ACTU versus Australia

Anyone reading The Australian today might be forgiven for thinking that they'd time warped back to the 1970's. With Gillard's help the unions are poised to crush Australia's employment prospects and drive small businesses into closing. Add smaller educational facilities to that list as well.

The new wage structures and conditions will affect small business, casual labour, Uni students, restaurants, and the list goes on. Already many small businesses are suggesting that they will have to reduce their work forces by 25% or put prices up by that amount. This will cause them to lose customers and so be forced to drop staff.

While this occurs about 100,000 skilled labourers are being imported to guaranteed jobs every year, i.e, foreigners will get preference over locals. Critical economic analysis points out that the current recession is nothing like the last two so Treasury predictions are worthless. All the world's major economies contracted by about 4.5% based on the most recent measurement and this is likely to continue.

Do the math. 25% contraction in small business staff levels, 4.5% contraction in the economy for the next year at least (probably a few more after that) and suddenly the unemployment figures look closer to 2 million than one and double digits are assured.

Into that mess are stepping the unions with full sized hob nailed boots. They want 26 weeks paid maternity leave, they want full control of all companies even when they have a minority of membership. They want all controls removed, pattern bargaining returned, standardised wages regardless of the individual situations. So they want to add another layer of stress to what is looking to be a very stressful work force.

This with what looks to be the full backing of Labor. They are certainly not on the side of the Australian citizens.

Now add less money for pensioners and what amounts to punishment to self-funded retirees. What does this all add up to?