bcworld

Which is referring to additional LSL no?

Amazulu

Australian employees are pretty pampered by international standards

Beoz

Like everything in Oz..... shop around and negotiate, the prices vary widly.

ozzieeagle

It contains the termonology where LSL becomes avalable after 10 years...At Pro rata rates. The reason employers want you to take it from this point on, is each year you accrue, it becomes more expensive for them to pay.

A fair few people take no LSL as alluded to in Oztennis post. Which means when they retire, they walk out with as much as a full years extra pay in LSL benefit.

moneypenny20

Never paid for blood tests, xrays or ultrasounds and the four of us have had a great many of all of them. The husband and both daughters have had MRIs and they've all been bulk billed.

Rachelanna

Where we live in Sydney, at any rate, MRIs are cheaper if you are referred by a specialist than by a GP. I find that I go to GP who bulk bills and most other tests are also bulk billed. But my husband goes to a GP with a large gap and he ends up paying quite a bit for all his tests.
Long service leave was apparently introduced here and also in parts of India by the British administrations to enable staff to make the long sea trip back to the UK every few years.

OzTennis

The flip side of that coin is that employers have more power and workers less rights elsewhere perhaps?

I don't agree with the pampering comment - not in education anyway.

I started off with the State Education Department who could post me anywhere in the state of Victoria they wanted. (need a teacher in Mildura or Manangatang or Woop Woop? - send a single, newly qualified teacher bonded to the department there; no chance of a placement then in Melbourne - any problems with staff immobility and difficulty staffing some schools immediately solved).

In return I got a satisfying job, decent pay, but at the lower end of the scale for graduates and decent annual holidays (don't start the 'how easy teachers have it' debate because I did thousands of hours of unpaid overtime and my friends in private industry earned lots more than me).

(Once my bond period expired I went into private industry for 3 years and then into the TAFE sector where industrial experience was essential and then we emigrated and I've worked in education the UK but that's another story).

At that time I had (usual provisos of not doing anything for which a teacher could be struck off) a job for life if I wanted it and I also could take LSL after 10 years and 20 years (with choices such as half entitlement on double pay). I was told at Uni that we have the Poms to thank for LSL (see #60) but it has since been ingrained into work practices and extended to the private sector.

Nowadays teachers are mainly employed on contracts - easier to get rid of them, easier from the employers point of view to alter staffing levels; less rights and job security for the employee.

My brother has worked all his life at Monash Uni and the job cuts they have had in the last decade are unbelievably draconian. Whole departments are being wiped out and huge numbers being made redundant. The TAFE sector has been decimated since I worked in it. Pampered? No.

ozzieeagle

Only watched the movie covering this subject a few weeks ago, great iconic Aus movie as well.

Wake in Fright (1971) - IMDb Wake in Fright.

spouse of scouse

Yep, I would also question claims that Oz in the worst in the western world.

I got 4 weeks paid holiday per year, and an additional 4 weeks that I paid for myself, with my employer taking a bit out of each fortnightly pay to cover that.

When I had a car accident, I used every bit of my 970 hours of accrued sick leave - full pay and time to recover.

I had income protection insurance through my superannuation, which cost a few dollars a week, which gives me 85% of my salary for two years.

Empoyer pays up to 6% additional superannuation over and above the statutory amount

Free gym in the workplace

9 day fortnight

10 paid public holidays per year

A workplace that recognises that employee's personal and family commitments are important, and the flexibility to incorporate that

The option of receiving 80% of your salary for 4 years, and having the 5th year off on full pay at your current rate of pay

Lots more. If we're the worst, I'd like to see the best!

Beoz

So what do you get in Oz as standard if you are made redundant?

1 months pay, holiday pay, accrued LSL, 1 week pay for every year you've worked for them, all tax free. Am I correct?

Rachelanna

There is really no standard for redundancy. Where I worked you only got accrued LSL if you had been there more than the ten years. The redundancy payouts are not all tax free; varies between components.
What I see on this forum is that the issues that people have when moving from one first world country to another are so different to those of many of the migrants coming to Australia from Asia.
They are concerned about how to continue to fully support aged parents and sometimes disabled siblings from a distance. How to get recognition for degrees that may have cost them dearly in terms of effort and money but are barely recognised here.
In general our working conditions and welfare provisions fall between Europe and USA in generosity. A friend in business used to explain that in terms of us having European type conditions but Asian trading partners. Hence the situation that many such businesses have folded or been outsourced.

BadgeIsBack

I agree with you and Beoz. I only have to work 37.5 a week and if I work overtime it's because I have not been as efficient as I could have been. I have hours of sick leave and still don't really get what I am supposed to do with them - they accrue do they?

It does vary and some companies give a month for every year - I think this is discretionary and gets taxed with the mandatory stuff not being taxed.

I agree. We've seen what happens when companies are too generous in Europe -with some people getting 6 weeks a year: the Americans find 4 a lot.

ozzieeagle

Not sure about the tax free part, I thought you had to pay tax on it.

Some employers pay 4 weeks for every year of service, some 3 weeks.

big_matt

Being a ping-ponger shouldn't be seen as a problem. Go wherever makes you happy and is appropriate for you and your family at this particular time of your life. We've done 2 spells in Australia and will go back again in the future. Do people think we are undecisive? Maybe. Do we care? No. We've lived in some great places both in the UK and in Oz.

I think a lot of times, people moving to Oz from the UK are looking for a 'magic bullet'. In reality, somewhere like Melbourne may not end up being that much different to what you have in the UK - everything is expensive, you are crushed onto a packed train to work or stuck in endless traffic, and its grey and rainy for half the year. It's a great city but it's certainlly not paradise - nowhere is.

Everywhere has its problems: maybe you need to focus on the great points about each place rather than the nagatives of the UK and Melbourne, and make a decision from there. Good luck.

spouse of scouse

I can only say how it is in Perth, although since Medicare rebates are the Feds I'd assume it'd be the same all over.

This is what I was told when having my last MRI. To obtain the maximum rebate, a specialist has to refer you. A specialist has the option of ticking the 'bulk bill' box - but all specialists have received a letter from the Feds, asking them to be vigilant in bulk billing MRIs as the cost to Medicare is blowing out. They were told (according to the receptionist I spoke with) to only tick bulk bill if they are certain that their patient is in financial hardship. Don't know how true that is, but I paid $1,000 for a bilateral hip MRI. And you have to pay before you leave. I got $450 back from Medicare because a specialist had referred me.

More recently, I paid $637 for a cervical spine MRI. Because I've reached my Medicare out of pocket threshold, I got $622 back. Pretty happy with that.