They're at it again!

The Australian: Public servants in revolt over IR:

"THE man in charge of John Howard's workplace reform agenda is facing a revolt from his own department, with staff claiming they were coerced into signing non-union individual employment contracts."

No one is happy with the work place reform. It's not reform, not unless someone can explain to us how it will improve our situation. It appears to be very manipulative. Sometimes things read worse than they actually are in practice. Sometimes vice versa. Most permanent people do not want to be made casual. The difficulty at present with the Austrlian workforce is there are too many casual positions and not enough permanent ones. It creates uncertainty, lack of commitment. On the other side of the coin , permanent workers can become too entrenched. I acknowledge there needs to be a balance. Right now we need more permanent jobs so that people can settle into the lifestyle choices we are supposed to make to keep the economy going. Some people cannot get a loan for a mortgage because they can never get permanent work. This means they cannot establish stability. With a family , it is a scary notion an employer can make you casual when you have been permanent. The public servants are quite rightly asking for some common sense and stability. Competition is fine but stressing people out because they cannot have a place to go to work and settle into it excludes them from making all sorts of other choices. The threat of these individual contracts has been around for years. Union workers decided not to sign them so that each individual had the support of the others to keep work conditons reasonable. If people are being co erced into signing individual contracts then the face of our country has become pretty sour.