JC Political Thread - For all things political Part 2

This statement couldn't be any further from the truth. Just about everything a teacher would use in schools is supplied by the school.. Their 'IT' equipment they have to pay for, which there is a debate where the gov should pay for it.

I am the technician supplied by the Victorian DEECD, the school does not pay a cent for me to be there, I'm free help as far as the school is concerned. Teachers pay $4 a fortnight PRE-tax for their notebook, which has 4 year warranty, loaded with software, 4 year accidental damage protection, insurance, a personal technician to fix anything that is wrong with it. For a total of a little over $400. Which is tax deduct-able. Other supplies that teachers use in a school, Whiteboard markers, printing credit, textbooks, any tool they require comes from the school. They have a budget for their domain, they spend it on tools to help them teach.

There are exceptions to the rule with primarily with primary schools, some schools have so little enrolments that they have to supply their own items for some things, but i's not a long list. A primary school of 30 kids I worked in had everything supplied for teachers, including the tea and coffee. I have a friend who is working at a primary school now and they only thing that she supplies herself is coloured printing, as the school does have a colour copier.

 

I tend to think that one major flaw with individual contracts was the omission of a "no disadvantage" test. That means taking whatever the current award is and applying $ values (would need cpi indexing) to all of the components. Employers etc may negotiate out various components such as weekend loadings etc and the no disadvantage test as part of the act would enshrine what that value would be as a minimum.

The 'take it or leave it' approach only really works if you are offering a market rate. If you are significantly below it rarely works and even then the person won't stick around if they are any good as they will get a better offer. You may call it arrogant but it is a legitimate negotiating tactic and I have no qualms admitting I use it myself at times (not often with wage negotiations though). It does have a significant down side as it leaves the person saying it with little room to manoeuvre if they are bluffing without loosing significant credibility and thus any upper hand they may have had. Most good negotiators will leave themselves an "out" until they get to their max (or min) amount at which time they may play the "take it or leave it" card.

 

Whilst I supported Howard's actions in downgrading union powers and his overall industrial policy, I witnessed the downside of Workchoices personally. My wife was employed as a Barista in 2006/7 at a well known Coffee House which was part of a national chain of shops. Following the intro of W/C, she was given a proposed three year contract by her employers. I read it very carefully and it stank - in fact, it was absolutely rancid and was just the sort of ammunition the union movement needed to undermine and fight against Workchoices. All penalty rates were abolished, staff could be called to work with less than two hour's notice, pay was to increase by forty cents per day over the three year period (that wasn't how it was expressed of course, I did the maths and that was the result). Like my wife, most staff who worked for that establishment were not union members, nor were they "strong" enough, either individually or collectively, to negotiate their wages and conditions. (Actually, knowing the two Egyptians who owned the business, negotiation was a word they had never heard of.) In other words, it was stiff cheddar, take it or leave it. She left. So did a number of others. THAT was the downside of Workchoices and it was serious enough to give the unions all the ammo they needed to get Howard. It might have been good policy for some, but for many, it was badly implemented, poorly explained and miserably inflicted on a workforce that had no prior warning. Howard's biggest political mistake, full stop.

It's a damned shame because it could have been done so much better and we wouldn't have the after taste that still lingers and gives the unions that persistent mantra that a return to Liberals is a return to Workchoices.

 

Ok I may have exaggerated but from what I could gather in a larger school in NSW yes you get most of these things; in NSW you get most stationery items and some very basic art/craft supplies, but you need to supply your own textbooks. In highschool teaching the general consensus is that there is not enough copier allowance (but this could be a school issue...) Over 6 KLAs (English, maths, science, HSIE, art and sport) this can be quite a bit.....and the grade you teach from year to year might change so yep, whole new library (or parts of it). I teacher I know who recently retired had his entire resource collection occupying a small room in his house . The figure of $2k I learnt from when I was on prac and I asked my associate/s straight out out of curiosity. Of course much of that is discretionary but a big chunk of it is somewhat expected. NSW teachers get a supplied DET laptop for nix, it is so they can use the $5k/room smartboards that most classes have these days.....not sure about highschool, though...

 

I currently work in two schools, one with 1200+ the other with ~450. Both are under the same circumstances as I mentioned before, staff don't pay for anything. And the Notebook they are supplied with, the current model is a Lenovo L430 and L420. Both are extremely durable machines, the reason these were chosen for the contract, is due to the excellent support that comes with them, and just how durable they are. They are perfect for what teachers are meant to be using them for. i5 and 4gb ram in a machine that I have personally stood on just to see how they fair can't be anything other than a decent machine. We have 500 of the same model funded by the NSSCF and if students find it difficult to destroy them then I personally would not use anything else in a school environment.

