(Aussie Style Attack) The nature of work will be transformed once workers relinquish penalty rates.

[unhappycamper]

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/we-dont-want-a-usstyle-army-of-working-poor-20140310-34hnp.html



Workers such as paramedics rely on night and weekend shift loadings to pay the mortgage and buy groceries.

The nature of work will be transformed once workers relinquish penalty rates.
Jess Walsh
March 11, 2014

Imagine an Australia with no compensation for working public holidays, weekends, or nights, or overtime. Imagine an Australia that allows the award safety net of pay and conditions to be undercut. That's where the federal government is taking us.

This was being engineered mostly sight unseen until Fairfax Media exposed the government's terms of reference for the Productivity Commission to rifle through our entitlements, pay and conditions. The revelation confirmed that this government wants Australians to work for less.



It is a deliberate march to an unwanted destination involving the review of modern awards and the Productivity Commission's slash-and-burn brief, with the first step the Fair Work Amendment Bill 2014 being taken into Parliament last week to reshape ''individual flexibility arrangements''.

Such arrangements have been with us since Labor abolished WorkChoices, but Employment Minister Eric Abetz proposes fundamental changes in the name of ''flexibility'' that could strip members of my union, United Voice, which includes paramedics, security guards, bakers and cleaners, and millions of families of tens of thousands of dollars a year. His changes amount to an effective revival of John Howard's hated and unfair Australian Workplace Agreements.

[rurallib]

1. in other words treat workers like we do in the US.