Month: January 2007

In the days of union domination of the workplace most awards had redundancy provisions. Failing that there was a fairly standard practice of the Industrial Relations Commission to write them in as needed.

The clauses followed a similar pattern. Companies could cut their workforces when times were tough or when they were closing past of their business, but redundancy had to be offered to everyone on the same terms, usually several weeks pay for each year of service. Otherwise, the rule was last-on, first off.

The law and practice in effect made it impossible for an employer to use redundancy as a means of getting rid of hopeless employees. Employers would have loved to have picked out a few drongos for redundancy while keeping the good staff. But in the union-dominated environment of redundancy-for-all, employers faced the prospect of the good people putting their hands up for redundancy because they could get jobs elsewhere while the otherwise unemployable drongos would hold their ground.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 27 January 2007 workplace”

Remember the early days of VCRs? Invariably, the only things worth watching on TV would come on consecutively on different channels on a night I had to go out.

After pressing buttons on the remotes for the VCR and TV according to the Japlish in the instruction booklets, I would go out hoping for the best.

Very often I came home to find just one or neither program was recorded. And I would mutter something like, “Oh gosh, I cannot watch the only thing worth watching because of the darned remotes.” Or words to that effect.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 20 January 2007”

British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli might have been right in the 19th century when he said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

More than a century on, however, the science of gathering statistics and our understanding of probability should put paid to Disraeli’s adage. The gathering of accurate statistics in modern times has been one of the greatest catalysts to improving people’s lives.

Australia is blessed with an independent body to gather statistics, the Australian Bureau of Statistics. We also have dozens of other agencies that gather them with similar objectivity and accuracy, such as traffic authorities and health and welfare agencies.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 13 January 2007 p”

Serendipity has been momentous in the cause of pure research. So often researchers looking for one thing stumble across another of much more practical significance.

Let loose a few researchers in pure fields and who knows what they might come up with – usually things of more value than directed research.

This is of great interest to journalists because the journalists’ task is to report and comment upon new things. So research that serendipitously spits out new findings of great practical importance is news.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 6 January 2007 juries”