Reminder that every “Chamber of Commerce” is literally just a lobby group that gave itself a government-sounding name to fool people.
The worst industry for this is school teachers.
At least in QLD, they are officially paid to work 5 hours a day which is ridiculous since kids are at the school for 6 hours a day and teachers don’t get a one hour lunch break. Oh yeah, and a lot of their job can’t possibly be done while students are in the room.
All teachers do unpaid overtime, which is OK since they are paid more than almost anyone else would get if they only worked 5 hours… but the issue is some teachers, because of the subjects or students they’re assigned to, have to do significantly more overtime than they should be doing. And they don’t get any pay for the overtime nor do they really have any choice other than trying to switch to a new school. Which often means uprooting your whole family and living somewhere else.
Yeah teaching sounds like such a terrible deal from my understanding.
Teachers have almost unrivalled bargaining power. They can stop society functioning if they go on strike - there is already a a teacher shortage, so no chance at scabs. The state teaching unions should be leveraging this to ensure they aren’t getting cooked over working hours.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The minister for employment and workplace relations, Tony Burke, has spent the week in conversations with the Greens and independent senators David Pocock and Jacquie Lambie, who both held reservations about the legislation.
Teacher Abigail Butler, from the Independent Education Union of Australia, said the pressures – which were in part driven by constantly needing to be contactable – meant she was thinking of changing careers.
“Increasingly, because of technology, it takes the form of being asked to perform work-related tasks when you aren’t anywhere near work – at home, out and about, even when you’re on leave, because you can’t escape your mobile phone, your email and your WhatsApp.”
Mark Morey, secretary of Unions NSW, said that to have its full effect, the right to disconnect must be accompanied by “a ban on unpaid overtime for people earning less than $150,000”.
Implementing an unpaid overtime ban alongside a right to disconnect would have a powerful legal effect but also establish healthy new work norms and culture.”
But Andrew McKellar, chief executive officer of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said the amendment, which has not been presented yet, could impact women’s participation in the workforce.
The original article contains 980 words, the summary contains 197 words. Saved 80%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!