I believe apprentice wages (make that ALL wages) should be based on
performance. I have long argued that
if an apprentice can perform the work of a tradesman (and I have met
many who can) they should be paid
accordingly. Bricklayers, for example, get paid per 1,000 bricks laid. I
know some 2nd year apprentices
who can out-lay a tradesman with 20 years experience!

Like it or not, people can only be paid based on the value of work done.
If you wanted a pipe fixed at your
house or some pavers laid or a new power point fitted and the value of
the work is say $100, how can the
tradesman you call in pay someone else $120 to do it? Some people are
slower than others, some are faster. That’s
life, and we all have to live with that. The fast ones end up earning
more than the slow ones.

As for “$5 an hour, be happy you’ve got a job”, every apprentice after a
few short years ends up being a
tradesman and is then on between $1,000 – $2,000 a week for the rest of
their life!

But apart from that, why is it OK for student teachers, student social
workers, student nurses and just
about every other area of university or TAFE or hairdressing students
etc to get $5 an hour? Why is that
not patronising?

When you spend your money Curtis, you decide whether it’s worth buying
for that price. It’s your money.
So who should decide how much people should be paid?

It would be super icky and sticky, not to mention untenable. Therefore, hard to do but, in this atmosphere, necessary. There is always a form of words – for everything. A newspaper has to retain some dignity.

Tonight on ABC News Sydney showed the clip of the fake handshake without pointing out what actually went on.

Looked to me as if the prankster got rodent a couple of times – hand out, then as rodent put his out the bloke laughed and pulled his hand away and touched his hair, twice, laughing in rodents face each time.

No doubt the clip will get air time on Insiders etc.

Congratulations BushfireBill for following this up

But when you read in the story this morning paragraphs such as:

“The PM&C submission says it is “widely recognised that Australian car manufacturers are facing serious pressure, raising real questions about the long-term viability of at least two, and possibly three, of the companies”.

“In essence, the question that the industry is raising is why would a Toyota, Ford or a General Motors in Tokyo or Detroit respectively want to invest millions in upgrading an Australian operation when they are facing higher labour costs, greater union militancy and the threat of more strike action when they can put their money into low-cost and highly efficient Chinese operations?”

…you have to ask yourself, was the PM & C submission written by Peter Hendy or by a Liberal party stooge placed in the department to generate such rubbish, which frankly reads like something from an undergraduate Liberal student doing business studies at Bond Uni…

With any little luck this story will “bell the cat” on the woeful coverage from our erstwhile national newspaper of record…

I hope someone puts in a complaint to the Press Council

And someone should also try and FOI the letter and its support material (that is, unless there’s a conclusive certificate on it already)

And if the journos of the MSM had any balls they would be starting to direct questions to both the Treasurer, the Finance Minister, the Minister for Industry etc to see if they were made aware of this correspondence

And directing questions to Shanahan himself…

Come on fearless members of the 4th estate…..your credibility demands it….

And BTW, frankly if you were a global manufacturing company would you be happy having your “brand” associated with “Team Howard”? and their ideological anti-union obsessions?

I think not. I suspect that not even Ratsak wants the association….

I really hope the media ask some hard questions of itself about this story, which – after all – led the front page of our national broadsheet and was clearly designed to set the agenda for the day and dovetails perfectly into the rhetoric and verbiage of the Coalition Government….

Is Dennis Shanahan for real?

I guess Paul Kelly is just happy he wasn’t lumbered or instructed to write this rubbish…