get reid of AWA in WA mining industry

gday

i had to sign AWA to get job

i am on $53 an hour

now i work 28days straight then i have 7 days off 2 off those days i am flying

so end up with 5 days R&R

what i miss out on redancy $175 week
i work every public holiday no overtime penalties
i do not get any holiday pay
i do not get any 17% loading
i do not get 2 rdo a month
the week i have off i do not get payed for
i can not get a car loan or house loan because i casual fulltime contract the banks will not give me loan
i do not even get sick pay
let alone time of if some dies in my family
no travel alloance
no fares
no food alloance the 2 days i travel
no tool alloance
no training

what do reckon of AWA

Youre right bazza AWAs stink - get rid of them and vote ALP!

Baz, in Sept this year, you and many other people have an option of who you want to lead the country.

You can vote Labor as Rets mentions, or that New Pauline Hanson's party, if its up and running by then, or the many others.

You don't have to vote for the ALP if you don't want to.

Now, don't sit there and complain, while getting $53 an hour to work, but at the same time moan out loud when the ALP gets in, and wages drop to say, $44 an hour, but you get more benefits, holiday pay, time in lieu, blah blah blah.

Stop whinging you bludger. Do some work.

Um, dont all casuals miss out on manyof the benefits mentioned above? What if you apply to go full time Bazza? Youre a union man Bazza, speak to them. You pay your dues each month, so have a right for greivance.

My company has a job going for a plumber where you will get most of those things without the need to fly in and out, plus 21% super and 6 weeks annual leave. It pays about $48,000 for a 37-hour week in a pleasant environment in Perth. You have the choice of a collective agreement or an AWA.

Interested?

An AWA is a legally binding agreement. If he signed - the union can't do a lot really.

Yes - casual wages have a loading in lieu of annual leave and sick leave. That was the law before and after Workchoices.

Jeez... I just can't believe anyone could be arsed getting out of bed for a measly $53 per hour... not to mention the other fecked up circumstances.

Wot next baz... no beer coupons, free fishing tackle?

gdonya, I dont think they have been forfeited, rather the increased hourly rat is supposed to make up the shortfall.

Ooops, just realised thats what you said #9.

I am just thanking god I am getting out of Mining this week .Scored a job as a Aircraft Maintence Engineer ;-) . A while back there was post that went on forever about unions and the mining industry. Since then there was news story on Stateline titled Why workers are deserting the unions.which out lines the slow death of WA unions.

<blockquote>Quote
<hr>the past year union memberships in WA plummeted more than ten percent. In real terms that's almost 17-thousand workers either dropping out or cancelling their union memberships.<hr></blockquote>

<blockquote>Quote
<hr>Last year alone, union membership fell ten-and-a-half per cent, down to a record low of 142 thousand members across the state. The drop means just 16 per cent of the current workforce is unionised. That's fewer than one in six workers. 15 years ago, more than one in three workers belonged to a union. <hr></blockquote>

Bazza you said before you where on a site that is no union card no start so why didnt you use them ? If you want the $53 an hour then you got to expect none of the perks, sounds to me that your just on labour hire.... why not go the dark side and work directly for the comapny??. On the non unionsed sites I have worked a fitter gets about $45 but with all the perks.

Jeez Bazza you are whingeing for $53 per hour? Why don't you get a normal job at $15-$25 per hour like the rest of us!

<blockquote>Quote
<hr>$53 an hour<hr></blockquote>
But how many hours are you working? 84 would be standard while on site, or since there is a labour shortage, tell them it's 84 hours or they can shove it. 84 hrs/wk @ $53/hr = $4,452

Aircraft Maintenance Engineer, full time, $30 per hour, 171/2% leave loading, 4 weeks annual leave pro-rated available as you accrue it, 10 days sick leave, 10 days paternity leave, overtime at 1.5 & 2 x normal rate, all public holidays paid for, company bonuses each year (last year was $3000), shares each year, subsidised canteen, airconditioned aircraft hangar, same pay across the board for all (2 levels of tradesmen, paid accordingly), 4x10 hour days-3 day weekend every week, non unionised, EBA arranged through worker representatives and company representatives. Bazza, you can keep your $53 per hour, Im going home to my job that doesnt pay brilliantly, but lets me balance my work with my family and recreational pursuits.

