Labour and all supporters should recognise by now that the MECA in particular is an attempt to reintroduce industry awards by another means. Collectives should be limited to one employer rather than being allowed to spread across multiple employers as the MECA is designed to do.

Why should they be limited to a single employer?

We’ve all seen MECAs within the public sector benefit both employers and workers as there is a clear economy of scale when it comes to bargaining. I’ve never been sure if the advantage is unique to the public sector (where the employers aren’t in competition), are there places in the private sector where MECAs are working?

Actually, this is already the case (except for non-union collectives) – employers are not compelled to bargain collectively. In theory there could also be another collective agreement signed by another union in the same workplace, since there are in some cases several unions representing the same occupational group.

Labour and all supporters should recognise by now that the MECA in particular is an attempt to reintroduce industry awards by another means. Collectives should be limited to one employer rather than being allowed to spread across multiple employers as the MECA is designed to do.

Maybe it’s time for a change in tact.

L

In the end, as your world picture evolves, all you can be sure of is that you have to make a decisions because to not make them is to make them by default. I changed over decades from a arrogant simplistic lad with attitudes like Rob, to a reluctant socialist (still arrogant however). The more I looked at people and history, the more you realize that talent arises in unexpected places, and society survives as a whole by allowing talent to flourish.

For all of the waffling of the neo-cons/neo-libs, they cling to the unproven theory that opportunity happens without infrastructure. It does for those who are willing to sacrifice most of their life to chase it. However that it is only the most obsessive and maladjusted who are willing to do that.

To allow whole groups of people to seize opportunities you have to provide the social infrastructure for it to happen. To the uninformed this looks like social engineering whereas it is social and economic survival generations out.

I’ve said this many times before – most of the ‘right’ are defined by their habit of thinking short-term.

I agree entirely. In many ways, getting to the heart of a matter is a process of triangulation – read widely around a story, look for the common threads which appear in each rendition, and most importantly, which are left out, by whom, and for what apparent reasons.

L

You do realise HS that franchises like subway would be covered under this. So if a subway restaurant has 20 or less staff then it’s covered by this. There are thousands of vulnerable low paid employees who will have their rights removed by this. Remember workers rights are human rights.

They should either get paid OR a paid day off. At the moment they effectively get both.

Labour promotes policies which are designed to penalise the employer because the unions hate employers. Another example is Kiwisaver. We hear a lot about the tax credit that doesn’t actually cover the full cost of forced employer contributions that has become another employment cost.

You could say they are equally objective, but objectivity isn?t a sort-of quality: something either is or it isn?t. You?d be more correct to say they?re equally unobjective.

Perhaps the source of the confusion is that people tend to say `objective? when they mean `unbiased?.

I don’t believe either objectivity or unbiased are possible. All you can really do is know what the preemptive biases are.

That is why I like The Economist. Clearly has a distinct of set of biases as an institution and proudly proclaims them. But their articles clearly state alternative ideas and why they disagree with them. They also discourse on previous opinions and explain why they turned out to be incorrect. There are a number of other news media around like that.

The media here often do have the thoughtful articles – but well into the paper. Their headline articles tend to be insipid, thoughtless, and what looks like headline driven rather than news driven.

That of course shows up in the type of pap that is fed to the media as ‘policy’. For instance an industrial relations policy as 12 or so bullet points with ambiguous meanings. However if that is what the media are willing to accept, then that is what they will get.

Who cares what is on page 15? Well I do – probably why I don’t watch TV news or ‘current affairs’ any more. At least the net means I can find out this stuff without having it filtered. I can find the clearly biased opinion and make my own assessment of their biases.

Of course, the 2% that the boss points to is money he would have paid out in wages anyway to someone else while I was on leave.

The ‘buy back’ is about reducing wage demands/ wages, NOT annual leave. The boss is going to be paying for 4 weeks leave regardless.

It’s a sneaky way of reducing annual leave back to three weeks.