Des Houghton blog: Gutless union thugs achieved nothing in protests

TO THOSE who marched against penalty rates today: Your own union bosses have already traded away weekend penalty rates in enterprise bargaining deals. JOIN THE DEBATE

WHAT a bunch of pathetic union clowns they were who marched in support of penalty rates around the nation today.

Do they know their own union bosses traded away weekend penalty rates in enterprise bargaining deals?

Most of those who marched wouldn’t work on Sundays anyway.

Unions rally in Brisbane against the Sunday penalty rates decision and the ABCC. Picture: Darren England.

Small Business Ombudsman Kate Carnell exposed the union’s own trade-off trickery. She said the unions should not get away with a campaign against the industri­al umpire’s decision to cut Sunday loadings, “when the agreements that they’ve entered into over quite a significant period of time did exactly the same”.

She told me: “ In Queensland there’s over 400,000 small businesses, many of them in the retail, hospitality and tourism industries.

“Consumers expect these businesses to be trading on Saturdays and Sundays, so if you do chose to open, the current penalty rate levels mean it’s virtually impossible to make ends meet on weekends.

“Now, the big businesses that open on Sundays, such as McDonalds, have enterprise bargaining agreements in place and have traded away Sunday penalty rates already, so the people who are struggling with Sunday rates at the moment are mum-and-dad small business people.”

And what a gutless mob there was in Sydney who harangued former PM John Howard, 77.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has condemned the “thuggish harassment” of Howard who happened to be strolling down the street when the mob surrounded him.

The march achieved nothing. It exposed the unions as the hypocrites they are.