The MACs on the other hand. Well they cost over 3 times as much as the Lenovo and these are alot harder to manage in a school enviroment. two rounds ago, teachers were offered the white macbook which was already an obsolete model, and they should not have been offered at all, a number of teachers handed them back in and replaced them for Lenovos. The current gen apples are Macbook pros which are alot better in terms of performance and have been slightly easier to manage in a school with a Windows infrastructure.

 

That's not the point Minux. The sort of contracts that unscrupulous employers could legally impose was grist for the mill with unions. People saw the advertising campaign and knew somebody who was faced with those sorts of ultimata. For that reason, the union campaign struck a chord with the electorate and was very successful.

The business still exists because others came to fill the vacancies and Rudd won the election. Workchoices died and the "threat" disappeared.

 

It's situations like yours where a no disadvantage test may have helped.

 

I was under a similar situation in the catering industry to Caliber's wife. Pretty much everybody in the industry got nailed to the ground. This was the problem with work choices, whole industries took the opportunity to take that very 'take it or leave it, we dont have an award any more' attitude. Reaper is right, a no disadvantage clause would have solved this issue and work choices may not have been the insanity that it was.

 

"Win a dinner with Julia Gillard"?

I'd rather win a month in a detention centre.

 

Cookies must be enabled. | The Australian

Surely you would think, especially after the epic failure of the household insulation scheme senior management (ie the minister!) would have insisted on the most comprehensive workplace safety risk analysis they have ever seen?? This is not and should not be a surprise for anybody when dealing with infrastructure that is many decades old.

No matter what you think of the policy, good or bad, it is yet another example that this government cannot deliver *anything* without ####ing it up. Can anybody think of any ALP policy that hasn't been thoroughly screwed up in it's implementation??? I'm not talking about the political argument about it's merits or otherwise, just the execution.

 

They have Lovers Fingers

 

RE: asbestos pits - whose responsibility was it to deal with asbestos? Before we jump to conclusion, could it have been some twit at telstra who forgot that there were a couple of million 30 yr old pits full of asbestos?
Then again with Julie Bishop having defended James Hardie on front bench of the opposition, they'd know heaps about asbestos

One could argue that Howard didn't screw anything up, simply because he didn't really try anything very big..... (ok there was the gun buy back, will give him credit for that). I'd argue the NBN is probably one of the biggest engineering project this country has ever seen, with it you are bound to stuff a couple of things up. No large engineering project goes 100% smoothly.

I would not really want to have dinner with Gillard or Abbott, but if I 'had' to as a metaphor for the election via the two-party preferred system of doing things, I'd still go with Gillard because I dislike her/ALP less than Abbott/LNP. Gillard gives me indigestion. Abbott makes me vomit.

 

The point is that with any large (or even small) project usual practice is to do a risk analysis. It is the responsibility of the primary contractor (ie govco) to ensure this happens. It's not a matter of somebody "forgetting". It's a matter of competent project management.

Not quite sure the relevance here

Without doubt there are many things the Howard government could have done far better. The GST introduction could be considered a large change and it was introduced relatively smoothly. There were changes along the way particularly in streamlining BAS reporting etc but overall the introduction was quite smooth.

Some things are bound not to go to plan agreed. Glaring safety omissions that are easily foreseeable is crazy though.

 

Govt helping to keep rates low: Swan | News.com.au

ROFL!

Cannot believe this idiot is still pedaling the current interest rates levels as a good thing!

I directly benefit from the current interest rate levels as it means every month I am paying off even more extra on my mortgage, but I'm not stupid enough to think that the current interest rates are a good thing.

They show an economy in trouble.

In regards to the dinner with Gillard thing. Meh. Just shows how desperate they are now. I'm not sure I could personally stomach having dinner with her, aside from her voice making me want to strange kittens it would be impossible to have an intelligent conversation. Or at least it would be very one sided.

Ah well, 3 months to go.

 

Speaking of NBN, one of my colleagues is in a new estate up North of the city. The other day he chased up when he could expect to have the NBN given his area is earmarked to get it soon.

So it turns that there is a handful of houses in his estate that will have it as of this month I think, one of these houses being 5 doors down from him while his house and the ones around him are scheduled to have it in 2022.

Brilliant implementation plan in the works there.