The Rail, Tram and Bus Union has stopped members using the 14 units at Jervis Bay after its insurer refused to provide cover - despite the union making just two claims totally $7,000 over the past 30 years. The insurer gave the RTBU no other reason than it was its business strategy.
But when the union went looking for an alternate insurer, they were continually knocked back - on the grounds that their original insurer had refused to insure them!
RTBU state secretary Nick Lewocki says the decision shows insurance companies are out of control.
"The matter has highlighted to the RTBU that the insurance industry is not governed by any regulations or guidelines that require them to provide a service to either business or private citizens," he says.
"If a major insurance company can dump a customer of 30 years what chance would an ordinary working family have against such action."
Lewocki says that while the insurance industry is happy to take millions underwriting NSW Government contracts and commercial property owned by superannuation funds, they are turning their backs on ordinary people.
"First it was the bastard banks, now it's the bastard insurers," he says.
The Labor Council is calling on the Carr Government to implement an immediate Code of practise requiring the industry to act in a fair and equitable manner.
"Only those insurance companies that sign a code should be eligible to insure government-owned property," Lewocki says.
And he says unions should also call on industry superannuation fund trustees to use only insurance companies who are committed to such a code for commercial property owned by industry superannuation funds.
"Only the trade union movement is capable of forcing these corporate mavericks to be accountable to force the industry to comply with appropriate regulations and guidelines that will assist families and workers in the protection of their property."
The stoppage - involving 320 workers - has been sparked by the refusal of Tri-Star to sign up to the Manusafe workers entitlement fund.
And the Australian Workers Union's Ray Sparkes says the rejection follows a back-flip on an existing entitlements deal.
Previous owner TRW was one of the first employers to agree to insure workers redundancy payments against the company's collapse as part of enterprise bargaining negotiations .
The employer agreed to take out a bank guarantee - through a property insurance policy - to cover all workers entitlements
When the new management took over - and would't even negotiate the bank guarantee - a four day strike ensued. That was March 2000.
The Industrial Relations Commission at the time recommended the employer actually talk to the employees about the issue - something they had never tried to do. Eventually they struck an agreement to lodge a new bank guarantee.
Under the current EBA negotiations, employer Arrowcrest has taken it off the table at the behest of the Australian Industry Group.
Even in the protected bargaining period - where the only time a union can take strike action - the management have refused to negotiate.
Sparkes says the insurance bond was something very close to the workers' hearts.
"The problem is that the company wants to place a cap of 26 weeks redundancy - even though 92 per cent of workers would be entitled to more than this amount, based on their length of service," Sparkes says.
"The workers realise the company was purchased in a fire sale and they are refusing to trust the company to protect their entitlements."
With workers due to meet on Monday, he's predicting ongoing strike action if their demands are not met.
ACTU Blames Howard
Meanwhile, ACTU President Sharan Burrow says that the attempt by Workplace Relations Minister Tony Abbott to blame the Tristar workers and their union, the AMWU, for the dispute in the vehicle industry was both hysterical and hypocritical.
"Abbott's comments about 'economic treason' are so ridiculous that they are embarrassing for Australia,'' Burrow says. "Mr Abbott is denying the reality of the industrial relations system put in place by his Government. But Mr Abbott is also being hypocritical.
She says the failure of the Government to establish a comprehensive national scheme, and only put in place a an inferior safety net arrangement, means that workers and their unions have to establish their own arrangements. That is what the AMWU and the Tristar workers are attempting to do," said Ms Burrow.
"Tristar appears to be under clear direction from the peak employer body, the Australian Industrial Group (AIG), to not negotiate the issue. This is pattern bargaining by the AIG - something for which it is criticising the union.
"The ACTU calls on the AIG to come out of the shadows and to sit down with the AMWU to discuss this issue at an industry level so that the vehicle industry can get back to work," Burrow says.
Bevis: Abbott an Embarrasment
And Arch Bevis has weighed in, saying the comments by Workplace Relations Minister, Tony Abbott, concerning the TriStar Steering and Suspension dispute were an embarrassment, not only to himself but also to the Prime Minister.
"Tony Abbott's comments that strike action undertaken by the workers at TriStar Steering and Suspension was 'industrial and economic treason' are ill considered and only serve to inflame what is already a very heated dispute.
"I noticed that even the comments reported this morning made by the Prime Minister were far more considered, and rightly so. He is trying to negotiate a deal to keep Mitsubishi manufacturing in Adelaide.
"Tony Abbot's ridiculous outburst has undermined the Prime Minister.
"Time and time again we have seen Tony Abbott make outrageous claims and this outburst is just the latest in a long line of these.
"Tony Abbott describes himself as an 'L' plate Minister and continues to prove that this description is accurate.
"The fact remains that this dispute is the only way parties can attempt to negotiate under the Coalition's Workplace Relations Act.
"The current dispute is in relation to negotiations for a new enterprise agreement, the actions being taken are legal and in accordance with the Government's 1996 Act.
"As Labor has said from the beginning, the Howard/Reith 1996 laws promote division and an adversarial approach to negotiations. The most unfortunate thing about disputes that occur under these laws is that the government seems to think that when an industrial dispute comes along, their job is to be in there swinging punches.
"Tony Abbott is an embarrassment to himself, the Prime Minister and to Australia as a whole", said Mr Bevis.
George Piggins circa 1968 Scanlen Sweets Footycards |
Fresh from his court victory over News Ltd, Piggins officially thanked the union and its leader John Sutton for the support Souths received during their long campaign for readmission to the NRL.
"On behalf of the South Sydney Football Club, I'd like to thank John Sutton and everyone from the CFMEU," he said. "Any time we needed your assistance you were only too happy to do it.
"Souths and the CFMEU will remain forever mates."
Piggins told CFMEU delegates he came from a union family and was committed to unionism.
"My father was a waterside worker, so were my brothers and so was I for a few years," he said. "I had no hesitation when Patricks locked the MUA out to lend my support
"Unions are the one way that working class people can achieve many of the things they need in life. Unions are about sticking together like South Sydney did.
"We've been able to do something not many people have - win in a court against Rupert Murdoch"
Widen Inquiry to Include Tax
Meanwhile, the CFMEU and the ACTU have called on the Cole Royal Commission to examine serious issues in the building industry, including tax avoidance of epidemic proportions.
Mr Abbott responded by saying there "have always been plenty of perfectly good avenues to pursue that". Mr Abbott said the Australian Tax Office was "quite vigilant in this area".
But when asked on the ABC's Lateline program last Friday whether the Commission would investigate tax avoidance and other issues, Mr Abbott said: "Yes, there is no reason whatsoever why the Royal Commission shouldn't tackle these subjects. Wrongdoing is our target."
CFMEU National Construction Secretary Mr John Sutton said today that Mr Abbott's move to distance himself from his previous commitment was a clear indication that the Howard Government's motive in calling the Royal Commission was politically inspired.
"If Mr Abbott and Prime Minister John Howard genuinely wanted to attack the real problems in the building industry, they would leap at the chance of exposing tax rorters," Sutton says.
"But it is clear they would rather the industry remains a safe haven for tax cheats
The settlement recognises the economic value of the work their husbands did at home.
Previously a widow's claim was not viable if her husband died over the age of 65 or earlier, unless he was working at the time of diagnosis. This was because compensation for dependents under Victorian law was in part based on their earnings at the time.
Eleven women - one in Canada, one in Queensland and nine in Melbourne sued the federal government body Stevedoring Industry Finance Committee, James Hardie and CSR.
The defendants settled the cases late yesterday on confidential terms.
Lawyer Suzanne Sandford of Slater and Gordon says the decision is a breakthrough for hundreds of women who have suffered hardship since their husbands died, as long as 20 years in some cases.
"Until these cases, the courts and the defendants had not recognised the substantial contribution that non working men make at home - mowing lawns, home maintenance, driving, painting, gardening," she said.
"Since their husbands' deaths, many of the widows have seen their houses fall into disrepair because they cannot manage them alone, or because they are under financial strain having to pay others to do the work their husbands previously did.
"This contribution was substantial. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, men over 65 spend an average of 19.5 hours per week on domestic services.
"Now the widows of waterside workers whose lives were tragically shortened by dangerous workplace conditions - in particular their exposure to asbestos - will not suffer further hardship after prematurely losing their husbands."
Greenpeace campaigner and Australian Services Union member Nic Clyde is facing six years jail following a protest coinciding with the July 14 testing of the Star Wars National Missile Defence system in California.
Clyde was one of 15 protestors - including one other Australian - and two journalists who were arrested. They face a pre-trial hearing on August 6 and indictment hearing on August 13.
ASU services division secretary Luke Foley says while the issue is political - it's also industrial. "Nic Clyde was arrested for doing his job and as unionists we should be supporting him".
"Pressing severe charges against peaceful protestors is an overreaction on the part of the US authorities".
The NSW Labor Council is backing the ASU, which has called on the Minister for Foreign Affairs to make a formal request to the US Administration to drop charges against the Australians.
See our features section for an interview with Nic Clyde
by Thea Ormond
Against the rain, and against what appears to be "debt fatigue" on the part of the leaders of the G8, 500 determined Debt campaigners formed a memorial procession through the streets of Sydney.
To the slow beat of a drum, people walked, carrying banners, a coffin and dozens of white crosses which stood out against a back-drop of black umbrellas and drizzle in a dramatic scene which impressed the watching crowds. Participants in the March were remembering those who are dying, many of them children, because the global community insists that their governments spend more of their meagre resources on servicing debts than on health. Unlike protests in Genoa, the Sydney based event was peaceful.
They processed from Hyde Park, down to First Fleet Park, where the rally was addressed by the Nigerian High Commissioner, Father Brian Gore and ALP Member of Parliament Tania Plibersek.
Jubilee campaigners this year were advocating for a New Deal on Debt, the centre piece of which would be 100% cancellation of debts owed to the international institutions, the IMF and World Bank. "As key shareholders in the IMF and World Bank, the G8 have a moral duty to make this happen," said spokesperson Fr Brian Gore. "It is appalling that the World Bank and IMF are still insisting on being repaid. This is money tearing teachers and nurses out of the poorest communities in the world."
Despite concerns about corruption, where substantial debt relief has finally come through it has resulted in significant improvements in social indicators. In Uganda primary school enrolments doubled in a matter of months. In Mozambique an extra half a million children have been immunised against killer diseases. The story is similar in South American Guyana.
In the lead-up to this year's summit the leaders of the world's most wealthy nations pointed to the gains made and claimed they could not afford to do more. At the summit, once again they made no new substantial decisions regarding the debts of the most impoverished countries. They dined in luxury and simply reaffirmed the current Heavily Indebted Poor Country Initiative (HIPC), and offered an extra US$1 billion to a Global AIDS and Health Fund.
Campaigners continue to point out the inadequacies of HIPC which has delivered an average of only 27% reduction in debt service to just twenty-three countries, on condition that these countries follow structural adjustment programs (SAPs) which in fact hurt the poor. The billion collectively offered by the richest nations to tackle AIDS is the same as was donated by one individual - Bill Gates - and a fraction of what is needed. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan estimates of the amount required is US$7 10 billion.
Hence, the strong statements issued by European Jubilee campaigners who travelled to Genoa. Spokespersons for the World Development Movement accused the G8 of "debt fatigue" and vowed to continue campaigning until all unpayable debt is cancelled. Jessica Woodroffe, Head of Policy at WDM, said "Under-funded gimmicks and empty promises on trade and investment will not make up for their failure to deliver the US$100 billion debt relief promised by the G8 in Cologne. Not a single country has received the level of debt relief it needs in the fight against poverty.......These are the poorest countries in the world. It is obscene that the leaders of the rich world can wine and dine in the splendour of a luxury liner while offering only crumbs in debt relief."
Adrian Lovett, Director of Drop the Debt stated, "The problem is not just the unnecessary scale and glitz of these summits. It is the failure of these leaders to use their great wealth and power to attack poverty for example by cancelling IMF and World Bank debt. These summits should be about direct action by the G8, in the form of meaningful policies which are about substance, not spin. ... African leaders, and those who support them, were the voices of sanity in Genoa."
Locally, Jubilee has managed to get the Australian Government to cancel the A$7 million owed by Nicaragua. We now call on the Government to also write off debts owed by Ethiopia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Nepal and Bangladesh which collectively owe A$510 million. Where there is substantial reason to believe the money would not be used for the poor, we advocate that trusts funds be established. At current rates of repayment a move like this would cost no more than the price of two cappuccinos per Australian per year, but it could save many lives in the countries concerned.
If the determination shown by participants in Sunday's wet weather march is any indication, Sydney can expect to see more demonstrations and continuing action until real progress is made, here and overseas, to lift the burden of unpayable debt off the backs of the world's poor.
by Andrew Casey
Limro Cleaning Services sacked Slavica Noveska last Friday.
The company has been involved in a drawn out campaign over annual leave rights for their 50 year old employee.
" This is an atrocious act to sack Slavica while she is overseas visiting her parents in Macedonia ," Gil Anderson ACT LHMU Cleaners Union Secretary said .
" This is an act of bastardry by an obsessive employer who does not want their decisions to be challenged - not by their employees, not by the union or not by the Industrial Relations Commission.
