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watt price tully 
Joined: 15 May 2007
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| Tannin wrote: | 615 stores in Australia. With an estimated 69% of them participating in this huge scam at the expense of the lowest-paid workers in the country, that is organised crime, with a head office in Mt Waverley and 400+ branch offices spread all over the country.
Did I link this one already?
http://www.smh.com.au/business/workplace-relations/7eleven-wage-fraud-coverup-from-head-office-20150828-gjahrc.html
7-Eleven: wage fraud cover-up from head office "A massive cover-up of employee exploitation is being run out of 7-Eleven corporate headquarters, a joint investigation by Fairfax Media and Four Corners can reveal." |
Corrupt Unions mate.
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“I even went as far as becoming a Southern Baptist until I realised they didn’t keep ‘em under long enough” Kinky Friedman |
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stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| watt price tully wrote: | | stui magpie wrote: | | watt price tully wrote: |
There is not much evidence of corruption in the union movement. |
Oh dear. What colour is the sky on your planet? |
Read & learn:
Copied response to Mugwump
You smear the whole union movement with the actions of a few. Like I said before hyperbole. It is not the Union movement but aspects or parts thereof. Your generalization is sweeping.
Nothing I've said above is contentious.
Add that to the chip on the shoulder  |
Learn to read. At no point did I smear the whole of the union movement. It's not even the movement as such that's the problem but a minority of individuals within it, but it's documented fact that some specific unions have more issues with corruption than others.
And there aint no chips on these shoulders, they're on the plate with the Steak where they belong.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| Tannin wrote: | Mugwamp, first we need to be careful with this rather artificial distinction you make between tax avoidance, sharp practice, and outright fraud. Very often, the distinction hinges on nothing more than legal technicalities, and this is especially so in the case of big businesses - the very organisations who are most able to game the system with their phalanxes of high-paid lawyers and slimy accountants.
Second, we can and should recognise that different forms of organisation lend themselves to different modes of theft. I'm using the term here in a broad sense, to include the full range of illegitimate ways of taking money from those to whom it properly belongs, from BHP and Apple avoiding billions in tax responsibilities through to Arfur Slimydinos fleecing the NSW taxpayer out of 20 million, through to 7-Eleven stealing millions from their lowest-paid workers who can least afford it. It's all theft and we need not distinguish between different modus operandi - to do so only confuses the issue.
As a general rule, big corporations tend to prefer the technically-legal-but-dodgy-as-hell methods, while the nakedly illegal scams tend to be more the domain of the smaller operator. This is probably as much a matter of organisational structure as it is of sheer size. For obvious reasons, it's often easier for individual proprietors to conduct downright illegal scams than it is for a public company. So, if you are looking for a $1 billion organisation doing straight-out illegal things, start by looking at the ones which are controlled by a single entrepreneur, or a small, tight group of backers - the likes of Bond and Tinkler are obvious examples. But if you are looking for the just-barely-legal-because-of-a-technicality form of theft, start anywhere you like. (But focus on the big ones first because they are the ones able to do most of it.)
I don't think a royal commission is the way to go, by the way. An expanded and strengthened form of the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption would be ideal - and perfectly able to go after the few small-fry in the union movement as well as the vastly more numerous and much, much bigger fish in the business world. |
There's also one of those commissions in Victoria, it was formed as a result of the revamped and rebadged "whistleblowers" legislation.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| Tannin wrote: | Mugwamp, first we need to be careful with this rather artificial distinction you make between tax avoidance, sharp practice, and outright fraud. Very often, the distinction hinges on nothing more than legal technicalities, and this is especially so in the case of big businesses - the very organisations who are most able to game the system with their phalanxes of high-paid lawyers and slimy accountants.
Second, we can and should recognise that different forms of organisation lend themselves to different modes of theft. I'm using the term here in a broad sense, to include the full range of illegitimate ways of taking money from those to whom it properly belongs, from BHP and Apple avoiding billions in tax responsibilities through to Arfur Slimydinos fleecing the NSW taxpayer out of 20 million, through to 7-Eleven stealing millions from their lowest-paid workers who can least afford it. It's all theft and we need not distinguish between different modus operandi - to do so only confuses the issue.
As a general rule, big corporations tend to prefer the technically-legal-but-dodgy-as-hell methods, while the nakedly illegal scams tend to be more the domain of the smaller operator. This is probably as much a matter of organisational structure as it is of sheer size. For obvious reasons, it's often easier for individual proprietors to conduct downright illegal scams than it is for a public company. So, if you are looking for a $1 billion organisation doing straight-out illegal things, start by looking at the ones which are controlled by a single entrepreneur, or a small, tight group of backers - the likes of Bond and Tinkler are obvious examples. But if you are looking for the just-barely-legal-because-of-a-technicality form of theft, start anywhere you like. (But focus on the big ones first because they are the ones able to do most of it.)
