WhaleOil Says it Right – 90 Days Probation

Heck, with reasoned posts like this, Whaleoil is in serious danger of becoming a blog to be read by normal people.

Much is being made by the Labour party, their lap-blog and other whining tossers about the 90 Day Bill.

Ok, so the first sentence is his normal “leg-cut-off,-I’ll-get-to-the-acid-later*” style, but the rest makes sense.

They all are saying that parliament and the public must be given a chance to debate the bill.

What the leftists fail to tell you is that this bill has largely been debated and been through the full select committee process already. It is substantially the same as Wayne Mapp’s bill and thus the argument hold about as much water as Cullen’s claims to have left the books in good order.

It’s also worth noting, since Phil Goff seems to think that the 90 Day bill is “arrogant and undemocratic”, that the Electoral Finance Bill was drafted in secret, in contravention of guidelines.

Astounding, isn’t it that a bill which actually changed our democracy is fine with Labour (until the lose the election) but actually giving employers the right to fire people is “undemocratic”, in spite of having very little indeed to do with voting.

Mapp drafted his bill publicly, took it through a first reading and select committee process, and then put it as a clear part of National’s manifesto.

A key point: one of the upsides of standing opposite Labour’s perpetual high-pitched screaming about National’s policy is that you can be very sure that no one was ignorant about the existence of this in the manifesto. If they didn’t want it, they shouldn’t have voted ’em in.

National was then elected on that basis. National is perfectly within their rights to pass this into law.

Further it redresses a balance that has been missing for sometime in workplace law. A worker can withdraw their labour whenever they want. They usually give notice but don’t have to. In times of near full employment this is often the case as workers get better offers. They can also ditch a shitbag boss freely as well.

The reverse is not true currently of employers. They essentially have to suck it up with no recourse. This law will provide at least some relief of that.

One might say that employers have power. Well, that might be true of employers of 1000+ employees, but those small employers covered by this bill are often strugling with limited resorurces, and this bill could easily be the difference between them hiring with confidence and going under – either by hiring bad staff or not feeling free to hire staff at all.

*inside joke…