Skip to main content ↑ ↓
Topic: Trumpled (Alternative Leading) (Read 836038 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 18 Guests are viewing this topic.

Re: Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

Reply #1380 –
You all look like a bunch of Paulines to me! ;D
"Extremists on either side will always meet in the Middle!"

Re: Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

Reply #1381 –
Whilst they have not done enough still to curtail the exploitation of the overseas skilled workers visas, this first step by the government is indeed a fantastic one.

I won't do the same here, but I put a big rant on Facebook on why I think this and why I applaud the decision. No one doubts the need to cover genuine skill gaps (that can't be covered with on the job training) in specialised fields, but this has been overwhelmingly used to bring in workers from overseas who will happy accept less than the market rate in Australia.

I know of and have been directly involved in discussions/decisions where 457 workers have been chosen simply because executives would not pay to hire locals. That is NOT a skill shortage, that is companies wanting to take a bigger slice of the pie.

Like I also said on my FB post, I think this might be the first time I agree with a Liberal (well other than when Little Johnny took away most peoples guns)
Goals for 2017
=============
Play the most anti-social football in the AFL

Re: Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

Reply #1382 –
MIO, same here. I've never been a Liberal voter, but when Howard came in, one of the first things he did was, as you say, take lots of guns away. I thought "wow, maybe this guy isn't so bad." Then of course, it all went down hill from there.

Re: Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

Reply #1383 –
Quote from: mateinone – on
Whilst they have not done enough still to curtail the exploitation of the overseas skilled workers visas, this first step by the government is indeed a fantastic one.

I won't do the same here, but I put a big rant on Facebook on why I think this and why I applaud the decision. No one doubts the need to cover genuine skill gaps (that can't be covered with on the job training) in specialised fields, but this has been overwhelmingly used to bring in workers from overseas who will happy accept less than the market rate in Australia.

I know of and have been directly involved in discussions/decisions where 457 workers have been chosen simply because executives would not pay to hire locals. That is NOT a skill shortage, that is companies wanting to take a bigger slice of the pie.

Like I also said on my FB post, I think this might be the first time I agree with a Liberal (well other than when Little Johnny took away most peoples guns)

I think I have no problem with 457 visas as long as the skilled and shortage part of the policy is strictly enforced, but in most cases it isn't a valid claim.

Posting articles about career scientists who arrived on 457 visas is rubbish, for starters most of them do not even need to go through the 457 process if their positions are legitimate. It's just become the easy solution and a way for organisations like universities or CSIRO to avoid quotas!

It was laughable seeing the IT sector bleat about the loss of skilled foreign workers when universities are pouring out IT graduates of all types at unprecedented levels. Just last year there were criticisms that there were too many IT graduates and not enough places to offer them, there was a call to reduce graduate numbers! Of course Universities didn't comply because a good portion of those graduates come from the lucrative foreign student marketplace.

It seems what the IT sector's real complaint was, they won't be able to hire low cost foreign IT workers of equivalent skill to the locals if too many locals keep graduating! In effect they want local universities to cut the numbers of IT graduates so they can justify importing low cost workers under the 457 scheme. That is not the intent of that legislation, but it is how it is being applied in any number of industrial and commercial sectors.

A great example is Victorian regional abattoirs. I know that many local workers had been paid out in recent years, made redundant or encouraged to take early retirement, then immediately the qualifying term is passed those jobs are reinstated by foreign 457 workers. Not because they work better, harder, longer or smarter than locals, or that they were not involved with unions or have skills locals cannot deliver. It was done because of an approximate 33% reduction in wage costs, "To help make Australian companies more competitive", but the prices never dropped, yet profits and executive bonuses increased!
"Extremists on either side will always meet in the Middle!"

Re: Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

Reply #1384 –
Yeah you have nailed it with regards the point about the profits.
The thing is an abattoir can run and be financially viable in Australia, they may not make as much profit as a business wants, but they can be supported by locals. What companies want is it pay minimum (or close to minimum) wages and locals who have worked for years and like many others in all other industries seen their wages rise, will not just accept minimum wage. The company then says they advertise by can't find anyone and apply for a 457.

I could tell any number of stories from the positions I have held that just show without a doubt that this is a ruse. If an Australian company cannot get the profits they want using local (and actual offshore if need be) staff then in most cases they should move to another industry, because I can tell you for sure that someone will fill the gap they leave behind.

Take the abattoir example... Will Australia just stop eating meat? No, someone will take over the role and run the market in the space the incumbent was.

And this is me trying soooo hard to hold back  :-X :P ::)
Goals for 2017
=============
Play the most anti-social football in the AFL

Re: Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

Reply #1385 –
Sharp stuff, MIO and Spotted One. Good reading.
Only our ruthless best, from Board to bootstudders will get us no. 17

Re: Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

Reply #1386 –
The other big joke about the skill shortage is that there has ALWAYS been a skill shortage.
In that were most of us actually skilled to do our first jobs in our respective industries, or were we hired and learned the skills on the job.

In one particular instance I had been hired to in a new team to do a certain job, they realised there was a critical skill set missing in the team for a particular product. They asked me in my 2nd week would I be prepared to learn that product an become the SME (Subject Matter Expert) for that, rather than the Operating System (AIX Unix) that I was originally hired for. This was a product the entire organisation relied on for recovery and operability... I said yes and they spent  about 5,000-6,000 sending me on a course for a week and gave me some manuals to read.

I was given a basic overview of the environment, some topology maps and asked to take it over, guess what... I (and the company) survived, like many others before me had. This used to be normal practise, I have since sent my staff on training to cover skill gaps, but companies are now loathe to spend the money (in actual cash or in work hours) to train staff, be they new or current. Someone in a company somewhere decided that workers are transient and the training budget could be saved and others followed suit.

