"Look at that old Holden! Hasn't needed a repair once in 30 years, not like these shitty foreign imports you get today!".
Nostalgia and lies are tricky bedfellows.
> "corrupting corporate influences and (especially) real estate developers vanished"
... and were replaced with a level of government corruption (and incompetence) that would have been funny if it weren't so sad.
I’ll complain about rising rents too, but from a place of “we need more housing” and not “people need to stop trying to live here.”
In 1999 (or thereabouts) I was sick of being run off the road on my motorbike and decided to buy a car. Being an IT contractor with silly Y2K rates going on, I had plenty of disposable cash.
First dealer was Toyota, Bill Allen's of Cheltenham. The salesman looked at me, decided I didn't have money then completely ignored me. Nice.
Second was an MG garage whos name escapes me. Literally every car was was wrong - either the doors didn't fit, or there was a clunk when they closed, or in one case they didn't bother fitting the rear brake light (internal) correctly and it fell off during the test drive.
I have never seen such a rubbish car in my life, literally each one I saw looked like it had been built on a Friday afternoon. No wonder they went bust.
Another anecdote: My boss at the time was awesome and from Birmingham, right next to the Rover/MG plant. He asked me to do a speech for his wedding anniversary, so I went along to a social club next door to the factory. I noticed there were hardly any of their own cars in the employee car park, it was all Ford, Mazda, etc. This tells its own tale, at a time where 'Buy British and save Rover' was trumpeted everywhere.
New Zealand's domestic car industry (where they simply connected the imported bits together) died in the late 80s when tariffs were removed and we've been better off for it.
Billions are being invested in replacing that stuff today, and every one of those projects cuts staffing needs 90%.
The plumbers will be there laughing at office wankers who thought they had a sweet gig.
Supposedly, the problem Rover hit was though their last-developed large car (Rover 75) was very good and reasonably popular, since they'd been pulled away from working with Honda by the sale to BMW, they had neither a modern middle-sized car nor a replacement for the Metro. Put that together with being passed from hand-to-hand (from BAe to BMW was 6 years, BMW to Phoenix another 6, and Phoenix lasted another 5) in an industry struggling from overproduction, and it was always problematic.
Whenever Citroen, GM, etc have gone bust, their respective governments have always stepped in. Competing in a loss-making industry against government-backed competitors is one tough game.
The only difference is Toyota models are just imported from elsewhere because they have a mostly global product line.
Ford and GM Holden now need to find either European or North American models to import that will suit the local market.
The other replacement is the European-built Mondeo, which is much more like the Falcon and far less offensive IMO.
You'd have to be rather silly to buy one: http://www.ancap.com.au/media-and-gallery/releases/ford-must...
Entitled bogans who think they're the Jamie Whincup but are more likely to hurt themselves and others than win any races?
Seriously, this is what track days are for.
“The driver’s door opened in the pole test, and whiplash protection for rear-end collisions was marginal,”"
"We spent all our money making the car look brutal and sexy to our target customers, so there was no money left to also make it safe". ... !
There are plenty of cars that are fun to drive and safe.
"“Of concern, the full width frontal test showed a risk of serious head, chest and leg injury for the rear passenger. There was also insufficient inflation of both the driver and front passenger airbags in the frontal offset test which allowed the driver’s head to contact the steering wheel and the passenger’s head to contact the dashboard,”
“The driver’s door opened in the pole test, and whiplash protection for rear-end collisions was marginal,”"
However, the demographic that buys Fords here in Australia are unlikely to read that ( or anything else...)
http://www.ancap.com.au/media-and-gallery/releases/ford-must...
I was surprised when it was reported that Toyota wanted to reduce the Christmas shutdown period from 21 days to 10 days in line with other international factories and the union rejected this. This was in the context of other car manufacturers shutting down in Australia at the time and they had to know that this attitude was risking Toyota leaving as well, but they just couldn't accept a reduction in any conditions.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/toyotas-altona-plant-to-st...
