AWU Push for Portable Long Service Leave

Now this has to be a pretty stupid suggestion from the AWU to introduce this because society decided to change their working habits and not choose to work at the one company for 10 years straight in order to obtain long service entitlements, typically 60 days paid leave which usually includes weekends. Long service is typically a 15 year entitlement at 90 days straight paid leave, though employee's can usually apply for it pro-rata at the 10 years mark.

Now to me this is pretty simple. An employee gets leave, sick leave, carer leave, and basically 30 days a year paid leave, maybe a bit more even, when you add them all up. That means an employer already is paying an employee for 30 days a year they get no work from, purely these are features that are rewards for working, for applying yourself to one employer.

Now I understand where this comes from, being the building industry where long service leave has been portable since about 1974, and some other jobs have the same thing, like cleaners. Now this means though, that those cleaners are only jumping from building company to building company, not work at this building company for 5 years, change jobs and go be a cleaner for 3 years, then come back and be a builder again for 2 years and expect a nice 60 days full paid leave. I understand industries that require it, but most do not.

The idea of long service leave is incentive. It is an incentive, not a right, but incentive to remain with an employer for a period of 10 consecutive years. This incentive is there so that the employer is losing money in having to employ another, train people, etc. Long service is an incentive to remain loyal to your employer. Most young people move jobs, but that has always been the case before they decided to label an excuse for this on societies changing ways by not staying in one job long. As people get older, as they commit to life, mortgages, family and life itself, they tend to cement themselves into an employer and remain with them. That is where the incentive comes in. Its not there for a person to start work at 18, and at 28 they are getting long service leave, being rewarded that is, because they have changed jobs many times over during that period.

Welcome back Labour.... absolute morons in some of their policy. This is what Labour do... they break employers until they close the doors, then they blame employers for going broke, when its simply the politics of Labour and unions that closeup most small business, being the majority of employment for Australians. Big business is not the majority employer, its small business overall that has the largest margin of employment. You break them by having to pay out long service rates, to reward a person, for not achieving 10 years employment to them, and you will break many small businesses alone through that one stupid act.