No organisation is perfect… This is where we digress in thought… Where a person is placed on an individual contract and told to accept reductions in pay, leave and entitlements particularly in companies that pocket the difference and don’t hire new staff we’ve got a problem here.
We’ve had a problem since the mid 1990s when John Howard set a precedent where employer could decide how much their employees are worth rather than using the existing independent tribunal. Where we’re at a point where 40% of Australians are now working in insecure work. Its not a hop skip and a jump. It only takes one more person like Tony Abbott to wreck the base of Unionism altogether.
We just need our own Ronald Reagan, or Margret Thatcher and then? It will be entirely out of control, employers will control everything and job security will be just as problematic as it is now both in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Its already happening… We’re looking at “Fair Work Australia” abolishing people’s working rights. We’re looking at a 2013 Liberal agenda to abolish the Disability Employment Services proper with the decision not to continue with the Commonwealth Rehabilitation Services, the continuing policy of under funding the NDIS and the continued push to move more people onto individual contracts brought in under John Howard.
It won’t be long now and we wont have any working rights at all and the most vulnerable as always are first effected. People have the right to feel safe in their employment without the fear of being sacked for unwarranted reasons, this can only happen collectively. The sick and the disabled particularly have extended rights to not feel discriminated against in workplace environments, this can only happen collectively through the establishment of disability support programs, and through affirmative action programs in the workplace environment and yet? The first thing that goes in the undermining of workers rights is the rights of the most disadvantaged to the ability to find secure work.
The rights of hospitality, retail and pharmaceutical workers that have been undermined by Fair Work Australia, the rights of the disabled to have their best possible oportunity to find meaningful work through the disability employment services and under the national disability insurance schemes and workplace programs that support disabled persons in work. All of these things continue to be undermined.
