Posted on 09/13/2023 10:15:32 AM PDT by dennisw
Amulti-millionaire property developer from Australia has sparked fury for calling for unemployment to rise to 50 per cent while claiming workers became “arrogant” during Covid.
Gurner Group CEO Tim Gurner told the Australian Financial Review’s Property Summit that productivity had plummeted during the global pandemic as “people decided they didn't really want to work so much”.
“We need to see pain in the economy,” Mr Gurner told the summit on Tuesday, taking particular aim at the post-Covid work rates of construction labourers.
“We need to remind people they work for the employer, not the other way around.”
The inflammatory comments quickly went viral on social media as politicians and commentators lined up to condemn the CEO.
“Reminder that major CEOs have skyrocketed their own pay so much that the ratio of CEO-to-worker pay is now at some of the highest levels *ever* recorded,” Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted on X.
“This Gurner character personifies everything that is wrong with unfettered capitalism and the cult of the super-CEO: rampant greed and an arrogant contempt for working people,” Australian media commentator Mike Carlton wrote.
On LinkedIn, business leaders were equally indignant.
Spence Rodgers, CEO of Ihm Luxury, wrote that Mr Gurner’s assertion that he would rather “level personal pain on millions of workers in order to keep his own money flowing is the epitome of class warfare”.
“What words could I possibly use to describe someone so incredibly stupid, callous, fragile, and worthless?” Mr Rodgers added.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
OK, that is INSANE. And your solution is exactly was a wise business person should do to mitigate costs and burdens. That CEO from Australia doesn’t sound as resourceful.
Also, on that goat herder insanity... I wonder if the Sacramento Twit understands that paying Herders far in excess of what the business budgeted will likely mean Herders being laid off (I’m from the Government and I’m here to help you...).
Anyone who is concerned with what people are doing during non-work hours deserves to lose their workforce; you only own me for on-the-clock time. People who are concerned with what someone smokes, snorts, or drinks after they are off the clock are just self-righteous twits who deserve to go bankrupt.
Instead of assessing what the future of real estate and whether or not he should invest in it, he'd rather enslave people to cover his errors and keep his wallet full.
Tim Gurner knows full well that those who are taking advantage of system on social programs are never going to work for him. He doesn't care about them, he wants hard working people to slave away for him. We already have people who work second and even third jobs.
Instead, why not have him, one person, lose money on his investments, and have him go work for someone else instead of working hundreds, if not thousands, needed in order to keep his wallet full.
“I hope he is bitten by a brown snake and is still alive when an alligator begins to disembowel him alive.”
I’d pay good money to see that.
50% unemployment might work out for him in Gun-Free Australia. Not so much in the USA.
True except those measures don't take into consideration that a large portion of the workforce is in a job two or three tiers above their capacity because of staffing shortages and scenarios where the position pays so low that companies hire far less capable people to fill them. We now have the C Team doing what the A Team used to do.
Companies desperate to fill holes will hire or promote someone today that they wouldn't have thought of putting in that position a decade or two ago. The guy who should be parking cars is now a "supervisor" overseeing the operation.
Employees used to have real skills in jobs that would pay their bills. For example, a local store manager years ago had real knowledge, skills, and experience. Now they're likely the best pick of the staff and not much older, experienced, or even better educated. I've witnessed a marked decline in experience levels where someone who had 10-15 years experience moves up or retires out and their position is backfilled with someone who has maybe 3 years of somewhat-related experience.
Poor math skills are an indicator. It's not that the person is dumb or mathematically illiterate; it's that they're in a job that's well over their capability, most often because someone who had the skills required in that job was pulled up to a higher position.
Sully Sullenberger of the "Miracle On The Hudson" aircraft ditching warned about it in aviation. Commercial piloting used to be a viable career but due to low pay and limited opportunities (pre-Scamdemic lockdowns), the quality of the candidates has been in decline.
In the fatal crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407 in 2009, the pilot had previously failed three check flights and the first officer was slinging coffee as a barista in Seattle to pay her bills before seat hopping on overnight flights to make that flight to keep her ratings current.
The FAA initiated several changes afterwards including that all airline pilots (both captain and first officer) are required to hold Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) certificates, which require the minimum experience of 1,500 hours of flying time, up from 250. Previously, the First Officer could have 250 and work their way up to pilot. Now, they might as well be a pilot instead of a First Officer. While both pilots held ATP certificates and had more than 1,500 hours of experience in the Colgan Air crash, the FAA knew the industry had a C Team problem.
Another change was to require pilot training failures to be reported in a national database to avoid C Team pilots from failing upwards because their new employers didn't know or didn't care about the flight check failures at previous jobs. You see this in law enforcement now. These departments are hiring rookies in their thirties, many of whom never worked in law enforcement previously or were let go from other departments for problems. Again, the C team is doing what the A team used to do.
Relatedly, the current pilot shortages are in part due to increasing the hours from 250 to 1,500. Many pilot candidates didn't chose flying because the pay wasn't increased for them to recoup their additional costs of training.
:NeverTrumpin':
When I suggested that workers today are “worse” than they were years ago, I wasn’t even thinking about actual job skills. I was thinking more about basic things that require no skills at all — like work ethic, standards of workplace behavior, taking pride in their work, etc.
“Productivity has risen since the 1970s primarily because the “tools” have gotten better and more advanced. You’d have a hard time convincing me that the workers are any better now than they were then.”
Red herring; the fact remains that the productivity of labor has risen and thus it’s free-market value. But the oligarchs have seen to it that the labor market is not free.
My staff can tell me how much more productive they are today than their counterparts in this STEM field were in the 1970s. But that statement is meaningless without accounting for the fact that their higher productivity is entirely a function of $30,000+ software packages and $10,000+ worth of computer equipment that: (1) were not available in the 1970s, and (2) are provided by the company, not the employees.
Employers refuse to accept that things such as work ethic, standards of behavior, and pride in their work is something the employer has to pay extra for. The change happened decades ago. Although it's not a skill set, the worker developed it, keeps up with it, and the employer benefits from it. Why wouldn't such ethics and behavior be rewarded the same as a professional skill specific to the job or industry?
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