Australian Industrial Reforms - workers could be sacked because of a personality clash.

What about my fired?

And I thought Charles Barkley was the only one who struggled with this.

Your and you're -- there is a difference, kiddies.

I don't like you - your fired.

Brendan:
In case you still don't follow what they're talking about: the "your" in the title is a possessive pronoun meaning "belonging to you," and it is grammatically incorrect in this context. You should instead use "you're", which is the contraction for "you are," as in "you are fired."

The IR reform is really yet to be tested. Will this be another GST over-hype (the sky will fall and the world will come to a stop)? Or will it have a serious impact on workers rights? We probably won't know the answer to this until there is a decline in the labour market and in the general health of the economy.

That said, there are thousands of workers out there who are rorting the system, hiding behind CBA's and the union's, who will now be working harder than they every have in an attempt to hold onto their jobs. It is naive to think that workers aren't generally far worse than the people they work for!

To be on topic, I think it's good policy to allow an employer to fire an employee for 'not liking' them. It's not an employers imperative to compensate an employee's personality. If the boss can't work with you, it's you or the boss. The boss usually wins.

This is simply silly. It's the boss's responsibility to make him- or herself comfortable working with anyone who's an asset as an employee, regardless of the employee's personality. Any supervisor worth his or her salt knows that. A boss who doesn't act with that in mind simply shouldn't hold a supervisory position.

I have seen many cases where my employer has hired dead beat employees. In most cases, they left with no hard feelings... These persons were incompetent... [The] dead-beat employee is a cancer to business...

I'm not going to get into whether or not I agree with all of the rest of what's said here, but I will say that it misses the point of the original article. No one's saying that an employer shouldn't be able to termintate an incompetent employee. The idea is that demonstrable incompetence (or some other legitimate offense) should be a condition of termination. No one should have to fear firing based simply on personality issues.

This is what I don't like about Newsvine; the rampant deletion of posts. I thought I was contributing!

This is simply silly. It's the boss's responsibility to make him- or herself comfortable working with anyone who's an asset as an employee, regardless of the employee's personality. Any supervisor worth his or her salt knows that. A boss who doesn't act with that in mind simply shouldn't hold a supervisory position.

A responsible boss 'likes' employees who are an asset to the company. It makes them look good. A boss does not like an employee that generates a lot of complaints from clients and other employees. If the boss fires employees based on pure personal dislike, that boss will have to answer for lost revenue due to high turnover.

My [deleted] point was that putting legal restrictions on the termination of employees puts serious constraints on an employer to conduct business. It's not always easy to demonstrate that an employee is costing a company more money to an employer than he/she is worth to them. Call it incompetence, or a 'poor fit', the employee is not living up to expectations. Having to prove gross incompetence adds several weeks of lost revenue to the employer.

In America we have this thing called unemployment insurance. This will allow an employee to collect 2/3rds of his/her salary if he/she loses her job through no fault of their own. This will give an employer an easy out.

First, Spacegoat, I agree. You definitely were contributing. I would imagine this was an error on brendon.'s part.

A responsible boss 'likes' employees who are an asset to the company. It makes them look good.

That's not even remotely true. I've had tons of employees who I didn't particularly like personally, but I valued them as employees nonetheless. And who would I have looked good to had I liked them personally? Why would anyone care very much about that?

It's not always easy to demonstrate that an employee is costing a company more money to an employer than he/she is worth to them. Call it incompetence, or a 'poor fit', the employee is not living up to expectations. Having to prove gross incompetence adds several weeks of lost revenue to the employer.

Again, the point of this article is that employees in Australia can now be fired simply for not being liked by their boss. That's not what you're talking about here.

My [deleted] point was that putting legal restrictions on the termination of employees puts serious constraints on an employer to conduct business... In America we have this thing called unemployment insurance. This will allow an employee to collect 2/3rds of his/her salary if he/she loses her job through no fault of their own. This will give an employer an easy out.

An employer is always compelled to have cause for terminating an employee for, umm, cause in America. An employee can be laid off or downsized without cause, but then their position must be eliminated. Even in 'at will' employment situations, employers have had the burden of showing cause for termination in situations where employees have felt that they were terminated for factors outside of their control. And this is as it should be.

