Holy Grail (and others) breaching human rights?

And to Midnitecalla:
I didn’t get the chance to read your post until after mine had gone up. Thanks for the Amen. And good on you for having the guts and energy to speak your mind on this (very important) issue.
All the best.

Mr(s) Bonfire,
It’s becoming rapidly apparent that (one of) your (main) problem(s) is that you are very much given to seeing politics in terms of archetypes and cliches (masquerading as “down-to-earth pragmatism” or something equally banal and philistine). And in so doing, you reveal how narrow you really are. So, in a failed attempt neatly to encapsulate what I’ve said, you trot out the familiar weedy and anaemic Green (fake) Left archetype, the “World Government” conspiracy theorist archetype – who attributes everything bad in the world to the hidden influence of some more-or-less shadowy organisation like the Masons or the Vatican, and then resort to calling me a “pinko”, a term conventionally applied to Communists and Left-wingers (as well as anyone free-thinking enough to associate with them) in the 1950’s and 60’s.
Why not, instead of resorting to – not particularly interesting or at all incisive – political epithets, try to respond to the substance of what I’ve said. Surely this is more important than trying to classify me according to your own impoverished frame of reference. I suppose it serves me right for trying to feed strawberries to one particularly unpleasant pig……….
Tell you what. I’ll fight you on your own ground for a minute. Let me attempt a character sketch of you……
You’re first generation into the middle class, right? After years of steadfastly promoting your own interests, you’ve contrived at last to crawl up the (if you will) arse of the middle class, where you maintain, as the owner of a small business, a most tenuous hold. But the fear remains in your mind that you could, at any time, be excreted back out of the very orifice that you once strove so hard to enter. You feel that deregulation and globalisation have provided you with opportunities you might otherwise never have had. Thus the unmistakable note of hysteria, progressively more evident in every post you’ve made here. You’ve got a very immediate and personal interest in seeing globalisation and deregulation continue. You certainly seem to have that sceptical and dismissive attitude towards formal education which is typical of the self-made, and the anti-big government, up-by-your-bootstraps outlook typical of small business owners everywhere. This is amusing at the best of times (especially as they rely, in many cases, on government assistance for subsidies, to keep the unions in check, and to regulate so that they are not destroyed by the banks/big business), but especially in the ACT, where, in a more or less direct sense, government pretty much KEEPS them in business (PS contracts, etc., not to mention the fact that a disproportionate number of people living in this town work for the government!).
Or maybe you’re a disillusioned public servant who’s seen far too much useless waste of public resources in his/her time, and longs for a new, Hayek-inspired dawn of private enterprise and personal initiative with “the little man” leading the way.
Does any of this ring a bell, Mr(s) Bonfire?…….
Quote:

“so we need manufacturing restored to maintain large unskilled workforces which can feed militant unions with more jackboots. i see now how wrong i am. we should of course aspire for our children to work in factories. lets remove the robots and stick 30 recent arts graduates in there. while were at it, lets remove containers from the wharves and get dockers back to humping boxes by hand.”

I’m not of course by any means suggesting that industry be de-mechanised – and your readiness to accuse me of wanting it to be is symptomatic of another of your apparent failings: the desire to put words into peoples’ mouths- here’s another example: “what you want is a return to central control – of not just our economy but our lives.”
What I am in fact suggesting is that a sound manufacturing industry is the foundation of true national sovereignty, and that it should be under workers’ control. After all, by whose labour is wealth created? Doesn’t it make sense that those who produce it should control it? The kind of service industries in which a vastly disproportionate number of Australians now work are essentially parasitic, and not wealth producing. It is only with national ownership of the commanding heights of the economy (and manufacturing in particular) and the development of the same under workers’ control that true national sovereignty and economic strength can be achieved. I don’t necessarily dispute your right to own a small business. What I do dispute is your right to deny your workers the conditions their forefathers and mothers fought for, to pay your workers whatever you say the market will bear, and, if they don’t fall in, to import third world labour to replace them. And I refuse to roll over and resign myself to the fact that my own country will be reliant, for the foreseeable future, on imported manufactures, and consigned to a shadow-existence as a service industry-orientated economy. Let me put it this way. What if (say) Chinese manufacturing collapsed entirely? What would happen to Australia’s (and America’s, and Britain’s – the list goes on) service industry-oriented economies? BIG problems, right? See where I’m coming from?
Quote:

“international trade, resource and labour supply dates back to cro magnon walking out of africa.”