I'm with Eli on this one.

$53 per hour isn't to be sneezed at.

<blockquote>Quote
<hr>2 off those days i am flying <hr></blockquote>
and where the hell are you flying to, that takes a day to get there and a day back? London?

Hear, hear boxbeach @17 - we offer similar conditions through our Collective Agreement (similar to EBA) and with market loading (which is available) our plumbing position would also pay around $30 per hour. Needless to say we have trouble filling trades positions due to the boom.

I detest unions and would never vote Labor because of this. The union people at work are aggrieved, antagonistic clock-watchers who actually make it worse for the rest of the staff. (we all work under the same agreement).

I used to have to meet with them quarterly and it was a waste of time (Why were'nt we consulted on the colour when the ladies toilet was painted?) Thanks to Work Choices I no longer have to.

<blockquote>Quote
<hr>and where the hell are you flying to, that takes a day to get there and a day back? London?<hr></blockquote>

Bazzas job is Fly in Fly out (FIFO) of Newman and depending on the size of the plane and transit time from the airport it many take all day to get home in Perth. Even on a meduim sized plane it could take 2-3 hours flying time.

Me...

Me too, paid in a lump sum at the end of November. Love it!

and where do you work?

Hasher, he can be home for lunch.

#26 a university. According to CareerOne, salary for my position is about $4000 under the market rate. I feel that’s more than compensated by being able to
<blockquote>Quote
<hr> balance my work with my family and recreational pursuits.<hr></blockquote> as bb said.

still would'nt leave the coast for that little money

Yeah Harry_Mudd you could be home for lunch but your day is still nearly over with and your not getting paid for travel. If Bazza worked for a company like BHP he would be traveling and getting paid for a full 12 hours work (plus frequent flyers), but since hes in labour hire he doesnt get travel time.

if he got those, the point that others are making, he wouldn't be on $53/hr. he'd be on 25. He's getting all those things, it's just put into the hourly rate.

It ain't rocket science.

Pearlz - why so hung up on unions? They basically don't exist any more. Workchoices doesn't discriminate between union and non-union employees. It just takes rights away.

Thought I made it clear when I described them!

<blockquote>Quote
<hr> aggrieved, antagonistic clock-watchers<hr></blockquote>

This applies to pretty much every union member I've dealt with in every industry I've worked for. Having said they, many of them are older - at least late 50s - with left-wing class warfare issues. Dunno what younger ones might be like - there aren't any.

Having said that, not they

Bazza, my heart bleeds....
I work 6 or 7 days a week part time up to 6 hours/day. Flat rate $15 per hour regardless of Saturday/sunday/Public Holiday whatever. We work everyday of the year except Christmas Day. We work straight through without any breaks at all. No sick pay, holiday pay or anything else.
But I do it because its only 5 minutes away, it involves doing something I enjoy and I am allowed to take a fewdays off 4 times a year to go to Sydney for Uni residential schools (I study external, part-time). If my boss had had to employ me under the award system (at the time) it wouldn't have happened so I just try to be happy with my lot and get on with it. For $53/hour I think you should remember that you are damn lucky to be in a position to earn that sort of money. I do sympathise with the problems involved with procuring a bank loan - that sucks.

bazza also forgets to mention that while on site he is well fed & accommodated.

He's probably not working 28 days straight... its unlawful. The 14th day should be rostered off.

Well that sounds more like a particular workplace culture than union members per se.. Still doesn't suggest a sound basis for forming judgments about workchoices, but there you have it.

Hasher,
Most city workers spend longer travelling than Bazza spends flying to Perth. My travel time is:

10 minute walk to bus stop
30 minutes on the bus (60 minutes if the traffic is bad)
5 minutes walk to my workplace at the other end

= 45 minutes x twice a day = 90 minutes travel time a day

90 minutes x 5 days a week = 7½ hours a week minimum (and I live pretty close to the city)

yehyeh

#37 - it will be more like $118,000/year if you consider only getting paid while working, and being casual he will have spells of unemployment between jobs

That's the outback nomadic work culture though - as A.B. Paterson put it over 100 years ago "work a while, and make a pile, and have a spree in town"

Bazza's situation doesn't seem that different from when I was doing it in the 1970s and everything was unionised.

