Wednesday 29 April 2015
Today seems like as good a day as any to withdraw our ambassador from the USA.
Today seems like as good a day as any to withdraw our ambassador from the USA. And China. Saudi Arabia. Singapore. Quite a few places really. While we are at it, maybe we should kick out all ambassadors to Australia from any countries that do follow international law and human rights treaties and save those countries the trouble of following Tony's new found ethical example.
Tuesday 7 April 2015
Who needs sleep anyway? #penaltyrates
Oh those poor multinational companies paying penalty rates. I know running a small cafe can be a marginal business, but when we hear all this carry on about penalty rates, this is the only sort of business we hear about. No one mentions McDonalds, Starbucks, Shell or Coles. Or pubs, hotels and casinos. There are plenty of big players in the hospitality industry as well. Is it my cynicism that these are the drivers of the campaign against penalty rates, not small town cafes? Of course, it doesn't look so good to say a multi-billion dollar company has the shits with paying its lowly employees something in compensation for not having normal free time.
Shift work sucks. I have done it for many years in a variety of fields, and it is something to be tolerated not enjoyed. We pay more for evenings, nights and weekends, because these are the times people normally get together, relax, play sport and not the least, sleep. When do we have family dinners, birthday parties, BBQs, festivals, dance parties, weddings, sporting matches or just casual get togethers? It's very rarely at 2pm on Tuesday afternoon. When your friends or partner work normal hours, shift work is a sure fire way to minimise the amount of time you get to spend together. If you have kids, it's a sure fire way to reduce the amount of time you spend with them. It stuffs with your sleeping and eating patterns and has been shown to be detrimental to physical and emotional health.
If a night club objects to paying penalty rates, they could try opening on Tuesday at 2pm instead. I mean, it won't cost them as much. But then again, they might not get a lot of business. Some businesses just are suited to running out of normal business hours, and the price of running one is paying people to work out of normal business hours. It's not like these businesses went into it blind, it's been the case for 100 years.
These days, I'm a nurse. I hate working nights. I don't want to work nights, Tony, do you think the patients' families could just come in and look after them from 11pm so I could just go home to bed? Really, I don't think I am paid anywhere near enough to be desperately trying to go to sleep at 4pm in order to be awake all night then manage to get a few hours sleep in the morning before wandering around like a zombie until it all repeats again the next night. $67.70. That's it. A flat $67.70 night shift allowance for all that suffering. That's a 20% penalty rate. To work all bloody night.
But even if they were willing, neither Tony nor the patients' families could actually look after the patients safely, so I accept that much as I hate it, I will have to work nights. Someone needs to. And that is a basic fact of a lot of shift work. We aren't just talking about being able to get a coffee on a public holiday (and what is stopping these cafes from charging a public holiday surcharge if they are struggling so bloody much anyway?). We are talking about nurses, doctors, carers, welfare workers, ambos, police, firepeople. And other unromantic jobs like cleaners, shelf packers and checkout operators. We all rely on someone doing this work. Strangely enough, only one of those jobs is renowned for its good income and even then, those doctors doing shift work aren't usually high in their pay spectrum. But it's ok to campaign to pay even less to these people already at the low end of income in Australia.
I've got this great idea. How much more productive could we be if all jobs were 24 hours? We could employ more people, get more things done ... look if all jobs were 24 hours, then we wouldn't have this strange prioritising of certain days over others or this expectation that we could actually sleep at night and we could just pay everyone the same rate for whenever. When Tony and the president of ACCI are awake at 3 am Saturday because they have to work, not because they choose to be out partying, then they can let us know what they think of penalty rates.
Shift work sucks. I have done it for many years in a variety of fields, and it is something to be tolerated not enjoyed. We pay more for evenings, nights and weekends, because these are the times people normally get together, relax, play sport and not the least, sleep. When do we have family dinners, birthday parties, BBQs, festivals, dance parties, weddings, sporting matches or just casual get togethers? It's very rarely at 2pm on Tuesday afternoon. When your friends or partner work normal hours, shift work is a sure fire way to minimise the amount of time you get to spend together. If you have kids, it's a sure fire way to reduce the amount of time you spend with them. It stuffs with your sleeping and eating patterns and has been shown to be detrimental to physical and emotional health.
If a night club objects to paying penalty rates, they could try opening on Tuesday at 2pm instead. I mean, it won't cost them as much. But then again, they might not get a lot of business. Some businesses just are suited to running out of normal business hours, and the price of running one is paying people to work out of normal business hours. It's not like these businesses went into it blind, it's been the case for 100 years.
These days, I'm a nurse. I hate working nights. I don't want to work nights, Tony, do you think the patients' families could just come in and look after them from 11pm so I could just go home to bed? Really, I don't think I am paid anywhere near enough to be desperately trying to go to sleep at 4pm in order to be awake all night then manage to get a few hours sleep in the morning before wandering around like a zombie until it all repeats again the next night. $67.70. That's it. A flat $67.70 night shift allowance for all that suffering. That's a 20% penalty rate. To work all bloody night.
But even if they were willing, neither Tony nor the patients' families could actually look after the patients safely, so I accept that much as I hate it, I will have to work nights. Someone needs to. And that is a basic fact of a lot of shift work. We aren't just talking about being able to get a coffee on a public holiday (and what is stopping these cafes from charging a public holiday surcharge if they are struggling so bloody much anyway?). We are talking about nurses, doctors, carers, welfare workers, ambos, police, firepeople. And other unromantic jobs like cleaners, shelf packers and checkout operators. We all rely on someone doing this work. Strangely enough, only one of those jobs is renowned for its good income and even then, those doctors doing shift work aren't usually high in their pay spectrum. But it's ok to campaign to pay even less to these people already at the low end of income in Australia.
I've got this great idea. How much more productive could we be if all jobs were 24 hours? We could employ more people, get more things done ... look if all jobs were 24 hours, then we wouldn't have this strange prioritising of certain days over others or this expectation that we could actually sleep at night and we could just pay everyone the same rate for whenever. When Tony and the president of ACCI are awake at 3 am Saturday because they have to work, not because they choose to be out partying, then they can let us know what they think of penalty rates.
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