The Whyalla steel works must be saved, at any cost

**frantic** · 14th April 2016, 12:17 AM

Originally Posted by PhilipA

? If the company restructures, and people are put into lower paying jobs, their old rate of pay is maintained forever, which cancels out the whole point of the exercise.

Eevo you are indeed blessed.

To compare, when I was in the NSW government the conditions were.

Maximum of 52 weeks retrenchment . This applies to Feds also.

If there was a "spill" you had to apply for your old job and if you missed out you went onto the lower pay classification of the job you were assigned.

Sick leave AFAIR 2 weeks at full pay plus 2 weeks half pay.

Your conditions are one of the major problems with Australia and why we are priced out of many markets. Enjoy while you can.
Regards Philip A

Actually if you get 52 weeks redundancy as a 5 day a week public servant it's virtually the same as a shift worker getting 104. See if you bother to look deeper than the headline a shift worker is paid out at their BASE wage which is about half their full time wage.
Secondly the sick leave scheme your talking about is called discretionary, this means if an employee does the right thing and only takes the occasional genuine sick day gets a major illness , they will give them time off at full pay, but will also be deducting days from their total accumulated over service and possibly be putting them into negative as well. But being at the managers discretion you can also get the abuser who used all their sickies every year who needs an operation or has a major illness where the manager turns around and says use all your hols and long service and we might cover the last few weeks!
You've stated people earning up to $160,000 , to do that they would be living at work doing lots of overtime, callouts and double shifts.
Pay freezing is a bhp caryover, it's called green inking. The way it used to work was if a person got forced to move to a lower paid job his pay was frozen until he trained up to an equally paid level or the depts pay caught up.
See in most areas there are numerous levels of training so if you shut one section through new tech or shutting a section you might have people who have trained for years to get to level 5 and are then put in a new area where it will take them 2-5 years to get to the same pay/ skill level. Now it's not their fault you decided to shut dept x and will pick up the new area skills faster than most outsiders, so it's not a major loss to freeze their pay for a period.
As to pricing ourselves out , are you ignoring the facts that labour is 5% of the cost in steel making ?
How about ignoring the costs to us the taxpayer if they shut shop and leave 7,000 unemployed , not paying any tax and drawing welfare?
The cost to the government of buying local at all levels is about 10% of the costs to them if Arrium shuts. Yet still we could all protect our constituents like certain people when asked about a govt buy local campaign:
But Mr Pyne told a KPMG lunch in Adelaide on Monday that was a 'mad idea? which would result in the creation of a 'monopoly??.
Interesting article
No Cookies | The Advertiser

**PhilipA** · 14th April 2016, 07:22 AM

Actually Frantic I didn't say any of that . It was a quote from the Australian in an article by Gottliebson..

The only part I said was the conditions in the public service.

But really the conditions enjoyed by the workers are even greater when you consider 4 weeks annual leave and 17% loading compared to say 2 weeks leave and no loading in the USA.

It is hard to compete with Chinese who probably are paid $10 a day and the some/most of the mills are modern .

But many of the problems in the steel industry were caused by government inaction to hold down the exchange rate when the iron ore export "enclave" boosted the currency to absurd levels.

Regards Philip A

**frantic** · 14th April 2016, 12:45 PM

Originally Posted by PhilipA

Actually Frantic I didn't say any of that . It was a quote from the Australian in an article by Gottliebson..

The only part I said was the conditions in the public service.

But really the conditions enjoyed by the workers are even greater when you consider 4 weeks annual leave and 17% loading compared to say 2 weeks leave and no loading in the USA.

It is hard to compete with Chinese who probably are paid $10 a day and the some/most of the mills are modern .

But many of the problems in the steel industry were caused by government inaction to hold down the exchange rate when the iron ore export "enclave" boosted the currency to absurd levels.

Regards Philip A

Your halfway there, pay rates in terms of the steel industry are a minor factor. 5%
The big issues as you said are govt not supporting local industry by various measures such as exchange rates, that China peg, export bonuses , that China give not us, write off debts to the tune of 25billion in 10 months by Chinese steel companies, pay for discount shipping, etc.
This results in price differences of about 15-20% and over 40% in some cases.

Tombie · 15th April 2016, 01:17 PM

Just for clarity.

Shift workers get 5 weeks annual leave (staff and wages)

Staff on fixed contract (like I was) get no loading for leave or public holiday work - nor overtime for any additional hours worked.

My wife is expected to attend all training and meetings on her days off or before / after her fostered hours with no additional pay.

**Eevo** · 15th April 2016, 01:25 PM

Originally Posted by Tombie

My wife is expected to attend all training and meetings on her days off or before / after her fostered hours with no additional pay.

i thought that was illegal.

Tombie · 15th April 2016, 01:26 PM

Originally Posted by Eevo

i thought that was illegal.

Staff are on "Commercial contracts" not EBA.

There is a reasonable hours policy although slightly ambiguous...

**Eevo** · 15th April 2016, 01:59 PM

.ignore

**bob10** · 16th April 2016, 08:59 AM

There is merit in this argument.This is not a political statement, something like this could save jobs.

‘Protectionism’ is no longer a dirty word | The New Daily

**Mick_Marsh** · 19th April 2016, 12:57 PM

Originally Posted by Ean Austral

I will read it as you suggest, but when I read Thailand I always think are we comparing apples with apples. I wonder what the cost per car to build the same amount of cars in Australia would be with our labour costs, union rules etc etc would be.

I know nothing of the car industry , but let me give you some example of something I do know about.
I can and we do send 40 foot containers of prawns to Indonesia and Thailand to get processed into prawn meat and cutlets, BUT, we also do the same job in our Brisbane factory. So the cost including freight by sea to these countries and returned to east coast Australia is - Indonesia approx. $2 per kilo , Thailand $2.50 per kilo. Now to do the same job in our factory here is 5 times that and only if we work normal hours , its more if we do weekend or public holidays , and to my knowledge we are the only company left that still does this type of processing in Australia.

So whats my point , its that there may be several reasons why most car companies are now using these countries , because like us ( Australia ) they have most likely priced themselves out of business with high labour costs.

Just a thought.

Cheers Ean

Hey, Ean, You've got the wrong business model.
Pulitzer Prize: Team that exposed slavery in Asian seafood industry wins top honour - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

You need to increase your slave labour content in Australia.

Ean Austral · 19th April 2016, 01:01 PM

Originally Posted by Mick_Marsh

Hey, Ean, You've got the wrong business model.
Pulitzer Prize: Team that exposed slavery in Asian seafood industry wins top honour - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

You need to increase your slave labour content in Australia.

Jeez Mick, if I work for much less I will have to start to give the company I work for some money back just to keep me employed.

Cheers Ean

Thread: The Whyalla steel works must be saved, at any cost

Thread Tools

Bookmarks

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions