457 Visa crackdown
Applications for 457 visas have dropped by 36.3%, there has been a 23.2% slide in 457 visas granted in 12 months to 31 March 2014. The previous government raised English language benchmarks and required employers to pay 457 visa holders market rates. There is not a "look local first" condition in place. Employers have to prove they have advertised vacancies but have been unable to find someone locally. Despite lower applications and awards, there are 11,780 457 visa holders in Australia, which is 5.9% higher than this time last year. Cooks are most frequent recipients. Most visas are granted to Indians, followed by workers from the UK and Ireland. Drop in applications is said to be due to increase in fees from $85 to $330 in June 2013.
As both an American and Australian, I understand Nationalism. I am also conscious of the high price for Australian labor, which contributes to challenges with the case for local manufacturing particularly for multi-nationals deciding where to invest. I have supported a few 457s in my time and have never regretted it.
Aurizon cuts
Aurizon is cutting another 480 jobs in Queensland maintenance operations and is looking to negotiate a new enterprise agreement with unions to allow compulsory redundancies.. It has cut over 2000 jobs (22% of the workforce) since late 2010 without forced redundancies. They are shrinking their locomotive fleet by 28%, and wagon fleet by 12% by fiscal year 208 to simplify its rolling stock, which has included 59 kinds of locomotives and 297 kinds of wagons. Aurizon also plans to stop providing maintenance service to Queensland Rail and cut jobs in workshops in Redbank and Townsville.
Resource sector slow down, not sure what else to expect. Unions will talk about stopping "eroding job protections" but there are no protections in life. If demand is not there, then decisions are made.
A lot of Candy Crushing
King Digital, owner of Candy Crush, says popularity of the game has peaked in its first quarterly reporting as a public company. Players spent US$429 million, down from US$493 million in the previous quarter. Amount spent across all their games rose to $US641 million, contributed by Farm Heroes Saga, whose daily users have doubled to 20 million since 2013. The growth of Farm Heroes Saga came at the expense of a 20% increase in marketing expenses since last quarter. 352 million people are playing its games, up 16% from last quarter. Number of users spending money declined from 12.2 million to 11.9 million, but average amount spent increased to $18 per month. King says barriers to new competitor entrants are increasing, since its large user base allows it to cross-sell content and analyse user data to improve gamer experience. It is also expanding into China.
What are we really investing in when we Candy Crush? Apart from time or money, our most valuable resource is our attention. What else could we do with this investment? What difference could we make?
Qantas targeting $1bn debt
Qantas looking to achieve $800 million in cost savings and reduce debt by $1 billion by June 2015 to return to profitability. To cut capitall spending by a further $200 million to bring net capital spending to $800 million. Goal is to reduce annual cost base of $11.6 billion by 10% over next three eyars. Wants to lower cst gap with Virgin to about 5% to icnrease Qantas'margin advantage. Challenges include high competitive industry and an elevated Australian dollar fuel price. Expects international capacity growth into Australia will moderate from about 9% this financial year to 4% to 5% first hallf of the 2015 financial year. Domestic market growth exxpected to be about 3.5% and could moderate to 2.5% first half of FY. Expects to reduce number of full time employees by 2200 by en of June and another 1800 by end of June 2015, meaning only 1000 would remain for 2016 and 2017 FY. Other cost savings includ simplifying its fleet by retiring aging 767s and some older 747s for a combined annual cost benefit of $155 million. Also working througb pross and cons of selling the $2.5 billion frequent flyer business.
20133 reports had Qantas at 33,265 staff, which puts the total drop at around 12% of their workforce. 'That's a lot of change for a fair amount of people.
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