" The company lost a decision in the Industrial Relations Commission, they've retaliated and sacked her while she is overseas."
Unreasonable boss
The Industrial Relations Commission had described as ' unreasonable' Limro Cleaning Services decision to deny Slavica Noveska her annual leave.
Because of the company's behaviour the Commission varied the Award to ensure annual leave rights for all cleaners.
Limro Cleaning Services had lodged an appeal against this decision, which was to be heard on Monday but, after sacking Slavica Noveska on Friday, they acted on Sunday to withdraw from the Industrial Relations Commission proceedings.
" Limro Cleaning Services had been pushing to get a Full Bench IRC hearing to declare that a boss has a right to deny annual leave, " Gil Anderson said.
" The case went before the AIRC with Mrs Noveska winning the right to take her holidays at her chosen time - but the boss was unhappy that his decision had been challenged.
Strong unionist
" Slavica Noveska is a strong unionist and she knows she is not fighting just for herself - she is fighting for all cleaners and all Australian workers.
" She has stuck by her union principles to help rewrite Australian workers annual leave rights with the AIRC coming down on her side declaring the boss unreasonable and changing the Award saying annual leave shall not be withheld unreasonably," Gil Anderson said.
" All Slavica wanted to do was attend a family wedding in Macedonia, see her aging parents - possibly for the last time - and to see her four-year-old grandson for the first time. "
Slavica Noveska has worked for Limro Cleaning Services for six years.
Limro Cleaning Services has the commercial cleaning contract for Parliament House and Calvary Hospital in Canberra.
At last Friday's meeting of the Executive Council unions unanimously resolved that more consultation was needed over the draft Peaceful Assemblies Bill.
It is believed that the government intends to introduce the Bill in the Spring Session of Parliament. Unions are seeking urgent talks with Police Minister, Mr Andre Haermeyer.
"We don't see a need for this Bill in its current form and it gives police more powers than they've have had previously," said Leigh Hubbard, Trade Hall Council Secretary.
"While we agree the Unlawful Assemblies and Processions Act 1958 is out of date, this is an important piece of law which affects civil liberties and the right to protest and it should not be hastily dealt with by the State Government or Parliament." Parliament's Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee reviewed the legislation in 1996, and again in 1999, making a number of recommendations, including the introduction of a legal recognition of a right to protest ands assembly.
Mr Hubbard said that unions welcomed legal recognition of a right to rally and protest, but that the restrictions make a mockery of the right in the proposed Bill. "As with any legislation the devil is in the detail. Unions believe the Bill reduces the separation of powers between the state and police. Under the current Unlawful Assemblies and Processions Act, 1958, a magistrate has to determine that an assembly is "riotous" and once that determination is made the police can disperse a crowd. In this new draft bill, a police officer of the rank of Senior Sergeant or above can alone determine whether or not a gathering is, or is likely to become 'riotous' and proceed to disperse it."
"The union movement has a long and proud history of peaceful assembly and of working co-operatively with police to ensure that events occur without incident. We are deeply concerned about the lack of consultation over this Bill. As the movement that holds more marches, rallies, pickets and other public gatherings than any other part of the community, we think it is only common sense to consult properly before the matter proceeds."
by Andrew Casey
" This is the first step in what we hope will be an on-going campaign to provide collective security and workplace improvements for a group of very poorly paid workers in our community," Terry Breheny, Victorian LHMU Assistant Secretary said .
" The weight loss industry sells gloss and glamour but they pay their workers a pittance.
" Ninety-percent of the Jenny Craig Weight Loss Centre workers have joined the LHMU and stuck with the union through a long process to win this first Award. "
The certified award has provided consultants and managers with pay rises of more than 30 per cent.
" We want to maintain a good activist and delegate structure so that these workers can win better conditions and the respect they deserve."
The Jenny Craig (Victoria) Award 2001 has increased the wages of the workers; provided redundancy benefits; overtime rates; accident pay; a choice of superannuation fund; Saturday, Sunday and public holiday rates; annual leave loading and public holidays.
The LHMU has now also lodged a claim in the Federal Court for back pay for members. The company is believed to have paid under th statutory minimum rate of $10.50 an hour since 1997, despite offering commissions on top of basic pay.
Individual employment contracts
The Award conditions will not apply to the few individuals who chose not to be in the union but signed individual employment contracts.
" Individual employment contracts are promoted by the Howard Government.
" Few individual employment contracts provide the same protections, conditions and benefits that Award-based collective agreements can provide.
" Individual employment contracts tend to provide little public accountability for bad workplace practices, lock people into poor conditions and demeaning relationships with the boss and fellow workers," Terry Breheny said.
The wages of Weight Loss Counsellors have gone from $8.79 per hour to $12.34 per hour.
The wages of Weight Loss Centre Directors have gone from $9.60 per hour to $13.35 per hour.
There are about 20 Jenny Craig Weight Loss Centres in Victoria.
by Liz Phillips
The matter was heard in July and at that hearing the application was opposed by the QCCI and other employer organisations.
The QCU application was to flow on the National Wage Case outcome to State Award workers. Depending on a worker's current rate of pay, the increases were for $13.00, $15.00 and $17.00 per week. The majority of employers argued that the increase should be only $10.00 per week for all workers.
The Queensland Industrial Relations Commission has agreed to the QCU application which means that from 1 September this year, over 350,000 workers on Award base rates will get a pay increase the same as those on Federal Awards.
QCU General Secretary, Grace Grace welcomed the outcome.
"These increases will be welcomed by workers on Award rates of pay and we are glad that the operative date for the increases has been preserved by this decision."
"Workers who will receive this wage increase are on the lower end of the wage scale and who have been hardest hit with price increases related to the introduction of the GST and the 6% CPI figure which is a direct result of the introduction of the GST."
"The position adopted by the QCCI and other employers that would have denied these workers the same wage increases enjoyed by Federal Award workers is to be condemned. The employers have no idea how hard it is for Award workers to get by in the current economic climate."
by Andrew Casey
" The laws, introduced by the State Government, help to create workplaces where our children are safe and protected," says Sonia Minutillo, from the LHMU Child Care Union.
" However child care workers and their union are concerned that these new laws work properly, do not unfairly deny people jobs and are not an excessive invasion of our members' privacy."
The LHMU Caring for the Future child care conference will be held in Sydney on Saturday 25th August 2001.
The NSW Commissioner for Children and Young People, Gillian Calvert, will discuss the first year of operation of the working-with-children laws at the LHMU's child care conference.
Background checks
Employers must now check, against a national database, all applicants for jobs working with children - both paid and voluntary workers.
In the first six months of the operation of the new laws - which came into place in July 2000 - employers were required to check if any existing employees working with children had been convicted of a serious sex offense.
" The Caring for the Future conference is expected to attract a large and enthusiastic audience of child care workers.
" Last year we had more than 100 people attending and getting involved in some spirited debate over the future of our industry," Sonia Minutillo said.
For further information about the conference and how to book a place click here.
Ten schoolchildren, including a girl who worked 16 hours on a Saturday and another who worked until 2am on a schoolday, were found to be illegally employed at a McDonald's in Camberley, Surrey.
The company that holds the franchises for the restaurants, Ikhya Enterprises, was fined �12,400 (about $35,000) by north-west Surrey magistrates, after admitting 20 offences of illegally employing schoolchildren.
This is thought to be one of the largest fines imposed on a company for breaking laws relating to child working conditions, and has been welcomed by child employment experts as evidence that the courts are beginning to take such offences more seriously.
The TUC, which believes up to 500,000 schoolchildren could be working illegally, says a firm like McDonald's has a special responsibility to ensure that youngsters were not distracted from school work.
Deputy General Secretary Brendan Barber says the courts were right to hand out this heavy fine and other councils should ensure McDonald's franchisees obey the law.
The NSW Labor Council endorsed the call by the International Confederation of free Trade Unions for the Inquiry after hearing evidence of the endemic abuses against trade unionists.
At least 129 Colombian trade unionists were murdered in 2000, with another 63 assassinated this year.
The ILO commission of inquiry is significant because it is the first step in the process of imposing penal provisions such as those currently in force against the Burmese regime.
More details: http://www.icftu.org
Hiroshima Day 2001 March & Rally Sat August 4
At 8.15am on August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, incinerating 140,000 men, women and children.
Three days later at 11.02am, at least 74,000 men, women and children were killed in Nagasaki by a second atomic blast.
For many years, the Hiroshima Day Committee in Sydney has organised a commemoration of these events, under the slogan of 'Hiroshima Never Again'.
Over the years, the march has focussed on different issues. But the central theme has always been: the only answer to nuclear threat is to abolish all nuclear weapons.
Protest against the US National Missile Defence plan
The 2001 Hiroshima Day commemoration takes place against the background of the US National Missile Defence plan. Australia is involved in this plan through the US military facility at Pine Gap, near Alice Springs.
The US National Missile Defence will destroy the existing international arms control and disarmament regime, provoke a new nuclear arms race and trigger a wave of destabilising events around the world.
NMD is, in fact, an offensive program which would allow the US to attack other countries without fear of retaliation.
With NMD, the US Government is using its economic and technological strengths to launch a new arms race. The aim is to reinforce US dominance in the Asia Pacific region - as Asian countries, especially China, are provoked into exhausting economic and social resources in their attempt to match the US military might.
NMD is the armed wing of globalisation.
Australia's involvement
The use of the US base at Pine Gap near Alice Springs for NMD will involve Australia and make us a nuclear target. The Australian Government's support for NMD makes us complicit in a program that will significantly destabilise global security.
92% of Australians called on the government to take a leading role in the elimination of nuclear weapons, according to a Morgan poll. The Federal Government has chosen to ignore those views and the Senate resolution calling on the US not to deploy NMD.
Hiroshima Day 2001 provides an opportunity for all thinking Australians, trade union members and the wide community, to demonstrate your opposition to the US Government's missile plans.
Commemorations will also refer to local issues, such as the threats from the planned new nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights and plans for a nuclear waste repository in Australia.
Hiroshima Never Again:
Hiroshima Day Committee: PO Box K257 Haymarket NSW 1240: Chairpersons: Bronwyn Marks, Brian Miller, CFMEU Construction, NSW Branch.
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BURMA - 13th Anniversary of 8.8.88
13 years ago in August 1988, a massive and peaceful "people power" movement demanded an end to 26 years of dictatorship and the restoration of democracy. The army reacted fiercely to preserve its rule. Crowds of peaceful protesters were machine-gunned by troops; thousands died. Thousands of people were imprisoned and forced to flee to the border after a new military junta seized direct power in September to quell the democracy movement. People of Burma still struggle for their freedom and human rights.
To commemorate the 13th anniversary of "people power" movement and to demand the restoration of democracy and human rights in Burma, the Burmese community in Sydney, Melbourne, and Canberra will be holding a peaceful demonstration in a park opposite to the Burmese embassy in Canberra on 8 August 2001.
Date: Wednesday 8 August 2001
Place: Burmese embassy,
Arkana Drive
Yarralumla, Canberra
Time: 1:00 pm
(Buses will depart from AYBL centre, 21 Kerrs Road, Lidcombe at 7:00 am.)
Organized by Joint Action Committee for Democracy in Burma (Sydney) and CCDB (Melbourne)
Contact: Aye Kyaw (Mobile: 0403335500)
Aung Naing (Mobile: 041333 5629, Tel: 02 97381241)
Peter Botsman, Tool of the Week in Issue 104, isn't going to criticise the "union movement for gratuitous or self seeking purposes". He is going to criticise us "from outside the fold" - presumably for our own good - or perhaps in the interest of those seeking to turn the Australian Labor Party into an imitation of the US Democratic Party.
To have any credibility with the union movement, Peter Botsman is going to have to demonstrate at least some grasp of the issues confronting unions. He attacks the organising model because "it's about a defensive older style industrial unionism." Gee, that's useful. But I do have to ask, who says? What's the evidence? Where's the research? Indeed, I'm interested in what the definition for his "Organising Model" is. (Be careful, Peter, it's a trick question. You may not have caught up but Australian unions have been developing and refining their own home grown version of the Organising Model over the past six years.)
Indeed, where is the evidence for the pronouncement that we need to link up with "people (especially younger people) working in and starting up small businesses in some constructive way."
Research from ACIRRT commissioned by the ACTU and the Labor Council, shows that our areas of potential growth lie in quite different areas.
The union movement you criticise is largely not there any more. Yes we still have our troglodytes who think that getting a Labor Government will solve all our problems or the way to get new members is take them around the back of the shed and thump them until they join - but they are very few and far between. The 2 million members we have now are virtually all volunteers. It's the biggest organisation in the country and its made up of working people who are willing to fork out quite significant sums of money to be members. That's your problem. That's why the ALP needs to keep them in the tent. Whatever the percentages, we will represent for the foreseeable future a huge proportion of voters and their votes determine who holds Government - as they did most notably in 1996. Neither Kim Beazley nor Al Gore's successor can ever hope to get close to winning unless they have a substantial proportion of our members prepared to vote for them.
