Dog Biting Men are back from holiday, with a vicious dismantling of Rodney Hide's latest employment law "sob story". A company was ordered to pay $10,000 for summarily dismissing a troublesome employee, despite following correct procedures. But digging deeper, DBM finds that the reason they were ordered to pay was because they didn't bother to contest the case. This would have happened under the ECA, or any other even remotely fair legislative regime, and the "victims" really have no-one to blame but themselves. Not that Rodney mentioned that vital fact of course, as it would have detracted from his argument somewhat. Maybe he's been taking disingenuousness lessons from Stephen Franks?
And (most of) the right never comes out and says what they want to do, e.g:
ReplyDelete- we will remove all employment protections and allow anyone to be sacked at the whim of their employer
- we will abolish the RMA and allow anyone to construct anything anywhere
I've known for a long time Rodney egages in bad arguments.
ReplyDeleteFrom before I even joined Labour, I remember a Press Release from Rodney which claimed that 1000 parents out 1400 submissions supported ACT's measures on a select committee.
Sounds like a massive groundswell of support? Until you realise most submissions have more than one name signed, parents in particular often have two names to a submission, and there can be hundreds of names signed to one.
Heh I know you consider me a hopeless rightwinger NRT but I did get a lot of pleasure out of that story. Which proved to me at least that my greatest love is when self appointed elites get caught with their willy flapping out regardless of political orientation :)
ReplyDeleteRegarding employment law you guys really should think it through a little. Most employers are small or start small and usually have all their lifetime wealth earned to date tied up in their businesses. They don't want to be left holding the can with a heap of fixed costs if circumstances turn against them.
I'd hire heaps more people if I knew I could fire them if circumstances warranted. What's better, to have two marginally employable people in steady work and then have one let go or to have two blokes jobless and an employer expanding slower than he would otherwise because its too risky and costly to take on more labour.
The people who are hurt by labour market regulation are marginal types who lose opportunities to prove their worth or at least learn some valuable lessons.
Wheras everyone (or at least everyone working as an employee) is hurt by a lack of labour market regulations. They're there to prevent employers from using their market power threaten employees and coerce lower wages. And without them, we can be victimised at will.
ReplyDeleteI'd rather have those "oppressive" laws, thankyouverymuch. People deserve protection from economic assault just as much as from physical assault.
We risk capital here readily enough, but we seem unwilling to risk managing people.
ReplyDelete