THE PSYCHOLOGIST : Same pay for same work to become law under Labor-crossbench industrial relations deal

Same pay for same work to become law under Labor-crossbench industrial relations deal

This sounds fair but the catch is that casual and permanent jobs are often not comparable. Causual workers often put in more hours under worse conditions and thus get MORE pay than permanents. These laws are designed to PENALIZE casual work and make unionized workers feel better

First responders will have easier access to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) compensation and contractors will receive the same pay as full-time employees in the same role within weeks, after the government agreed to crossbench demands to split its massive industrial relations bill.

The deal will see same pay for same work changes from next year

Crossbench senators David Pocock and Jacqui Lambie last month harpooned Labor's plans for workplace changes amid concerns the government was trying to rush the changes through the parliament.

At the time, the crossbenchers introduced their own bill that created a path for Labor to pass the non-controversial elements of its IR proposal, including the PTSD compensation.

The Senate passed the crossbench bill with the Coalition's support but the government has for weeks refused to pass that bill through the House of Representatives, insisting it wanted to proceed with its original plan.

In a deal struck ahead of the final sitting day, Labor agreed to split its plans in return for the crossbench supporting its same pay for same work provisions, which have been controversial among business groups.

Here is what is changing and what is not (for now).

Pay and condition changes

From next year, labour hire loopholes will be closed, in a move that will require contractors doing the same work as full-time employees of a company to be offered the same pay and conditions.

The new laws will also ensure employees will not miss out on their redundancy payments, regardless of the size of the business.

Under current laws, a small business is one that employs fewer than 15 people. Some small businesses do not have to offer a redundancy payment when making an employee redundant.

Supports for workers

The new laws will make it easier for first responders to gain workers compensation for PTSD from January 1.

Members of the Australian Border Force and the Australian Federal Police, ambulance officers, paramedics, emergency services communications operators and firefighters will be the beneficiaries.

The laws also seek to offer workplace protections for people experiencing family and domestic violence.

The Labor-crossbench agreement will also expand the remit of the Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency to cover silica and silicosis, in an attempt to better protect workers who use the materials.

Making wage theft a crime

Employers caught deliberately underpaying workers could face jail time under new laws the federal government is proposing.

Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke has repeatedly said it was a criminal offence for an employee to steal money from the till, but not for an employer who withholds money from an employee's pay.

The proposed changes would see a maximum penalty of 10 years in jail and fines up to $7.8 million — or three times the amount that was underpaid if that amount exceeds the maximum fine.

The government insists criminal penalties would not apply for "honest mistakes".

Industrial manslaughter will also become a criminal offence.

Three elements of Labor's original industrial relations changes remain in limbo — at least until the new year.

They include minimum standards for gig workers, minimum standards for truck drivers and changing the definition of casual employment to provide a path to permanency.

These provisions, which have the support of the union movement, have faced fierce backlash from business groups.

A Senate committee is investigating those changes and will report back next year.

The Greens and unions want to give employees greater rights to disconnect from work and hope that will be considered next year.

Senators Pocock and Lambie have offered their commitment to consider the remaining parts of the legislation "in good faith early in the new year".

"It's clear that things like minimum standards for gig workers are necessary but we need to ensure we get the details of these big changes right," Senator Pocock said.

“Bringing forward changes that will better support first responders with PTSD will be life-changing and I thank the government for working with the crossbench to split the bill to get this done this year.”

Mr Burke thanked the senators for the discussions they have had and insisted the compromise would deliver for workers.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-07/industrial-relations-government-agree-crossbench-changes/103199540

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Background

The essence of conservatism is caution. The essence of Leftism is anger

This blog is written solely by John Ray, who has a Ph.D. degree in psychology and 200+ papers published in the academic journals of the social sciences. It does occasionally comment on issues in psychology but is mainly aimed at giving a conservative psychologist's view on a broad range of topics. There are very few conservative psychologists.

The blog originated in Australia and many (but not most) posts discuss Australian matters. Australians have an unusually good awareness of events outside their own country. Australian newspapers feature news from Britain and the USA not as an afterthought but as a major part of their coverage. So Australians do tend to have a truly Western heart, which is the reason behind the old name for this blog. So events in Australia, Britain and the USA all feature frequently here, plus occasional coverage of other places, particularly Israel.

