Ooops, sorry Mods et al - this probably belongs elsewhere...

LOL, Adel....I subscribe to their newsletter and I figured that: ordinary workers and employers alike had a right to know, what kinds of 'choices', 'opportunities' and 'solutions' they are subject to...

I'll need workers for when I start stripping out the old copper wires from the phone network and flogging them off to China and India.
The hours will be long, the work will be hard and thankless and the pay will be minmum..any takers?
Oh..and u will have to work at the dead of night because it wont be strictly legal   

The best advice I can give is DON`T employ people in Australia!

Looks like this employer coud afford to pay the correct penalty rates and did not require their workforce to subsidise the change for the interum period.

It is not compulsory to underpay if the company can afford the correct rate.

Most companies have no problem providing management their full bonuses, maybe they should stage them as well - 20% the first year etc?

Andrei.Hicks wrote on Dec 23^rd, 2010 at 12:40pm:


Yes I know - I have been working in technical / management for over 20 years and clearly see what goes on around me. I have sat in meetings where decisions to give staff a 1% or 2% increase have been decieded with the primary motivation of justifying huge management increases, typically 15% min and over 30% on the cards. (just greed)

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Yes I am on call Xmas day, working Boxing day to give my team the day off and was working through till 3 am Tuesday night to complete a planned cut over.

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You would be surprised to find for how many it really is. My company has one guy who has been on the books for about 7 years and has never been on site - ever. During December we have a number of managers who have probably gone to more than 15 xmas parties.

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I recently was offered to go back onto pay by time - I grabbed it - after a decade of working many hours for no return I will more than make up the slight reduction.

BTW, our company doesnt pay bonuses to anyone.

Verge wrote on Dec 23^rd, 2010 at 10:15pm:



I mostly think that is a good thing.

All bonuses are is an excuse to put the management team on different platform to the workers which allows a segregated and often corrupt approach to total takehome pay between the two groups.

I see management teams blustering about modest pay increases accross the company - but in the end this is not where the major increases to their anual pay packet comes from.

It is a lot easier to keep a tight lid on wage increases when it does not impact on you.

Dnarever wrote on Dec 24^th, 2010 at 9:04am:


Well actually it starts at 20% on 1 July 2010.

As for the department, I fully understood it and as a result educated the staff, but from reading the award it isnt all that clear to a degree.

That said, are you prepared to go the other way with the deductions happening in 100% in year one as well?

The casual annual leave loading of 8.66% has been changed to zero, should we be taking 8.66% of our staff in one year?

Also, those under the award as management, instead of paying them overtime (Senior management are on 3 year contracts) and the like, we pay them a 30% exemption rate to cover things like return to work penalities (which never happens), break shifts, early and late starts and overtime.  It doesnt exclude public holidays.
Under the new award its back to 20%.  Should we take 10% off them in year one.

Also, employees engaged before 1999, permanent part times got a loading of 15%, guess what, back to zero now.

Under the new changes we the employers would have come out far rosier if we applied it across the board of both the increases and decreases.

The transition rules make it fair for both parties.  Employers need to ensure that they meet their obligations, but also meet their obligations to the owners/stakeholders/members by ensuring payments in excess of our legal requirements are not made unless a determination has been made by management or the board that those employees are deserving of a higher rate of pay.
One example is we pay our cleaners higher than our floor staff.  Reason being after a floor staff refused to clean a toilet after a patron had defecated and vomited they said "I'm not the frigging cleaner".  It was at that time we as management decided the cleaners although rarely have a hard time of it, and as a result deserve to be paid more than those that wouldnt do the job.

Higher than required wages should be at the decretion of management and the boards, not by misinterpretation of the new award conditions.

And if it was so simple all these new changes, why was I the one helping other businesses run through it, as well as our payroll software provider?  The misconceptions and misunderstandings are rife as people try to apply new rules, old rules and transitional rules while ensuring employees receive no reduction in their take home pay.

I think one of the best forms of reward is share options.

Obviously you'd probably link it to middle management and above - if you open up to the masses then you dilute the EPS.

But if managers are part owners in the company, we are all stretching ourselves to achieve an aligned mission objective of the company.

If all the financial controllers left work tomorrow, the whole system would fall off a cliff.

How would you know how much capital you have to spend?
How would you know how much you've sold?
How would you know the effect on the share price of your decision?