You must have access to some revolutionary new branch of archaeological enquiry if you have evidence that early sapians sapiens were engaged in trade and “international labour supply”. Or is this just another example of your completely a-historical approach to fundamentally historical questions: “Thus has it ever and will always be………”.
Quote:

“you can dazzle us with your undergrad rants on economic theories, but despite your biased observations you cannot deny that the nations that have entered the global market by responding to market demands have prospered.”

I wasn’t aware that I’d said anything either particularly dazzling or especially undergraduate But I suppose it all depends on the perceptions (intellectual level?) of the reader. I WAS under the impression, however, that I’d attempted to adduce some kind of evidence for the arguments I put forward, something that you have conspicuously failed to do.
Quote:

“If what you contend is true we would have depression era numbers of unemployed.”

I think it is entirely possible that this is the case. Despite your protestations to the contrary, five hours work a week as a casual (with or without the prospect of something better the next week) is not employment in any real sense. Take all the people in casual or part-time work, as well as those who have given up looking for work entirely (remember, unemployment figures are calculated on the basis of monthly surveys of 30,000 households, and only those still actively looking for work are counted as part of the work force), and we might indeed have something approaching depression-era levels of unemployment.

Anyway, I’ve had enough of this. I dare say you’ll be provoked to ever-greater heights of personal nastiness the longer this goes on. And, in any case, I’ve said all I have to say on this issue. Thanks, Mr(s) Bonfire, for the…..errrr….”lively” debate. It’s been real.
I guess I’m never gonna get that Amen.

as for globalisation its flawed and in times of crisis its the existing skilled workers located locally that often save the day.

When we go offshore we lose the talent and knowledge often forever but there is an air of dont worry be happy sheel be right mate we will be able to restart if it goes bung mate.Wrong Aussies are a gullible and arrogant racewhen it comes to industrial relations. Australian talent is and always was one of the best in the western world. i dont say not to close a factory if it is achingly obvious its uneconomical , but to close it just to save on workers conditions not on the product itself is abhorrent.that is truly squandering our kids future for short term profits.

i have learnt a leading tyre factory closed in VIC because the chinese plant was making them for 20 dollars cheaper. the diff wasnt in quality but in workers benifits. and the locals had negotiated until they were blue in the face and gotten productivity to a world standard.Still the management kept thier jobs and the factory and workers were scrapped for coolie workers and bad wages.Not good . not good at all

and as a result i am a renewed union member . it may or may not be of use but i feel its a sheild against unscrupolous managers and employers.

no shake down isnt deluded Bon fire but he puts up a better argument than you .

your way to thinking is if a person gets the sack they can melt away and get retraining.This may enable most employers to get some sleep at night with this myth. yet all i hear is bleating from the buisness community that they cant get the old fashoned work ethic any more .

well, bonfire here is the news: It doesnt come cheap it never will .But its out there. Most employees are and have been promised the sun but got the moon so some are naurally cynical but can you blame them?.Also most employers are egocentric enough to believe that in most ways the employee owes them a days work, and should go to bed grate ful. WRONG!

and Bonfire not all can get retraining as you succintly
pointed out. some cant get past the glass wall thrust in front of thier faces after a certain age because employers here wont give them a go because they are in essence workplace skinflints.rather get a minor to do the work and whinge about the growing ranks of older centerlink customers who can and do expect a fair day pay for a fair days work and wondering what they did so wrong other than reporting for work .
so most need the unions to give employers a goood old aussie kick in the pants and to keep the negotiating table fair for all. the old chestnut rolled out by employers is that they are unfairly being hurt. utter blarney! as most employers are now netting profits garnered by depriving workers of leave loading, penalites and other supposed luxuries. I wager as a kid your Dad benifited from them and in turn you got a set of school shoes or the ten speed or atari yet as an adult to espouse to thier removal to a certain extent smacks of duplicity.

it erodes the very standard of living you take for granted but would not give a toss and would rather deny the next bloke to have

so Amen to shake down for having the fortitude to put it out there like it is in a impartial manner and
starting a damn good thread of conversation.

also unionism isnt communism if you hadnt noticed.

