The Prime Minister says it will take a few months for the [industrial] laws to settle in and he believes there will be good news stories in the future. (From the ABC.)
This is after a spate of incidents where workers have been sacked and offered their jobs back under inferior conditions.
The PM has never had a job in the real world, and it's starting to show. Is this the line that the employers' organisations pushed to get change and does he really believe it? Or are the polls not looking too good? Methinks probably both.
And then this ...
The head of Australia's Chamber of Commerce and Industry insists the new WorkChoices laws are good for workers as well as employers.ACCI chief executive Peter Hendy has told Channel Nine that thousands of people were sacked each week before the new laws were implemented.
He says the new system provides workers and their employers with more opportunities.
"They're opportunities for enterprise based bargaining, which we think will actually help sustain the real wage rise, that we've seen one of the best periods for decades and also one of the lowest unemployment rates for 30 years," he said.
The booming economy and low umemployment rates happened before the IR changes were implemented. Maybe Hendy just thinks we're stupid.
The Government must be spitting chips that companies like Cowra abbatoirs are blatently are invoking the new IR conditions in such an unpleasant way and so immediately.
Maybe they thought there would be a stream of happy stories from Soviet type smiling workers as they skipped merrily into all the new jobs being created.
Although I still have a vison of Potemkin villages with the sacked shuffling out the back.