Sunday, March 23, 2008

A Great Leap Forwards

There is no entitlement to breaks in New Zealand. Breaks, like overtime, hours of work, and pay rates, are decided by negotiation between the employer and employee. In workplaces without a union, these negotiations proceed the way you expect when one party has money and the other needs to eat:

Employer: We don't have breaks here
This year was the 100th anniversary of the Blackball miners' strike. That strike was to win the right to a lunch-break, and 100 years later the government triumphantly announces that they're going to reintroduce the right to a lunch-break. Which tells you a lot about union history.

3 comments:

  1. You thief my lines then don't even credit me? Pfft... ;)

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  2. I thought I was thieving your friend's line?

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  3. Well, yeah...but he wouldn't have said it if I hadn't been in the conversation! :P

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