A primer in American politics for non-Americans:

SCOTUS is the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the land

The "GOP" stands for "Grand Old Party" and refers to the Republican party. The GOP is at present center/Right, while the Democrats have been undergoing a steady drift Leftwards and now have policies similar to mainstream European Leftist parties.

The ideological identity of both parties has however been very fluid -- almost reversing itself over time. In the mid 19th century, the GOP was the party of big government and concern for minorities while the Democrats advertised themselves as "The party of the white man" -- an orientation that lasted into the mid 20th century in the South. The Democrats are still obsessed with race but have now flipped into support for discrimination AGAINST whites.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.

Global warming

Calibrated in whole degrees. Larger graph here

Climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson said. “The warming we have had the last 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have meteorologists and climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all.”

The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.

Two examples of Leftist racism below (much more here and here):

Beatrice Webb, a founder of the London School of Economics and the Fabian Society, and married to a Labour MP, mused in 1922 on whether when English children were "dying from lack of milk", one should extend "the charitable impulse" to Russian and Chinese children who, if saved this year, might anyway die next. Besides, she continued, there was "the larger question of whether those races are desirable inhabitants" and "obviously" one wouldn't "spend one's available income" on "a Central African negro".

Hugh Dalton, offered the Colonial Office during Attlee's 1945-51 Labour government, turned it down because "I had a horrid vision of pullulating, poverty stricken, diseased nigger communities, for whom one can do nothing in the short run and who, the more one tries to help them, are querulous and ungrateful."

Defensible and indefensible usages of the term "racism"

The book, The authoritarian personality, authored by T.W. Adorno et al. in 1950, has been massively popular among psychologists. It claims that a set of ideas that were popular in the "Progressive"-dominated America of the prewar era were "authoritarian". Leftist regimes always are authoritarian so that claim was not a big problem. What was quite amazing however is that Adorno et al. identified such ideas as "conservative". They were in fact simply popular ideas of the day but ones that had been most heavily promoted by the Left right up until the then-recent WWII. See here for details of prewar "Progressive" thinking.

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a war criminal. Both British and American codebreakers had cracked the Japanese naval code so FDR knew what was coming at Pearl Harbor. But for his own political reasons he warned no-one there. So responsibility for the civilian and military deaths at Pearl Harbor lies with FDR as well as with the Japanese. The huge firepower available at Pearl Harbor, both aboard ship and on land, could have largely neutered the attack. Can you imagine 8 battleships and various lesser craft firing all their AA batteries as the Japanese came in? The Japanese naval airforce would have been annihilated and the war would have been over before it began.

FDR prolonged the Depression. He certainly didn't cure it.

WWII did NOT end the Great Depression. It just concealed it. It in fact made living standards worse

Joe McCarthy was eventually proved right after the fall of the Soviet Union. To accuse anyone of McCarthyism is to accuse them of accuracy!

The KKK was intimately associated with the Democratic party. They ATTACKED Republicans!

People who mention differences in black vs. white IQ are these days almost universally howled down and subjected to the most extreme abuse. I am a psychometrician, however, so I feel obliged to defend the scientific truth of the matter:

The average African adult has about the same IQ as an average white 11-year-old and African Americans (who are partly white in ancestry) average out at a mental age of 14. The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they have had to concede that sort of gap (one SD) in black vs. white average IQ. 11-year olds can do a lot of things but they also have their limits and there are times when such limits need to be allowed for.

America's uncivil war was caused by trade protectionism. The slavery issue was just camouflage, as Abraham Lincoln himself admitted. See also here

Did William Zantzinger kill poor Hattie Carroll?

Did Bismarck predict where WWI would start or was it just a "free" translation by Churchill?

Leftist psychologists have an amusingly simplistic conception of military organizations and military men. They seem to base it on occasions they have seen troops marching together on parade rather than any real knowledge of military men and the military life. They think that military men are "rigid" -- automatons who are unable to adjust to new challenges or think for themselves. What is incomprehensible to them is that being kadaver gehorsam (to use the extreme Prussian term for following orders) actually requires great flexibility -- enough flexibility to put your own ideas and wishes aside and do something very difficult. Ask any soldier if all commands are easy to obey.

A good article on Leftist hate

The real history of social Darwinism

Some personal memoirs

Memoir highlights

THE PSYCHOLOGIST

Same pay for same work to become law under Labor-crossbench industrial relations deal

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