Neither can you write off our leaders as union bosses out of touch with their membership. Both ACTU and Labor Council - as well as individual unions - spend large amounts of money every year commissioning research to make sure that what they are saying reflects what members think. Organisers are now trained to ask questions and listen rather than just put out a party line. Strategy is informed by research into not just what members think but also by research into community attitudes generally and the changing shape of the labor market. We can tell your views are misguided because we have the research on where the most easily organised non-members are.
We have tested our organising techniques over the last six years and we reckon they work. We need more organisers and more money to make real inroads into the non union workforce. But that will happen given time.
Twelve unions have signed onto a longitudinal study of delegate and organiser attitudes over the next three years to track the degree to which their efforts are successful. The study is being conducted by researchers we trust, who have been engaged with us for some years in testing our ideas and strategies and who we know have the interest of working people at heart.
Other unions are mid way through a major research project on the effectiveness of particular trade unions. The unions concerned have welcomed them into their organisations - again because they trust the researchers.
In the union movement we understand that we are in the middle of a class war - not of our making but declared on us by most employers and our national Government. We will fight that war and I suspect win, because we are using every possible survival tool available to us. We are taking casualties. Some of our activists are losing their jobs. Some of our staff are burning out. Others are hanging in but putting real pressure on their families. We lose some battles and the way in which members are paid and treated at work in some cases goes backwards. In that context, forgive us if we fail to be amused by erstwhile friends taking cheap shots.
We all wish the Whitlam Foundation well - with that glorious name how could we do otherwise? But its Director needs to think carefully before denigrating an institution so critical to the fight for fairness in Australian society.
Michael Crosby
Joint Director
ACTU Organising Centre
One point for those who are quick to condemn manufacturing unions for their industrial action in the car industry.
Manufactures, large and small, have been able to move to a "just in time" manufacturing regime. No longer do car plants need weeks of parts in stock, and are they have been saved the expense of warehouses, storemen and clerks. This has only been possible because of a climate of good industrial relations, going back many years.
Just in time has given millions in extra profits to big business, much of it foreign owned. Workers have gained very little of the benefits through their pay packets. The system does mean, however, that one industrial dispute anywhere in the manufacturing chain will result in unintended stand-downs for others.
Noel Baxendell
Would it not be possible for the international labour movement to set up a world-wide website where members could find information on companies which have bad industrial relations records and be offered the option to protest via email to their directors,and sign online petitions.
I feel the publicity generated by the inclusion on such a site (or the threat of it) would make negotiations with such companies much easier.I would like to draw your attention to www.stoptorture.org ,which i feel would be an excellent model for what I am suggesting.This site was developed and is maintained by http://www.getactivesoftware.com ,the leaders in the field of such software. Perhaps the application forms of trade unions could offer the option for local branches to send email on behalf of members as issues arise in the event of them not having internet access.
Union and Left leaning organizations worldwide could all provide access from their sites via a link
I also think that the development of a union orientated chatroom would be beneficial to the development of original ideas from the grassroots level and give us all the feeling of being part of a thriving community.
Yours Fraternally
Kris McHale
Ed: thanks for the ideas - we do have a chatroom on LaborNet - just waiting for critical mass to make it work!
I am a big supporter of Members Equity and I think the concept of a 'Workers' Bank' is a good idea.....but...
Members Equity should ensure that its relationships with union members are always positive and principled.
Members Equity needs to ensure that the groups it operates in partnership with also have relationships with union members who are positive and principled.
Our union has some problems at the moment with one of Members Equity's important partners in this exercise AXA, the French multinational finance company.
At AXA's HQ in Melbourne the company has recently changed the parameters of the contracted out cleaning service in such a way that unionised cleaners are losing jobs and are being financially penalised.
The LHMU has had a dispute with the company over this issue for some months now.
AXA keeps trying - Pontius Pilate like - to wash its hands of the problem by saying it has nothing to do with them, it is purely a matter between the contract cleaner and the union.
The truth is the contract cleaner is at the beck and call of AXA who tendered out the job and in the final instance sets the parameters.
Members Equity, as the Workers Bank, needs to show that it is not prepared to work with companies who behave in ways which financially hurt their customers base - or their potential customer base.
Yours
Andrew Casey
PS. Let me declare here that I am a satisfied customer of Members Equity as I have a great home loan from them and use their credit cards. However I am uncomfortable with their behaviour towards LHMU members.
Jonathon Hamberger |
What do you stand for as Employment Advocate?
The key reason why the OEA exists is that there are a lot of people out there who the traditional industrial relations system has largely disenfranchised. The system traditionally is based around registered organisations and large employers, employer associations and tribunals. But most workers aren't in unions - rightly or wrongly that is the reality - and a lot of people are in small businesses which may or may not belong to registered organisations, and who traditionally haven't had a lot of opportunities to really do much within the system.
When the Workplace Relations Act came in at the end of 1996, it gave some opportunities and obligations on individual workers - including non-union workers - and also in relation to small business and individual businesses generally. Now, I think the Government recognised that it was one thing to give these traditionally disenfranchised groups rights and responsibilities, but the realities of the workplace mean that without someone to help them through their legal rights and responsibilities - to assist them - those rights and responsibilities might just be a bit of paper.
If you take for example AWAs, the idea is that individual workers should be able to negotiate directly with an individual employer - but there is also recognition by Parliament when they passed their legislation, that there are in fact, imbalances in power relationships, and that to ensure that employees were not exploited in that negotiation of individual agreements, that there be a government body charged with making sure that their rights are protected. And in relation to freedom of association, the same really, that individual workers are given rights about whether they do or don't join a union. That is great to have it on paper - a right, but how do you actually enforce that right? It is pretty hard for individual workers to take legal action in the Federal Court or any other court, and so there is an organization charged with assisting individual workers in that situation. And that covers, I might say, both the right not to be in a union, and indeed also the right to be in a union.
Can you understand the suspicions of some in the trade union movement of an organisation headed by somebody who came out of Peter Reith's office?
I worked for Peter Reith for a year. I have actually been in industrial relations for getting on to 20 years.
But can you understand the perception that you are anti-union?
Of course I can. I actually do have quite strong personal views, which may or may not coincide with Peter Reith. I used to be, I might say, a union delegate. I used to actually go and do the hard job of actually trying to persuade people to join a union. I was a union member for most of my working life.
Who were you a delegate with?
I was actually a delegate with the ACOA. I was a member when I was in the Public Service.
What was that experience like?
It gave me some insights into why people do and don't join unions.
Were you successful?
It was a hard ask. Because people had very personal reasons why they would or wouldn't join. In my opinion, except for a fairly small minority joining a union is not an ideological or philosophical issue. For most workers it is a pretty pragmatic issue. People join unions because they think it is in their interest to join - or they don't join because they don't think it is in their interest to join most of the time. Obviously some people do join and don't join because they are given no choice about it, but in this day and age most workers, though not all, do have an effective choice about whether to join or not, which, as I said, I think is a good thing.
In the Federal Public Service, certainly in the white collar areas, it always has been a choice. There has never been compulsory unionism as far as I am aware in the Commonwealth Public Service, certainly not in the white collar areas. And yet they have had relatively high levels of union membership, so obviously a lot of people have chosen to join. But some people wouldn't join because when they had actually sought assistance from the union on a particular grievance it hadn't been forthcoming. Now, that may or may not have been justified from the union's point of view. You can always go back and look at the individual circumstances of the case. But often that is when people would say, right, I'm fed up, I don't want to be in there.
And I still think that for unions the key issue - and I have read a lot of stuff about the Organising Model and all the rest of it - that is all interesting - but it is still true to say that the key issue about getting people to join unions is to provide a good level of service at the individual level. And yes, people may join for things like collective bargaining and negotiation of pay and conditions, but for a lot of people, what they are looking for from their union is someone who they can seek assistance from when they have had a problem, usually with their employer, whether it is some kind of grievance, or dismissal, or a workers compensation problem.
In fact, the trouble is that a lot of people feel that when it comes to the crunch, they don't get any help. And those are the people that were hardest to persuade to join the union. They wouldn't have an ideological problem with it, but they had a personal experience which didn't make it favourable for them to fork out whatever it was - the five dollars a week. And I think that it is as simple as that at the end of the day.
Our statistics, plus anecdotal evidence, I might add, suggests that there are a large number of workers being intimidated from joining unions. You would have seen our survey last week: If free to choose, would you be a member? Do you see this as a significant problem?
Can I say that I don't think that is what your statistics show. With all due respect to your survey, that is nothing new. It has been clear for many years that if you do a survey of workers and you ask would you like to be in a union or something along those lines, substantially more people will say they would like to be in a union than actually are. I guess the question then becomes: Why haven't they joined?
Now, in my view, in some cases there is no doubt that they feel intimidated by their employer from joining. I do not take the view that that doesn't happen. We know that it happens and we have dealt at the OEA with over 150 cases where employees have complained either that they have been prevented from joining a union by their employer or that they have suffered some consequence for being a member of a union.
So there is no doubt that it is a problem. I have never said that there is no issue there. However, my personal view is that probably a much bigger issue is that in many workplaces there is no effective union presence and so why people aren't free to join isn't so much that their employer won't let them join - though as I said, that does happen. There are certain situations like that. But that there is nowhere to join.
The unions have virtually no presence in small business nowadays - small to medium sized business. And that is where over half the workforce is. People there who may well have joined a union - they wouldn't even know where to start to join a union. I actually think that that is a bigger issue in terms of people not joining unions.
I don't pretend that there isn't a problem in some workplaces with employers intimidating people from joining unions. We have actually dealt with a number of matters like that.
What do you do in those cases?
We have got a very recent example of this from just the other day at a large manufacturing company, a number of employees who were long term casuals who I think had been engaged through a labour hire company, had indicated that they intended to join a union and got told basically we don't have union members here, and essentially got dismissed. They complained to us and we took the matter up with the employer and we were able to get compensation for them.
But would you agree that in the majority of cases, a worker who is too intimidated to join a union is going to be too intimidated to file a complaint with the Employment Advocate?
I don't know about the majority of cases. We do have quite a lot of people who do it. It is always true in the area of industrial relations that when you are talking about issues of the workplace, that some people will feel nervous about going to seek assistance from a third party, whether it be a union, whether it be the Department of Industrial Relations, whether it be the OEA. Nevertheless a lot of people do do it. It is probably much more common to do it - I suppose unfortunately but realistically - in this kind of situation when someone is no longer employed at the place. The same with award breaches. People are much more likely to take it up when they have left their employment.
One of the things we have actually been quite active in and where we have taken legal action on more than one occasion, is where people have been victimised for seeking the assistance of a body such as the OEA or the Department of Industrial Relations. You have a legal right to be protected against victimisation for seeking that assistance under Part 10A of the Workplace Relations Act. We have actually taken legal action in a couple of matters, actually on that point and have successfully got compensation for employees concerned.
Going back a step. If your proposition that a lot of people in small to medium businesses would like to be in a union if they could, but the union isn't there, is there some public policy role for government to assist them in getting unionised - in finding the correct union for them? Should there be a role if there is a desire there from an organisation like yourselves to actually get people in touch with unions?
We certainly do promote as far as we can the right for people to join and we certainly tell small businesses and employers in small businesses - and we have even had advertising campaigns to the effect that you have the right to join. We haven't actually gone out recruiting for unions in the sense of actually saying here is the phone number you ring and this is the person you contact because I think that is a job for the unions to do. But certainly we have actually actively promoted .....
But a facilitative role? There must be some sort of public policy in assisting people make exercise their choice to join a union...
If you go to our website I am sure we have the ACTU and probably the Labor Council's phone number on it. I don't have a problem with it. If you want to give us your contact details we'll put them on our website. I don't have a problem with it in principle. We are not going to go out there actively recruiting people. It is not our job to persuade people to join or not join unions.
But we certainly will go out there and educate people about their rights. That is really our role. To go out there and tell people you have the right. Whatever your employer says, don't believe it: you have the right to choose to be in a union or not to be in a union.
We spent quite a bit of money on an advertising campaign amongst a number of other initiatives, to actually make that point and I must say we do get a lot of calls about this issue and as I said we are quite active in promoting the right to join unions, as well as the right not to join.
On the building industry Royal Commission, are you concerned that your office has been used as a political pawn in this whole process?
The Minister to whom I report, asked for a report on broadly speaking the state of industrial relations in the building industry and whether we were aware of unacceptable practices. It would have been quite inappropriate of us not to have given him such a report. I thought that was a perfectly reasonable request.
Critics say that it was merely a collection of media reports. It was just a summary of what had been in the papers, which were quite sensationalised stories over the previous few months. Did you do extra research beyond going through the media clippings?
Certainly, some of it was based on media reports, but most of it wasn't. We deal not only with issues of freedom of association, we also deal with issues of coercion in enterprise agreement making; issues about right of entry; issues about strike pay - and in those areas the majority of complaints by far come from the building industry.
As well as those issues, we have compliance officers around the country, and we come into contact with a lot of issues of inappropriate behaviour in the building and construction industry in particular. Most of what was in that report was based on the information we had quite independently obtained.
Some of the issues are outside our jurisdiction and we don't formally investigate matters that are outside our jurisdiction obviously, however, we acquire a lot of information almost incidentally to doing stuff that is within our jurisdiction, and this is particularly true in the building and construction industry.