I don't think a royal commission is the way to go, by the way. An expanded and strengthened form of the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption would be ideal - and perfectly able to go after the few small-fry in the union movement as well as the vastly more numerous and much, much bigger fish in the business world. |
The distinction between lawful and unlawful activity is not merely "artificial". It's the bedrock of the liberty that protects us all. Aggressive but lawful tax avoidance - which I dislike intensely - is a legislative problem, but it's not corruption in the sense that that term is usually used.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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watt price tully
Joined: 15 May 2007
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| Mugwump wrote: | | Tannin wrote: | It is an elementary matter to address the worst problems first and hardest. Union corruption is a trivially minor matter in the context of the fraud and corruption in the Liberal-supporting, Liberal-funding business community. And yet this government has pissed $60,000,000 up against the wall to catch - wait for it - four small fry. Four. Yep, four. After months of work and astronomical expense, that's how many union officials have actually been charged with anything as a result of this commission. Four. Oh, they'll find a few more, and there is a handful of others who probably will be charged one day, but whichever way you try to spin it, it's pitifully meagre result for a vast amount of money, time and energy.
Business corruption, in contrast, is massive. The corrupt dealing of the disgraced former Assistant Treasurer - who hasn't even been booted out of the party or the parliament FFS - was aiming at twenty million dollars out of the public purse. That is one example. One. And that one alone was bigger than all the piddly little union scams put together.
Sure, address union corruption. Do it on a wet weekend someday when you have at least made a start on addressing the far, far, far larger and more expensive and more dangerous problems of corruption in the business community and haven't got anything better to do.
Having this union RC is like treating your sister's acne when she's bleeding to death from multiple stab wounds. And I do mean "bleeding to death" - this country is being bled white by greedy "businessmen" gaming the system in a host of different ways, ranging from scamming the tax system right through to deliberate outright frauds like the 7-Eleven wages scam. |
I would welcome an inquiry into corporate tax avoidance. The level of fraud by large businesses is less clear, but having worked in some large corporations along the way, i have not encountered any. And i think i would have seen some of it, had it been there. Technocratic managers in large corporations don't take home the proceeds of fraud, so there is no real incentive. Still, if you think an RC would get to the root of it, then define your terms of reference and tip the gold into the open mouth of the legal fraternity. |
With all due respect Mugwump, anecdotal responses are fine but are not evidence based.
By your reckoning then all is well because you didn't experience it.
We need inbuilt protections that this government has helped got rid of:
They use the marketing term "red tape" - more weasel words to increase business productivity.
The Government has defunded a plethora of organisations who purpose was to place checks & balances on rampant capitalism.
Read up on what was discovered by 4 Corners & Fairfax on the Commonwealth Bank & see the National bank. This is the tip of corporate irresponsibility & corruption.
That will serve as a bit more evidence than what one individual experiences in the workplace.
_________________
“I even went as far as becoming a Southern Baptist until I realised they didn’t keep ‘em under long enough” Kinky Friedman |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^ Fair enough, but what one experiences directly is a valuable kind of evidence, when one works inside a system or something that replicates in patterns. I give your views on domestic violence a little more weight than average, because youve seen how it happens and why. I think we all do that, and its a valid way to understand something. In one sense, testing ones prejudices against a concrete reality might be the only way to really understand something.
Im not well-versed in what the big bad Abbott Government is doing on business regulation. Of course I have seen all kinds of petty wrongdoing, and ethical fudges in business, because issues are often grey, people are ethically fluid, and law itself can be uncertain and arguable. But I have also seen a lot of agonising over reputational implications of different courses of action, the views of regulators, and fear of prosecution.
Businesses operate in a complex regulatory and competitive environment and some will certainly go bad. The significant point is that there are powerful institutional checks and incentives against doing that, and most of our wealth is created by businesses that operate well, producing products that consumers can choose to buy or not. You can throw the baby out with the bathwater en route to your socialist republic, replete with the public sector and the holy unions, but dont expect serious well-run businesses to spend much time in your economy. It might be quicker to migrate to Venezuela.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| Tannin wrote: | It is an elementary matter to address the worst problems first and hardest. Union corruption is a trivially minor matter in the context of the fraud and corruption in the Liberal-supporting, Liberal-funding business community. And yet this government has pissed $60,000,000 up against the wall to catch - wait for it - four small fry. Four. Yep, four. After months of work and astronomical expense, that's how many union officials have actually been charged with anything as a result of this commission. Four. Oh, they'll find a few more, and there is a handful of others who probably will be charged one day, but whichever way you try to spin it, it's pitifully meagre result for a vast amount of money, time and energy.