( Common mistake employer groups make world wide)

As so the over use of the old time insult of pinko is rather dated and not in proper context.

so we need manufacturing restored to maintain large unskilled workforces which can feed militant unions with more jackboots. i see now how wrong i am. we should of course aspire for our children to work in factories. lets remove the robots and stick 30 recent arts graduates in there. while were at it, lets remove containers from the wharves and get dockers back to humping boxes by hand.

im afraid the manufacturing battle is over. look in any carpark and you will see the people have spoken. overwhelmingly people do not care where a widget is made as long as its cheap, reliable and available.

why shoudl business go broke to satisfy your ideology ? start your own manufacturing business and see how you fare.

if you do you nee to focus on niche items or something which is unique or can be supplied in a timely fashion economically.

i gather youre one of those one world govt types as well ? are the masons behind globalisation ?

international trade, resource and labour supply dates back to cro magnon walking out of africa.

you can dazzle us with your undergrad rants on economic theories, but despite your biased observations you cannot deny that the nations that have entered the global market by responding to market demands have prospered.

As economies grow and evolve why force any industry to stay where its no longer profitable ?

Sure the workforce is initially displaced, but people adapt and evolve and find other work. If what you contend is true we would have depression era numbers of unemployed. the fact that unemployment is at record lows would tend to indicate that while you have a pinko shop steward lets get em boys angle to motivate the people you want to remain downtrodden, you actually are deluded.

what you want is a return to central control – of not just our economy but our lives.

hayek was on to you pinko bastards. read the road to serfdom.

Mr(s) Bonfire’s laughably simple-minded mischaracterisation of me as a politically correct “bleeding heart pinko”, given to the driving of Kombi vans and the selling of copies of Green Left Weekly (the publishers of which are advocates of free and untrammelled movement of labour – a position which I most certainly do not support) is one thing. His/her dismally a-historical view of the phases in the development of industrial capitalism is quite another.
Once, not so very long ago on a world scale, Australian capitalism (under the aegis of more or less bipartisan Keynsian economic policies) was able to guarantee Australian workers full employment. And not anything that Mr(s) Bonfire or his/her ilk would settle for as such, but full-time work with guaranteed minimum industry-wide conditions, wages, etc. This during a period when tariffs were maintained at a relatively high level, there was government intervention/ownership in key sectors of the economy, and the union movement remained strong. In short, gains in living standards for working people in the postwar period were made in the context of a sovreign nation state with relatively strong manufacturing base, and a government exercising some (but not by any means all) of the prerogatives that the term “national soverignty” implies.
Quote:

“while you bleeding heart blind pinkos dance around decrying globalisation you ignore the tremendous advances in living conditions in every western style economy since the industrial revolution began.”

But globalisation was unheard of in the immediate Post War period, when many of these gains were made. You might recall, to Mr(s) Bonfire, that Australian building workers in Melbourne and Sydney were the first workers anywhere in the world to win a 40-hour week. In the 1850’s. After the Industrial Revolution, yes. But well before the era of Globalisation.
See, Mr(s) Bonfire, how an historical view of things helps a little bit here?

In the early seventies, US-led capitalism (in whioch Australia participated) fell into crisis – crippling over-expenditure in Vietnam, the oil crisis, and ‘stagflation’, along with the decoupling of the US dollar from gold and its floating on world currency markets were early causes/symptoms of this crisis.
Using the Bretton Woods institutions (set up immediately after WWII) principally GATT (which evolved into the WTO) and their own military intelligence organisations, the US and its European allies, along with Australia, set about creating (internationally through trade negotiation and proxy wars on Leftist/Nationalist movements, at home through attacks on trade unions, etc.) a global system in which the evolving transnational corporations would be able to move their operations tax-free to those countries that offered them the cheapest, most complicit labour forces available, and then to export the goods produced there tariff-free. The shift of manufacturing jobs, on an ever-increasing scale, to countries like Malaysia, The Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and, latterly, China, was one result. Another was the decline of full employment in the developed world where labour is more expensive – as manufacturing (and other, associated) jobs began to disappear.
Nor, with the invention of the internet, was technology any longer a barrier – goods can now be produced to a digital template just as well in China as they can anywhere alse, and for a fraction of the cost.
Some jobs, however, principally those in the services and construction sectors – in which occupations, these days, something like 80% of the Australian workforce is engaged – are not so easily exported. Having largely destroyed Australian manufacturing and cowed the union bureaucrats, the next task is to destroy the potentially militant building workers and to further attack conditions in the (already profoundly casualised and de-unionised) services sector.
But if you can’t export the jobs, how are you going to achieve this?
By bringing the third world to Australia, of course!
Thus the Philippino workers at the Holy Grail.
Quote:

