Pacific Brands

[Jovial Monk]

Well, we certainly got some extra info on that unlovely company. While they were coldbloodedly moving to sack nearly 2000 workers the top execs doubled their own pay (trebled in terms of the CEO.)

Very nice, not!

Typical of the neo-Liberal thing tho (like Sol Trujillo) where CEOs now get 1000x times the median pay in the company instead of 10x like 20-30 years ago. Then they call for tax cuts (the Lieberals in Parlt have been screaming for those pretty loudly and Howard & Costello certainly cut the top tax scales, eh? The previous head of MacQuarry bank got a $400,000pa/$8,000/week tax cut in '05 or '06--these huge tax cuts while infrastructure, education & public hospitals rotted and decayed!

Not a lot can be done about PB moving to China, this is a free country. Maybe Rudd should ask for repayment of the assistance moneys provided to PB?

I wonder how Chinese wages have moved with all the factories and overseas companies etc all happening there. Did wages rise, or did the govt keep them exploitatively low? Know the chinese workers were exploited in the crash, factories closing and the owners taking their money back to Hong Kong, leaving the employees unpaid! Chinese currency kept at an artificially low level, know that, remember Bush begging them to revalue it?

So perhaps Western countries need to implement anti-dumping tariffs on Chinese goods?

Rudd will have to grow a pair and start raising the top tax rates and lowering the level where they start cutting in, while lowering the lowest tax scales and raising the level where they kick in, to keep the economy going and generate the tax revenue to eventually move the budget into the black.

[Hebe]

What happened to the Anti-Dumping Authority?

[Jovial Monk]

You asking me? I dunno!

[Hebe]

We used to have one - probably got rid of by Howard. Now it seems to be under the control of Customs.

[Hebe]

Gosh they make a lot of well-known brands.

Bonds, Berlei, Hestia, Holeproof, Lee, Stubbies, Dunlop, Wrangler, King Gee, Slazenger, Tontine, Sheridan, Actil, Grosby, Clark, Hush Puppies, Pierre Fontaine. Good grief - do we have anything left?

http://www.pacificbrands.com.au/

[Jovial Monk]

Apparently more and more has been made in China anyway.

[Jovial Monk]

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says the Government may ask clothing firm Pacific Brands to give back some of the taxpayer-funded support it has received in recent years.

The company, which last week announced it would sack 1,850 Australian workers, has received around $17 million of Government assistance in the past two years.

It has also awarded millions of dollars worth of pay rises to top executives, with chief executive Sue Morphett's pay going up from around $680,000 to more than $1.8 million.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009 ... 509118.htm

[skippy]

This company sucks, they take money off the Australian government and then pack up and move to China, boycott the bastards, I'll never wear bonds again.
This whole thing really annoys me, I wish some body would take them on, where's dick Smith? maybe dick could start up a company in OZ selling undies,
dicks stickers?

[Jovial Monk]

"Don't dick around, dick, buy Dick's"

Advertising slogan donated free of charge

[Hebe]

dicks stickers?

What a great idea.