This article has been archived and comments closed because the original Workchoices legislation has been axed.
The Government is proud to unveil its new industrial relations program – SerfChoices. You may have seen the ads for it already: smiling peasants plough the fields while soothing mandolin music plays.
You wouldn’t believe how hard it was to find peasants with full sets of teeth for those ads, this being the Middle Ages and all. Or ones that remembered how to smile. But I digress.
SerfChoices features exciting changes to the way your lord handles your employment. In the past, there were many ways you and your lord negotiated. Some lords liked to beat their serfs with maces; some cudgels; some preferred the rack. The Government is pleased to announce there will now be one standard method for beating peasants with large sticks, making it a simpler and fairer system.
SerfChoices also changes the way you, the peasant, negotiate your weekly payment of turnips.
In the past, you negotiated your turnip ration in the presence of your lord and the Government’s official torturer, Dagmar the Terrible. The Government is pleased to announce it has eliminated third parties such as Dagmar. Now your lord will beat and torture you directly as you beg for scraps. Once negotiated, your contract will be cast in iron. You can’t get much more cast-iron than manacles.
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SerfChoices guarantees that many of your employment conditions remain unchanged. As a peasant, you’re not entitled to holidays, so there’s no change there. Your medical benefits remain intact – when you pass out in the fields from exhaustion, you will be left until you recover or the wolves take you.
The Government has made it illegal for your lord not to beat you because of race, colour, sex or age. Everyone will be given the same number of beatings, making it a better system for all.
The maximum number of working hours a day will be fixed at 23. One hour is permitted for sleeping, smoking noxious weed from the West Indies, and turnip consumption. Casual peasants will earn a quarter of a turnip and a piece of weevil-infested bread for each hour they work over 23.
Your protection from unfair dismissal will depend on your individual bargaining power – that is, whether or not you can talk your lord out of shooting you with his crossbow. Yet another way the Government is rewarding individual talent.
Thanks to SerfChoices, Sunday will no longer be a day of worship, but of work. Your lord is your living god – you may worship him whenever you please. Collective bargaining – otherwise known as peasant rebellions – will be treated in the usual manner, with the king’s horses using the dissenters for speed bumps until they drop their demands.
Over time you may notice that your daily turnip ration goes down. That’s because peasants in Upper Saxony and Timbuktu are willing to work for less. SerfChoices will allow us to build foundations for a stronger, more prosperous kingdom. If we don’t act now, soon there’ll be no turnips for your children and your children’s children. And no one wants that.
This humourous take on Australias New Industrial Relations Laws was originally written by Charles Purcell in the Sydney Morning Herald “Heckler” reader submitted content section: Introducing SerfChoices – New work laws offer a brave olde worlde
Good entry Neerav. The more we can do to raise public discontent with the proposed IR changes the better. I’d like to think that it might even undo the current government but as we have seen in past elections, the Howard government has been reelected time and again despite some shocking escapades.
Markmcg
– excerpt from SMH article Goodbye to perks as work laws bite
excerpt from bulletin.ninemsn.com.au “Obfuscating on thin ice: Kim Beazley becomes the worker’s friend as the PM and his treasurer confuse and stupefy over industrial reforms.”
If you’re wondering what the long term effects of Australia’s new industrial relations regime and orwellian “Fair Pay” Commission will be … reading the article below from Associated Press in America will confirm your worst fears:
excerpt from GOP [Republican]-Run Senate Kills Minimum Wage Increase
– Unions eye more support for IR protests theage.com.au June 26, 2006
“Businesses behaving badly: new IR reforms could trigger more workplace violence, says UWS researcher”
An excerpt follows:
Read more at the UWS press release
I just discovered a Blog about industrial relations & the workplace at the SMH website. It’s called The Anvil
Recent interesting posts include:
– Human Resources – Friend or Foe?
– Is there really a brave new world, or is the Work Choices debate getting out of hand?
– No unions, no problems
– excerpt from SMH article “Child Contracts”
– excerpt from SMH article “A pretty standard increase”
excerpt from Ross Gittins article in the SMH “Employers shifting risk to employees”
excerpt from SMH article Women are hardest hit by workplace laws
Tomorrow, WorkChoices will have been in operation for a year. The Victorian Government has just released new research examining the evidence that does exist on its impact.
-EXcerpt from Crickey.com.au article WorkChoices is electoral poison: new study
John Howard, you should be so ashamed of yourself for what you have done to the little worker. Just last week the company i work for did away with leave loading for their newer workers. That is to say, she has been employed full time for at least eighteen months. Workers who have recently been employed are on lower wages than the older workers. In the last three years my pay has gone up about $1.50. Not being skilled AWAs are a joke and my boss who thinks shes born to rule would laugh her ass off at the request.
A new study of the Federal Government’s WorkChoices laws show low-skilled employees, like childcare workers or shop assistants, are earning less on Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) than those on collective arrangements.
On average those on AWAs, according to the report, are earning $100 a week less.
– excerpt from ABC News article WorkChoices study fires up political debate