So, most of what was in that report was actually based on our own independent sources of information. Most of it wasn't based on the media. But what happened was of course, as these things always happen is the media picked up on the stuff that was the most sensational kind of matters we raised in our report, and a lot of that stuff was actually in the media so there was a lot of circularity about it. The media reporting on essentially the media, but no, the guts of our report wasn't based on media reports.
Labor has vowed to disband your office if they win power. (a) Do you think you could work with a Labor Government if they kept it going and (b) What do you think would be lost if the Employment Advocate was disbanded?
Most of my staff are career public servants. I know some people like to portray us as some sort of band of ideological zealots, out to achieve some sort of political gain, but in fact, most people are career public servants, and we have quite a lot of people from a union background. I think we have significantly more people from a union background than we have from employers' background.
I have worked as a public servant for governments of both persuasions, so I don't think there is any doubt that if there was a Labor Government and they wanted us to continue to exist in some form or other, or in fact whether that was the result - the parliamentary game if you like - then I am sure we could work with the Government. I certainly could and I am sure all of my staff could.
What would be lost if we didn't exist? I guess that goes back to the point of why we were there in the first place.
Let me take an issue of the freedom of association. It is interesting that the freedom of association provisions in the Workplace Relations Act have been used very extensively by unions, which is fine. However, the FOA provisions, as well as giving rights to unions and their members, also give rights to people who aren't in unions and it is interesting that as far as I am aware the only use of the freedom of association provisions by people other than unions has in fact been by the OEA.
Going beyond that, there has been no suggestion that a Labor Government would repeal the provisions that give workers the right to choose whether or not to join a union as far as I am aware. That has not been an issue. No one has even talked about it in fact and I dare say they wouldn't. It is one thing to give people a right in an Act of Parliament - it is just a piece of paper at the end of the day in some respects - but if you don't have any means of enforcing that right then it is a dead letter.
If you genuinely want to give workers the right to choose whether to be in a union - you can argue about whether or not that is a good thing or a bad thing - but if you accept the principle that people should actually be able to choose, you need something like the OEA in my view to make that a real right, rather than just a paper right.
Now, it doesn't have to be the OEA, you could have somebody else do it, but you need to have somebody like it. Until the OEA was set up there was no such body at the Commonwealth level. With all due respect to the Federal Department of Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business, their Office of Workplace Services, which I suppose in theory could perform a role like that, has always focussed heavily on issues of award compliance, which is a big area. There is a lot of work to be done and they have enough time handling that in terms of resources - it is a big enough job.
That in a nutshell is what would be lost.
Again, if you were to let us say, retain AWAs, because I know Beazley says he will abolish AWAs, but if AWAs - who knows what will happen in Parliament if Labor get it - won't necessarily control the Senate - who knows what will happen. But let us say AWAs still exist, of course in theory you could give a greater role to the Industrial Relations Commission in relation to AWAs, that is certainly one point of view, but at the end of the day if you want to make sure that workers under AWAs have rights that are protected, you probably need a body something like the OEA to assist there, even if there is a bigger role for the Commission.
Say, for example, somebody to deal with issues of alleged duress, somebody to investigate breaches or alleged breaches of AWAs and so on, which is a role we perform.
So I think it is the small business, the individual, predominantly non-unionised worker - but remember that is the majority of workers - who I think would lose if the OEA didn't exist.
I just want to add that, OK, we have taken quite a lot of matters to court, but that is the tip of the iceberg of what we deal with on a day to day basis. We are dealing with individual workplace matters everyday, around the country, where someone's rights are potentially being abused. Sometimes it is a small business. Probably at least as commonly if not more commonly, it is an employee. If you took us away you need someone to fulfil that role.
One final question. It is a question we asked in our survey and I would be interested in your response. Do you agree with the proposition that Australia would be better off without trade unions?
No. I think Australia would be worse off without trade unions, that is my personal view.
Protesting or Blockading at CHOGM? - by Peter Murphy
Progressive activists have been told since May 1 that stopping CHOGM is next. There are two strongly competing views about how to protest at CHOGM - shut it down, or make it a forum for protest. There are many reasons put up for protesting at CHOGM, using either tactic. Already, some activists have started to "switch off" CHOGM.
The call to blockade and shut down CHOGM has come from just a few organisations, not by consultation, but by declaration. This is not the way to develop the dynamic of popular protest that made such an impact at S11 against the World Economic Forum. It is likely to demobilise and reduce the numbers that will be involved at CHOGM.
What are the politics and crucial issues behind this rather bewildering barrage of arguments and demands around CHOGM?
CHOGM is a meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of Government. The Commonwealth is a body of 54 nations, all but one from the former British Empire, but also including since 1995 Mozambique, a former Portuguese African colony, because of its historic ties with the anti-apartheid struggle. Commonwealth countries have a population of 1.7 billion, or 30% of the world's population.
The Commonwealth is the latest evolution of what was the British Empire. It started as the British Commonwealth of Nations after the Imperial Conference of Westminster in 1926. After national liberation movements successfully fought for de-colonisation, which started in India in 1947, the "British" was dropped in 1949 and republics like India welcomed. In 1971, the Singapore Declaration spelt out the Commonwealth's commitment to improving human rights and seeking racial and economic justice. In 1991, the Harare Declaration spelt out more clearly that democracy and human rights are the basis for Commonwealth membership. However, it was in the Harare Declaration that the language of the neo-liberal TNC agenda started to emerge in the Commonwealth, in parallel with other international institutions influenced by Thatcherism and Reaganism (the Washington Consensus).
The Commonwealth is best understood as something like the United Nations on a smaller scale. It has broad, even amorphous goals, works on the principle of consultation and consensus, and has open processes with non-government organisation involvement. The Commonwealth has no military force, or coercive power apart from suspension and expulsion.
The Commonwealth stays together because Britain wants to maintain its economic, political and cultural influence in a post-Empire context, and because the non-Anglo member nations want the economic support they can obtain from Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The Commonwealth is a north-south dialogue in motion - hence its continual name changes and the continuing review of its relevance at every CHOGM. Because it is a north-south dialogue where the "northern" member nations want it to continue, the "southern" member states have bargaining power. This is a major reason why the issues of human rights, democracy and development dominate its activities.
The Commonwealth suspends or expels nations which have military coups and non-democratic forms of government. Cases in point are Apartheid South Africa, Ian Smith's Rhodesia, Nigeria under the generals, Fiji after its coups and currently, and Pakistan after its recent military coup. Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe is now a focus of Commonwealth concern.
This is in sharp contrast to the World Economic Forum, which is an organisation of the top 1000 transnational corporations (TNCs); or the WTO, which is an organisation of governments focused on neo-liberal free trade and investment; or the IMF which as an international finance agency dominated by the US Treasury Department to impose TNC interests on vulnerable states; or the World Bank, which is a loan agency for infrastructure projects, run by the US Treasury Department also to promote TNC objectives; or the G8, which is the heads of government of the eight richest nations who meet to coordinate economic policy in the interests of the TNCs of their nations. The WEF, the WTO, the IMF, the World Bank and the G8 promote the interests of TNCs in expanding profits, and pay no attention to human rights or democracy. The CHOGM Business Forum is a meeting of TNCs, much like the WEF, and is a proper target for concerted anti-corporate globalisation protests.
The "Stop CHOGM" case
Those arguing to blockade the Brisbane CHOGM meeting rest their case on two points:
a) CHOGM is the British Empire in another name, and we must repudiate its legacy of dispossession of indigenous people in Australia and all over the world. It is illegitimate and must be shut down.
b) CHOGM is the same as the WEF, WTO, IMF / World Bank or the G8. It is there to promote the neo-liberal free trade and investment agenda against human rights, democracy and genuine development. At the Brisbane CHOGM, there will be a caucus of governments to force nations to vote for expansion of the General Agreement on Trade in Services at the WTO November Ministerial Meeting in Qatar, and to vote for a new general negotiating round - the "Development Round" - with an expanded agenda compared to the Uruguay Round completed in 1994. Therefore it must be shut down.
Protest but no blockade
On the first point, CHOGM is far removed from the British Empire, and only exists because the former colonies see a value in it. Yes, it is a vestige of the British Empire, but so is the Australian Constitution and the Constitutions of all the Australian state governments. But the people proposing to shut down CHOGM for this reason - the British Empire connection - do not propose to shut down the Queensland Parliament or any parliament in Australia. Why not? Because it is manifest today that these parliaments are based on a democratic vote. The Commonwealth applies the same democratic test to its member states. Indigenous rights are abused in Australia, and in many of the Commonwealth member states - and the CHOGM is the perfect place to protest about these abuses. So why shut it down and deny this international forum as a place to communicate this legitimate protest?
It is only in democratic forums that arguments for human rights and genuine development have got any chance to be advanced. TNCs do not support democratic forums which may regulate or constrain their freedom for the broader social and environmental good. But we should.
On the second point, CHOGM has no standing in the WTO, the WEF, or the IMF / World Bank or the G8. Britain and Canada are the only two Commonwealth members that are members of the G8. Decisions made at CHOGM have no direct bearing on these other forums. Nations which may vote for a resolution on a corporate globalisation issue at CHOGM cannot be bound to vote the same way at Qatar. It is highly unlikely that CHOGM will go to the detail of GATS.
However, the general corporate globalisation case will be pushed by the desperate pro-TNC forces at CHOGM. That is a good reason to protest against corporate globalisation at CHOGM and to support those member nations which want to maintain their opposition to a new round in the WTO, and extended agendas for GATS, the Agreement on Agriculture, and the Agreement on Intellectual Property Rights. But to try to shut down CHOGM would be to try to suppress this vital debate.
It would be much better to raise these issues forcefully in protests in Brisbane during CHOGM to support the member nations which also oppose any further power going to the TNCs. Any clear division of opinion (no consensus) on these corporate globalisation issues at CHOGM will be a victory for people everywhere, and we should do our best to make it possible for opposition to the neo-liberal agenda to be expressed. Therefore, the "shut it down" approach is self-defeating.
There are other reasons to object to the call to "shut it down". The broader progressive movement and beyond us, the public, have had no chance to discuss together the best approach to CHOGM, and so the "shut it down" approach is going to divide the protest movement, and tend to isolate the "shut it down" group who will look like a self-appointed vanguard. It worked at S11; it worked to a lesser extent at M1 - another corporate target, but it is not likely to work at CHOGM - not a corporate target.
There are important issues to raise at CHOGM that will be on the agenda - democracy in Fiji after the Speight coup. The Commonwealth needs to be much more forceful in its support for a return to the Constitution in Fiji, and protests outside about this issue should be supported.
Nigeria is back in the fold at the Commonwealth, but human rights abuses in the Ogoni country and elsewhere in the oil fields continue. Protests about this issue should be made at CHOGM.
In Zimbabwe, President Mugabe is waging a war against his own people to hold onto power. Opposition democratic forces, known as the Movement for Democratic Change, want to raise their issues at CHOGM, and should be assisted to do so. The Commonwealth has been very slow to criticise Mugabe until now.
In Papua New Guinea, the police recently shot students protesting against the IMF / World Bank program to privatise everything and to open up custom land for sale. The Howard government strongly supports that program. This issue must be raised on the streets at CHOGM.
John Howard claims there are no human rights abuses in Australia, despite the local and international criticism of mandatory sentencing, his denial of the Stolen Generations, his Wik amendments to Native Title, his cuts to funding for Aboriginal programs, his abuse of the human rights of asylum seekers, his coddling of One Nation. The Howard government should be exposed before the whole world at CHOGM. This opportunity would be denied by the "shut it down" tactic.
All these arguments are about the politics of the competing approaches to protests at CHOGM. They may be answered by claims that both the "shut it down" and the "protest" approaches can go ahead together. This may be what happens, but if so, it will be because of a lack of genuine dialogue among the protesters, and it will undo the movements which want to protest at CHOGM but not deny the heads of government the right to meet.
Firstly, this will happen because the mainstream media, dominated by neo-liberal interests, will focus on the division among the protesters and work to advance their ideological campaign against the global protest movement. In the CHOGM case, they will have plenty of poor country representatives saying that they want to meet and that their right is being denied, thus echoing George Bush, Peter Costello and others who say the protesters are selfish people denying the benefits of globalisation to the poor of the world.
Second, the security deployed at CHOGM to stop a blockade will also stop any protests in the vicinity of the CHOGM events at South Brisbane. This will make headlines, no doubt, but not about the central issues. Nor will it win the sympathy of the public and grow the broad movement against the TNC agenda.
Peter Murphy, Media Alliance Member, Sydney
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From Genoa to CHOGM - Vince Caughley
It is not just the scenes of violence and the death of Carlo Giuliani which is fuelling debate in the aftermath of the Genoa G8 protests. Nor is it simply the fact that Italian police hospitalised 60 unarmed people - many of whom were sleeping - when they raided and smashed up the Independent Media Centre.
The sheer size, the determination and the diversity of anti-capitalist protests have opened up questions about the legitimacy of international bodies - the G8, the World Trade Organisation, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund - to decide the fate of the people of the world.
