Your Choice '07. Benny's Say.....

[benny]

For the overseas forumites (I think that is only you, KJS), Australia is holding a Federal Election this upcoming Saturday. Currently the Coalition holds office, however the Opposition has currently pulled a strong following with the opinion polls indicating people preferring Kevin "Dr. Bunsen" Rudd as Prime Minister to "Little" Johnny Howard.

One of Labour's (Kevin Rudd's Party) main push for votes is the promise of abolishing the current Industrial Relation (IR) Laws which have been introduced by the Coalition (Liberal and National Parties, John Howard's Party).

Pretty much the IR reform aimed to bring in a solid and consistant working guideline on a national level where the main points of conjecture are the loss of penalty rates and overtime, the "selling" of sick leave and annual leave and most controversially, the abolishment of the unfair dismissal law for small businesses.

The unfair dismissal law means a person who works in a Business with less than 100 people employed can be immediately "sacked" without having grounds to sue the company which sacked them in response for "unfair dismissal".

As someone who has worked under these laws for 2 years now in the pub, I see the IR as a positive thing for small business. People were initially paranoid about power-tripping bosses going around sacking people willy-nilly... "Because they can". This didn't happen. The reason is based on the outrageous assumption that a small company needs it's workers to keep operating. Wow!

Finding competent workers for the pub is difficult at the best of times. In days gone by, if a worker was employed who didn't do anything wrong per se, just be "generally shit", my boss would have no option but to have to keep them on and pray that they eventually did a fuck up that warranted dismissal.

Currently we have a few workers at the pub who I believe fall firmly under the category of "Generally Shit". Even when I am not manager, I often find myself having to direct these people to serve people rather than stand with their back to customers washing glasses, polishing wine glasses etc. These "Generally Shit" people are also very slow serving customers and have very minimal product knowledge about our wine list, beers and spirits available etc. One of these people spent over a minute looking for "Maker's Mark" Bourbon, before asking me where it was, only to be told we've never stocked it.

Are these people doing anything wrong? Well no, not really. Are these people suited to the job they are doing? No. Would the company be better off paying for the time of a person who is better (and it wouldn't be overly hard to find a person better) than them? Yes. All of these "Generally Shit" people at my place of employment also have very poor attitudes to their work, complaining often about being tired, the fact it's "late" (newsflash, it's a PUB, kiddo), often ask to finish early and complain or give excuses for not wanting to close and the like. This clearly shows they don't want to be at their shift, let alone learn and improve themselves in the job.

Running a small business is a risky business. In the past, a person who was sacked for being "Generally Shit" would have most likely turned around, found a lawyer and tried to get themselves either reinstated or a large cash payout, hurting the business further.

I really don't like having to work in the same area as these "Generally Shit" people, as I'm often feel as though I'm doing the work for one and a half people. With the IR Laws now allowing small Business to sack slow, incompetent people with awful attitudes and show no desire to learn, before they set fire to the building or get caught shagging the bosses wife on the job, I can only see that as beneficial for the advancement of small business in Australia.

So who will I be voting for this Saturday? It's a preferential system... I'll be voting for EVERYONE!
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"Making the world a better place.... One Friday Arvo at a time....."

[Toam]

[benny]

But for whom, Toam?
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"Making the world a better place.... One Friday Arvo at a time....."

[Toam]

In the house of reps, EVERYONE!

[Toam]

Hey Jordn, who are you gonna... oh, yeah...

[Toam]