Around 20% of the total workforce.

We get it whenever we take annual leave, be it a day or a week or a month. They just add 17.5% tax free on top of your total, which is a great bonus for holidays.

But I'd sack him.. he he..

So Bazza ....what do you think ? TIme for a change of jobs ?

#26, I work at my local airport(when at home and not O/S for work), a 20 minute drive from my front door, no traffic. Its about as good a job as I could possibly ask for, and gives my family the opportunity to grow up and live their lives in a quiet country town, 400 metres from the beach. Wouldnt want it any other way. With my 10 hour days, 4 days a week, it gives mum and dad time out whilst the kids are at school, and also gives me the opportunity to drop them off and pick them up once a week, something many dads cant do due to work hours. Theres ample opportunity to go contracting and earn $40-$50 per hour, especially in Sydney or Melbourne, but quite frankly, with the pay and conditions my company provides, id be mad to chase extra dollars.

But Boxbech, Those F-18's can be noisy buggers,and what a day it is when you get the F-111's and the 707 in on the same day. ;-)

A bit of trivia Harry. The more moisture in the air, the louder they get. So on a bright clear day, not so loud, on a rainy day, loud enough to pop your eardrums...

$53 an hour may sound like alot of money to some people, but the reality is it's not. It's a flat rate that does away with Award and Agreement conditions such as Annual Leave, Sick Leave, Redundancy, Travel Allowances, Meal Allowances, Public Holidays, RDO's, many specific site allowances, location allowances, the list goes on.

The base rate under a union Agreement is anywhere between $23 and $28 an hour. When you take into consideration the amount of overtime someone like Bazza works plus all the allowances they would otherwise be entitled top under an Award or union Agreement the $53 stops looking like a lot of money.

At the end of the day, regardless of what anyone earns , whether it be $15 an hour or $115 an hour if they are entitled to certain things they should get them. Better in your pocket than the bosses.

You also need to consider that people in Bazza's position are spending their lives away from their wives (or husbands), partners and children. They spend 12 hours a day sometimes up to 28 days straight working in conditions that are filthy, dangerous, and very hot. They work in dusty conditions and i mean cement dust, nasty stuff. They work with or in the vicinity of dangerous chemaicals, paints and solvents, health hazards. Those are some of the non-tangible things that are compensated by the rate of pay.

Also, look at the itinerant nature of the industry he works in. Most people in Bazza's situation work from job to job. they don't work for the same employer for years on end. there may be periods of unemployment between finishing on one job and starting another. Also, the reality is most of these people may spend a couple of years working up North or wherever. For people in trades or labourers it's rarely a lifelong career.

I'm not even going to mention the problems people have because of the classification of their employment relationship with thier employer. Most banks and finance companies still live in the dark ages and won't look at anyone who is classed as a casual, even a "fulltime casual", an oxymoron if ever i heard one.. and a copout as well. Just another way for bosses to avoid their obligations. The new one is independant contractors. Lets make each employee a company and then they have to pay for their own Superannuation, Workers Comp and Public Liability insurance, etc, etc. What a joke.

Instead of deriding people like Bazza who are, in reality, not much better off than people working down here turn your anger towards people like Michael Chaney.

Michael Chaney head of the Business Council earn't the equivalent of $115,000 per week over the last six years. And he's been at the forefront of the promotion of Workchoices legislation introduced by Howard. He infamously once said "There is no place for fairness in the employment relationship" or something along those lines. eay to say when your're earning the equivalent of 145 time the average weekly wage.

Him and his conservative mates backed up by a conservative Government and a conservative media have long pulled the wool over the general public's eyes. They scream about Unions, they winge about safety net wage increases for ordinary people, they say if you get rid of AWA's the sky will fall in, what a joke.

