22/10/24
Growing up in the 80’s I remember there was so much circulating through the grapevines that the unions had ruined the country. That a strong Nation was all about economics and business growth. But it never really sat with me. I had little interest in politics, and the only thing I heard about unions was they were apparently bad for the country. I saw the protests, the disruption caused ever so emphasised through the media, with little explained from the workers perspective.
I never really stepped off to carry the hatred towards the unions that was being projected, and I never really gave it to much thought. Unions were bad for the country, and I was in the headspace of just being lucky to have a job. A notion that has been hung over me more than once.
More recently I started reading a little more about what the unions represent and are calling for. With my own long experience of being paid at or under award rates, and hardly ever being paid proper overtime or any overtime at all, for jobs that always seem to gather far more responsibility’s than the position mandates, I started finding more in common with the workers supporting what unions are calling for.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m so grateful to have earnt my trade, I’ve been in work for most of my life since school days, and there’s been jobs that I’ve enjoyed. But it does start to wear you down and affect how you are. Always getting paid less than the others, being made to feel you’re bad for business and just lucky to have a job, but very self aware of the result of business growth through your effort and time there.
I’ve read a little more about what unions are calling for. Fair and equal pay, fair treatment, and a standard of worker safety and consideration. But this is where things get a little complex. In Australia things are becoming so over regulated that it becomes difficult to do your job. You can become so concentrated on the requirements and procedures that it overrides common sense. And if you forget to sign That, that’s your job gone. Maybe a second chance if you’ve got decent supervisors. But the black mark on your employment record will have little in relation of your ability in carrying out the job correctly and safely.
We definitely need safety and health standards, and procedure can help with that; though it can be pushed into grounds of over regulation. As workers, What considerations have been granted us that haven’t had to be fought for ? They used to send small children up chimneys to clean the charcoal. Now some may argue that we didn’t know better a couple of hundred years back. But guaranteed a mother would know somethings a miss when their child comes home black with soot and having to clean their nostrils out with a rag. Probably would have been orphans though. Less bother.
It does raise the question of what the opposition of fair worker treatment is trying to achieve. The parasite ever so present. Maximising profit, minimising worker returns. Presenting investor interests as the ultimate motive of business, and workers pay a necessary, Out Right Fought For requirement from efforts of litigation and worker support. I know it gets clever. If they loose a few grounds, the parasite reapplies elsewhere. Can’t send the kids up chimneys anymore ? right then send them to the cotton fields. Can’t do that anymore sir. Fine get the blacks back out there. No they want fair pay to. Well tell me we can at least send the broke and homeless whites back out there breaking rocks. “We’re working on that one SIR”.
The problem that can come through unions is the tipping point. The parasite looses grounds to fair pay, so they push it to too much pay, to many “Rights”, to much regulation. That in turn amongst things collapses small business and even large companies. In Australia we lost General Motors Holden. These guys started off as a family business making horse saddles and later horse drawn carriages. That’s how far these guys went back, but collapsed by bureaucracy. The first time I got paid proper overtime I was in my 40’s and earnt more on one public holiday 12 hour shift than I had ever earned in a week. Happy for the pay, but something just didn’t sit proper.
While unions, as with entire Nations and corporate centres, are susceptible to be taken host by the parasitical minded. Without the unions, we would have no shield.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-02/sally-mcmanus-actu-thirty-year-war-against-unions/101458318
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