The protests have, for instance, focussed attention on various trade deals currently being drawn up behind closed doors - like the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), a World Trade Organisation agreement designed to phase out all governmental barriers to international trade and commercial competition in the services sector.
And despite the media's obsession with balaclava-wearing anarchists, it is the range of representation among protesters that should give the big powers cause for concern - stretching across trade unionists, debt and genetic campaigners, greens, reds, fringe parties, social and religious movements, and a variety of NGOs.
Significantly, the Genoa events show that trade unions are taking an increasingly active part in the push against the neo-liberal agenda, being spurred along by a surge of international protest.
Weeks before the G8 meeting, a wave of industrial action swept Italy. 300,000 metalworkers marched through the streets while pilots, flight attendants and air traffic controllers caused chaos in the skies. The marches, dominated by young workers, were incredibly lively and militant. Representatives from the Genoa Social Forum - a key group organising protest activities - spoke at the rallies, inviting the strikers to come to Genoa, and were greeted with an enthusiastic response. Thousands of Italian unionists attended.
In the immediate lead up to the G8 meeting, as European authorities began cracking down on the movements of thousands on their way to Genoa, it was direct union action which helped get activists there. French rail unions, for example, were instrumental in getting 500 peaceful protesters from Britain to Italy after the rail company SCNF had been ordered by the French Minister of Transport to cancel their train.
As the dust settles on Genoa, there is a range of tactical discussions being had about how to take particular protests, issues and demonstrations forward, which is one of the strengths of the movement. Local activists - shocked and inspired by Genoa, and involved in the home grown successes of S11 in Melbourne and the national M1 blockades of Stock Exchange buildings on May Day - are currently engaged in such debate.
Trade unions, of course, have for some time been attempting to grapple with the issues being thrown up by globalisation and the difficulties faced after more than a decade of economic rationalism.
But, as some have strongly hinted previously on Workers On-line, trade union leaderships here should seek to more seriously involve themselves in the debates being had, and openly engage with the growing anti-capitalist movement.
There are two key reasons:
1) The issues being raised by anti-capitalist protests around economic globalisation - free trade, privatisation, labour standards, Third World debt, the environment - are union issues. They are clearly issues that affect the lives of union members. GATS, for example, directly affects the 75% of Australian workers employed in the services sector, not to mention all those who actually require things like health, education, transport, employment or emergency services.
2) There is an obvious need for trade unions to maintain their relevance to not only their current membership, but an upcoming generation of politically aware activists. Unions are the organisations to which millions of people have traditionally looked to protect their living standards. They have been a natural home for many young activists whose involvement has been central to helping unions grow - something certainly worth remembering during a time of serious membership challenges.
The next major stop for anti-capitalism in Australia is the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Brisbane in October. There will be thousands of protesters demonstrating around a number of issues - Indigenous rights, global warming and the environment, Refugee rights, homophobia, and the crippling debt being borne by developing nations.
Importantly, many are organising to protest against the forms of trade liberalisation being pushed by CHOGM members - especially developed nations like Britain, Canada and Australia - in the run up to the next WTO meeting in Qatar in November. CHOGM represents 40% of the membership of the World Trade Organisation, and will be debating how to get the WTO agenda back on track since the events of Seattle in 1999.
The Queensland Council of Unions' decision to hold a rally and march around CHOGM is certainly a welcome development. A day before CHOGM convenes, the rally will be an important opportunity to "officially" involve rank and file workers and provide a focus for uniting all the different campaigns. A big march through city streets will gain enormous publicity and help build the actions for the following day.
Here in Sydney, a number of groups and individuals are mobilising for CHOGM. Activists involved in the 5000 strong M1 protests have booked a train to Brisbane to be there for the QCU march, and are already getting a strong response from both protesters and the media. They are seeking support and involvement from a range of organisations, especially NSW unions.
The participation of organised workers is crucial in helping to shape the debates and tactics around globalisation and free trade. The situation demands that the union movement respond more effectively to what is, fundamentally, a subjugation of democratic and social values to the priorities of the free market.
CHOGM represents a fantastic opportunity for union leaderships to help narrow the divide between unions and anti-capitalist activists, to give further strength to what is a vibrant, optimistic and intelligent movement. In the process, there is enormous potential to build strong links among all those who are fighting for a fair and decent world.
Vince Cauglhey is a member of the Australian Services union
e-change |
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The transformation towards a networked society is being driven by business. But it's not the old model of companies rising to power with a new product. Instead there is a mad rush to occupy the territory. The new economy revolves around the information, how it is packaged, transmitted and received. Those with money link up with those with the ideas, fast-track development, then win or lose( in recent times more likely the latter). The new dynamics have transformed the business world, with a new high-risk, high-return sector overlaying the traditional blue-chip culture. Understanding this new world is a first challenge for policy-makers
The New Economy consists primarily of people who use and understand the network and have been quicker to embrace the cultural changes that the technology engenders.
But a qualification before we get started: not all that is wired can be characterised as 'new economy'; there are new products and new aspects of business that are being delivered through information technology, but it doesn't distinguish them in any way from old bricks and mortar businesses. There's nothing about the technology itself that makes the business either 'new' or successful.
The new and old economies can also be distinguished through how businesses are built. The old way of building a business is by working really hard for five years, doing lots of research and development - growing the company, and. maybe - five years later, you'd have a viable company. On the other side you have the new economy cowboys who's growth strategy is hype and acquisitions For instance, take Sausage Software or Solutions 6, who, just put whole lot of cash on the table and buy out other companys, rather than doing things the conventional way, spending a whole lot of years slogging it out. It has largely been hype that has driven the extraordinarily high share value associated with these types of organisations.
The Big Boys and Defensive Speculation
While there has been a lot of new activity amongst start-ups, you wouldn't write the old mega-corporations out of the picture just yet. There's probably a change in orientation towards big player, historically, that have an information background, like a News ,Sony , IBM or Microsoft.
We've seen some very big names emerge in a very small period of time, for instance, Yahoo, AOL, Netscape, Amazon. Their value has been on the back of big investment by the markets, investors wanting a slice of the new economy, even though they are not sure quite where the value will lie. So we've seen this rush of money into the information sector, from the old economy that is not entirely rational. In recent times this has finally come home to roost.
But as we trawl over the entrails of the dot-Bomb, recognised the failures for what they were: defensive investment. It was rational from the point of view that established players could not afford to risk not taking to risk. Everybody was talking about their business-to- business position, or their eCommerce position, because the market said they had to. The actual validity of the strategy wasn't being looked at. When they were, a lot of the strategies began to unravel at an amazing speed.
But if you consider the underlying dynamics driving this New Economy, the defensiveness was - and remains - entirely justified. If you accept our underlying thesis that network technologies flatten hierarchies into matrixes, big corporate edifices have a lot to fear. Look at the media sector - how can organizations that have traded in scarce information, position themselves in a world where technology makes information easily accessible? For a while, they can attempt buy up each new technology, but this may only allow them to defy gravity for a while. Although the IT crash has slowed down this process, it has only delayed this effect, not stopped it.
The Start-Up and the Golden Handcuffs
The vehicle for a lot of this defensive speculation is the start-up. A start-up is a fast company. It's formed quickly, and has a very short time to market. Within that window of opportunity it is attempting to do things much more quickly than a traditional company. That includes recruiting people, and in the technology sector, that has been a difficult ask. It's attempting to leverage some capital investment, in various ways, either from Angel, and/or from venture capital, some sort of very rapid investment of capital so it can grow.
It's typified by the "burn rate" - the rate at which it's spending that money. They've not got any significant revenue, they're not making a profit. They've not got any profit in sight in any of their business or financial plans...the best is maybe we'll make a profit in four years time...who knows.
The rationale behind them is to get acquired, make a profit and get out, selling to one of the larger companies seeking a new economy asset. So the defining characteristic of a start-up is that there is an exit strategy.
This requires a shift in mindset from the industrial model of innovation. The classic Australian problem has been, that if I'm an inventor, I hate giving up any percentage of my idea in exchange for money. This new generation of start-ups understand that at the end of the day if I get "x" million dollars for my idea, and I'm no longer in the company then that's been a worthwhile exorcise.
Because the prizes are so high, people are prepared to work ridiculous hours for the sake of a start-up. Call it geeksploitation - young workers giving blood in the hope of rewards down the line. You'll find these companies have options plans for staff that become a set of golden handcuffs. You have to make them part of the vision, part of the company, give them a percentage stake. The deal is: stick around, work hard, it's a different less formal atmosphere, you'll be exposed to ranges of skills and responsibilities you'd never be exposed to normally and in a year to eighteen months time when you shares vest, they'll be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Those handcuffs get stronger as you move up the hierarchy of staff.
In the industrial age the value of a business entity was tied up with the value of it's capital. Except at the very top, the employees were expendable and interchangeable. Each person had a defined role and any person could be easily replaced. In the New Economy, a lot more of the value of the firm is linked to the skills of the individual people who make up the organisation. It is now more important, from the viewpoint of the owner or investor, that the employee has an incentive to remain.
Valuing the Asset
The new generation of businesses are very much people driven. It's not so much the technology as what you do with it and who does it. The venture capital community will tell you that the idea doesn't have to be the gleaming idea extends the knowledge envelope, it just has to be sound. They invest in the people and their capacity to deliver that idea, or indeed hand it on to another organisation to commercialise it to the next stage. It is a different model: the people are the key - which may force us to re-evaluate our concept of capital.
An example is Solution 6 which is currently valued on the share market at around $4.9 billion. Solution 6 are an old style IT company, trying to look like a new style IT company, making software for accountants. Last year they made a $66 million loss, but they're talking like a start-up and talking themselves up as application service providers. Currently they're in a merger with Sausage. And what does Sausage do?. Five years age they used to make a dinky little visual basic HTML editor and then the founder of that company tried to do things called snaglets, then he had e-vand and then they did something else. So Sausage Software does something different every six months. Nobody could really say what they do except they seem to be doing except they're making a $1.6 million dollar profit.
So what do either of the companies do? Well at the moment they don't do very much. But they've got a management team there that probably regularly plans to take over the world and you can see their aggressive acquisitions that go towards hyping them up. They talk themselves up and with everybody else talking them up as well they build this phenomenal valuation. If they become big enough, they may be able to have an entrance onto a global stage.
But where does the value in those companies lie? It's largely in relation to whether they are the first to market. So the valuation is potential market share. In the new information economy the expression of these business ideas probably doesn't have precedent.
Whenever a new idea is first to market its valuation will be high. The big question will then be whether they have the personnel to pull the idea off - which is why technology valuations are so fraught with difficulties. It's different from starting a car manufacturing plant and forecasting to produce cars five percent cheaper. In this case the market will come up with a valuation of this technology based on a track record of manufacturing automobiles. In contrast, a lot of the business ideas being invested in here represent a trip into the unknown. For example everyone says Amazon hasn't made money yet, but people still support it because, the idea, if it's able to be delivered, and they get the logistics right...sounds fantastic. So it's the potential that characterises these valuations. That why they're so high - they haven't got a track record to assess potential against...whereas in traditional industries, you do.
The other thing about the new economy is that the markets for these potential product ideas are always expanding. If I'm putting together a proposal for a new type of lathe, the market returns that I can responsibly project over five years might amount to tens of millions, at best. A similar amount of grant money to invest in something associated with the internet, I can project hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue based on the assumptions of the Internet, because the potential applications of any idea are limited only by the take-up of the technology. That's because every market is new, and theoretically global. A new application can be that lucrative - it's just a case of choosing which ones will fly.
Venture Capitalists and Angel Inverstors
Venture capital is a financing mechanism for corporations. The key characteristic is that the investor has an exit strategy. The idea is to come in at a particular stage and provide money combined with some business skill to convert that business to something of greater value, which is then passed on, through an Initial Public Offer (IPO). The game for VCs is simply to cash in their chips and get a return much greater than their initial contribution.
It's more than a loan because the venture capitalist maintains some level of involvement with the running of the business. You get a percentage of equity in the business for your investment as a venture capitalist. Generally most people invest with the initial entrepreneur but over time the entrepreneur's role changes. The entrepreneur, at start-up phase has to accept that at some point in time they might exit the company themselves. They are unlikely to be the CEO of the established company. And that makes sense. Because the one with the good idea, or the one who started up, put all the hours in, isn't going to be the one who can manage a 100 million dollar company.
The biggest myth about venture capital is that it's actually not for new ventures. The venture capital market in Australia is extremely conservative; the way in which it pitches to it's potential candidates is: "You have to jump through an enormous number of hurdles in order for us to be interested in you", so they're not actually promotional, they're very defensive and they don't actually provide money for true start-ups. They generally want to see some sort of track record in a business before they invest.
But there is an earlier phase where a good idea may be seeded by an 'Angel' investor. Angel investment is generally for people with a track record and for getting businesses into shape earlier, because it's really difficult at the start. Once upon a time Angels may have been slightly philanthropic, self interested, small business people with a couple of hundred thousand or a million to invest in a company. Now they're getting together in groups and so you'll see the emergence of groups like the Tin Sheds, East Coast Angels to really give that initial seed investment. You're then looking at further rounds of more full-on venture capital or perhaps institutional investment. That what's typically called first and second round.
