i could never understand it either. as time went on orders slipped as machinery broke down and such and they would expect us to make up that difference during work hours but without the bonus. not long after that i left as i couldn't support my family enough on it. it was basic award wages. you can survive on it but it's really really tough. the massive corps like woolies and the others are holding the government to ransom. they know that if the unions push to hard they'll replace with contractors or like the big mining companies, with overseas workers, who they can legally pay at their countries pay rate, as was the court case last year showed. it sucks but the best thing would be to break up woolies and coles and the other duopolies and make law saying that you can only own or have x-amount of market share. they did it in america with standard oil and they threatened to do it to telstra not long ago and they need to stop selling our natural resources off so cheap. do what norway has done with their oil money(plus too they tax the s*** out of it, so that oil companies pay a lot for their oil rights and what they pump). if they liquidated their oil fund they could give every norweigen(i don't know how to spell it,sorry) a million dollars in their currency.