John Linton
......according to more of the deluge of 'irregulation' under which business operates these day (if you have more than 25 employees in Australia then the Federal Government decrees that you may not use the word small to describe your company). The 'feral gubmant' now supersedes Fowlers, The Oxford Companion and the Cambridge Modern as THE arbiter on word usage - at least in Australian business.
You may think this is hardly an onerous burden imposed on a business operating in Australia but it a symptom of the constraints that now apply to playing a small part in ensuring Australians have places to be employed around the country. It came up at yesterday's board meeting as part of a minor review of our compliance with the various legislation under which we operate based on the new Labor Party's 'laws' regarding their recently introduced industrial relations regulations which are giving so much trouble to various unions around NSW over the past few days.
Labor's new IR laws are overwhelmingly the same as the bitterly derided "end of industrial justice for the working man" of the previous government and in fact, as they relate to Exetel they are almost identical. The only difference is that the current Labor government has scrapped each employee's entitlement to five days annual sick leave in their first year of employment and replaced it with 10 paid days "personal leave" and added a further two unpaid days of personal leave. Clearly Labor views the health of people who work in Australia as being in rapid decline or perhaps the change from "sick" to "personal" leave indicates that the Labor party regards work as an increasingly optional aspect of people's lives.
The other interesting change was the provision for 24 months (unpaid) maternity/paternity leave) per employee after which the employee now has the 'right' to return to their position they left up to two years previously at the inflation adjusted remuneration they were previously being paid (presumably on the birth of any child over a working life). Personally I don't know of any person who, after two years away from their position could actually do their job in the very changed circumstances that would then exist but doubtless there are circumstances. The rest of the requirements were typically pointless strictures that included holding meetings with employees after sending them and giving them time (during working hours) to read the 50 plus page 'summary of changes'
Nothing in the new Labor IR laws will affect any professional person in any way (or for that matter anyone that leads a normal life and works for an average employer and, as I previously said, the stridently derided 'work choices' if you compare the major parts of the screech owls new laws with the ones they replace I defy you to tell the difference. Though, reading the various media this week you would get the impression that more than one or two unions believe the screech owl's version of IR makes them worse off than the previous government's "work choices".
We also reviewed some new ACEMA requirements relating to a 'return' we hadn't provided before along with our usual review of our payroll tax returns and our payg returns and our 2009 tax return as well as as our employee superannuation returns before reviewing the latest insanities from the TIO (fortunately a new low) and then we dealt with the major issues of running a business that is no longer 'small' in the time remaining. Fortunately that took very little time as everything else about Exetel is running pretty much as planned which is always nice to 'check off' on the long term calendar.
The only, in its way significant 'event' was my request for a research/project assistant to take over the work that I am now struggling to fit into my working week.Age, health and quite possibly boredom with its repetitive and time consuming nature after so many years has finally taken its toll and I can't do a number of key functions with the required enthusiasm and clarity of mind that is required. So I guess that's a very real sign that Exetel is no longer a small company.
PS: I have thought about it and discussed it with some sensible people and have decided to make this blog 'members only" with a subscription 'fee' of $10.00 per annum. The subscription "fee" doesn't go to me or to Exetel it goes to one of the wildlife protection projects that Exetel supports.
My reasons for doing this are:
1) After over 900 daily entries since I started this exercise the number of daily readers has grown to cover the demographics that were alluded to in the papers that convinced me it was a worthwhile exercise. I have no interest in the readership of the musings growing beyond the useful demographics that have currently been achieved after two and a half years.
2) My view is that whether there is a 'fee' for reading my musings or not the people I, and Exetel, get value from reading this blog will not change by asking them for a tiny donation to a worthy cause. Whether that is a correct assumption remains to be seen.
3) My further view is that if my writing is so worthless then why is anyone bothering to read it in the first place? I certainly wouldn't expect anyone to waste their time doing something so pointless.
4) Over the past six months there has been an increase in the number of d***heads sending emails containing statements that no reasonable person should have to read and I think that having to pay for the privilege of sending their filth will largely eliminate the distasteful task of having to read enough of it to bother deleting it.
5) Exetel customers will continue to get 'free' access via the User Facilities for the time being in the event they wish to do so.
I therefore sent the 'work order' to our development function to write the code to make this happen - I gave it the lowest priority so there is no firm time frame for this to happen.