Man, Howard is such a jerk.

Spacegoats deleted comment (hope you don't mind me reposting it)

Damn grammar freaks! Get over yourselves. They were mocking your use of "your fired." It should be "You're fired."

To be on topic, I think it's good policy to allow an employer to fire an employee for 'not liking' them. It's not an employers imperative to compensate an employee's personality. If the boss can't work with you, it's you or the boss. The boss usually wins.

I have seen many cases where my employer has hired dead beat employees. In most cases, they left with no hard feelings. In a couple of cases, we had a hard time getting rid of them. It took us months to fire them, and even years in one case, just because they were minorities.

It had nothing to do with race creed or color. These persons were incompetent. In both cases they played the minority card (in one case race, the other race and sex). In one case, the dismissed employee did in fact sue the company for discrimination. Litigation went on for two years. I'm not privy to the results of the case, but it is over now, and I don't think she won.

I do think equal opportunity employment is important. But the dead-beat employee is a cancer to business. An employer is concerned about performance from their employees. If an employee does not perform, the employee should go. If an employee performs, and the boss lets him/her go, the boss is accountable to the boss's employer.

I'll go out on a limb here. As a white male in his mid 30s, gainfully employed, I think I'm a better candidate than a black male in his mid 30s and gainfully employed just because I am more easily liquidated if I don't work out. That is of course, unless they are trying to fill a quota.

#17 - Tue Mar 28, 2006 4:36 PM EST

As an employer, I can say that all of the ridiculous legal things you have to go through to get somebody fired are terrible. I generally do contracts instead of going through all the employee number stuff. It puts an incredible pressure on an employer to find the right guy (which of course you're trying to do) but then to pretend that it's OK if he's working for you when he's doing a shoddy job.

In the US we have 'right to work' states where you can get fired for any reason and the boss doesn't have to tell you why.

But people are rarely fired. Why? It's bad for moral. If someone is fired for no apparent reason, it makes your other employees nervous and they'll start looking for work elsewhere. People want to feel that their jobs are secure.

Foreigners might find it surprising that not all states are 'right to work' states. States have a lot of autonomy in the US.

I'm always surprised when I read about labor practices outside of America. Every job I've ever had here has been an 'at will' job, meaning that either your employer can fire your or you can quit with no notice at will. The only basis for fighting this if it was motivated by illegal racial or gender discrimination, and being a white male I don't qualify for that.

What's the big deal? I'm a good worker and I don't get fired. Companies have to be able to get rid of employees who don't perform, or who cause friction in the office with their fellow employees.

What it ends up being is that if employers are forced to retain bad employees, they will find some roundabout way of achieving the "at will" status. An employer should not have to sink money into a poor worker and it's foolish of any government to say so.

brendan, I don't think any laws are needed to prevent the employer wholesale taking complete advantage of their employees. The market already does this. Whoever the boss is wants their company to be successful and won't do anything rash, to do so would hurt their business.

Ugly Bastard:

But people are rarely fired. Why? It's bad for moral. If someone is fired for no apparent reason, it makes your other employees nervous and they'll start looking for work elsewhere. People want to feel that their jobs are secure.

The thing that worries me about this though is not so much on an invidual level but what it will mean over-all in the medium to long term. Here in Australia the very day the reforms were introduced, we had a company in Victoria firing its people then offering them their jobs back at $20,000 a year less, and without some of the perks they previously enjoyed.

So sure, in 5 years time, I'm sure you're right, people won't just be fired willy nilly because of these new reforms, but in the mean time they will be, and that will change the working environment drastically, and it won't be changing them for the better as far as the average worker goes.

I would suggest this happens anytime a labor market liberalizes their labor policies - in the short term. In the long term, it will stabilize. America has had this system for as long as I've been alive. I've never been fired. I was once laid off along with half the company as they faced imminent bankruptcy, though I was the one person rehired. One good person at X dollars can't be replaced by 4 crappy people at X/4 dollars, though this does seem tempting in the short term.

I'm politically inert. But I want to learn.

Maybe some of you more polically savy types could help me out over at ...

All I know is maybe it's time for a shift in views... i.e. give the big man a go.

Cheerz.