Fair pay
Industrial relations - - Posted on February, 28 at 4:48 pm by Ken L
Professor Ian Harper is the part-time chair of the Fair Pay Commission, the body which increased minimum wages by a derisory amount last year (a whole $5.32 a week for those privileged bastards on $700 a week).
It turns out he got a pay rise himself last year which was a bit more than the amounts his Commission awarded.
The Commonwealth Remuneration Tribunal lifted his pay packet from $81,445 to $119,830 for the part-time job.
The June bonus came as he and other Fair Pay commissioners were deliberating on a wage rise for 1.5 million low-paid employees.
They awarded an extra $10.26 for minimum wage workers — the worst result in a decade — lifting their pay packets to $522.12 a week.
The adjustment came into force in October.
But in an unexpected bonus for Prof Harper, his own pay rise was backdated to March.
This was a much greater increase than the 4.2% awarded by the Commonwealth Remuneration Tribunal to part-time officers generally but I can’t find any explanation on the Tribunal’s s ite for the decision.
The relevant determination (no. 2007/10, .pdf downloadable here) covers all sorts of statutory appointments apart from the FPC and I noticed this wonderful clause:
An office-holder shall be paid the daily fee in respect of
such period, not less than three hours, on any one day on which he or she attends a
formal meeting of the authority, and/or is engaged on business of the authority …
Yes that means office-holders paid casually get the whole daily fee even if they only do three hours work. One can imagine the outcry if the ACTU launched a campaign for a general provision like that for casual workers employed in less exalted occupations. BTW they only get 60% for two hours … only a hopeless cynic would wonder aloud how often points of general business continue to be raised while people smirk and look pointedly at their watches until the magic third hour ticks over, when the meeting is promptly adjourned. For my part I am sure it never happens.
*Sings*
It’s the same the whole world over
It’s the poor wot gets the blame
It’s the rich as gets the pleasure
Ain’t it all a cryin’ shame
Posted in Industrial relations |
February 28th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Do I get a gold star for guessing who appointed the good Prof..
February 29th, 2008 at 12:25 am
To quote the great Lowest of the Low:
:-/
February 29th, 2008 at 8:30 am
See ‘er on the bridge at midnight
Frowing petals to the waves
There’s a cry, a splash!
My God, wot’s she a doin’ of?
So they dragged ‘er from the river
Water from ‘er clothes they wrang
And the corpse they thought was deaded
Rose to its feet and sang….
February 29th, 2008 at 9:05 am
Yes it’s old but gold. However it hasn’t escaped the notice of the great unwashed, just how crap their pay rises have been despite the so called ’skill shortages’.
BTW, I wonder when we will be hearing abut the scandal of the ‘real profit overhang’ and calls from the well paid and well connnected to do something about restoring wage and salary share of total output?
What do ya reckon? Next century perhaps? When we are all dead?
Harper is a sanctimonous prick, and the appointment of the (Un)Fair Pay Commission, with its pay cut wage rises for the hoi polloi and rises for themselves that keep them just that leeeetle bit ahead of inflation, make me sick. I suppose the right to remuneration that is above inflation has to be earned now does it? You know, like if you are so poor and hopeless you have to rely on the Fair Pay Commission for your wage increases, you might as well cop the rap for fighting inflation as well.
February 29th, 2008 at 9:54 am
That says it all really Ken. Hypocritical, unfair etc.
February 29th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Professor Harper is a Christain who cares for the poor and needy.
Well now we know.
February 29th, 2008 at 10:47 am
I see it has a code this morning,I just left a post for Senator Bartlett but,I was over his limit,there is unfairness outside of the regularily employed ,whilst the employed add to the destruction of the non employed.I cannot take this any more,I do not want to meet a Centrelink deadline of the sixth of March,for reasons that are quite real to me,and a problem ,not of a health problem,but a complete and uncompromising disgust..which means,by way of being communicative now,I will hit someone ,for personal disrespect and other matters about her behaviour to others.They cannot hide behind forms any longer,they cannot hide behind the requirements of law and requirements of law,they cannot hide behind the supposed requirements within that law or the urgings of those above,to use the arrogance of forms and requirements of an Act of Parliament is a complete contempt of me,because the form requirements become a substitute for the arrogance of the designer of those forms.If the person willing to leave their name on it,is the essential person engaging in the requirement of the form as a function of the requirement of the Act,when I say I am ready to personally assault someone,and refuse to meet the deadline,I mean it!That person must understand her job,her self,the Act the requirements of that Act and the design of the forms,doesnt at all in a legal sense,make all that,a case that she is or will be an innocent victim,only the fact ,that,provocation isnt a excuse,allows her to act in the way she has done.I have heard her name a number of times,unacknowledging a number of problems outside the bloody forms,and their requirements.
February 29th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
I was at school with the good Professor H - a fee-paying Anglican penal institution in Brisbane. Harper was captain of the debating team, being possessed of all the glib salesperson’s toolkit. He wasn’t much of a god-botherer in those days, but I do recall one discussion with him where he claimed that Billy McMahon was the greatest Treasurer Australia had ever had (this was in 1973). I’m not sure whether he would still hold to this view.
Like many self-righteous economic fundamentalists, Prof H would implicitly assume causal relationships between wickedness and poverty - and virtue and wealth. Hence accepting taxpayer-provided manna would merely be doing honour to the deity. You can see this line of thinking in the very name of the agency he chairs - Fair Pay Commission. The only factor the agency is expressly forbidden in its legislation to consider when setting pay levels for the lowest-paid is - fairness!
February 29th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Notice how the bludgers like the good Prof.,swarm to these positions and most have always or mostly always, sucked off the tax payer tit for all their life. And are mostly devil dodgers.
February 29th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Waits for the howls of outrage from the right wing commentariat about ideological bludgers in QUANGOs sucking off the public tit while lecturing the rest of us about how to live our lives…
I thought so.
February 29th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Bit slow tonight Seeks, maybe a tax audit sorta thing has scurried ‘em.