Supply and demand in effect. Funny how free market proponents sometimes fail to apply their logic to unionised labour markets.
Maybe your tune would change you if were in the middle of no where and the oil rig you happened to be on, say caught fire? Or completing the underwater helicopter evacuation and survival training or being in a helicopter crash.... NEWS JUST IN CEO OF WOODSIDE GETS PAID 20K a day and risks getting paper cut in air-conditioned office
You're arguing by misdirection. You refuse to address the thread issue which was worker remuneration, not CEO or management remuneration about which I have the same sentiment. The compensation they get is well in excess of danger money. You don't get compensated for not having your personal room on a barge because of danger. The same applies to mines. There are dangerous jobs all over Australia in many sectors - probably more casualties in agriculture. "Supply and Demand" is relevant but it is not the main cause of the distortion. Main cause is getting companies over a barrel with organized labour that locks out more supply (scabs) and demands ridiculous conditions. Once the work force is populated for a project management can't undo and redo the recruitment. It's labour organized for cynical and capricious purposes not equitable purposes.
I am not making that argument, I am challenging what has been said looking beyond the circle jerk sound bytes this guy is spewing, go back and read my comments. You are the one framing this as a black and white case about worker remuneration when you know very well that this is more complicated than that...
I'm currently working on one of the LNG Plants up north and can say $120K is probably cheap for even a Trade Assistant. The Unions are very powerful here - though i'm a non-manual i.e. no Union relation. Plenty of 'scab hunter' hard hat markings around which refer to non-union manual employees... They are a bunch of unproductive individuals who stand around doing... not much really. Productivity is terrible! "Mate, its a dairy out there... everyone is milking it" "Mate, its a Gold Mine here" "It's called Pipe Hokey Pokey... you put the big pipe in... you take the big pipe out... put it in and move it all about" Let's all do our morning stretches, safety talk, have two 45min smoko's and probably complete 2.5 hours of a 10 hour working day actually doing anything productive. Our commodity prices are tumbling Iron Ore, Coal, LNG, Oil etc. yet most construction guys think they can hop from one project to another... short sighted vision perhaps. When the capital dries up and big business consolidates their operations to lower operating costs - unemployment not just direct hire tradesmen, but all the services based business in the big cities will be letting go staff at alarming rates. The true extent of the snow ball will be unexpected... like a Swiss National banker in the dead of night. I'm holding cash and buying gold/silver with some of my keep whilst i'm on this derailed "gravy train". Bellinvest
The cynicism of the big union apparatchiks and a lot of drone workers an insult to what unionism came from and once was. I was infected by it once when young in the Victorian Railways as a carriage cleaner. Used to carriage clean along with a lot of immigrants who enjoyed the protection of Australian unions. They'd just do a bit of desultory sweeping in carriages and instead of putting it into litter bags provided would just whisk the garbage out the doors to blow around the CBD or rot on the ground. Then every second Thursday they'd wend their way around the tracks to the pay office. Single file like sheep making their way behind 'the leader' to the feed bag. I can't talk as I would pick night shifts where the customary practice was to work for two hours then stuff newspapers under your clothes curl up and go to sleep in a carrige for 6 hours.
NOW what do you think the big boys do...Make enough $$ when the stock market opens, then off to the golf course for a skins event, a lot of drinks, then back to the office.. A great job if you can snare one... ^^^Had a hard day at the office Honey. Regards Errol 43
Good on you for being a free man, independent of the unions. So, tell me, is it rank-and-file union members who physically intimidate independent workers, or do 'heavies' and 'enforcers' get called for those special occasions?
I finished up on site back in April and came back to the concrete metropolis of Brisbane CBD. As for intimidation... i'm unsure as i was not associated with Tradesman. However, if you wanted a 'better deal' then you wall fall in line under the EBA umbrella. The professionals were being paid less then a site cleaner (under EBA). By professionals i mean contract administrators, site engineers etc. These people would generally be on the same hourly rate as working in Brisbane for example, just adjusted for their hours worked. None of this overtime (2x rate), none of this 'ferry allowance' crap the unions pull, none of the special perks... Have a go at the plants now there! Santos and Origin share prices have gone through the floor!
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/bus...k=42cd94126274ee429b951896cb6d32dc-1458296054 [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mehLKdRFpsM[/youtube]