The other thing to realise in this is the venture capitalist is not actually not looking at taking a controlling share of the company. If they come to you and say, "we'll give you a million dollars for eighty percent of the company" - then you don't have a company any more. That's the first thing to realise, it's not actually selling the company. Eventually, as you go through successive rounds, everybody is effectively reducing their shareholding. So it may be that the original people in the start-up end up with 10-20% of the company. Even the first round venture capital investors will reduce their shareholding in order to obtain a second round. All the time, when you're doing that, you are in turn, further valuing the company.
So you're getting layers upon layer of venture capital going into a company at various stages. And what makes it an attractive investment is that it is actually a very clean vehicle. Sure you'll have the initial shareholders, some staff, the Angel etc. The second round VC may be the same as the first round VC - if they're happy with the way it's going they may put in some more. Every time they put in more, you're pushing up the stakes. They're always pushing....they're pushing it fast...they're really riding you, because they don't want their money in five years time, they want out in eighteen months time.
The New Corporate Landscape
So if we've got all these start-ups emerging, you've got venture capital funding many of those projects. What does this all mean in terms of the big picture? In the 19th or 20th century corporate landscape, it was virtually impossible to set up a new business because there were enormous barriers to entry, primarily the need to raise large amounts of capital. Markets were thin, there was only room for one or two players in each area, and they were free to operate uncompetitively in such a way as to drive out competition - so they dominated the available market. So the business model of the industrial age, in a thin market like Australia was, get in, dominate, squeeze out the competition obtain a monopoly and then profit take.
Now we're seeing venture capitalism emerge - supporting all kinds of new business, which challenge that traditional market dominance of the established players in many areas. When it's so easy to get in and start a company - what does this mean in terms of changing the corporate landscape?
With information technology - theoretically you have global markets - so they're much bigger and able to support more players. You then get the companies trying to find niches in the market - so instead of having three big players offering the same bland product or service, dominating 90% of the market, you're more likely to get a plethora of business trying to segment the market and meet the needs of smaller and smaller groups of consumers. That's what's happening to business on the net, everybody's trying to niche market, or narrowcast - the segments are getting smaller.
Also in the real world, I'm limited by geography, I use a particular bank because it has a branch in my suburb, but on the net I can pick any financial service provider, globally. In the real world I have to spend all day wandering from shop to shop to find the best deal - on the net I can simply find a site that offers product reviews and price comparisons - I have much more power as a consumer - and I'm freer to find a provider that offers the service that I want. Consumers will become a lot less tolerant of bad service or uncompetitive pricing.
Evidence does show that the average size of the firm is declining - and has done since the early eighties, the start of the information revolution when the invention of the fax machine made dealing with an outside organisation simpler and cheaper - because technology enabling interaction between organisations is getting simpler. But that's not the whole story, there are a range of factors, not related to technology that limit outsourcing, these include control, trust, available competition, organisational politics and culture. Not all of these other factors are related to technology. Nevertheless the effect of email will inevitably be profound.
In business each player in the chain of production is taking a thinner and thinner slice. Companies are getting smaller and monopolies are coming under pressure. Workforce statistics suggest that the chain of production is getting longer, companies are outsourcing all but their core competencies, big players are employing fewer staff, preferring to contract out. Although in many cases this is driven not by a need to deliver better services to customer and clients, but to satisfy the prejudices of the Share Market -- there is still an underling trend.
There is a premium associated with interacting with an outside organisation - but in many cases IT is lowering those costs, making it easier, resulting in a narrowing of the band of core competencies which means that no one company is ever delivering anything on their own - businesses are hollowing out. There's electronic procurement and billing software - automating the supply of goods and services. This smooths the interface between a business and a contractor. In fact, it is pushing procurement back to the individuals desk --for example, I want a ream of paper, I look on my Intranet, I order my paper, it goes through some automated systems typically requiring a very few number of steps by anybody else, is pooled with a whole lot of other requests and automatically the supplier is selected.
The New (Economy) Tax System
Venture capitalists would argue that the Australian taxation regime, as compared with international standards, is punitive on venture capital because of the capital gains provisions. As a result we don't get much overseas institutional investment. In contrast Israel is seen as a winner in the IT and Internet stakes. Their regime is that they'll match the investing countries capital gains tax regime.
It's difficult for the Labor party to confront this issue because that rationale in the eighties, when the tax was introduced, is that, if you're earning money as a capitalist, why should you be taxed less than if you earn the money as a worker - why does this augment no longer apply. But there is a philosophical difference between the knowledge and value creation in a venture capital investment as opposed to investing in say property, which just accumulates value as the market inevitably rises.
There's a thing called the innovation investment fund which is two thirds funded by government where the venture capitalist places an investment based on a fund that was contributed two thirds by government - but it's only for approved organisations, so they have to be early stage, less then four million dollars turnover, in approved innovation activities like the high tech, IT sector and then they are able to access this fund.
At the same time Australian Super funds do not invest anything in innovation because of the risk profile. In contrast, up to five percent of the money invested in American pension funds now goes into this area. At the same time Austrialian super fund trustees would like to get in and invest in this area but they are required to follow the advice of their investment managers, who are very conservative.
The Role of Government
The intersection of physical space with cyberspace is really interesting. The question is: do Nations compete in the corporate landscape? Answer: It kind of depends. For Australia we have to continue to be think about national interests because if you take the Australia's total R&D expenditure, it's still smaller than Seimens R&D budget.
There is value in Australia thinking of itself as a company in some sense given the size of the players. If we use the information economy as a reason for dismantling National boundaries you run a risk that some of the things that it offers Australia by getting over tyranny of distance might be lost - because we'll end up just getting swamped So it is important for governments to have an information technology strategy for Australia as a nation.
The bigger question is: what is the role?. It must intervene by offering programs that address the fact that, by definition, in the new economy, innovation has a higher level of risk associated with it than for proven activities or proven investments. The way in which they need to intervene is to provide programs that tend towards self administration by people utilizing those programs, rather than administration.
The problem is you've got the eighties experience in Victoria where the government was investing heavily in entrepreneurial activities and got it's fingers burned very badly. How does one go about assisting start ups, assisting the new economy to grow, without having to go in and start picking winners, putting government money behind risky ventures. The question is: what kind of programs can a government put in place to avoid this trap?
There are more innovative areas for government involvement as well - like getting long term unemployed young people trained in IT and promoting hi-tech (information worker) communities in rural areas. Ultimately, the best industry policy may be to address the absolute fundamentals by investing in people, culture and education. What is irrefutable is that we need to promote some experimentation with new ideas rather than return to debates of the past.
This chapter is based on discussion with net entrepreneurs Peter van Djlk, Richard Weatherly and Kris Gale held in early 2000. Yes, the world has changed since then - but perhaps some of the analysis still holds.
Hamburgled |
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The CPSU Communications Union has formally asked the Office of the Employment Advocate (OEA) to rule on the legality of AWAs forced on workers by call centre operators Vodafone and Stellar.
The documents, which workers are required to sign, have been targeted for alleged breaches of Workplace Relations Act provisions relating to "duress" and "freedom of association".
Hamberger has also been asked to rule on the legitimacy of Stellar over-riding the standard disputes settling procedure, effectively blocking staff from representation by an "agent or organisation" of their choice.
Assistant union secretary, Stephen Jones, admitted the approach was a "shot in the dark."
"Hamberger's track record is ordinary," Jones said. "The problem is that his office okayed these provisions in the first place. This approach is only one element in our efforts to get a fair go for these people."
Hamberger was a prominent member of Peter Reith's staff as the former Workplace Relations Minister redrew the the industrial landscape.
He moved to head-up the OEA, theoretically charged with delivering on John Howard's promise that "no Australian worker would be worse off" under his industrial laws.
Hamberger has used his office to undermine collective bargaining and try to marginalise trade unions.
But it is the way Hamberger's office has endorsed AWAs that shaft workers, especially the young, which has raised most eyebrows.
While wages and conditions have been slashed under his stewardship, the Employment Advocate has run a line which, at best, stretches the truth.
Central to the Government's AWA snow-job is its "no disadvantage test". Hamberger outlined its key elements, in the OEA's annual report:
"The OEA cannot approve an agreement if the employee is worse off, overall, when compared to the relevant or designated award" he wrote, "we also check that the employee has genuinely consented to any agreement."
Which might be okay if wages and conditions in awards against which AWAs were being measured were still relevant. Because of the attack on the award system, spearheaded by Reith and Hamberger, much remuneration is now set out in legally-binding collective agreements.
Awards, in industries like telecommunications, sit below collective agreements as basic safety nets.
This has allowed Hamberger to rubber stamp Stellar AWAs, for example, that leave workers $10,000 - $15,000 a year worse off than those previously doing the same jobs with Telstra.
Australia's largest company, too, now employs new call centre operators on AWAs. In its Townsville office the annual wage is $27,500 against the $33,000 set-out in the collective agreement.
Like Stellar, Vodafone, one of the world's 10 largest companies, writes AWAs that deny employees the right to union representation.
Each of these companies offers AWAs on a "take it or leave it" basis, making a mockery of Hamberger's claim that employees "genuinely consent to any agreement".
Hamberger recipe burns Sherri
Stellar statistics should have made Sherri Purse a company favourite. Instead, the Wollongong teenager chooses to spend her free time warning fellow workers about AWAs.
Stellar splits its "agents" into teams of 20-25 people. Its own print-outs reveal the 19-year-old topped her team for the week ending May 19, and finished second in the two subsequent recorded periods.
In April she received a certificate for "excellence in customer service" but was less than impressed.
"Don't get me wrong, I'm proud to have my work recognised but I thought it was a bit strange to give someone a certificate for excellence when they
were on a written warning.
"As soon as you join the union around here you are in for it."
Last month Purse addressed the CPSU's management committee about life at Stellar, emphasising the problems caused by AWAs.
Utilising 3pm starts at Burelli St, Wollongong, she gets around other sites with CPSU organiser Naomi Arrowsmith, telling her story.
"AWAs are unfair," Purse says. "We are on them for three years with no negotiations at all.
"Whenever they get you for a disciplinary reason it's - 'it's in the AWA or the company handbook and you signed it' - yeah sure, but if I didn't I wouldn't have a job."
From The Works, national magazine of the CPSU
Frank Stilwell |
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The proportion of Australian households directly owing shares has risen, in round terms, from about one in ten two decades ago to one in two today. Much of this growth in share ownership is the consequence of privatisations of public enterprises. We are well down the road to owning privately what we previously owned collectively.
The sale of the first tranche of Telstra shares was the classic example of promoting privatisation. The sale price was deliberately set below its realistic market value so that there would be no shortage of buyers. The politicians were then able to crow about the popularity of privatisation. The process was subsequently thrown into reverse gear when the public enthusiasm was jolted by the disappointing shares prices following the sale of the second tranche of Telstra shares. The continuing slide of Telstra share values leaves that second round of share-purchasers about $2.50 per share worse off. Kim Beazley is now publicly pledging an end to any further privatisation of Telstra. However, it would be fanciful to conclude that the privatisation process run its course.
There are certainly signs of a backlash. Privatisation: Sell-Off or Sell-Out, a recent book about Bob Walker and Betty Con Walker shows that many of the claims made by the privatisers do not stand up to critical scrutiny. Public assets have sometimes been sold at such bargain basement prices that the result is woefully uneconomic. The posited efficiency gains coming from privatisation are often not forthcoming. More reliably predictable is the social damage resulting from the sacrifice of public service obligations previously imposed on government enterprises. Ironically, government regulation tends to become more necessary following privatisations, so the choice in practice may be between public enterprise and more strictly regulated private enterprise.
As the Walkers argue in their analysis, it is necessary to consider privatisations on a case-by-case basis, looking at the pros and cons in each instance. Logically, the reverse also applies: that consideration should also be given to extensions of public ownership where appropriate.
Beyond that case-by-case examination of different industries it also has to be recognised that there are political and ideological, as well as economic, dimensions to the privatisation issue. The drive to privatise public enterprises has been part of a broader neo-liberal policy program which prioritises individualism over the collective resolution of our social needs and concerns. Margaret Thatcher once declared her intent to 'scorch socialism off the face of Britain' and it would appear that she effectively succeeded. A similar process has been happening in Australia. It involves undermining the principles and practices - even the perceived possibility - of collectivist practices, and their replacement by selfish individualism as the central assumption of social organisation. 'Incentivation' is how John Howard has previously described it.
From this perspective, the sale of our public assets has a broader political and ideological rationale which even some on the Labor side of politics, perhaps unwittingly, have come to accept. It links up with the push towards the contracting-out of public services, the transfer of welfare state functions to private providers, and the further alienation of public land. Privatisation comes in many guises. Another is the increased use of BOOT schemes (build, own, operate, transfer) for the provision of tollways and other social infrastructure. Meanwhile 'privatisation by neglect' is undermining public education, encouraging more parents to send their children to private schools. 'Privatisation by squeezing' is making the Universities even more reliant on the sale of their services in the marketplace, including to corporate sponsors.
