The reference to "wage theft" reminds me of a Communist Party poster I saw
in Sydney some time ago: "Profits are stolen wages".
Profits are the wages of the entrepreneur. Without profits, there'd be no
business, thus no jobs and certainly no wages for anybody else.
Tony P
On Tuesday, 23 November 2021 at 11:48:55 UTC+11a...@... wrote:
> The different unions are a legacy of past times when the various public
> transport sectors were completely independent and uncoordinated. Private
> buses were administered by the old Department of Motor Transport,
> government buses by the Department of Road Transport and Tramways, later
> DGT. The RTBU is a legacy of the railways and tramways, thus a government
> employees union that is skilled in the art of squeezing extra benefits out
> of politicians who are terrified by the idea of strikes costing votes.
> Private bus operators, on the other hand, traditionally didn't tolerate
> bs.
> It's only in very recent times that the two sectors have been brought
> together. The unions are a legacy of the old system. The situation in NSW
> has brought the TWU and RTBU together in a united front. Other states and
> territories, except Brisbane City Council in Queensland, have only the TWU
> looking after bus drivers. The average private company has a dim view of
> any attempt to bring public service perks into their workplace as they
> don't have a bottomless well of taxpayer funding to draw upon. Yes, there
> should be common working conditions, but the private sector (with margins
> as tight as they are in public transport operational contracts) can't
> afford the inefficient lavishing that the public sector tolerates.
> Tensions
> result.
>
> Tony P
> What a load of boss-toady right wing crap. How outrageous that workers
> should use an industrial action tactic that doesn’t alienate the public,
> like this excellent campaign is doing, eh?
>
> What could be worse than a union that runs a competent campaign. If the
> privately employed bus drivers have had to put up with inferior working
> conditions because the union they were stuck with was ineffective, then
> that situation is well overdue for change.
>
> If the TWU wasn’t aligning with the RTBU guess where their membership
> would migrate to.
>
> What this reveals is the bludging, parasitic rent seekers of the “private”
> (but on the government tit) sector are really there for - to erode working
> conditions and rights, nothing else.
>
> These are not “perks”, they are hard won conditions fought for but a union
> that isn’t the passive and docile creature of the employers, like the TWU
> has obviously been in the past. If the TWU is finally waking up to the
> reality that if they want to maintain membership in this sector, then good
> for them. If the RTBU and TWU unite and campaign together then the bludging
> rent seeker parasites and the state government's ideological pogrom against
> decent working conditions in this sector will fail.
>
> If the private sector “can’t afford” the established and pre-existing
> working conditions it has no right to exist. Like all underpaying wage
> thief employers they don’t have a viable business. It would be interesting
> to compare what they pay the managers and executives compared to the actual
> workers, the productive people thy steal the value of their labour from.
>
> They could make some cuts there so the drivers get more.
>
> Tony.
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