Club Troppo

(another one of the Lost Files following the Great Server Crash)
“Exempting any group of people from criticism is not a blessing but a curse. — Thomas Sowell ”
It was reconciliation week once more last week, a good opportunity to debate some of the more thorny issues surrounding indigenous affairs. I apologise in advance for confusing you, because at the end of my mental journey I find myself in favour of native title rights, but leaning against reconciliation week.

The trickiest issue concerns native title rights. This issue is tricky in any country and the perennial question is how far back historical rights reach. Should the English figure out which Kelts were disowned by the invading Angels 1400 years ago? Should the South Africans figure out which Bushmen were disowned by the invading Bantus 500 years ago? Should the Arabs figure out which Berbers they disowned in North Africa in the Middle Ages? The practical answer to these questions is ‘no’ since the period is so long that it by now has become impossible to trace initial ownership and it would only lead to a war to rake up all these old rivalries.
Yet, land ownership does extend through the generations. Sons and daughters inherit from their fathers and if their fathers stole it from someone else, then in Western legal tradition, the surviving kin of the dispossessed do have the right to legal redress. This principle is not extended back into perpetuity, but within the laws we have adopted for ourselves, intergenerational rights do exist. Since we’re all supposed to be equal under the law, the principle applies equally to indigenous land rights.
(Continued)

In various columns and articles (pdf) I’ve pointed out the irony of the fact that, at a time when we’re deregulating the labour market, we’re paying next to no attention to the problem of getting information to prospective employees about the quality of workplaces. Though workplaces try hard to keep their employees happy both because it generally improves their productivity and because unhappy workers walk, the fact is that a lot of employees prefer the devil they know to the devil they don’t. It would, as I argued in an op ed a few years ago be great if we had a decent, transparent market in job satisfaction. And it wouldn’t be that hard to achieve. Because I don’t think it’s up on Troppo, I am posting the old op ed on improving the market for work satisfaction over the fold.

But the purpose of this post is to tell you that someone’s giving it a try - right here in my home town of Melboure. As I discovered reading The Age’s IT supplement yesterday - lured by a headline reading HR gets the Web 2.0 touch - Hot Employers is now offering companies that pay it a fee to subscribe a service whereby their employees can be surveyed on line. The sponsoring firms receive a report on the results as they would from any HR firm, though the automation of the process presumably lowers costs considerably.

But Hot Employers also allows subscribers to publish the results of the survey. As you can imagine, if a firm did well on the survey, publicity for that fact could offer a powerful way of promoting itself to prospective employees. Thus you click on a button “Find a good employer” and can search for employers with Gold, Silver and Bronze medals in your area, or your industry.

Of course it’s a long way from having a good idea - thinking ‘they oughta do this’ to actually bringing it off. A visit to the site confirms that it’s very new and so a search doesn’t turn up many companies. I would have felt more reassured if the site looked like it was backed with more money, as that’s important to making a mark and so developing a critical mass. The net is littered with good ideas that failed to achieve critical mass.

But I really wish the guys at Hot Employers the best with their business. The op ed is over the fold. (Continued)