How much are you spending on salaries in Aus that could save millions if you move to somewhere else? What capital cost would that take? What effect would there be on the supply chain? What is the market trending? What is the ROI of such a decision? What are the years payback?

None of these. None of them, are possible without the Finance & Accounting teams.

Andrei.Hicks wrote on Dec 24^th, 2010 at 9:37am:



Just another way to differentiate the payment of yourself from other workers.

Dnarever wrote on Dec 24^th, 2010 at 11:07am:


Not it isn't. How come you're so cynical??

It's a way of ensuring management have a stake in the company and aligning our goals along with the corporate mission statement.

The better your department does, the better the company does, the higher the share price, the greater the value of your share options.

It ain't rocket science - hence why share options are so successful across US listed entities.

That happens everywhere.

Effective headcount management is a tool to control variable costs and increase the drive through from the top line through into the bottom line return.

It's part and parcel of business.

Andrei.Hicks wrote on Dec 24^th, 2010 at 11:34am:



More like bean cruncher stupidity, they pretended to remove 2 positions and increased overheads by around $700,000 while reducing productivity and blind Freddy could have forseen the impact.

Andrei.Hicks wrote on Dec 24^th, 2010 at 11:44am:



In other words bullshite over substance.

Do that too much and you may end up with the healthiest looking bankrupt company in the market.

Funny how a thread on the application of the new workplace laws and their transitional provisions under the fair work act was turned by DNA into a "Management bad, workers are screwed over" thread.

The State has not achieved best practice yet in meeting its legal obligations and targets in raising Pensions in Parity with minimum wages.

Verge wrote on Dec 24^th, 2010 at 12:28pm:



Funny that the description you have chosen (workers are screwed over) is in fact the impact of the transitional provisions.

The award changes are giving workers conditions thay should have had a decade ago and the transitional arrangements are delaying them for another 5 years.

Note: this is not saying that management is bad it is saying that the transitional arrangements are poor.

Verge wrote on Dec 27^th, 2010 at 8:42pm:



BS.

At least 5 off topis posts before mine and I only went off topic in responce to off topic comments.

My first off topic post was in responce to an off topic statment made by Andrei and my second off topic post was in responce to an off topic comment made by you. (when you said that your company do not give bonuses).

viewpoint wrote on Dec 28^th, 2010 at 7:52am:



I would agree about 70% with this in the case of small business but the larger the company the less relivant this attitude becomes.

THe bigger the company the less likley that management will correctly identify the worth of employees and the more probable that the worthless one may be the manager making the decision.

I have never worked in a corporation where the person seen as the best worker was not the same person who the Boss / manager did not drink beer with (or equivilant services) and the worst worker least effective is always the person the boss does not like. This person tends to be deemed the least productive even when they can clearly demonstrate that they complete more tasks and projects in better time with less problems than others.

A number of years ago I worked as a shift manager with 4 other team leaders, we were each responsible on certain shifts to allocat additional shifts and overtime based on the selection of the most appropriate person for the required work from a pool of about 70 workers.

Interesting was that we all tended to favour a group within that pool based of efficiency of the people and that we all had selected a different list of staff as meeting that catagory. In each case the basis of the groups were the people we liked the most. Virtually all managers do this and they do not even know that they are biased - it is not deliberate just human nature.

People truly believe that the employees they like are more efficient when in fact they can often be the people who do the least and I have never met a manager who does not regularly fall for this trap, I could give dozens of examples.

(this is an off topic responce to an off topic post / appology to anyone offended by discussion movement).

DNA, I would never run with an EB in our industry, ever.

An EB leaves you at the hands of the Union, and the greed factor kicks in quickly.

I have no desire sitting across a table every few years "negotiating" with people who do not have the best interests of the business at heart.  In my experience Unions are a breeding ground for trouble makers and do far more to create a disharmonous workplace than management could ever hope to.

The 5% of our workforce that creates the most pot stirring and trouble is the only 5% in a Union.

The award gives us the flexability to put our better employees higher up while leaving those who only want to do the minimum get paid the minimum.

At the end of the day, we are responsible to the board as managers of the business.  We are a community asset that needs to ensure a fair system, but most importantly we are in the community for the long haul.  Overpaying wages to staff who wont give us any more for the extra money doesnt serve our purpose.

Our staff turnover is only 15%, not bad for the hospitality sector if you ask me.

With such low turnover, sometimes it isnt always about money.