Pay for cooks shows IR madness IF there is a single example that the Australian industrial relations system has lost all balance and common sense, it's in the pay rates to cooks working on ships involved in the oil and gas industries. The cooks are on a $230,000 package for a rotating roster and they effectively work only six months a year. It's a great gig if you can get it, organised and enforced by the Maritime Union of Australia. This is the MUA's definition of workers "rights." It would certainly buy the union loyalty of cooks and other ship workers under the MUA's 2013 pattern agreement.