Wednesday 27 August 2008

Not afraid to do what's wrong

Does anybody else find it ironic that a party opposed to today's gold-plated employment grievance laws is using those same laws to force a union into "talks" over their sacking of an employee?

Or that it claims "racism" by the union because they supposedly discriminated on the basis of race in sacking the employee, when the chief reason the party themselves is interested in the chap is his race.

Perhaps the main irony is that this is a party that claims, on occasions, to put principle ahead of politics and to have put scandal-mongering behind them ... as we saw demonstrated so cogently in parliament yesterday.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Call me naive, but I held out some hope that ACT would actually make a principled but nonetheless media savvy move here. Let the story play out to a point, let everyone else get all upset over it, then explain that they won't be taking the matter any further in line with their own principles. Would have been a brilliant move, but since apparently even ACT can't survive on their own principles - how could anyone else? Obviously we need these employment laws.

Berend de Boer said...

Nah, any employer should be able to sack any employee for any reason any time.

Maybe the libz should make an ad about that. I'm sure it's gonna be a hit with the public.

But let's talk again after you get a guy in parliament, right?

Anonymous said...

Berend - in a free labour market, I envisage that employees would demand a contract with their respective employers stating the grounds upon which the employee could be sacked. That would avoid the inconvenience (to the employee) of being sacked on arbitrary grounds. An employer that sacked employees will-nilly for frivolous reasons would not remain in business for long, especially in a low unemployment environment.

Blair said...

Your second point is well made, and one that I have made myself on my own blog. But your first is not quite as ironic as you might suppose. To my knowledge ACT have never opposed employment discrimination laws. Whether they should is another matter, but there is no inconsistency there, as ACT's disapproval of current employment law is a separate matter from that of discrimination on political grounds.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps, PC .. but it's always satisfying to see an organisation (the union) tripped up by its own silly laws. ;)

Callum said...

sus: It's very hypocritical of the Union, especially considering that Unions would've had a large role to play in the legislation that disallowed employers to sack employees for political views!

Anonymous said...

Exactly, Callum.