But my choices are all the same...

A 'worker's market'

Take the job you're offered, says PM

October 25, 2005 - 12:26PM

Job seekers should take the job they are offered rather than hold out for a better salary, Prime Minister John Howard says.

Mr Howard today defended the impact his workplace changes would have on the unemployed.

The changes would force job seekers to accept a job under an Australian Workplace Agreement even if some conditions such as holiday pay and meal breaks were lost.

Job seekers can alreday have their Centrelink payments docked and suspended for refusing a job based on the conditions offered, but they can often successfully appeal to have them reinstated under an industrial relations environment which is seen as more generous than that being proposed under the changes.

Mr Howard said the practice of docking and suspending job seekers' payments had existed for a long time.

"They don't have that [choice to refuse a job] now," Mr Howard told Radio Easy Mix in Cairns.

"If you don't try and get a job now when you're getting the unemployment benefit you run the risk of some penalty. That's been the case for a long time."

Mr Howard said most Australians would support welfare recipients taking a job that was offered to them.

"I believe most Australians think that if somebody is offered a job and, providing the conditions of that job are reasonable and the minimum pay and conditions standard requires that you get paid at the hourly rate prescribed by the award, requires you get four weeks' annual leave, requires maternity leave, requires sick leave, [then you should take it]," he said.

AAP

Yes but everybody can quote a different situation. I accept that. But the overall reality of the Australian economy now is that we do live very much in a workers' market. The greatest complaint I have from employers at the moment is that they can't get enough good staff. That is the complaint that we have. We've had an ongoing debate in this country about a skills shortage. Why don't a lot of young people go into apprenticeships? The reason is that they can get highly paid unskilled jobs as soon as they leave school. We are living in a situation where it is a workers' market, like never before.

John Howard - 10/10/2005

But, I thought it was a worker's market, doesn't that mean I get to hold out for a better job? Or is 'worker's market' Newspeak for 'workhouse'?

I really wonder how people who voted for John Howard feel. Interest rates are going up, medicare is falling apart, your job security's about to vanish and the economy's flattening partly as a result of your man's disastrous policies in the Middle East which are keeping oil prices high and driving inflation. Honestly, what did you vote for and when are you going to get it?