It's all part of an orchestrated campaign to get rid of Unions. Unions are the last line of defence for ordnary you and i workers against these capitalist pigs. I tell you what, the way they've been talking about Unions, they're a spent force. If that is so why do they devote so much time and money on deriding Unions. It's because the reality is Unions are still strong, and still making a difference for ordinary you and I. And yes i am a proud Union member.

Look at the guy who sacked 28,000 bank workers to cut costs and at the same time took a golden handshake of tens of millions of dollars from, i think it was the Commonwealth Bank.

Who are the real criminals in this country.

<blockquote>Quote
<hr>$53 an hour may sound like alot of money to some people, but the reality is it's not. It's a flat rate that does away with Award and Agreement conditions such as Annual Leave, Sick Leave, Redundancy, Travel Allowances, Meal Allowances, Public Holidays, RDO's, many specific site allowances, location allowances, the list goes on.

The base rate under a union Agreement is anywhere between $23 and $28 an hour. When you take into consideration the amount of overtime someone like Bazza works plus all the allowances they would otherwise be entitled top under an Award or union Agreement the $53 stops looking like a lot of money.<hr></blockquote>

When you take into consideration and add all your extras into $23 or $28 per hour you get $53 per hour. Jee Whiz, What a stretch. Amazing.

<blockquote>Quote
<hr>It's all part of an orchestrated campaign to get rid of Unions. Unions are the last line of defence for ordnary you and i workers against these capitalist pigs. I tell you what, the way they've been talking about Unions, they're a spent force. If that is so why do they devote so much time and money on deriding Unions. It's because the reality is Unions are still strong, and still making a difference for ordinary you and I. And yes i am a proud Union member.<hr></blockquote>
nah.

Eli @ 38 - yes it is partly a workplace culture issue, but the union members here are real throwbacks. I doubt they realise how puzzling their attitude is to new staff members who consider this a workplace with decent pay and conditions and good management. No wonder they say no thanks.

Anyway after some thought I’ve decided that unions are similar to radical feminists. They’re both past their use-by date. Radical feminists are ignored (at best) for two main reasons:

1. many of their original ideals are now law as well as a widely accepted part of western culture.
2. most women looked around at the men in their life and realised that not all of them were the enemy

Same in the working world. Entitlements to leave and minimum pay are enshrined in law as well as a widely accepted part of Australian culture and most people don’t see their employer as an adversary. Yet unions still do and as for Labor - Gillard illustrated her attitude amply by her recent comments.

And back to bazaa: I have no problem with his $53/hr. He’s a tradesman and in demand. If he decides against a lower-paying secure job in the city that offers all the benefits he mentioned, that’s his choice. I just hope he realised that the $53 rate replaced all those other things. His post makes it sound like that wasn’t the case.

Yeah. I can see that. I just fail to see what Workchoices has to do with unions. I guess that's what comes from being workplace law specialist.

In my case after Workchoices we were no longer required to meet with the union reps. I don't know if it was due to a change in the Collective Agreement which was in proces when the legislation came in and had to be re-negotiated, or a HEWRR requrement, or something else entirely. I was told it was Workchoices. I might ask if I see the boss becsaue I'm curious (I'm not acting in that position or area anymore).

It wouldn't be due to Workchoices directly.

for the record, banks are coming around to realising that not everyone has a long term permanent job...if you have a stable employment history for 3 years in the same industry/job type they will give you a loan...I know this because i just spent two hours with a mortgage broker trying to get a new loan organised when at present i don't have a job at all. There are also "low doc" loans which I believe you can apply for if you are a contractor with an ABN or self employed though not being relevant I didn't ask about the details.

Yes, I was working overseas for some time and got a normal loan off a normal bank with no tax returns and no payslips (and also no job at the time I applied for the loan).

"Low doc" loans are typically used by tradesmen, contractors with their own company, professional criminals and the like who "forget" to declare most of their income to the ATO and are therefore unable to come up with either tax returns or another plausible source of their income, but can demonstrate a steady cash flow through banking history. You pay about a 2% interest rate premium on "Low Doc" loans - avoid them if at all possible.

