Delays in shipping to Australia?

[Bladestorm]

Can anyone shed light on this?

I was in my local HK Post Office today and there were big signs up warning about considerable delays with items being shipped to Australia because of industrial action causing temporary port closures.
Is this true? Is it Aus Post based or Customs or something else?

Just curious as obviously this may affect many of you who order internationally and as I do ship to Oz I want to see how potentially delayed the post has become there...

[DarkHyren]

I haven't heard anything about it though I have noticed a few delays getting things from oversea so could be true.
(PS. I got Brainstorm just haven't had much time or thoughts lately to mention everything, great packing job, really happy )

[speros]

yeah its true Australian Customs is having industrial strikes from the 03/11-09/11 so there will be a back log, they are having a nation wide 24hr strike on the 09/11

[DELTAprime]

Oh great, government workers going on strike again. What are they bitching about this time?

[5FDP]

Oh great, government workers going on strike again. What are they bitching about this time?

What do they always bitch about... more pay

[GoktimusPrime]

Apparently border force workers are looking at an $8000 p.a. pay cut.
http://www.theguardian.com/australia...-minute-delays

[Ralph Wiggum]

I understand pay freezes during hard times but pay cuts? I'd be pretty pissed too.

[griffin]

That could just be one of the results of the merging of Customs and Immigration.
If people that do similar roles in each department were paid at different rates, the new combined entity "Border Force" is not likely to increase pay rates to match the higher of the two departments. They are more likely paying something between the two (or the lower rate of the two), which means some people would get a pay rise to the new rate (that you would never hear about) while most would get a pay cut (that you do hear about).
They would also be cutting any jobs that are no longer needed after the merger (roles that both departments had employees covering).
All for cost cutting.

[Lord_Zed]

What Griffin said, plus also merging with Immigration customs are also in danger of losing several benefits, which is problematic because they deal with many of the nastier criminals such as drug and gun smugglers where as Immigration side of investigations is mainly focused on illegals and fraudulent visa rackets, which aren't quite as scary but there are lots of we never hear about.

And it's not even good for the immigration side of the equation the whole workplace culture and organisation is changing to command and control with guns and jackbooted uniforms and everything. They want people to be intimidated now.

The people I know in said organisations are understandably less than pleased.

[DELTAprime]

Ok, a massive pay cut is worth going on strike for in my book. A pay freeze or not enough of pay rise is one thing, loosing pay while doing the same work as you always have been doing is another.

I was like WTF for a little while when I saw my payslip this week and saw I got 20ish dollars and hour instead of the 24ish I normally get. Turns out the new payroll system pays casual loading separately.