Union,Goverment,Company,whats the diff

I have been on strike for over 8 weeks now and the fight was over the company introducing a two-tier pay structure. I consider this to be arbitary discrimination and contravines article 23/2 of the universal declaration of human rights that states " Everyone,whithout any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work."
Companys these days need to find a group of people to marginalise and what better than a group of people that dont even know that they exist. The "yet to be employed." There is no one that can legally fight for them. They can not legally protect there own rights. It is illegal for any other group of people to assist us in our struggle as this would be termed a "secondary boycott". yet it is in fact no more "secondary" than us being on strike in support of there rights. The union party( labour) has created this situation. They have at the very least not tried to fix it. I believe that Julia Gillard ( the union party) whats the companys to succeed even at the expense of the working class.
PPG ( clayton, Australia) is making record profits and is determined to break the aussie workers. etc etc. They are bringing crews in from America to break us.
What do you people think??
Jim Mc

Originally posted by jimmac
I have been on strike for over 8 weeks now and the fight was over the company introducing a two-tier pay structure. I consider this to be arbitary discrimination and contravines article 23/2 of the universal declaration of human rights that states " Everyone,whithout any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work."
Companys these days need to ...[text shortened]... eak us.
What do you people think??
Jim Mc

I think that the idea of challenging a duly negotiated voluntarily entered into salary structure based on "human rights" principles is bizarre.

You are represented by a union, presumably (or are you striking alone?). You are striking because you want more money. Fair enough. You have every right to do that. Management has every right to pay you what they are required to pay you for their economic purposes.

Incidentally, how are these tiers based and how do you get on that top tier?

Originally posted by sh76
I think that the idea of challenging a duly negotiated voluntarily entered into salary structure based on "human rights" principles is bizarre.

Incidentally, how are these tiers based and how do you get on that top tier?

Why??. Upon what principles do women negotiate. If the company negotiates a lower pay for them is that ok. No, it is not. The discrimination in this case is arbitary. The new starts are expected to do exactly the same job as the 1st tier with absolutely no hope of ever reaching 1st tier pay. It is intended to replace ALL 1st tier with 2nd tier as 1st tier people leave. This is going to cause a lot of illwill on the floor for a long time. The company also wants to cut our pay/conditions as well and we have no way to fight them.
I believe that the 2nd tier is going to be paid approx 40% less than the ist tier and get a lot less benefits than 1st tier.
Also what " duly negotiated". if you dont have a job it is a case of "like it or lump it". Even though Australia is aiming for a 4.5% unemployment try finding a job that pays a reasonable amount. There are not many out there for the young,over 50's and/or the under-educated. The unemployment rate "might" be dropping but the total labour "cost" to buisness is dropping. PPG is making record profits and I bet all the higher management ( current and future) will get a bit more than their fair share. (Their share goes up/workers down) The workers contributed to many of the productivity gains.They own them every bit as much as the execs.

Are they really planning to pay women less for the same job? Isn't that illegal (even though it happens a lot implicitly)?

Originally posted by jimmac
Why??. Upon what principles do women negotiate. If the company negotiates a lower pay for them is that ok. No, it is not. The discrimination in this case is arbitary. The new starts are expected to do exactly the same job as the 1st tier with absolutely no hope of ever reaching 1st tier pay. It is intended to replace ALL 1st tier with 2nd tier as 1st tier peo ributed to many of the productivity gains.They own them every bit as much as the execs.

Sounds to me like they're simply offering lower salaries to new hires but are unwilling or unable to cut existing employees' salaries. Maybe they can't afford the previous salary levels but also can't afford to lose all their existing staff at once.

Good luck with your strike but I just don't see a human rights violation. Sorry.

Originally posted by sh76
Sounds to me like they're simply offering lower salaries to new hires but are unwilling or unable to cut existing employees' salaries. Maybe they can't afford the previous salary levels but also can't afford to lose all their existing staff at once.

Good luck with your strike but I just don't see a human rights violation. Sorry.

Thank you for the support. They are not violating any human rights because the yet to be employed "dont exist". But they "do exist". They are simply unidentifiable. They have no rights, no status etc etc. Also no means of defence.If the company planned to employ any recognised group and tried to marginalise them based on any known criteria, race, colour ,sexual orientation etc then that would be illegal. This is only legal because this group is not known. PPG is comming out of the GFC making record profits and going from strenth to strenth, but it is the workers that are expected to pay. It is not right.

They are definatly dropping our pays as well. We have lost.

Originally posted by jimmac
Thank you for the support. They are not violating any human rights because the yet to be employed "dont exist". But they "do exist". They are simply unidentifiable. They have no rights, no status etc etc. Also no means of defence.If the company planned to employ any recognised group and tried to marginalise them based on any known criteria, race, colour ,sexu ...[text shortened]... s not right.

They are definatly dropping our pays as well. We have lost.

It does sound reprehensible to cut workers' pay while profits are at an all time high. I will say that.

Originally posted by sh76
It does sound reprehensible to cut workers' pay while profits are at an all time high. I will say that.

Thank you for that. They have destined the site to mediocrity. On site, before the despute, we were putting out record volumes of over 3m liters a month for 5 months straight with about 50% of the staff of 12yrs ago. The motivation to do that has gone with the clear message of " the better you do, the more we want". That is "ok", but with no intent to share the benefits of a smaller more efficient workforce, we only hurt ourselves.

We have lost our fight having conceded the two tier and will lose between $200-$280 per week at the expiration of this agreement. That will be dec 31 2013. This took 9 weeks to lose. Every division of international companys sets out to put the workers of each site against the other. At the end of the day the only outcome of working harder/more efficient is that the workers pay. Our pay goes down. The execs go up. Thanks for comming. I am very angry.