Industrial Relations Articles:

For the September quarter building and construction work is down 11 per cent compared to last year. This release is a memory-jerker reminding us what we confront in terms of the monopoly boosted costs of this essential component of capital investment. On the Bolt Report of 21 November, Kimberley Kitching refused to criticise the CMFEU, arguing that the union had been good for its members. John Slater of the H.R. Nicholls Society takes a contrary view arguing that the winners are the union chiefs and ordinary members lose out. Unless John Slater was addressing a broader definition of worker, Senator Kitching is likely to be closer to the mark, just as the 1980s highly protected car assembly industry or the worker controlled postal and electricity monopolies were good for their workers. They were, of course, especially bad for their customers and bad for the economy as a whole.

HALF a century ago more than 60 per cent of employees were trade union members. Today it’s 17 per cent. Even that overstates union membership’s importance since, in addition to employees, the workforce also includes two million non-union workers — businesspeople and contractors — more in fact than there are union members.

Shortengate contains so many threads that it could unravel not only his and others’ political carrears but the entire corrupt and feudal structure that is Australia’s unique industrial relations system. Remember, we have the only system in the world where a judicial body determines what the pay rates should be for the vast majority of workers. And that system is run as a retirement home for Union lags and ALP-friendly lawyers. Anthony Klan has asked 10 questions that need to be answered in a case that would fall within racketeering laws if it were to be addressed in the U.S.

I have been intrigued about why Daniel Andrews canned the Melbourne East West road link. The standard answer to save inner city seats does not wash as those seats were always going Green and in mollifying the inner city denizens he aggravates potential users from more winnable seats in the East