Even with a contract/casual job, you should be able to get a loan at the normal 0.5-0.7% off the standard variable rate which everyone gets if you can demonstrate an employment history - all the banks care about is being able to see regular pay deposits into your account. Particularly if the loan-to-valuation ratio is less than 80%, they don't really care who they give cash to.

<blockquote>Quote
<hr>The new one is independant contractors. Lets make each employee a company and then they have to pay for their own Superannuation, Workers Comp and Public Liability insurance, etc, etc. What a joke.<hr></blockquote>If it wasnt for this option, I would be finding it very hard to afford a house. This option allowed me to earn very good money and pay cash for my block of land. People are smart enough to make their own decisions, a fact I think many unions dont understand.

in my expert humble opinion i reckon this resources boom has had a knock on effect all the way accross here to melbourne, seeing as though the local job market for tradies has had to up its wages to keep them here instead of them migrating for the super-money out west it means there are a hell of a lot more cashed up bogans floating around the outer suburbs with plenty of money to spend, and unlike their white collar cousins who seem to squirrel all their funds into investment properties and share portfolios, these C.U.Bs tend to spread the wealth, the knock on effect being that your humble taxi driver is making somewhere between $20-$35 an hour depending on what day of the week it is ferrying these uncouth newly wealthy working classes around..

Times are good for now, but who knows how long it'll last to the next bust...

seems easy to knock the unions right now when things are good, but wait until the bosses have an unemployed labour pool to draw upon when things aren't so good anymore and can pit the ragged trousered philantropists' against each other to see who will work longer for less, and there'll be nothing stopping them if we collectively let the union movement fade away now under the mistaking assumption that they're a thing of the past of no more relevance in this 'enlightened' day. Ha.
100 years of work and revolution to bring the working classes up from serfdom and so many people willing to throw it all away,,, fools!!

I feel like the guy walking down the street wearing a sandwich board saying 'The end of the world is nigh' but I have to agree with dbrother .....the bust is coming. Having lived in a mining town all my life I have see the ups and downs of a town tied to mining. Roughly I believe the cycle is about 7 years where this one has gone on slightly longer because of the India and China 'Asian Economical Miricales' and there need for base metals. In 1999 I owned my own retail business , gold was in decline and people where leaving the town in droves, one customer said "Kalgoorlie is finished" ,infact that week 19 people had defaulted on housing loans. Three years later the town was on the rise again and now its in full boom . All I get from conversations now is "This boom isnt going to end for 10 years".

Perth seems to be experiancing some of the biggest effects because of workers like Bazza. Workers with 100K+ incomes FIFO of Perth to remote minesite and have staggering morgages and debts which relie on there high paying jobs. Last year alone Perth domestic airport traffic increased 70% due to small charter companys flying workers to minesites. My worry is that if China go's POP as with all the previous 'Asian Economical Miricales' (Japan, Korea,Thailand) that the resource sector with go BANG dead in its tracks. This would leave the mining companies no choice to axe workers heavily and since there mostly contractors they have no obligations as the employer to find alternitive work.

Watching Shanghai stock market's record growth to may be hard to argue theres not a bubble growing.
<blockquote>Quote
<hr>New figures released Thursday show China's economy grew 10.7 percent in 2006, the fastest rate in more than a decade. And its stock market is witnessing a record-breaking bull run. Murmurs of a bubble are growing, with foreign brokerages warning investors to stay away. But local investors are still pouring money in.<hr></blockquote>

Its going to be an interesting 2 years ahead and I hope I am wrong with my predictions of a major downturn in the mining industry.

<blockquote>Quote
<hr>but wait until the bosses have an unemployed labour pool to draw upon when things aren't so good anymore and can pit the ragged trousered philantropists' against each other to see who will work longer for less, and there'll be nothing stopping them if we collectively let the union movement fade away now under the mistaking assumption that they're a thing of the past of no more relevance in this 'enlightened' day. Ha.<hr></blockquote>One thing that might stop that situation is the shortage of skilled tradesmen. The resources boom isnt the only thing driving up hourly rates for skilled people, its the fact that many school leavers are reluctant to get their hands dirty doing traditional trades related jobs. When they can park their butts in a chair and get similar money for less learning time, who`s to blame them...