“…do you have a japanese watch on ? do you watch a korean made TV ? ever paid to watch a US made film ? ever pumped saudi crude refined in singapore into your kombi van”

Errrr…..I think you’ll find that foreign trade and globalisation are not really the same thing, Mr(s) Bonfire. Australia’s first trading links with Japan were established in the mid 1930’s. Trade with the other countries you mentioned also commenced prior to glabalisation. And since you ask, my watch is Chinese-made – it appears that globalisation is moving too fast even for you.
Quote:

“…we can stay stuck in the past or move on and adapt our workforce, economy and industries to keep ahead of the pack.”

Stuck in the past? Give me full employment, a strong local manufacturing industry and the exercise of (admittely deeply flawed) national sovereignty any day. While I realise that you (as, I presume, some sort of local small business magnate) may indeed be “keeping ahead of the pack”, filling your manse with ever more Korean-made electronic goods, and your garage with the latest model Japanese cars, all the while stripping the considerable surplus off the backs of indentured third world workers. But I rather doubt that those Australians who lose their jobs when yet more capital is exported to China, as yet another poor bastard from the Philippines or Pakistan or Indonesia arrives to further drive down wages and conditions for himself/herself and his/her sons and daughters is likely to be “getting ahead” in quite the same way as you.
I’ll say it again. Can I get a Amen?

its a pretty simple logical path.

shakedown has no work in week one and gets x dollars from the gummint.

in week two shakedown spends 6 hours flogging green left and earns $3.50.

i would consider that shakedown worked for 6 hours in week two. that employment.

he/she may not like the fact thet he/she only earnt $3.50 for selling green left and in week three move on to flogging ‘big issue’ where he/she earns $75 for 3 hours work.

in week three he/she is emplyed at a better rate and things are looking up for week four.

its simple –
you work = employed.
no work = unemployed.

you can march around singing about the red flag flying to your hearts content, but there is low unemployment and there is a skills shortage.

if you had ever tried to arrange for skilled work to be performed you would understand the frustrations in actually finding someone who can fit you in within 6-10 weeks.

‘I maintain that the ultimate goal of the government and their supporters in the business community is to erode the conditions of Australian workers by making them compete with third world workers who, for various reasons, will accept wages and conditions that Australian workers will not (at least for the present – though this may change if the globalisers get their way).’

I maintain you are full of shit. If what you contend is true, why are we experiencing low unemployment and high standards of living ? Economies evolve and change (even marx saw that) and we can stay stuck in the past or move on and adapt our workforce, economy and industries to keep ahead of the pack.

‘Globalisation is, after all, a race………….to the bottom.’

For fucks sake spare me – do you have a japanese watch on ? do you watch a korean made TV ? ever paid to watch a US made film ? ever pumped saudi crude refined in singapore into your kombi van ?

while you bleeding heart blind pinkos dance around decrying globalisation you ignore the tremendous advances in living conditions in every western style economy since the industrial revolution began.

