LEOPARDS do not change their spots and Liberal governments will always try to reduce the pay and conditions of workers in an attempt to reduce costs for business.
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Where the Abbott government differs from some of its predecessors is in the implementation. Instead of taking its agenda to an election, it has chosen to undermine wages and conditions through a mean, sly process of "reforms" . Poorly paid childcare workers are denied a much-needed improvement in pay and conditions because of budget pressures and cleaners are denied basic conditions in the Clean Start agreement because the government wants to remove red tape.
People in those sectors are already struggling to make ends meet and their families are bearing the costs of the new flexible workplace through increasing casualisation and contracting.
They are the people who are really making the sacrifices for the new flexible workplace.
I am not sure which is worse the callous indifference to people affected in describing a reduction of over $200 per week in a cleaner's wage as "reducing red tape" or the dishonesty of the government's sly nod-and-wink agenda of reducing wages and conditions under the cover of other measures.