I am hoping one of the benefits of this will be that employers see it as a responsibility of the business leaders of today to train the next generation the same way most of us were trained on the job. Because this selfish generation of maximum profits at the cost of minimizing investment in local talent is doing nothing to help this country.

To compare the differences, when I got into IT, I worked in a department of about 40 employees with a wage budget of about 2.2 - 2.4 million and about $100,000  in training expenses (thousands of hours of paying wages whilst training). So about 4-6% of the wage budget for training (plus probably another 4% in time dedicated to training)

In one of my last roles, I had around 100-120 employees  in total under me with a wage budget of perhaps 15 million and a training budget of $0. We managed training, but only through leveraging our relationships with vendors to supply our staff with training. We could not spend at all.

It is an absolute joke that companies can claim a skill shortage that they created should mean they can employ outside of the country.
Goals for 2017
=============
Play the most anti-social football in the AFL

Re: Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

Reply #1387 –
Worse, a lot of those startups commence as a result of Federal or State Gov funding and innovation grants!

The Feds use our taxes to fund a company whose business model requires the employment of minimum wage foreign nationals to make a profit!

Then the bureaucracy reports we have a shortage of skilled workers, and use the innovative projects that need foreign workers as the example of our skill shortage!

Even worse still, Abbott basically forced the CSIRO into the low cost labor market by cutting budgets and installing managers who who refused to sign off on project funding until wage costs reduced. In many cases Principal Investigators had to replace local PhDs with minimum wage foreign graduate students just to get the money to continue! In one location alone 350 local PhDs and Engineers got the bullet, and this is not counting the Environmental Sciences Group which effectively had it's door closed for political reasons! What an utter a55hole of a bloke! Of course the inevitable happened, a bunch of these foreign 457 graduates turned out to be siphoning CSIRO's IP and sending it back home, including military/defense grade secrets! This event was then used as an example of CSIRO's ineptness to justify another budget cut! In effect he cut until it damaged the organisation, the damage organisation he created then failed, so he used it as reason to cut it again!

The scary thing, Trump is worse!
"Extremists on either side will always meet in the Middle!"

Re: Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

Reply #1388 –
Trump has got through his first 100 days without achieving any of the objectives/promises he set/made ... and that's with a Republican majority in both houses  ::)
It's still the Gulf of Mexico, Don Old!

Re: Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

Reply #1389 –
Quote from: DJC – on
Trump has got through his first 100 days without achieving any of the objectives/promises he set/made ... and that's with a Republican majority in both houses  ::)

That's a 'positive' not a 'negative' :D

Re: Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

Reply #1390 –
I would say that it was always going to be the case.  Ive never seen politicians achieve much in 100 days aside from cancelling deals.
"everything you know is wrong"

Paul Hewson

Re: Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

Reply #1391 –
Quote from: Lods – on
That's a 'positive' not a 'negative' :D

That's one way of looking at it Lods  :)

I'm more concerned that it shows how ill-prepared and unsuitable the current POTUS is.  I'm not fussed about his inability to keep what were clearly unachievable election promises (that is a good thing) but I wonder what those who voted for him (or didn't vote) think.  Probably not very much!
It's still the Gulf of Mexico, Don Old!

Re: Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

Reply #1392 –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz69-RkE4PA

Billy Connolly on Trump.

Caution - keep volume low if you are in public!
Reality always wins in the end.

Re: Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

Reply #1393 –
Quote from: DJC – on
Trump has got through his first 100 days without achieving any of the objectives/promises he set/made ... and that's with a Republican majority in both houses  ::)

MMM ! sounds like several of our PMs. ::)
I spent most of my money on Women and grog.
The rest I just wasted.

Re: Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

Reply #1394 –
OMG! Trump admires strongmen who murder their citizens more than anything.  He's hosting Duterte in the White House.  Maybe he won't have to build a wall after all.  If he kills all the drug users in the US, then he won't need to worry about the cartels anymore.  And he says he'd be honoured to meet with Kim Jong-Un, saying he admires the way he was able to take over from his father at such a young age.  We're lucky Hitler's dead or the red carpet would have been rolled out for him too.  Now there was a strong guy - wow, he took on the world and almost won ...

He also has climbed aboard Steve Bannon's Andrew Jackson bandwagon. He says that Andrew Jackson would have been able to do a deal to stop the Civil War and that Jackson was angry about what happened.  Leaving aside the fact that Jackson died 15 years before the start of the war, so reports of his distaste for the war may have been greatly exaggerated, does Trump realise that the war was fought over slavery? Would Jackson, who apparently inherited 150 slaves, have made a deal short of abolition?  Maybe he might have capped slave ownership at, say, 150.  Then everybody would have been happy.

Of course Trump and Bannon would like to pretend that the Confederacy was all about the southern states defending state rights - they were sticking it to Washington, just like Trump says he's doing.  But as with Trump's many alternative realities, you can only make that case if you ignore the facts.  The Southern States were, in fact, angry that the Federal Government didn't enforce its own laws against the Northern States.  There was legislation called the Fugitive Slaves Act which required States to assist slaveowners track down and recover runaway slaves.  But the Northern States refused to comply.  Far from defending States rights, the southern States wanted the Federal Government to use the military to enforce that Federal law.  That set the scene for the Civil War. When Lincoln was elected on an anti-slavery platform, the Confederate States specifically seceded in order to maintain the right to keep slaves. They fought the war to be able to keep slaves, NOT because they were mounting a resistance to Federal power.