Verge wrote on Dec 27
th, 2010 at 8:42pm:
As far as Andre is concerned every thread is about him and he is always on topic.
You are not wrong
Quote:In our industry, it was last reported that well over 90% of the industry applied the Award. It is a generous award, and in actual fact the NSW arm of our industry has been fighting hard for the retention of many of the existing provisions, but because Vic, SA, WA and NT have never seen those sorts of things, many of our really generous provisions are now gone over the next 5 years. We have managed to keep a couple, not many though.
Yep this is the main problem with modern awards the are unfair to the better off high cost of living states because the look at the total picture and go for an average result.
It does sound like your area would like to do the right thing and in this case I would think that to move forward with the intention of the system would be the only way to get the required result.
The Modern award is meant to be a base position and the mechanism to provide for meeting the current position would be to put an enterprise agreement on top of the award to return to the current position.
In terms of things like shift penalties which have been around since around the 1930's they should have been in place decades ago. The employers not paying them have been getting away with it for a long time and getting the benefits - while I can understand the fairness point the employer side could have been fair 10 years ago if they wanted I believe that it has been a rip off of employee entitlements which the process is extending.
I don’t think it a huge problem because it is moving in the right direction but overall I think the modern award system is crappy in terms of implementation, it is unfair on too many counts.
Quote:The transition provisions are about fairness and balance. An employer should be given the rights to phase in a raft of new changes that will affect their bottom line, and employees can hope that the provisions they are loosing happens also over a long period.
Would you support there being no transitional arrangements providing the employer can also remove the now lost benefits just as quickly?
As I said before I do not believe that there should be lost benefits - negotiate an enterprise agreement and keep these benefits in place. I feel that this should have been manditory and automatic in the process.
In terms of fairness in transition I think it reasonable to phase in changes except in areas like penalty rates, shift leave etc where the employer has basically been getting away with ripping off the employee on conditions which should have already been in place for a long time.
Phase in changes - yes
Extend the rip off - no.