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Last updated on August 9th, 2017 at 02:11 pm
If you can read this without smiling, well, you’re one tough hombre, sir.
- “One would need a heart of stone not to laugh at the despair of Tim Dunlop…” Oscar WildePosted by richard mcenroe on 2006 03 26 at 11:23 PM • permalink
- Not only did I smile, I chortled!Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2006 03 26 at 11:31 PM • permalink
- Dunlop is a sanctimonious blowhard.Posted by niobium2000 on 2006 03 26 at 11:42 PM • permalink
- Is it me, or does Tim Dunlop write in the most plodding uninspired style imaginable? Hell, he might be right, occasionally, on some issue of interest and importance. Stranger things do happen. But it’s an absolute chore to read his posts and to ask, first, what he’s blathering about, and secondly, why should anyone care in the least?
For the past month he’s written, oh, probably 52 posts (might be less, seems like more though) on wheat, or some such. Who cares?
Posted by wronwright on 2006 03 26 at 11:43 PM • permalink
- Poor Dunlop. I imagined his head exploding over this change to a “Soviet system of command and control” (God, is the irony thick here, or what?)…..and then I smiled.Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 03 26 at 11:57 PM • permalink
- For the first time in 4 years I am considering taing on a new employee. .Posted by Dean McAskil on 2006 03 27 at 12:07 AM • permalink
- Dunlop wrote, “So today we officially move from being a country that uniquely developed on the basis of a system that presumed the right of the average worker, the battler, to be an equal player in the industrial relationship to being one where virtually all power has been handed to the employer.” [emphasis added].
There is again. The worker is a “warrior.” Business should be run by politics. And so on. Then some of these marxoids will insist that power is never anybody’s motive, it’s always about money, power is about money, etc. Meanwhile those marxoids try to politicize everything.
What is this endless confliction & confoundment between decision-making & carrying out, and between warriors’ strife & workers’ toil, & between weaponry & tools, and between power & wealth? I think it’s some sort of two-card monte.
- “So today we officially move from being a country that uniquely developed on the basis of a system that presumed the right of the average worker, the battler, to be an equal player in the industrial relationship to being one where virtually all power has been handed to the employer.”
Exxxxxcellent.—C. Montgomery Driscoll
Posted by Ed Driscoll on 2006 03 27 at 01:07 AM • permalink
- …virtually all power has been handed to the employer
And, as an employer I say, about jolly time!
—Nora
Posted by The Thin Man Returns on 2006 03 27 at 01:28 AM • permalink
- “Once upon time Australians believed that an employer who could not afford to pay a living wage did not deserve to be in business. That’s over. Now anything goes.”
What? WHAT!? When the hell did ‘Australians’ believe any such idiotic thing? When was such a bizzare and stupid idea ever part of the Australian culture, ever? What is this idiot talking about?
- It’s just not right to be continually gloating since October 2004.
But, when I read tripe like Tim Dunlop’s diatribe, I just have to go and gloat some more.Keep it up, moonbats, and the Libs will be in government forever.
(not that there’s anything wrong with that.)Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2006 03 27 at 01:32 AM • permalink
- I almost followed through I was laughing so hard.
I’d like to hire two, possibly three new people but have yet to encounter a year 12 graduate with basic literacy and numeracy- we may have to take on some geezers who had to endure the horror of an education system predicated on competition and reward for effort; they should have been suitably broken down by such a draconian system that they’ll be willing pawns in my commercial conquests. And able to read, write, count and follow simple directions without sticking their tongues in a powerpoint.
- A possibly interesting anecdote. Late last year I was working as a contractor in a central policy department of the ACT Public Service. It was a highly militant workplace, thoroughly unionised, utterly opposed to the WR Reforms and well represented in the various anti reform demonstrations around Canberra (which the ACT Labor govt gave its employees paid leave to attend).
It was also the slackest place in which I’ve ever worked. Basically, no one was expected to do anything; absenteeism was the norm (I can’t remember a single day when the entire group was at work), no one got to work before 9 or stayed after 4.30. I can remember lots of times walking through the work area and noticing that every PC screen was on some non-work related sight: sport, fashion, holidays, recipes, E-Bay. Lots of time was spent sitting around cahtting about – well – sport, fashion, holidays, recipes, E-Bay!!
Needless to say, work output was minimal in terms of quality and quantity: bad expression, poor logic, errors in spelling, grammar and basic arithmetic, deadlines always overrun, lots of gibberish that had to be rewritten….
Whatever the arguments for an against the WR Reforms, it was plain that these militants, at least, saw their wages and conditions (very good wages and conditions, too) as an entitlement that had nothing to do with productivity.
