Used to work closely, too closely for me, with the unfortunate chap. Colleagues used to tell me he couldn’t be as useless as I complained.
Many of his members and all of the parallel employers organisation leaders treated him as a joke.
But his neanderthal views on labour relations have been one of the two voices of employers in recent years.
New Zealand has been poorly served and it is about time employers got a rational voice to represent them in our largest city.
Thompson may deserve a zero out of 10 for his comments but, ignoring his shortcomings for the moment, the pun in your post title deserves a 10+
Man, this dude should be muzzled!
Mihinirangi Forbes did a great job of interviewing the dinosaur on Campbell Live last night.
He should join Barney in the creepy Dinosaur hall of fame!
I just saw the pun in the title!
!
The NBR came up with a good one too – calling it a “Period drama”
Trev, you say: “Many of his members and all of the parallel employers organisation leaders treated him as a joke.”
Well, it is hardly a consolation that his colleagues have not yet all publicly distanced themselves and said he should resign.
Their silence or passivity is leaving it to the implication that they support, promote, or even worse, share his views and attitude.
I’d suggest they say to him “Adios dear Thompson”.
He has through his lack of foresight completely ruined the legitimate debate around causes of pay inequality. The entire debate has now been framed around PMT (which if you’ve ever dealt with an HR department there is a stark counterpoint to his claims)Seriously though the entire gender pay gap is purely down to life choices.
Take law, a women can choose to work 80 hour weeks / weekends and make partner in 3-5 years or they can choose to have children come back to work part-time perhaps switch to an in-house counsel role etc…
Likewise a male could bust his ass to become a QC etc.. working similar crazy hours, or he could avoid late nights and weekends at a more provincial firm and puddle around with a lifestyle block in his spare time or raise kids too etc..
Ultimately it comes down to the lifestyle choices and decisions people make, not the perception that employers are sitting in a smoke filled room colluding to pay all females 15% less or whatever.
Effectively the perceived pay gap is an aggregation of the choices genders are making, but that is a snap shot of where things lie now not necessarily where they may be in 5-10 years particularly as the female university participation ratios start outstripping males in many areas. Social changes not legislation are what is going to have the greatest impact