If I was doing 11 day fortnights I might want an extended holiday period over Xmas to get reacquainted with my family.
It is sad to read so many comments blaming the workers, their union and the quality of the cars.
Australia, a country of 24 million people, has more car brands competing for the customers dollar than any other country bar China.
"The flood of imports has given Australian car buyers more choice than ever before — and more than every other country on the planet except China.
Australia has 64 automotive brands, the US has 38 and the UK has 42." [1]
Why? Well Australia has extremely low import tariffs for cars lowering the barrier of entry for foreign car companies to compete. All while the countries from which Australia was buying these cars maintained import tariffs protecting their domestic car industries.
So Australia lets everyone import but everyone doesn't let Australia export. Sounds fair.
It is sad that politicians dogmatically denied car manufacturers the support of the state while these manufacturers are competing in an international environment where every other country is subsidising and supporting their local car manufacturers.
We see a similar ideological approach with Qantas. A lot of the major international airline carriers are de facto supported by the state but in Australia subsidies are a political no-go zone so we leave them to the dogs.... and blame the workers and their unions.
I'm as opposed to subsidies as the next man in the long term BUT these industries employ huge numbers of our citizens and foster unique and important skillsets. As a nation Australia should work towards the ideals of removing subsidies and trade barriers but why do we martyr ourselves for the cause while every one else is ignoring them?
[1] http://www.heraldsun.com.au/technology/why-australian-car-ma...
A living wage as defined by the Harvester judgement, which seems to be what you are referencing, was based on begin paid enough money to be able to afford food, shelter and clothing for a family.
In the case I'm referencing the dispute is over whether the workers should have their standard break for Christmas reduced from 21 days to 10 days. I can't think of any other companies within Australia that offer such a generous Christmas break, but maybe there are some; i think it would be a very small number. What they were being asked to give up seemed very generous and the replacement of 10 days instead doesn't seem onerous - it still seems generous compared to many companies.
You'd have to ask the workers that lost their jobs if they are now better off having lost their jobs rather than stay competitive with other places by bringing their conditions in line with what is typical even within the country they live in.
I also disagree with the way you phrased your point, on one hand, you mention that the unions would not budge on conditions, but then state that they should have because "no other company that you know of" allows 21 days of holiday over the Christmas. First of all drawing to the fact that the Union represents workers, not companies, it makes sense why the companies have an interest in shortening the holiday break of the workers. It is not in the interest of workers however. To counter your point that their breaks should have been cut in line with that of other countries, then we should keep in mind that some Northern European countries are going further in terms of workers rights, in the opposite direction, so all of us a sudden, your advice that we should follow the lead of some countries leads us to question which way we go.
I would also like to highlight that the CFMEU (Construction) enforces a 17 day shutdown over the Christmas break, so there are other's who do lengthy breaks.
I also struggle to understand your last point about bringing conditions in line within the country they live in, Australia has Union representation across most industries. If you wish to do business in Australia, then you surely understand this, I would hazard a guess that given this, then good conditions and decent pay is the typical situation. Why would anyone want to degrade that?
Winning a race to the bottom is a zero sum game.
They weren't forced to take a reduction in Christmas leave. They company asked if they could, considering the local and international conditions in their industry. The workers weren't forced, it was their decision and they said no, presumably knowing that the consequence might be that this may be the straw that shuts the factory down permanently.
If the company had made a draconian decision that cut workers pay unreasonably, regardless of the current economic circumstances and pocketed this money, I'd agree strongly with you. But, this isn't what happened. The workers kept all of their conditions and the factory shut down.
There have to be some circumstances where you would see that it would be reasonable for workers to give up some conditions in the industry they are working in if it is under some economic pressure, either internally or externally? They may only agree to give them up temporarily until conditions improve, or make some other offer to help the company to increase output or reduce costs.
The reality is that Australia is an open, market economy. Its companies have to be competitive with the rest of the world in order for those companies to survive.