I won’t respond in kind to the Ad Hominem tone of the first part of Mr(s?) Bonfire’s posting (does anyone in Canberra smoke crack, I wonder?).
What I will say is this:
I strongly disagree that part-time or (especially) casual employment should be placed in the same category as full-time employment. You might (or might not) be onto something, Mr(s?) Bonfire, when you claim that the ABS may “…supply breakdowns of hours worked…”. But this is hardly the point.
The point is that these “breakdowns” are never provided when unemployment statistics are announced by the media. Thus, a picture of low unemployment that is – at best – misleading is routinely presented to the Australian people, especially in the last three or four years.
This in turn creates conditions in which the lie of a “skills shortage” is generally accepted by the population, allowing the government/businesses to bring in foreign labour when these jobs could be filled by Australian workers who are outright unemployed, or, at least, “underemployed”.
I maintain that the ultimate goal of the government and their supporters in the business community is to erode the conditions of Australian workers by making them compete with third world workers who, for various reasons, will accept wages and conditions that Australian workers will not (at least for the present – though this may change if the globalisers get their way). Globalisation is, after all, a race………….to the bottom.
Can I get a Amen one more time?

PS I like the look of this:

“so you can choose not to take a job you dont like and the gummint will pay you. or shoudl i say, i will pay you via my tax dollars.”

So how much are we talking here, Mr(s?) Bonfire? Is the pay negotiable, in the same way as it would be in an individual contract? How do you propose to funnel your “tax dollars” directly to me? We really should get together to talk about this. I promise I won’t involve the union…..

yes – you do get a partial payment from the if you are earning a really tiny amount. this is to support people who get work one week and not the next – so you remain in the system. Or that is how it used to work about a decade ago – you declare your earnings every fortnight, and they deduct all/most/some of the next payment.

as a person who was on the dole, i can say that if i had a few hours work a week, i would have regarded myself as ‘working’ but could do better.

I think we’re talking about a third category here – “under-employment”. As someone who’s never had to recieve unemployment benefits, I’m not sure – does it top up your wages if you’re being paid below what you’d be recieving if you were on full benefits?

5 hours work is not emplyment really. Someone who is emplyed should have enough money to house and feed themself. 5 hours’ work isn’t going to do that. 5 hours work is what students do on weekends – casual work.

shakedown youre on crack.

if i have a job working 45 hours a week twisting balloons into animals, im employed.

if i have a job working 5 hours a week twisting balloons into animals, im employed.

naturally id be happier to work the amount of hours that kept me in martel cognac and dining at rock salt 7 days a week, but you have to make a choice.

despite your polemic its a little difficult to say that because i work 5 hours a week at a crappy job im REALLY still unemployed.

perhaps you have a point that 5 hours work a week should keep me in martel cognac or at least a roof over my head (or a key to deb foskeys office) but if i dont like my current job im free to find another.

on to ‘hidden unemployment’ – if there are jobs that are advertised and no one applys for them then how can you say that there is ‘…much-vaunted low rate of unemployment is solely attributable to the obscurantist sophistry of economists in the service of a government (in cahoots with an entirely complicit media) that is flat out lying to us’ ?

im sorry, but when i left school it was fucking tough to get a job and you took one doing anything that paid a wage until you gained skills and could move on to something you WANTED to do. sure the economy has changed and there are more mcjobs now than then, but the basic observation is still accurate. unemployment is lower now than it has been since the early 70’s.

so you can choose not to take a job you dont like and the gummint will pay you. or shoudl i say, i will pay you via my tax dollars.

i sort of object to this. im not saying you need to be chained to a fruit tree and pick peaches by order of her majesty, but surely its a nonsense to pay someone unemployment benefits when there is work available but peopel choose not to take it.

by modifying the statistical definitions, perhaps some sense is replacing ideology. im sure the abs will still supply breakdowns of hours worked etc.

im not saying people shouldnt get paid a decent wage for a days work, i am taking issue with your definition of unemployment.

if you work youre employed.

Amen

Errrr….
But before you give yourself over entire to a-testifyin’ and a-hollerin’ (and I know you want to), take note of this (from the ABS website):

“A fall in employment doesn’t necessarily lead to an increase in unemployment (or the unemployment rate). Not all people who leave employment become unemployed – others leave the labour force altogether (for example, people retiring, or stopping work to look after children). People are considered unemployed only if they didn’t have a job at the time of the survey and they were available to work and were actively looking for work.”