The common element in these processes is a drive to restrictive society on more straightforwardly capitalist market principles. The 'commodification of social life' thereby proceeds apace. The demutualisation of cooperative institutions like the NRMA is a parallel trend. The consequences include growing social and economic inequalities, most obviously in the form of the prodigious executive salary packages 'earned' by corporate executives, including those of newly privatised and demutualised enterprises.
In this increasingly unequal society, social cohesion becomes more fragile. The willingness of people to work together for common purposes is undermined because the fruits of such cooperation are not equitably shared. So, ironically, even the economic consequences of the neo-liberal program are likely to be quite perverse in practice.
Meanwhile, share ownership remains markedly concentrated in the hands of the large investors. So the rhetoric about 'people's capitalism' sits uneasily alongside the evidence of 'business as usual' for the really wealthy stratum of Australian society. The latest Business Review Weekly 'Rich 200' list shows that there are now 11 Australian billionaires, up from only 3 six years ago. To get on the list of the wealthiest two hundred now requires at least $80 million. These are not the 'mum and dad' shareholders who bought into the privatisation process: they are the class elite who continue to dominate the ownership and control of capital. An article in the latest issue of the Journal of Australian Political Economy shows how well integrated in this elite, owning the dominant blocks of shares in the major businesses and having numerous interlocking directorships in each others companies.
The broadening of public control over industry development remains the key political economic challenge. It is not achieved by privatisation - quite the reverse. Nor is it necessarily achieved by the extension of superannuation funds. There has been a rapid growth of workers' savings in superannuation funds, of course, and therein lies tremendous potential for having more influence over the investment processes. However, the capital in the funds is typically allocated according to fairly limited rate of return criteria, not departing substantially from capitalist investment principles in this respect. About a fifth of the money is invested overseas. A nationally coordinated superannuation system, financing a national investment fund, could provide a much better means for promoting Australian industry development while spreading risk in the process of managing workers' retirement incomes. Ethical investment and the engineering of a more ecologically sustainable economy could then be effective priorities. Developing this means of linking the broader ownership of capital with policies for industry development is something for the prospective Labor government to consider in the run-up to the Federal election.
The key issue is not whether workers should have a stake in industries. It is the appropriate form of that stake. Individual share ownership? Collective ownership through the establishment of public enterprises? Or the less universal form of collective ownership which the extension of superannuation arrangements makes possible? The continuing debate over privatisation should put these broader issues on the public agenda. The key issue is the disposition of workers' capital. Going further down the privatisation road individualises the disposition of workers' capital, with all the attendant risks and uncertainties that entails. Other more collectivist options beckon.
Frank Stilwell is associate professor of economics at Sydney University
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With over a billion air travellers expected annually by 2010, and with far too little runaway space, far too many delays, and no tech "silver bullet" expected soon, the situation promises traveler gains and "runway rage" alike. Any progress in reducing gridlock and upgrading the quality of air travel may pivot in large part on how we resolve a 20-year-old strike still with us in many taxing ways.
Twenty years ago on August 3, 1981, PATCO Air Traffic Controllers manned picket lines at National and other airports, thereby beginning the best-known, costliest (in careers and dollars), and most consequential labor-management dispute in post-War American history ... one from which we are still trying to extract ourselves.
Over 85%, or 12,500 of 14,000 eligible federal controllers, struck, and 11,345 of them were almost immediately thereafter fired and blacklisted (12 years!) from careers they loved and jobs they had been born to perform. PATCO, their feisty 13-year old union, was fined out of existence ($34 million), and decertified, the only such federal union ever permanently punished this way. PATCO's arch enemy, the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA), gleefully got itself a union-free environment. The nation's air travelers got record-setting cancellations and delays, the economy got a battering, Congress got a lot of heat, and air travel safety got severely challenged for many months thereafter. Trust between Labor and Management was dealt so severe a blow by the Jihad "crush Labor!" mentality of the Reagan White House and the FAA as to leave it wounded to this day.
Now, on the strike's 20th anniversary, we ask what can we learn from the '81 Gotterdammerung ? How can we prevent any like "crashes"? Honor the victims (strikers and air travelers alike)? Bolster the safety and reliability of air travel? And encourage a culture of cooperation, rather than conflict at work?
Having assisted PATCO as a survey researcher for 18 months before the '81 strike, and having stayed in touch with many ex-controllers, I'd like to think we have learned at least three lessons: In severe industrial conflicts the ability to do one's job is the real issue. Second, labels like "winner" and "loser" are meaningless. And third, only cooperation makes the best"flight plan" possible.
The 1981 strike was not about money, or about honoring an (oft-broken) Oath not to strike, as was alleged by the media. It was about a situation that had become untenable, at least for professionals who took their life-protecting responsibilities seriously. The bulk of PATCOs' 96 contract issues focused on threats to air traveler safety; e.g., old radar equipment urgently needed replacing. Inordinate stress made accidents probable. Harsh disrespectful leadership undermined morale and fostered retaliation. A fundamental lack of mutual respect poisoned everything, and made it difficult for controllers to do their job.
Second, strikes do not have stark winners or losers as much as different types of long-term casualties. PATCO "losers," thanks to extraordinary efforts by their own advocacy group, Controllers United, aided by the AFL-CIO, finally persuaded President Clinton in 1993 to lift the blacklist ban on re-employment. Now possibly "winners" (at least if recall speeds up), PATCO stalwarts also have the grim satisfaction of knowing the FAA's' new 10-year modernization plan is rich in reform ideas championed by PATCO twenty years ago.
Similarly, the FAA was a self-styled big "winner" in '81 for having gotten free of unionization. But it looked quite the sap when, after six years of doing things its own ill-conceived way (a bizarre mix of wimpy paternalism and military authoritarianism), a new union (NATCA) rose in phoenix-like from the ashes. Its founding members in '87 had many of the same grievances as had PATCO. So much for the title of "winner" and the costly illusion that top-down management can escape the price of its own excesses.
Accordingly, the third lesson from the '81 "aluminum shower" is that when the parties are truly inter-dependent, only cooperation really clears them for "takeoff." NATCA, while no less protective than PATCO of its members (and of the air traveler), has achieved a constructive relationship with a much better-led FAA. In 1998, for example, the parties agreed to employ alternative dispute resolution options that have helped reduce arbitrations from 38 that year, to 31 in 1999, and only five last year. (Jane Garvey, FAA administrator, explains, "It's a step-by-step approach. We need to stay focused and do it together to obtain success. It won't work if it's done in isolation.")
A work in progress, the relationship of mutual respect has the parties intent on lessening gridlock (compounded by a severe shortage of runways), remaining the world's safest system (73 million safe operations last year), and staving off cockamamie calls for privatization heard since 1981 in every GOP White House, a pro-greed threat to the union, the FAA, and the nation's 665 million annual air travelers alike.
In the ongoing process of redressing mistakes made in '81, recall remains an especially costly sore point. Eight long years after rehiring became possible only 836 of 4,988 original applicants have been brought back. While in 1994 some 78% of all new rehires were PATCO (37 en toto), the figure in 2000 was only 10%. AFSME PATCO Local 6881 and Controllers United are keeping up rehiring pressure, even as NATCA helps by insisting a minimum of 25% of new hires be drawn from the PATCO waiting list.
On this tragic 20th anniversary, friends of the nation's air traffic control system want to vector a "flight path" that hastens re-employment, models progressive labor-management relations, blocks reckless calls for privatization, and substantially upgrades the system - much as PATCO always sought.
Nic Clyde |
Nic was arrested with 15 other protestors including fellow Australian Stuart Lennox from Tasmania during the test phase of the Star Wars missile system late last month.
Nic spoke to the Australian Services Union's Greg Turner about his treatment inside a maximum security prison and the support of his family and union.
What's the latest situation ?
I 've been released from gaol on $20,000 bail, my passport has been confiscated and a hearing has been scheduled for 13 August. A military prosecutor appealed against the decision to release us. It's hard to know what to expect now.
We understand you've been held in a maximum security gaol.
I spent six days in a cell with other maximum security prisoners that measured four metres by six metres. You get let out of your cell into an exercise yard twice a week. In court I was shackled in leg irons with chains around my waist. We were treated as any common criminal facing the same number of years
You are among 15 protestors and two journalists charged with conspiracy to violate a safety zone. - what's going through your mind as you face the prospect of a six year jail term ?
I'm just blown away by this major felony charge. I can't describe how dismayed I am to come to this country and be treated like this. I think we're being singled out because we're shining a light on a dangerous problem.
What support are you getting from Australia ?
My family have been great. Mum's even been on the radio. I'm absolutely 'stoked' the union is supporting me and trying to get the charges dropped. I joined the union because I believe if we stick together we can win things.
What support are you getting from the Australian Government ?
It's embarassing being an Australian. There's a lot more diplomatic activity going on to help those ( arrested campaigners) from other counties.
The circumstances of your arrest are confusing. Its understood you were not arrested at the missile test site but at san louis pier, sixteen nautical miles away, several hours later, by FBI agents.
I've been given legal advice not to comment on the circumstances. It is alleged we were technically 'on the water' . We are actually alleged to have 'conspired' to violate a safety zone and failing to adhere to a commander's instructions. The thing that really pisses me off is that we Australians just don't have the money to lobby Washington and our only tool is peaceful protest. This is a direct threat to all Australian unionists.
What's the problem with Bush's National Missile Defence System?
The problem is build a bigger shield and someone will build a bigger sword. This system could spark and new nuclear arms race or even a new chemical or biological arms race. In a world where we have pressing problems, the United States is spending US$300 billion dollars on this Star Wars program.
You are employed by Greenpeace Australia, can you tell us about your job ?
I'm a campaigner for Greenpeace Australia (Pacific). Recently I've started to campaign against the nuclear weapons threat. I'm also involved in local campaigns, such as Lucas Heights. That's half my job, I also organise training for staff and volunteers.
We often hear about tensions between the environmental and union movements on forestry issues. As a trade unionist & environmentalist, do you think there is much room for us to come together ?
Yes. Absolutely. I truly believe the environmental movement is not a threat to jobs or a threat to the labour movement. The energy industry is a good example. The number of jobs in renewable energy far outweighs the number of jobs in building new power plants. I think those trade unions who don't understand the green movement should get together with us and talk.
During the last 20 years the union movement throughout the western world has experienced substantial membership decline, while environmental organisations such as Greenpeace have attracted large numbers of new recruits, especially among young people. What can those unions looking to rebuild strength learn from the environmental movement ?
I'd be hesitant to answer that question given the great support you guys are giving me! But what comes up in Greenpeace market research, time and again, is that in a world full of words and savvy company marketing, people are becoming cynical of companies who 'claim' to support the environment. They perceive that Greenpeace gets out there and 'does' stuff. People like action.
Susan Sheather |
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Ok, to be honest I've never actually visited seven pubs in seven nights. But for the sake of this article, for the sake of those who do, I'm using this opportunity to review seven pubs in Sydney and the Inner West over seven nights and explain why these pubs are worth visiting.
Sunday: The Vic on the Park, (Victoria Road, Enmore)
Why? Every Sunday, the Vic on the Park has Karaoke from 5.00pm to 9.00pm, the opportunity to win prizes, and flipping of the coin for free beer. There are, of course, a few regulars who can really sing, but, like any karaoke night there are also a few people (like me) who try really hard but don't quite succeed in the song they're singing (see: Just Jeans commercial where that girl "sings" The Locomotion). Not so busy that you can't get a turn, but busy enough that its loads of fun after a few beers.
Monday: The Summer Hill Hotel (right across the road from Summer Hill Station).
Why? Location is one of the prime reasons to visit the Summer Hill Hotel. Also, the fact that unlike many city pubs, this is a place you can breathe. The Summer Hill is actually light and airy. The beer is comparatively cheap and one of the best things about this pub is the bistro which makes absolutely delicious food!
Tuesday: The Oxford Hotel (Cnr of Victoria Road and Lyons Road, Drummoyne)
Why? Trivia and great, yet inexpensive food. I have had many nights at the Oxford and what a pub it is. I can particularly recommend the grilled fish and chips or the bangers and mash. Trivia begins on Tuesday nights from around 7.30pm and its free to enter. Great prizes can be won including (and especially) bar tabs and money! Just don't drink that bar tab after you win the trivia or things can get a little messy the next day. Trust me.
Wednesday: The London Hotel (Darling Street, Balmain)
Why? It's a great pub to chat to locals and drink different types of English beer which are stocked behind the bar. In summer its especially nice with chairs on the balcony. Its also a very old-fashioned looking pub and its worth visiting in itself for that reason. There is also a restaurant attached but I haven't actually had the pleasure of eating there. Its always busy though, so check it out.
Thursday: Trades Hall Hotel (Goulburn Street, City)
Why? Simple, it's after Labor Council and its convenient. In its favour are the pool tables and the juke box but it's also a great place to drink with trade unionists after Labor Council meetings.
Friday: The Bristol Arms Hotel - aka The Retro (Sussex Street, City)
Why? Ok, this might seem like a dodgy choice to many given the meat market it is, but this pub makes it for three reasons. Firstly, its now free to enter the ground floor (you used to have to pay $15.00) and you only have to pay if you want to visit specific dance floors on other levels. Secondly, it plays a great mixture of 70s, 80s and 90s music and its music you can really get down and dance to. Thirdly, happy hour. Drinks are cheap from 8pm, you can get a schooner for just $2.50. It's also a place that appeals to people aged 18 to 50 so there is a wide range of people there.
