Neil without collective bargaining you can end up paying a premium for the best people and paying peanuts to those who aren't up to the job. Found that out at one place I was made redundant from, turns out I was paid twice the amount of my colleague who wasn't really that crap, just got on everybody's nerves. (yes performance pay is excellent for bullying and harassment)
Pay people for the actual job their doing, not if you think employee A works slightly better than employee B, where they live or more likely because you don't like employee B.
Geoff what your describing is on the job training, everybody has to go through that when they start a new job, nursing it's slightly different and requires years after they leave uni. Perhaps a better comparision would be a cleaner, you don't need to train for 7 years to be a cleaner so why pay them like they do?
