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![Qantas chairman Richard Goyder. Picture Qantas Qantas chairman Richard Goyder. Picture Qantas](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/3BUUzmFAhrhLyX9rFCubPq5/5d4dd05e-2527-40e1-9ffe-ca682bb9b1bf.jpg/r0_47_1752_1032_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
He was a grim, humourless man. But he took great delight in the misfortune of others and news that one of his executives was running late for a meeting because his bus had broken down amused him. He stretched his thin, cruel lips into a smirk.
"His ... bus ... broke ... down?" he asked. Each word dripped with conceit and contempt. "Who goes to work on a bus? Buses are for losers."
My old boss enjoyed chauffeur-driven cars and spent his days surrounded by personal assistants devoted to his drycleaning and juggling his nightly restaurant bookings while he ruled his fiefdom with a crude combination of fear and loathing. When I imagined his childhood it was easy to picture a sneering boy plucking the wings off passing butterflies.
But he was rich and as the ensuing years made him even richer, his condescending tone toward the great unwashed - those losers who journeyed to work on public transport to help increase his wealth - only grew. I naively assumed his disdain for the average worker was a rarity. Now I'm not so sure.
As economic inequality in Australia reaches levels not seen since 1950, the gap between corporate Australia and the rest of the country has become a chasm. It's hard to recall a time - apart from the bastardry of the banks in the 1980s - when big business was so on the nose and so publicly contemptuous of those contributing to its profits.
Take Qantas. Its chairman, Richard Goyder, refuses to step down despite accepting a $100,000 pay rise while urging a two-year wage freeze on his company's pilots. His airline, the target of more consumer complaints than any other Australian company, has been charged with deceptive conduct for selling tickets to thousands of cancelled flights. And the High Court has ruled Qantas illegally sacked 1700 workers during the pandemic.
But Goyder, who along with former CEO Alan Joyce oversaw the unprecedented trashing of a brand that was the nation's most trusted for almost a century, believes he should stay. He should resign for medical reasons citing his chronic tin ear.
Those banks? Hauled before the Senate, they have been gloating about their profits and boasting about not losing customers despite slashing city and regional branches. At the same time, business groups are opposing a proposed legislative shakeup to Australia's workplace aimed at greater protections for our growing 2.5 million casual workforce, dismissing it as a ploy to boost union membership.
This "Us versus Them" mentality was once the preserve of militant union leaders. But in this climate of rising costs and stagnant wages it's now big business calling for protection from the great unwashed, resorting to tired old cliches we haven't heard since the 1970s industrial warfare era.
Empathy has rarely been a factor in workplace relations - unless, of course, you're a company leader attending one of those annual CEO Sleepover stunts armed with a cardboard mattress and a horde of photographers to document your affinity with the homeless.
But rarely has empathy been so starkly absent than in the comments of property developer Tim Gurner earlier this month. With his designer stubble, open-necked shirts and slicked hair, Gurner is not just a comical stereotype; he personifies that growing gulf between the big end of town and the nation's 14 million wage earners.
"We need to remind people they work for the employer, not the other way around," Gurner bragged to a business love-in. "We need to see pain in the economy ... people decided they didn't really want to work so much through COVID and that has had a massive issue on productivity." The only way to pull lazy workers into line, Gurner suggested, was for unemployment rates to rise by up to 50 per cent.
Gurner later issued one of those standard grovelling apologies now so common in public life. But we all know a declaration of class warfare when we hear it.
This week US President Joe Biden joined striking auto workers who are pleading for wage rises from car companies that largely survived the pandemic thanks to government handouts and tax discounts.
After speaking on a picket line, Biden handed his bullhorn to a union official who began thundering against the billionaire class and companies fighting against worker pay rises.
"They think they own the world," he railed. "But we make it run."
Old slogans. Old thinking - on all sides. Forget the threat and potential of AI. Or how we've embraced new ways of working. The workplace of the future is looking more like the past.
![David Pope's view David Pope's view](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/XBxJDq6WLub2UphQ8wEq23/58e17bf5-3784-4411-b7a5-2612d89229d9.png/r0_0_1920_1079_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
HAVE YOUR SAY: Is corporate Australia out of touch with its workers? Should the chairman of Qantas step down? Do you believe we are heading into a new era of industrial showdowns? Email your response to echidna@theechidna.com.au.
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
- Australia's top universities have fallen down the global rankings. The University of Melbourne remained Australia's best, according to the Times Higher Education's World University Rankings, which graded 1904 universities from 108 countries. But it fell three places to 37th globally. It was Australia's only school to appear in the top 50.
- The new Premier of Victoria will take the weekend to talk to her colleagues before unveiling her cabinet. Jacinta Allan was sworn in as the state's 49th premier, only the second woman to hold the position, after Daniel Andrews announced his resignation on Tuesday.
- The ACT will not make voluntary assisted dying available to teenagers in its upcoming bill as the work required would be too complex, given the very small number who might be eligible.
- The departing US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley said he would take measures to protect his family after former president Donald Trump suggested he had colluded with China in an act he said would have once warranted death. Trump last week criticised Milley's handling of the chaotic US withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan in 2020.
THEY SAID IT: "I'm a strong believer that you can build great companies in time of both greed and fear. But you have to be paying attention and operating under the right assumptions. You don't have to believe history repeats itself, but you should accept that history rhymes." - Brad Feld.
YOU SAID IT: Steve opined about the Voice campaigns, and put a plague on both their houses - "No" for the false claims "swirling around in the cesspit of social media" and "yes" for its patronising attitude towards "people without degrees, people working hard with their hands, people who wear boots to work not made by Prada, people who have to count the cents".
The Echidna is delighted to say you responded politely and thoughtfully.
John agreed with Steve: "For me, also a committed 'yes' voter, the 'yes' campaign has come across as almost condescending, high brow intellectual and administered from an academic viewpoint. One sure way to alienate the vast majority of middle-of-the-road citizens."
Erik wrote: "There are 'no' voters who will do so for good reason, frequently questioning the 'detail'. But when the Constitution was put to the people 125 years ago, no one knew the detail but voted for it anyway. I honestly don't think that argument holds."
Kate said: "I deeply resent the tags that the 'yes' voters constantly throw at me. I have four in-laws who are Indigenous (1/2, and 1/4) who think it is funny that I am supposed to be 'racist'. I have two degrees: science and computers in education. I feel the 'yes' vote is not explained. I don't want to hand any government that sort of power."
Jennie said: "I stood for two hours yesterday at a stall handing out for the 'yes' vote and, while I won't call the 'no' voters deplorable (if for no other reason than that it back-fired on Hillary), I will call them generally unlikeable and the 'yes' voters generally likeable. I went into the local gallery where Ray Hadley was holding forth on 2GB radio, and all I could conclude was that the 'no' voters have been listening to him, and he is indeed deplorable.
"We're going to take a long time as a society to get over all this, whatever the result."
And Sue said: "I see definite links between the 'yes' and 'no' debate in Australia and the American version of politics that came into being with the rise of Trump. I find it terrifying and so sad and I can't see the debate ending well because it's no longer a debate. It's more of an election frenzy, which none of us will end up winning."