Spare a thought for the hard-working Grumbles, if you plan to celebrate this women’s day nonsense

Not for the first time, the Council of Trade Unions has over-gilded its lily.

It has put out a press statement to say: 

On Sunday woman all over the globe will be marking international women’s day. The International Trade Union movement’s theme for the day is ‘Count us in’.

And then:

“On International Women’s Day we celebrate all women workers – those in paid and unpaid work. We honour working women heroes who have stood out as champions for women’s rights at work. We celebrate Kristine Barlett and the many thousands of caregivers who are at the forefront of the historic struggle for equal pay In New Zealand,” CTU Women’s Committee Co-convenor, Sheryl Cadman, said.

With regard to the first sentence, which woman all over the globe are they talking about?

Or – surely not – did they mean “women”?

If that be so, let’s be clear: many women all over the globe may well mark the occasion. But not all.

Mrs Grumble is among those who won’t be bothering.

Trade unionists learn something vital about Fiji – it doesn’t have a democratic government

So who coughed up the money to teach trade union leaders something the rest of us already knew?

The lesson is that Fiji is not a democracy.

Alf knew that without having to get on a plane and fly there.

But Helen Kelly, president of the CTU, flew there with a bunch of Aussies to find out the hard way, presuambly with tickets paid for by hard-working union members.

Alasdair may well be gone by lunch time – but on what date will the axe fall?

Oops, sorry - we thought it was him.

Alasdair Thompson, chief executive of the Employers and Manufacturers Association (Northern), has lived to fight another day.

An emergency board meeting to discuss his future today has been cancelled.

Not postponed. Cancelled.

This explains why Thompson – so far as we know – was not gone by lunch time.

But it looks unlikely he can hold on for long. The baying for blood is coming from a pack of formidable proportions.

As the movie moguls fly in, Phil Goff flies out – but will he confront Simon Whipp?

The good news: Phil Goff is off to Australia.

The bad news: he has a return ticket.

But he won’t be back in time to help or hamper desperate effort to repair the damage done by threats of an international actors’ boycott of The Hobbit.

Let’s extend the 90-day trial period to politicians before they can become entrenched as troughers

The Government is about to do employers a big favour, with its plans to extend the 90-day trial period for hiring staff.

The trial period allows the boss to fire a new worker within the first three months of hiring him or her, without the fired worker – or drone, more like it – having the right to take one of those bloody vexing and costly personal grievance cases.

The idea, as Alf understands it, is to extend the scheme to companies with more than 20 workers, as part of a package of workplace law reforms.

Obviously this will ease the way for bosses to get rid of any recently hired staffer who turns out to be a drone, a pain in the arse, a trouble-maker, or whatever.

The percentage of such people – by the way – is much greater than Alf had previously understood.

More jobs, please – oh, and can we can get a bigger pay packet, too?

Talk about wanting a bob each way (preferably without having to work for it).

The trade unions that have been hollering for a hefty hike in the minimum wage are now demanding the Government create new jobs.

Labour similarly wants a higher minimum wage and more jobs.

The pressure for more jobs followed the disappointing news that the unemployment rate had risen to 7.3% in the December quarter.

Gender benders have their PEE cut off

Lots of shrieking and wailing has been heard in recent days, and desperate lefties have dragged the long-departed Kate Sheppard into an equal-pay furore in a bizarre attempt to shame the government.

Words like “tragedy” have been thrown into the furore, too, although – so far as Alf knows – no-one had been killed.

Actually, nothing has happened except the Government decided to abolish the Department of Labour’s Pay and Employment Equity Unit (at least one report abbreviated it to PEE, much to Alf’s delight).

Council of Trade Unions president Helen Kelly howled that the decision to shut down PEE shows “an absolute disregard for the thousands of women workers in this country whose work is undervalued simply because they are women.”