You say that companies only have an interest in shortening holiday breaks. But if this is the case, how did the holiday break end up as 21 days in the first place? Companies have to compete for workers too - there must have been a time when it was beneficial to the company to attract and retain workers with a longer Christmas break. You point out that some European countries have more workers rights, but this misses the point that the competitive pressure at the time wasn't for workers - it was on total cost of production.
Nobody wants to degrade good conditions and decent pay for workers. However, for many people that work in small business and haven't had a pay rise in several years can only look on with bemusement when highly unionized industries demand 4% pay rises plus extra Christmas holidays and then demand tax payer money when their industries falls over.
It seems like every time a unionized industry is asked to make a small concession that it's seen as a zero sum game, the thin end of the wedge, a race to the bottom and the apocalypse. It's blown completely out of proportion. Most industries go through ups and downs. The inflexible ones go broke.
Should people who have other means of support be allowed to hold jobs?
Executives, investors, management, industry, market, over production, competition, technology, and economics are never a factor.
Stupid labor.
Are the tariffs just not as high to effectively subsidize their local car industry?
To add. I think those counties understand that the car industry helps to invigorate many other parts of the economy, so it's sad to see AUS let that go like that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysian_motor_vehicle_import...
So you we can speculate why, in a complicated world, the (cars, Australia) paring works badly while the (education, Australia) and (cars, [South!] Korea) pairings work well and the (cars, Taiwan) paring is somewhere in between.
But an important answer behind all of these is: The market speaketh thus.
This figure likely included a lot of overtime - the average annual salary at the Elizabeth plant was only $60,000 according to Senator Kim Carr.
This is because the base rate leaves out all of the various loadings that are applied under different circumstances. There are so many circumstances for loadings that the base rate becomes meaningless.
Overtime is only one way to get paid more than the base rate. Also, overtime becomes a meaningless word when you can get overtime just for working slightly non-standard hours, as opposed to working extra hours.
The agreements are written in a way that makes it really hard to calculate what a worker is actually likely to get paid annually. The only way to be certain is to look at the worker's group certificate for tax purposes.
So, while what Senator Carr said was probably technically correct, it was also meaningless since I would suggest that no worker was actually paid that amount in a year. It would be more meaningful to ask what the average amount on a worker's group certificate was.
> It would be more meaningful to ask what the average amount on a worker's group certificate was.
I think a better figure yet would be the average amount per FTE.
What they can't do though is lie to the tax office. That crosses a threshold from being misleading to being illegal.
There is a big incentive for unions to be misleading about what their members are paid. It's hard to garner a lot of sympathy from the public when the average member of the public is paid a lot less than the average union member. That's not to say that this is always the case - the wages, agreements and marketing to the public by the unions varies significantly between unionised industries.
I'm not interested in talking about unions like you are. Merely getting an accurate read on how much an employee earned.
What you're proposing is eliminating the value of people's time from the equation. Working extra hours or unsociable hours should be paid more because they represent the employee trading away their spare time for more money, and as spare time approaches zero the amount they require at the margin should also increase.
I don't think standardizing all hours across all employees is fair in that regard.
I also agree with you that it's important to get an accurate read on how much an employee earned. My point is that there are some people that have an incentive to obfuscate this amount and that I can only see one unambiguous way to avoid this obfuscation.
I think the starting point in these discussions should be what someone was actually paid, not what they might have been paid. Then if that amount can be justified by unsociable hours, extra hours, or whatever, then that's fine. But if the various hours, loadings or whatever seem unreasonable then that's a different discussion.
I wouldn't even normally be interested in what someone's paid - it's not my business. However, the car manufacturing industry is a different case since there was an expectation that tax payer's money should be used to bail it out. In my opinion, tax payers deserve to know what it is that they are paying for, in detail. Particularly in the car industries case since it seemed like every time that the government tipped in more money that it was closely followed by the workers getting a pay rise.
Ah I'm sorry if I was unclear with that one. I'm not suggesting that you think people should all be paid standard regular rates irrespective of time. I meant that if you use a lump sum "average per employee pay slip" number you're not taking in to account those details.
