There was an article in today's rag about the soon to be vote by the building union for new terms and conditions on Grollo based building projects in Melbourne.

One side of the page was Grollo explaining the new terms and conditions. 36 hour week. ~12% percent pay rise by Feb next year. Flexible annual leave. The ability to cash in sick days and rostered days off.

The other side was the union's side of the story. "Grollo is evil. Vote No. Think about your job. Grollo is evil. Vote no." and various other paranoid rants asking Grollo why it hasn't provided employment registers so it can check it for new "fake" employees who may not know "how to vote".

Made the union look paranoid and stupid.

I knew I must have been missing something... so I took a bit of effort just then and found this press release explaining the unions case (PDF 7k).

Effectively Grollo wants no limit on the overtime they can make a construction worker work. The ability to make a worker from from 5am every day, including weekends and never have an RDO or Annual Leave etc. for months.

The standard union plan is 7am to 7pm standard working day and a 20 hour cap on overtime (ie. a 56 hour week), along with standards for the number of weekends an employee can work (standard 9 day fortnight).

So obviously the union is in the right. All they want is to follow the industry standard... but I shouldn't have had to look so hard to find these facts.

FYI, my current contract effectively says my company can make me work 24 hours a day non-stop and not get paid an extra cent for it. "That's stupid and would never happen" you and my CEO say. Except last month it did. Narf.

OK, that's all off my chest now. Back to ranting about music.

It's that week before Xmas. That week where you try to figure out why you didn't organise leave the two days (Monday / Tuesday) before Xmas off. That week where you just can't be bothered anymore. That week where you're finally not on call anymore. That week after the six weeks of overtime. The week you'd wish would just go away.

Getting over that...

Hey. Stuff happened. Tolls for cars in the Melbourne CBD [The Age]! Not quite what I'd like but it's a start. Personally I'd like to prevent cars travelling on all of the Melbourne laneways, all the "Little [street-name]" streets... unfortunately most of the buildings are designed with car entrance ways on these streets so this would be impossible. A toll will just have to do. That money will of course go directly into public transport for the city right?

And National Express gives up on their public transport contract for Melbourne [ABC]. That's M>Train and M>Tram and V-Line. So it's controlled by the government again... but not for long. So close yet so far.

(stories via train scabbed Herald Sun, links via acb)

Those crazy guys at the RIAA are at it again. Could CD sales have fallen in the last two years (in the US) because of a 25% decrease in CD production [The Register]? Less CDs to buy means less sales? The RIAA could easily argue they (record companies) are making less CDs because they're selling less CDs... but they don't, they just hammer home the "CD sales are down" line.

After keeping the figure rather quiet for two years, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) says the industry released around 27,000 titles in 2001, down from a peak of 38,900 in 1999. Since year-on-year unit sales have dropped a mere 10.3 per cent, it's clear that demand has held up extremely well: despite higher prices, consumers retain the CD buying habit.

... A&R budgets are set well in advance, and with Napster causing a mighty panic amongst industry executives a couple years ago, they decided to cut the rosters, close their eyes and wait for a bomb that never went off. But far from being besieged by CD-burning vandals, the music industry is seeing astonishingly resilient demand.