The irony, of course, is that the reforms are going to have any real affect on state public sector conditions for the foreseeable future!!
Posted by Consuela Potez on 2006 03 27 at 01:33 AM • permalink
- Firstly,
its interesting to read of Howard’s comments that people have been saying to him that every small business has 1 ‘whinger’ that makes it hard for everyone else. Its true. Here in HK I have the luxury of using two year contracts. If you are part of the team, you can enjoy extended contracts, a wage increase, and an extended gratuity. If you are not capable then its bye bye, evolution in action.I did like this from ‘Amos’ though:
Yeah, I love Howard for the same reason I loved the Sex Pistols, he makes all the right people angry. (chortle)
- I have heard that a large number of ALP staffers in Canberra have been on dreaded Australian Workplace Agreements for some time now – in fact they demanded them.Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 03 27 at 01:47 AM • permalink
- All you guys talking about hiring someone, I’d take you up on it, but Howard won’t let me shoot shit…Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 03 27 at 02:10 AM • permalink
- Me, as an American, I feel sorry that you Australians do not have one of the greatest recources available, Mexican immigrants. Until you’ve been around, and have worked with Mexican immigrants, you have no idea what a great group of people they are, and what great citizens they make.
I personally wish that the three NAFTA coutnries (Canada, Mexico, USA) would drop all immigration control among themselves. One, it would deprive those Spanish bastards that mis-rule Mexico so badly of their peons and serfs that they so badly abuse. Two, it would add a truly solid group of citizens to both Canada and the USA. (Although Canada sure seems to love immigrants that are almost adamantly opposed to traditional Canadian values.)
Posted by David Crawford on 2006 03 27 at 05:57 AM • permalink
- Consuela (#18), I thought I heard on ABC radio the other day that the population of Canberra was around 385,000 and that they had just employed their 80,000th territory public servant! Can this really be true?!Posted by AlphaMikeFoxtrot on 2006 03 27 at 06:09 AM • permalink
- #19 – It was also the slackest place in which I’ve ever worked. Basically, no one was expected to do anything; absenteeism was the norm (I can’t remember a single day when the entire group was at work), no one got to work before 9 or stayed after 4.30…
This is also the libraries at RMIT, especially the city campus. There’s a 40+ year old employee there, a spinster, who regularly takes two hours off during the day to go to the cinema – and no one says anything at all. With efficient workers they’d need half the staff. No wonder the finances at RMIT are stuffed.
Posted by walterplinge on 2006 03 27 at 06:46 AM • permalink
- AlphaMike [#28]: according to the ACT Government’s figures, there are a little over 19,000 public servants (not including employees in semi privatised bodies like the electricity, gas and water corp or the TAB)for a population of 330,000, a ratio of about 1:17 . I don’t know what the ratios are in other Australian jurisdictions, but that still seems pretty high to me!!Posted by Consuela Potez on 2006 03 27 at 09:56 AM • permalink
- All power is in the hands of the employer eh?
I would beg to differ.
Where are the unfair quitting laws? Why should employees be allowed to quit just because they can get better pay and conditions elsewhere?
Employers were not allowed to replace employees for better or even cheaper employees.
What happens to all the time and money invested in training an employee who just goes somewhere else? Straight down the toilet or worse still off to the competition.
What of the recruitment costs involved to getting a replacement for someone who quits?
And these goons talk about all power being in the hands of the employee.
There is a market for labour just as there is for any other resource. The difference between labour and other resources is that labour can get up and go anytime it likes and in a labour market beset with shortages, this can be devastating to a business. Yet there are supposedly intelligent people like Combet saying that employers will shed staff on a whim.
- Indeedy Veesh
The lesson from the founding of Australia is that you can behave appallingly (break the law) and it can all work out fine in the long run (when you’re transported to a better place).
That’s why this emphasis on personal responsibility is un-Australian.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 03 27 at 06:30 PM • permalink
- This from “Your Whinge” over at Faifax:
“Well, I was a senior manager in a well known org that has a low number as the first part of their name and guess what – I got to the end of 6 months probation and on the final day, they just said, ‘Sorry but we don’t want you, here is a month’s pay and goodbye’”
Followed by three or four para of wallowing self pity and doom-saying.
Doesn’t this “senior” guy realise the employer was under no obligation to pay him a month’s wages at the end of a probation period?
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 03 27 at 11:37 PM • permalink
- “senior” manager — Paper hat AND a two-line name tag on your shirt.
Doesn’t 7-11 start with a low number?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 03 28 at 11:11 AM • permalink
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