One would get sacked at Aussie post, for taking any mail, the offices and mail rooms all have cameras in them. Even taking a foxtel magazine or householders (junk mail) is considered sackable. Once a postie is out on the street there are 1,000's of members of the public willing to report posties for anything. We know the phone calls come in everyday, because a postie has spent 5 mins talking to someone.


I will get the figures for reported missing mail tomorrow.

Coincidentely, we had our first piece of mail go missing from our household in the last two weeks. It was a magazine for my 12 yo daughter, and I'm certain it was taken from our mail box at the front of our house.

Workers from Melbourne, the Sunshine Coast, Canberra, Tasmania and Sydney have complained of being sacked in the three days since the laws, which remove protection from unfair dismissal, came into effect.

In the latest case, eight long-term employees at Melbourne company Triangle Cables were given four weeks' pay in lieu of notice on Tuesday and told their services were no longer required.

Opposition Leader Kim Beazley said the eight men were the first among millions of Australian workers whose job security had been torn up by the prime minister.

And Labor's industrial relations spokesman Stephen Smith asked Prime Minister John Howard if his office had contacted employer groups and demanded they provide "good news" stories about the changes.

Mr Howard refused to deny the speculation.

Excerpt from news story on http://ninemsn.com.au

I would not dream of commenting on an individual case since I don't have any idea about the circumstances.

However, I could say that for years Australian legislation has made employers have to almost guarantee jobs despite economic reality and it would not surprise me if there is quite an upheaval in the short term. it's no consolation for those involved but the UK went through much the same in the eighties and it did pull the country into some semblance of the 20th century.

Out of interest are these reforms going to be reversed if another party get in at the next election?

Beazley (opposition leader) says he will repeal these laws if elected but the man is a buffoon & will say anything to get elected.

This just goes to show how wrong "many people" can be.

If the situation was as dire as you paint it, the consequences (both for the average punter on the street, and Australia Post itself) would be catastrophic indeed.

Fortunately, the situation is not dire at all - at least, not in Australia:
Source.

And again:
Source.

And again:
Source.

By contrast, Australia Post has never been fined for failure to meet its contractual obligations, despite rigorous monitoring by an independent organisation (KPMG.)

This explains the happy result described here:
Source.

I was an Australia Post employee at that time, and enjoyed my little bonus very much indeed.

Highlights of 2004/05 are available here.

A brief excerpt follows:

• We delivered 98.2 per cent of bulk letters for Australian businesses on time or early.
  
  
• The volume of promotional mail grew by 5 per cent.
  
  
• We met or exceeded all of our regulated performance standards, including delivering 94.9 per cent of domestic letters on time.
  
  
• We continued to operate one of the lowest cost and most reliable letters services in the world.

Not too shabby, I think - especially for a country three times the size of Western Europe.

Agreed.

While I am sure there will be some unfair dismissals in the near future, I can't help doubting the veracity of claims that people have been sacked just one day after the new legislation came in.

>>This just goes to show how wrong "many people" can be. <<

"Many people" in my context is just about everyone I know here! It is a predominantly semi-urban area, too.

I made no comment about the UK mail and am not interested in "mine is no worse than yours" arguments. I was merely relating the problems I have experienced in Oz.

Incidentally, one of the people who advised me to get a PO box is a mail sorter in Bowral: she says herself that it is the only way to stand a chance of getting all your post since the delivery system has so many holes in it.

Cheers.

Thats very interesting and challenging feedback your putting out there Wol....

If I may ask, when your mail went missing what action you took, where you complained to etc and if you could PM me as to what type of mail that it was.

Reason being under the workplace solutions protocol at work, we have a rewards system, where if a problem is proved to be "systematic" there is quite a financial reward for the person identifying and actioning the problem.

The fact that a Mail sorter has told you to do get a box, suggests that indeed there could be a specific problem, in your Locale.

Despite the fact, I'm a shop steward, I do care about the performance that Aussie post, and solving this kind of thing makes all of our jobs a little bit safer.

I will be targeting the Southern Highlands of NSW at work via our Delivery centre manager, for a statistical and in depth performance review request.


I'd also like to hear about other problems, because we rarely get complaints (that we hear about). You never know the could be some kind of system fault.

I cannot believe that Mail personal would be Jeopardising 45,000 AUD (average) plus per year, for unknown content mail items. Unless they are Natural Kleptomaniacs.

Seriously Wol, what action did you take ?

Some were and appeared on tv. Some had been sacked then re-hired as casual so that they no longer had entitlements such as holiday and sick pay.

I have no problem with employers being able to dismiss people who produce unsatisfactory work but I would advocate for a trial period of employment for new employees so that their performance can be assessed as they settle in to the job. Employers should also have to offer support designed to help the worker improve in areas that have been identified that they are underperforming in.

A 'fair go' means just that and we should never undermine what has been an unwritten laws of Australia and NZ's social values. There are ways to improve production and revenue that don't leave workers worse off financially,feeling insecure or out of a job.

A 'dog eat dog' mentality to business and workers will eventually cost a nation in other more expensive ways. If people want a reasonably safe and secure society with a good quality of life for its citizens then investment must be made in its social capital.

Sure, but this wasn't necessarily a consequence of the new legislation - and it doesn't mean that all these people were dismissed unfairly, either.

In any case, these incidents (and this new legislation) have no bearing on Australian holiday entitlement, which remains exactly the same.

I totally agree. Australia already has a standard 3-month trial period (as does Britain) which can be extended or waived at the employer's discretion (as it is in Britain.)

I was on probation at Australia Post for three months before I became a fully-fledged employee.

Agreed.

Agreed.

Yo're an agreeable guy Vash but don't you think it a bit more than coincidental that people were sacked then rehired as casuals or just sacked once these laws came into effect? Maybe because there were no genuine reasons to sack them hence the employers couldn't under the old unfair dismissal laws?

Aw, shucks...

I can't be sure without examining each case in detail.

If we looked closely at every single incident, we may find that some employers had legitimate reasons for sacking their employees, but had been unable to act on these reasons until the law widened the scope of "fair dismissal."

As I've said before, the legislation seems to be aimed primarily at small businesses - perhaps in an attempt to protect them from financial ruin by spurious "unfair dismissal" claims launched by dodgy workers?

My grandfather was a film director and producer, and ran a highly successful business for decades.

He always wanted to expand the comany, but was restricted by the cost of adding new employees (supernnuation, etc.) and the dangers of our increasingly litigious society.

Sounds like your grandfather would have been an interesting character to chat with. Obviously very talented in his profession. The introduction of super was of course a big step by gov to begin down the path of reducing old age pension payouts by making workers and employers contribute towards a retirement package.

One of those things that sounds ok in theory but in practice, doesn't quite work as intended.

Spot on!

I've been saying the same. It's going to get tough before it gets better. But it will.

Unions have a stranglehold, productivity is poor and on the other side, temporary / casual employment in Aus is nothing short of exploitative. However once a few test cases have set precedence, then the dust will settle and the pendulum will swing more in the middle. For both employer and employee.