Drip Drip Drip

Update 

Well. How spot-on is Sir Roger?
He’s yet again demonstrated how appropriate it is that he was granted the OGPC (Order of the Grater Praesagium Conspiciens) as the World’s First and Only Genuine Political Clairvoyant. 

In the previous post he noted that ‘Christian’ Porter was less the Minister for Industrial Relations and more the Minister for Industrialists .

“WorkPac” sounds like an American right wing Political Action Committee, doesn’t it, and frankly that wouldn’t appear to be far from the reality (except for the american bit).

WorkPac, (CIMIC Group trading as WorkPac) which was previously Leighton Holdings (there’s a story there) is helmed by CEO Hamish Griffin. It’s one of Australia’s largest labour hire companies.

WorkPac was upset that the unions won a case in the Federal Court [WorkPac v Rossato ] about the rights of casual labourers—mostly in the mining industry which is WorkPac’s main territory—to things like sick leave. They’d already been upset before, in 2018 [WorkPac Pty Ltd v Skene ]. 

So now to their delight they’ve been granted special leave by the High Court to appeal WorkPac v Rossato.

And guess who is supporting them? As Sir Roger (OGPC)  foretold.

Both the Attorney General and the Minister for Industrial Relations: ‘Christian’ Porter.

Truly the actual Minister for Industrialists.

Porter cries that the cost of decency and fairness is too many billion dollars. Which seems to suggest that for the rich, important and self-congratulatory to stay rich someone has to be poor.

WorkPac cries that the children will be worried by the uncertainty in a strange and unknown new future.

If this pandemic has done anything it’s shown that as a country we can definitely handle uncertainty, strangeness and an unknown future.

Nothing is what it seems.

Here’s the thing.

McDonalds is not a restaurant chain. It is in the real estate business. It leases out space to restaurateurs.

Coles and Woollies are not retailers. They are in the real estate business. They sell shelf space.

Your phone company is not a telecommunication company. They are a billing system.

When you use your smart phone or your PC you are not the customer. You are the product.

When you rent a house or a unit from a real estate agent you are not their customer. Their customer is the landlord. You are the product and you produce your money.

And when you are a casual worker who got your job through WorkPac your employer is not the mining company.

It’s WorkPac. You are not WorkPac’s customer. WorkPac’s customer is the mining company.

You are WorkPac’s product. You and your work are sold to the employer. 

When another company is the customer that’s where a supplier’s responsibility, and interest, is focused.

The lower the cost to a customer, the happier the customer will be, the more customers will be attracted and the more customers will be retained. 

And, of course, not to forget that the real customers, and the real bosses of a company’s board, are the shareholders who will tend to be either massive superannuation companies or the already very rich. And they have no responsibility for the actual employees. 

So the system is skewed towards industry and away from the workers.

How do we know this? Just a guess? Maybe because CEO salaries and politicians’ salaries keep going (as Tony Abbott liked to say “arpa-narpa-narp, prizes a rarp“), higher and juicily higher, while middle class incomes have been stagnant for years.

According to the ABS (via ABC, 12 July 2019):

” It’s official: the rich are getting richer.

Well-off Australians are pulling away from the rest of the nation, with inequality of wealth rising in recent years, new figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show. . . .

The figures show income growth has been virtually non-existent for many — average household incomes have stagnated, with virtually no growth since 2013,  

So it’s good to be able to see real commercial Australian values in operation, to see the ancient engines working, to look behind the painted curtains, to shatter the hall of mirrors and realise they’re taking the piss.