In another example of the high cost of rushing changes, representatives of the federal government are working with newsagents and their representative bodies to overcome problems caused by the workplace changes introduced earlier this year.
I don’t know who is to blame for the changes which looked set to significantly increase newspaper home delivery costs and make many casual employment arrangements untenable for newsagents. That said, it was a government initiative and so the government must be responsible for the months of uncertainty and stress for many newsagents and their employees.
The resolution which is ultimately negotiated ought to have been put in place prior to making the changes. Had this been done, considerable time and money could have been saved.
Governments have an obligation to get it right. They keep telling us how hard they work for us – maybe they could show it by not introducing problems.
“The resolution which is ultimately negotiated ought to have been put in place prior to making the changes. Had this been done, considerable time and money could have been saved.”
Mark, as you blogged here at the time, and I have mentioned a couple of times, the silence coming from the newsagency industry at the time submissions were called for on the proposed new industrial award was defeaning.Only the QNF saw fit to reply, as what was proposed was significantly different to what existed in that State under previous arrangements.
Certainly in NSW, the new award has no provisions that the old one didn’t.In fact, there was scope for small savings in overtime payments, as the commencement time of “normal hours” was bought forward to 5am from 6am, for newsagents only.There is no point in criticising the government for ‘getting it wrong”, if individual newsagents negatively affected and/or the various associations didn’t bother to reply.The chemists,independant supermarkets associations and countless other industry associations managed to do it. Why not the newsagents?