With full-time equivalent, if George works 60 hours for example he counts as 1.5FTE. After-hours work is harder to quantify, but usually employment agreements similarly put extra value on those hours that can be translated back to FTE.
This seems the sanest and most accurate way to figure it out. The number actual people earn per week is a misleading figure.
I think you might agree with me here, because you said "Then if that amount can be justified by unsociable hours, extra hours, or whatever, then that's fine" and FTE is exactly the way to do that!
I just came across this four corners episode from 2016 which has the quote
"According to Holden management 90% of the workers earn between 43k and 55k per year" (https://youtu.be/CIRuU8qot3s?t=33m08s)
Straight from the horses mouth, as it were. Though of course .5FTE @ $43k is $86k FTE (for example) so we're back at the problem of standardization...
However, I think while it would be revealing in some areas, it would mask other problems.
For instance, if you look purely at the FTE, you wouldn't see that George had worked 60 hours. That's a problem. Why did George work 60 hours? Was he really productive for all of that time or is he gaming the overtime system by deliberately doing less work within normal hours so that he has to do overtime to complete his scheduled work.
Definitely all related though. In this case to bring it round to the start, I am focusing on the “how much does the average worker earn” problem. I have a little experience is human resource budgeting for a small team, and my establishment was represented in FTE.
Thanks for the chat, it was interesting.
My guess however is that the stereotype represents a shrinking proportion of actual Aussie males, though they're still there. We all have our own selection bias of course, but in my experience young Australian men are a pretty big improvement on their bald barrel-shaped shock-jock-addled beer-guzzling 4WDing [poofter/boong/woman/asian/tree/whatever]-hating coal-loving fathers who so despoil the Australian suburban landscape.
Don't believe me? Many Australian men are two inches away from overt racism on one side, and super-duper-liberal-moral-high-grounder on the other.
That said, Australians are generally very kind and fun. But hard work and struggle builds both character and moral fortitude, and the typical Australian male is without either: They're gfted a generous opportunity, chilling out on the doll, or pushing papers in some uncompetitive bureaucracy.
I used to have several Australian coworkers who were generally quite pleasant and easy to work with, but several of them had an attitude and their interaction with dark skinned individuals was shocking. Having overheard them arguing with another Australian coworker about the case of the "abo gal fucked to death", I'm not surprised by your description using the terms "overt racism on one side, and super-duper-liberal-moral-high-grounder on the other". Their conversation was peppered with racist stereotypes, going as far as to blame the victim as being an "abo whore". I found out later that the victim was Lynette Daley, a young aboriginal woman who had been drugged and then, shockingly, literally, raped to death "blunt force genital tract trauma". There was little to no coverage of this here, but it does seem to have attracted at least a little attention in Australia. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-09/nsw-dpp-under-scrutiny...
We also sort of have this kind of dichotomy in America. As a matter of public policy, our wars and policies unfairly target Muslims while we preach that any and all discrimination is illegal and intolerable. I like how the South Park creators put it: https://i.redd.it/bbwo4ropuesz.jpg
I did see it in Netherlands though. I also worked for a few years in Netherlands, and I was shocked to see a woman, one of the management / HR mock the only black employee relentlessly with monkey noises.
For reference: I grew up in Adelaide, about 15-20 minutes drive (15 km.. erm 9.3 miles for you lot) from the suburb where the Holden factory is located.
I remember as a student/early graduate (so, 2000 - 2003ish) having.. acquaintances who were in their early 20's, bringing home close to $AUD100K/year, for assembling commodores. People who would laugh about how funny it is to let a car leave the production line, with the wrong colour door handle fitted.
Another "acquaintance" took forever to get a resolution because his 2-door ute was delivered to him with a 20cm gap in the carpet on the passenger side. It went through the factory, through QA, through a DEALER and nobody fucking noticed a 20cm gap on the passenger side of the floor.
These were not high quality cars being built by well trained craftsmen. They weren't even average quality cars built by moderately trained craftsmen. They were pieces of shit slapped together by over paid idiots.