Employment Whingers Need to Look Inwards

I sit and read the Herald Sun daily, here in Melbourne, and it absolutely amazes me at the amount of people whinging how they are somehow hard done through signing an Australian Workplace Agreement (AWA) when I also read the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) watch on wages from the Australian Bereau of Statistics now showing the average weekly wage at $1103, which is a 5% rise in the last 12 months. Now considering inflation is managed to consist constantly around the 3% mark per annum, that is a pretty decent overall rise in wages.

Now here is the thing. With all good there is bad, yet with all bad there is good. Those who sit and whine about unemployment for example; lets be honest here, employers in Australia are screaming for people and at the Federal level had to provide temporary work visa's to migrants in order to fuel the empty positions because some just don't want to work for their money, instead they sit and whinge how hard it all is. Yes, some employers are taking advantage of the current state of AWA's being a new thing, however; instead of whining to the media about it, they should be producing the facts to Work Choices who oversee the new system being implemented. The existing system of award wages and employment control has never factual provided a method to stabilize the economy, Work Choices has, and has done so in only a short amount of time. These minority of employers who take advantage of the system whilst implemented should be disciplined, absolutely; however for the most part employers are doing the right thing and employee's are earning the rewards of the agreements as well as the employers. Everything is not about the employee people, and if you think it is, you need to take your blinkers off and look at the bigger picture. If employee's are screwing employer's to the wall, employers go broke thus no employment exists. This is what happens under the older industrial relations system, hence employers stop employing people, unemployment goes through the roof, interest rates fly upwards and so recession and instability once again.

I started as an apprentice, $130 a week for my first year, I think from memory then my second year was $180 a week and so it kept going. Now this is back in 1986. With inflation at 3% that averages out too today's dollars around $180 per week as a first year apprentice. I read that these so called young people who want to work, want trade qualifications, seem to be walking out on their apprenticeships because they cannot live on first year wages. No shit sherlock. I couldn't have survived on my first year way then either, it was only that I was living at home or living with others in shared accommodation and general living. If it wasn't that way, I wouldn't off afforded to live either. Sure, mates of mine who opted not for trade skills went other directions, like cleaning and earning $500 a week back then, which was sure appealing, yet today they have no trade skills and no hopes for further earning potential.

If the average Australian wage is now over $1100 per week, that means obviously some reside below this mark, some above the mark, and you will find the majority reside on the mark. That means one of two things.... either the employers in the lesser earning categories are ripping people off, or the lesser earning categories are a majority of less skilled labour which typically brings lower income potential. So the solution is; stop whinging about earning less and get qualifications, skills and make sacrifices in the shorter term for the longer term benefit, or continue what your doing, continue earning less, and simply come to terms that you failed to do something decent with your life.

How exactly this becomes John Howards problem is beyond me. What I see people doing who earn the lesser end of wage scales is simply turning for someone to blame other than themselves. Get educated, get motivated, get qualifications and move up the pay scale instead of complaining about your own personal situation and blaming everyone else for it.