I get 54 and all that.

#62 - a similar cycle works in the oil & gas industry - roughly 1.5 years going up, 1.5 years plateau, 1.5 years going down, 2 years trough
Each time it goes down, a lot of skilled workers leave the industry, many never to return, so on the upswings they end up paying silly wages to people with little experience.

It's not always directly dependent on commodity prices - the resources companies don't always reinvest their profits in a boom, at least not until shareholders notice that's there's nothing new in the pipeline.

This cycle has repeated again and again in my working lifetime, yet few "market analysts" or whatever ever acknowledge it - they just tell investors what they want to hear, or what everyone else from their MBA year is saying

#32 <blockquote>Quote
<hr>Well that sounds more like a particular workplace culture than union members per se.. <hr></blockquote>I thought pearlz explained to you that <blockquote>Quote
<hr>This applies to pretty much every union member I've dealt with in every industry I've worked for.<hr></blockquote> So why would you then say that it sounds like a workplace culture??? <blockquote>Quote
<hr>I used to have to meet with them quarterly and it was a waste of time <hr></blockquote>I dont think this is a work place culture thing Eli, Pearlsz has formed an opinion based on experience with unionised work places and people.

#32 above should be #38...

<blockquote>Quote
<hr>The resources boom isnt the only thing driving up hourly rates for skilled people, its the fact that many school leavers are reluctant to get their hands dirty doing traditional trades related jobs. When they can park their butts in a chair and get similar money for less learning time, who`s to blame them... <hr></blockquote>

i doubt your average non-profesional desk jockey is making the $400 to $800 a day that the average freelance tradie is making, sure a good QC can charge $5000 a day (and i've got the invoice to proove it) but that too has taken a lot of learning to get there

Yeah, when youre talking contracting, as Bazza is doing, then yes lots of money to be made, lots more than a desk jockey. Take Pearlzs comment at #7, and you begin to see the point I was making.

Boxbeach - I guess I form that opinion based on my interactions with unionised and non-unionised people in a variety of industries.

I don't think the oil industry is going to have a significant downturn in the forseeable future:

- large oil fields are gone; the smaller oil fields don't take that much less engineering and project management effort to develop so there are similar staffing requirements even with oil running out

- the fact that new oil developments are smaller means that there are more of them = more jobs in oil industry

- oil is unlikely to go down significantly in value like it has done in the past as there is general recognition that it is becoming scarce and recognition that it contributes to climate change.... there would be a social disincentive allowing to cheap oil or some form of carbon tax to keep the price high.

That said, there are always cycles even if the next trough may not be as bad as the past.

Tele advice:

- save loads of cash now while times are good

- buy a large, powerful gas guzzling car now before they are carbon taxed out of existance

#71 - "the industry" won't have a downturn Tele, but employment will.
Everyone's working at capacity, all rigs are working, and Exxon have already announced a cut back on drilling activity in order to take profits and try to stabilise costs.
We've been through this before (and the price hike in 73 was much steeper than this one) , and the cycle will assert itself. Profits don't always equal employment boom.

Your advice on large gas guzzlers is not particularly good either unless you plan to run it into the ground or keep it as a restoration project - already their resale value is dropping much faster than fuel-efficient models

In post #62 I wasrefering more to the Iron ore , Nickel and Gold industry which drive the resource sector in WA and is what Bazza is employed in. Yes I agree I cant see a downturn in oil and gas for some time with all the conflict in the middle east.

Baz should stay on the mines for a 6 months or so and buy a V8 with 4 exhaust pipes. I'd aim for 400g CO2/km.

would you stay on wages or subcontract to try be tax

Baz, piss of the wages crap and get a contract through an agent. Tell 'em you want loads of cash.

Glad you have a car with 4 exhaust pipes now, that's why your ears are on the duff.

#71 As another oil rig worker I very much agree with Nerb's thoughts.

You are getting $53 an hour, and you are complaining!?!

Ratman

bazza about get layed off

Bazza, that will teach you to whinge.

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