Facts speak louder than statistics

Friday 24 April 2009

The Enterprise Part 2


Following on from ‘The Enterprise Of The World’ article regarding Collective Employee/Enterprise Agreements and the sleight of hand that appears to be used in those agreements where the claim is made by employers that if they are supposedly paying more money then the employer should gain something from that like increased productivity and/or have working conditions or employee rights altered in the employers favour.


In trading off conditions for a pay rise it may help to think of the conditions in question as having a monetary value as well.


Just say each condition is worth $20,000. You are then asked to give up some of these conditions to pay for a pay rise that’s worth maybe $500 a year.


In other words you are giving your employer something of yours, and well below its true value, to pay for a pay rise that won’t keep up with inflation.


Basically you pay for your own pay rise, sort of like if you have to buy your own birthday presents.


And when there are no more conditions to trade off what will you do then?


Remember the true value of money is in the purchasing power it has. If you can’t buy as much with your wage as you could the year before you are being paid less in real terms.


Businesses don’t give more of the product or the service they offer when they raise their prices, nor do they trade anything off for that extra money so why should anyone else?


1 comment:

Jeremy Michaels said...

I will say that the last comment about business not giving extra doesn't appear to apply to RACQ. My premiums increased with inflation but so did the payout figures. That seems fair to me!