Business corruption, in contrast, is massive. The corrupt dealing of the disgraced former Assistant Treasurer - who hasn't even been booted out of the party or the parliament FFS - was aiming at twenty million dollars out of the public purse. That is one example. One. And that one alone was bigger than all the piddly little union scams put together.
Sure, address union corruption. Do it on a wet weekend someday when you have at least made a start on addressing the far, far, far larger and more expensive and more dangerous problems of corruption in the business community and haven't got anything better to do.
Having this union RC is like treating your sister's acne when she's bleeding to death from multiple stab wounds. And I do mean "bleeding to death" - this country is being bled white by greedy "businessmen" gaming the system in a host of different ways, ranging from scamming the tax system right through to deliberate outright frauds like the 7-Eleven wages scam. |
I'd argue that there are already plenty of rules, regulations etc in existence to allow fraud, corruption and other illegal or questionable activities in big business to be found out. Maybe they need tightening up or reviewing but they exist. No-one in the public complains if a large corporate gets pinned for doing the wrong thing.
Unions and not for profits however enjoy comparatively relaxed oversight and present significant opportunities for unscrupulous persons. You don't want to burden small unions or NFP's with onerous reporting and disclosure requirements but once they reach a certain level of financial turnover I'd encourage the same level of transparency of the accounts as is required of the companies with comparable financial turnover.
Again, the majority of people in these organisations are there because of their idealistic mindset of wanting to make a positive contribution and many take a lower wage than they could get elsewhere because of that mindset. But that also leaves them organisationally open to rogues. HSU No. 1 and the Jacksons and Michael Williamson are classic examples who put Craig Thomson right in the shade.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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I think the point is, overall, the unwarranted targeting of one over the other, which is in fact the mainstay of corruption worldwide. Ills can be found everywhere, and over-policing them is more costly and open to corrupt selection bias and political interference than tolerating a modest level of mischief.
Large organisations of all stripes, from unions and churches to lobby groups and companies are all corruption prone. Conjuring up false nonsense to claim the unions have "had it easy" or are any worse is complete rubbish. Churches which have been harbouring pedophiles for decades maybe; companies which have written their own tax laws, maybe; unions which have had in-bred relationships with, say, construction companies and government officials maybe.
The special pleading coming out of the mouths of paid and incentivised corporate beneficiaries is plainly a farce. Not because it's wrong in all details, but because it's politics of the most thuggish and deceitful sort, not rational analysis.
Sometimes it pays to take a step back and give up on defending your crappy religion. There is plenty of incentive to corruption to go around without buying into BS pretend analysis.
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watt price tully
Joined: 15 May 2007
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| Mugwump wrote: | | watt price tully wrote: | | Mugwump wrote: | ^ Your understanding of hyperbole seems to be as robust as 3's understanding of the difference between an Australian Royal Commission and a Stalinist Show trial.
Not much evidence of corruption in the union movement ? HSU. CFMEU. AWU. Thompson, Maitland, McDonald, Williamson, Wilson, Blewitt. I dealt with unions in Australia for a number of years, and I'm sorry but their standards of governance and conduct are too-often shameful. Back through the Painters and Dockers, the BLF, and the CFMEU, but reaching into the service unions such as the HSU, there is ample evidence of a corrupt culture in many (not all) unions. It's well worth a Royal Commission, and Labour will never hold one because of their inherent conflict of interest on the matter. |
You smear the whole union movement with the actions of a few. Like I said before hyperbole. It is not the Union movement but aspects or parts thereof. Your generalization is sweeping. |
You need to read the definition of "hyperbole". Comparing a Royal Commission to a Stalin or Hitler show trial is hyperbole, ie absurd exaggeration as a rhetorical device. I think you mean unjustified. We'll have to agree to differ on that. |
Defintion of hyperbole (from wiki):
exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally.
synonyms: exaggeration, overstatement, magnification,
You're right, you were just exaggerating and overstating the claim, which was errant to begin with.
_________________
“I even went as far as becoming a Southern Baptist until I realised they didn’t keep ‘em under long enough” Kinky Friedman |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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Did you actually read the definition you quoted ? My statement was clearly credible when taken literally, and meant as such. It was thus - per your definition - not hyperbole at all. "The match against Hawthorn was a slaughter" is hyperbole. Comparing an Australian RC to the work of Freisler or Vyshinky is hyperbole (though i am not sure the OP realised it, which is why I damned it as such).