I recognise that this appears to contradict my assertions (above) regarding the method by which unemployment is measured, though I stand unreservedly by the rest – and the substance – of what I said.
I think the salient – and most revealing – point raised by the ABS quote, however, is this:
the jobseekers surveyed are assessed as unemployed ONLY if they do not have (any sort of) job. Importantly, it also appears that there is NO minimum number of hours that a person needs to work in order to be classified as employed.
So, in a way, my main point re. methods used to measure unemployment statistics still stands:
ALL work, regardless of whether it is casual/part-time/full-time is evaluated equally. This was not, moreover, always the case.
Nevertheless, apologies are in order. Hope this will serve to pre-empt any criticism of my sloppy research.

NB This is rather long. But it’s an important issue, and, as such, one deserving of some attempt at a serious treatment.
“Skills shortage” huh? Hmmmm………
As far as I’m aware, the sort of jobs that the Philippino(a?) workers in question are doing could be classified, at best, as “semi-skilled”. Of course, if they’re working as kitchen hands, this classification would need to be revised downwards (on the skills scale, that is).
While I realise anecdotal evidence carries very little weight, I know a number of Australians actively seeking work as kitchenhands/chefs who find it very difficult to even persuade local employers to give them a run. Why is this, I wonder, in conditions of supposedly record low unemployment (under 5%, apparently)? I have my suspicions.
The much-vaunted low rate of unemployment is solely attributable to the obscurantist sophistry of economists in the service of a government (in cahoots with an entirely complicit media) that is flat out lying to us. Fiddling the unemployment figures, incidentally, began long before the election of the current federal government, though not perhaps to such an egregious extent. Here’s (roughly) how it works:
where a person was once considered employed if they worked a certain number of hours per week, they are now assessed as employed according to whether or not they claim social security benefits.
This means that someone working a few hours per week, in casual employment, sans benefits, and with no security of tenure and who makes just enough to render him/herself ineligible for social security benefits is now regarded as “employed” for statistical purposes in the same way that a CEO on several hundred thousand (or more!) dollars per annum is regarded as “employed”. Here’s a link (and links within links) outlining still other ingenious ways in which the unemployment statistics are fiddled: http://www.roymorgan.com/news/papers/2003/20030801/
IN REALITY, then, what we have in this country (as in many other developed countries) is a huge number of “hidden” unemployed. Many (though not – by any means – all) are (or, rather, were) semi- or unskilled workers who would once have filled exactly the kinds of jobs that the Philippino workers (and other guestworkers on visa 457) are now doing at the Holy Grail.
So why are Philippino guest workers being brought to Australia, when there are Australians who would be perfectly willing to work?
No doubt you’ve heard the conventional explanation, which is trotted out again and again, all over the (developed) world: “(insert nationality here) won’t do these kinds of jobs. They’re lazy. That’s why we need (insert third-world nationality here) to do them”.
What this really means, of course, is that citizens of developed countries have certain expectations regarding wages/conditions – which they and their forefathers and mothers have won over the course of 150 and more years of struggle – beneath the level of which they will not work. They are also, for a variety of reasons (foremost among which is that they will not be deported if they refuse to do whatever the boss commands) more likely to join unions and to organise collectively.
While, admittedly the hospitality industry has always been among the least unionised of all sectors, Australian hospitality workers, on the whole, remain less obedient and less willing to work for peanuts than third world workers whose families are often dependent on the remittances they send home, and whose continued employment is contingent upon their assumption of a “cooperative” attitude in the workplace, no matter what they are asked to do, and for what money/conditions. This is why employers prefer to import third world workers rather than support the (re-) training of the hidden Australian unemployed. And this is why employers, economists, the media, and the government are so wont, of late, to bleat about a “skills shortage”, our “aging population”, and other fictions. That’s globalisation, Brothers and Sisters!
Can I get an amen?

Cay? He’s from Barcelona!

The fact that it takes forever to actually get served at the bar at the Holy Grail (in Kingston) suggests that the non-indentured staff are pretty useless, and anyone else would be an improvement.

Move the imported workers out to the bar and the pretty girls out the back into the dish-pit. This removes any accusation of subterfuge on the part of the owner, and I get my overpriced beer more promptly. Now everyone’s happy!

Ian Meldrum…no..not “the” Ian “Molly” Meldrum.

thats still 31,000 that he wouldn’t have otherwise.
Not getting paid enough, ask for more money.
not worth more money, increase your skills to make yourself worth more money.

Who owns the Holy Grail?