It doesnt really matter, but it's unusual to quote a definition that refutes your point and claim vindication from it.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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Tannin 
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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| stui magpie wrote: | | Tannin wrote: | Mugwamp, first we need to be careful with this rather artificial distinction you make between tax avoidance, sharp practice, and outright fraud. Very often, the distinction hinges on nothing more than legal technicalities, and this is especially so in the case of big businesses - the very organisations who are most able to game the system with their phalanxes of high-paid lawyers and slimy accountants.
Second, we can and should recognise that different forms of organisation lend themselves to different modes of theft. I'm using the term here in a broad sense, to include the full range of illegitimate ways of taking money from those to whom it properly belongs, from BHP and Apple avoiding billions in tax responsibilities through to Arfur Slimydinos fleecing the NSW taxpayer out of 20 million, through to 7-Eleven stealing millions from their lowest-paid workers who can least afford it. It's all theft and we need not distinguish between different modus operandi - to do so only confuses the issue.
As a general rule, big corporations tend to prefer the technically-legal-but-dodgy-as-hell methods, while the nakedly illegal scams tend to be more the domain of the smaller operator. This is probably as much a matter of organisational structure as it is of sheer size. For obvious reasons, it's often easier for individual proprietors to conduct downright illegal scams than it is for a public company. So, if you are looking for a $1 billion organisation doing straight-out illegal things, start by looking at the ones which are controlled by a single entrepreneur, or a small, tight group of backers - the likes of Bond and Tinkler are obvious examples. But if you are looking for the just-barely-legal-because-of-a-technicality form of theft, start anywhere you like. (But focus on the big ones first because they are the ones able to do most of it.)
I don't think a royal commission is the way to go, by the way. An expanded and strengthened form of the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption would be ideal - and perfectly able to go after the few small-fry in the union movement as well as the vastly more numerous and much, much bigger fish in the business world. |
There's also one of those commissions in Victoria, it was formed as a result of the revamped and rebadged "whistleblowers" legislation. |
And it's completely farnarlking useless. Knobbled by the corrupt scumbags of the former Liberal state government. Toothlees, powerless, pointless. Exactly what they wanted.
Will Andrews have the decency and guts to give it the powers it needs? You wouldn't reckon, but stranger things have happened. It's a long shot but better than no chance at all.
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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watt price tully
Joined: 15 May 2007
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| Mugwump wrote: | Did you actually read the definition you quoted ? My statement was clearly credible when taken literally, and meant as such. It was thus - per your definition - not hyperbole at all. "The match against Hawthorn was a slaughter" is hyperbole. Comparing an Australian RC to the work of Freisler or Vyshinky is hyperbole (though i am not sure the OP realised it, which is why I damned it as such).
It doesnt really matter, but it's unusual to quote a definition that refutes your point and claim vindication from it. |
Mea culpa 
The point I'm trying to make is that both you & Stui have misrepresented the allegations of corruption by making the generalisation that all unions are corrupt by use of the word "many" and the use of the term "union movement". That is far too sweeping, is a distortion & an exaggeration.
On the other hand, both yourself & Stui seem to think that business is all OK except for the odd bit of misbehaviour.
Then you use the word ideological to another point of view without any embarrassment. We are all ideological..... Comrade.
_________________
“I even went as far as becoming a Southern Baptist until I realised they didn’t keep ‘em under long enough” Kinky Friedman |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^ fair enough, WPT. I am sure that my judgement about this is ideological, or at least shaped by many frustrating encounters with unions along the way. I've dealt with Dutch and German works councils, and they are tough, challenging, but much better than the simply adversarial Australian-Anglo model of trade unions. I just think the model is flawed, and it attracts the wrong kinds of people as a result. That, too, is an ideological view !
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Two more flags before I die! |
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watt price tully
Joined: 15 May 2007
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| Mugwump wrote: | | ^ fair enough, WPT. I am sure that my judgement about this is ideological, or at least shaped by many frustrating encounters with unions along the way. I've dealt with Dutch and German works councils, and they are tough, challenging, but much better than the simply adversarial Australian-Anglo model of trade unions. I just think the model is flawed, and it attracts the wrong kinds of people as a result. That, too, is an ideological view ! |
The late great Stuart Hall once said...." we are all in ideology all of the time.."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Hall_(cultural_theorist)
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“I even went as far as becoming a Southern Baptist until I realised they didn’t keep ‘em under long enough” Kinky Friedman |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^ Yes, that's undoubtedly true - but only up to a point. We do have a responsibility to try to think outside it. Ideology clouds everything, but we can choose not to be totally overcast by it.
In this case, the relevant question is : how many major unions (or businesses) would need to show evidence of significant corruption for us to agree that there is a problem ? In the end, this is really about proportions.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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