Saturday: The HQ Bar (Parramatta Road, Camperdown).
Why? This is a pub with down-to-earth and friendly patrons, a big screen which you can watch the footy on, reasonable drink prices and pool tables. It's especially good if you're gatecrashing a victory party for a football team and get to do a lap of honour around the bar with the trophy.
Those That Don't Make It But Should
The Bank Hotel (King Street, Newtown) - a pub with excellent Thai and also is just a particularly great atmosphere.
Unity Hall Hotel (Darling Street, Balmain) - this place has live jazz on Tuesday nights, and live music most other nights. One of the few pubs in Sydney which really has great live music and cheap drinks.
Royal Hotel, (Norton Street, Leichhardt) - reminds me of a country pub. Particularly good on Friday nights and its in the middle of all those great restaurants so its also extremely convenient.
Those That Just Don't Make It
The Gaslight (Mortlake) - serves weak Schweppes Cola on tap and smells like a pub I visited once in Temora.
The Orient Hotel (The Rocks) - Notorious moment: the barmaid charging $15.00 for two schooners. Plus those stairs are a health hazard if you've had a few too many drinks.
by The Chaser
The Chaser |
Cartwright's passing is all the more poignant in that he died doing what he loved: an Australian Workplace Agreement that he had been attempting to negotiate with his children's nanny discharged accidentally as he beat her over the head with it, killing him instantly.
Never a stranger to controversy, Rob became well-known in industrial circles for his prowess in achieving radical change in an organisation with little or no financial pain to anyone in senior management.
The summit of his commercial career was at the helm of the Moving People Onto Individual Contracts function at Telstra, one of Australia's largest employers. He, and the team that he assembled there, managed to make history in the 2 years in the job, moving more Australians onto individual contracts than has ever been achieved before or since in a single employer.
This task is all the more breath-taking when it is realised that in his negotiations with individual employees, he was armed with little more than control over the worker's working conditions, health care plan, incentive structure, pay levels, future livelihood, promotion prospects and access to non-pay terms and conditions such as child-care and dental benefits. With only these delicate tools, he nonetheless managed to migrate a significant proportion of Telstra workers away from controversial "collective agreements, that were preventing those workers from participating fully in Telstra's labour cost reduction programs.
The breakthrough that Cartwright engineered represented a quantum leap in the then little-known field of Moving People Onto Individual Contracts, lowering Telstra's HR costs and allowing the company to fund the provision of loss-making services in marginal seats at a much more acceptable gross margin that had been possible before - something that Industrial Relations Minister described as giving "myself, and the rest of the Government, a frisson of near-sexual excitement".
It was in the Australian Industrial Relations Commission that his greatest talents would be revealed. By his own admission, as neither a lawyer nor an industrial relations specialist, he nonetheless showed a ready grasp of what was expected of him by the Howard Government in appointing him.
He was famed for his willingness to embrace the issues, to balance up both sides of the questions and then to write long, impassioned judgements that one of his colleagues on the Bench famously referred to, in a lyrical mood, as "an etude on the theme of the employer's pain".
His exquisite sensitivity to the difficulties faced by employers never failed him. In more than 100 judgements, he revealed in each a separate and individual reason why management ought to prevail, often uncovering arguments and legal reasoning in an employer's favour that even their own counsel had failed to uncover in their submissions.
Rob Cartwright is survived by Telstra, Rio Tinto and a likely string of lucrative consultancy contracts. We are all diminished by his passing, but none more so that the AIRC, which was doubly bereft, being already diminished by his presence.
Creating a catchy new brand name is as legitimate in politics as it is in commerce.
All aspirants to political office need a strategy to gain recognition in a tired and congested market. Adopting a catchy new tag is a smart move.
But consumers are not mugs, and as time passes they will look beneath the brand name, just as over time voters will check out the substance of policies under various political banners.
Arguably, the 'Third Way' is already well past its use-by date as an attractive, attention grabbing moniker in this country (if it ever really had a shelf life at all).
Clinton and Blair latched onto the term to distinguish their respective offerings from their political allies as well as their political opponents - from the old guard nostrums of their own side of politics and also from the cold-war era Reaganomics and Thatcherism that preceded them.
So 'New Labor' and the 'New Democrats' were invented to demark the Clinton and Blair teams from, respectively, tax-and-spend liberals in the US and supporters of nationalization of industry in the UK.
But here Down Under we were already ahead of that game, electing a social democratic regime which had its own distinguishing tag - remember the Accord? - and cut public spending as a share of GDP, deregulated the foreign exchanges, privatized state owned airlines and banks and generally repudiated many of the tired old cold-war era nostrums of Labor in Australia.
In fact the aspiring opposition parties in the US and the UK took more than a fleeting glance down here for inspiration during the eighties, during those early Accord years.
As for distinguishing the product from that of political opponents in today's Australia, John Howard is simply not in the same league as Ronald Ray-guns, and (like William Hague) is not within cooee of Maggie Thatcher. He preens and promotes himself as a conviction politician, but as our recent history shows he is no ideological oak, just a resilient political reed.
Blair and Clinton followed ideological warriors whose statures cut distinctive profiles against which they could define themselves and badge their policy alternatives . Both Blair and Clinton paid homage to their great predecessors and adopted substantial elements of their conservative policy packages .
John Howard followed a man of stature too, but his own policies define little except opportunism and his vision consists in a new tax and a retreat to the past.
Whoever follows Howard will not be intimidated by his shadow; and Australia's aspirant third-wayers show no inclination to doff their caps in Howard's policy direction nor to repudiate the policies of his predecessor.
A decade ago, the 'Third Way' purported to offer public policy a rational path between discredited extremes, a way forward to a better world that was neither rampant free-market capitalist nor rigid centrally planned communist. Substantively however, the 'Third Way' was premised on pursuit of market solutions to social and economic problems .
A decade on, it is relevant to ask whether the 'Third Way' can yet excite political interest in Australia, or whether time has already passed it by.
To be neither Capitalist nor Communist is simply to be a mixed market economy, which really is rather old hat. Indeed, for thirty-five years after World War Two it was the mainstream and standard description of the political economy of the world's developed nations.
It is nearly 15 years since the Berlin wall fell. In practical terms, there is no longer a 'Communist Way' abroad to be emulated here.
After a decade or two of 'market-oriented' solutions in this country and abroad, the public policy pendulum appears to be swinging back from the rationalist free market extremes of the eighties.
As it did half a century earlier under the Keynesian consensus of the post-war years.
The 'Washington Consensus' and the neo-liberal orthodoxy may not yet have lost their policy hegemony in the English-speaking democracies, but are under heavy challenge from points across the political spectrum.
Indeed, and this is one I can't resist, more than a century has passed since 'The Fourth Way' was introduced to the West by G I Gurdjieff and his disciple P D Ouspensky !!!
So as I see it, the Third Way is not really new, and as a popular moniker will probably be as enduring as the 'Four Tops' and the 'Fifth Dimension', though more so than 'communitarianism' or 'incentivation'.
But the distinctive substance of 'Third Way' policies is likely to be more enduring than the name.
The difficulty here is in defining what is and is not included in the 'Third Way' policy box. Rather than attempt an exhaustive taxonomy of its contents, I want to focus briefly on what, as I see it, are a few important and distinctive 'Third Way' elements.
Minimum Wage Laws
Under Ronald Reagan, the US Federal Minimum Wage was frozen for 9 � years, from 1 Jan 1981 to 1 April 1990. Under Margaret Thatcher, Britain denounced and withdrew from the ILO Minimum Wage convention and abolished the UK's de facto minimum wage setting mechanism, the Wages Boards.
In both cases, the justification was labour market deregulation , in the belief that minimum wage laws price low paid / low skilled workers out of jobs. There is not a scintilla of evidence that the abolition or erosion of minimum wages in either country created any jobs, though in both countries the ranks of the low paid grew sharply.
Under Clinton, the US federal Minimum Wage was 'hiked' (as they say) sharply on several occasions. Under Blair, the UK Low Pay Commission was established, its recommendations have been implemented - Britain now has a National Minimum Wage and it has already been 'uprated' (as they say). There is barely a scintilla of evidence that establishing and repairing the minimum wage floor in either country has cost any jobs, though in both countries the incomes and living standards of low paid workers have risen substantially as a result .
Third Way advocate Mark Latham MP supports effective minimum wage standards in this country. The Labor governments here from 1983 to 1996 consistently supported regular increases in minimum award wages through the National Wage processes.
Unions will support Third Way policies that support maintenance and improvement of effective minimum standards in our labour markets.
Education and Health
Third Way advocates identify these policy areas as the pre-eminent fields for policy activism and intervention by national governments in a global world economy.
In part this reflects an acceptance by Third Wayers of the 'New Growth Theories' in orthodox economics. According to this view, governments can shift their nations onto a higher economic growth path by investing in the 'human capital' of their citizens and raising the nation's competitive advantage in world trade and commerce. Public investment in education, and also in health, is believed to do this.
In part, singling out education and health as the key sectors for policy activism by national governments also reflects a view that in a globalised world, governments are constrained to fail if they intervene in other sectors. On this view:
� real power lies with global capital such that governments will fail if they try to flout it
� government failure is a more virulent and debilitating ailment than market failure and
� as Dr Pangloss might have said, the fruits of globalisation are realized every day in the ordinary lives of ordinary people interacting through free market processes.
Unions will support policies to improve our public health and education systems. Blind Freddy knows we need to improve them. The main basis for that support is the direct improvement in the lives of ordinary people that flows from having better public schools and better public hospitals (whatever the veracity of the New Growth Theories).
Unions do not accept the quivering vision that education and health are the only areas remaining for public policy activism in the global world economy. To make the world a better and fairer place, a role for government in education and health is necessary, but not sufficient.
� A cursory review of tax/GDP and public expenditure/GDP ratios across OECD countries provides prima facie evidence of the wide scope for policy activism by government in the modern nation state.
� The inexorable rise of megacorps, burgeoning international capital flows, and the impact of human activity on the global environment, point to the inevitability of increased global regulation in tomorrow's world - the current international debate over Tobin taxes and climate protocols is harbinger of things to come.
Atomistic Individuals or Social Systems?
The Classical Political Economists analysed rises and declines in the wealth of nations believing that the key features of interest - the centers of gravity in the economic system - could be discerned by considering the differing motivations of the broad classes which comprised the social order.
This analytical conception was jettisoned with the rise to prominence of supply and demand theory under the marginalist revolution in economics, from the 1870s. The starting point in this new analytical schema, which still holds sway today, is the abstracted atomistic individual seeking to maximize its own best interests.
From this point of departure, competition between economic agents and unfettered markets maximize welfare for all, in this the best of all possible worlds. [Margaret Thatcher encapsulated this vision in her epithet that 'there is no such thing as society'.]
Flowing from this is the view that, unless market failure can be demonstrated and it can also be shown that regulatory intervention would not make matters worse, the best thing that governments can do is to get small (cut taxes and spending) and get out of the way (deregulate), so as to maximize the scope for free competition and the unfettered inter-play of market forces.
Much Third Way policy prescription seems to accept the veracity of this neo-classical economic conception of the world, resting on the presumption that market solutions are the best solutions unless a compelling case to the contrary can be established, and that ever more competition makes for an even better world.
Unions do not agree that real or synthetic market mechanisms are always and everywhere the best means to deliver better public policy or greater public investment in the education or health or other sectors.
� Vouchers and shadow prices in contrived pseudo-markets are no cure-all, and bring their own problems.
� Because governments can borrow long-term at lower rates of interest, and are not constrained to return a profit on public investments, national infrastructure can be provided by government at lower total cost to the community than private provision of identical facilities.
� True capitalist competition in the sphere of production leads towards merger and monopoly at the commanding heights of real and financial economies, not to a fragmentation and proliferation of small competitive units of production.
� The U-shaped long-run cost curve is, in general, bunk.
The nation state is a political and economic and social system, an interconnected network of interacting individuals. It is baloney to believe that all our systemic problems - from salinity to global warming to urban ghettos to family violence and intergenerational poverty - can be rectified by establishing the 'right' set of taxes and subsidies and letting the market rip.
The role of government in the modern world extends to all aspects of the nation's infrastructure - physical, social, and environmental . Infrastructure binds the system together; its provision and maintenance determines the world we bequeath to our children. To fashion adequate policy here requires an analysis of the workings of the system as a dynamic system; conceiving it as the impersonal product of an aggregation of atomistic utility maximizing decisions will lead us up a blind alley.
It should be noted though, that there are contradictions and inconsistencies here within the Third Way camp. For example, the Blair government declined to adopt the EU 'social clause' in the name of free trade, but the Clinton administration accepted the legitimacy of including labour and environmental issues in trade agreements.
Unions will continue to agitate around the legitimacy of these issues, with governments of every hue.
Devolution
A core tenet of Third Way policy prescriptions calls for reducing the dead hand of bureaucracy and devolving to local communities the authority and resources and responsibility to bootstrap their own way out of their own problems by improving their own social capital.
Unions accept that devolution can empower local communities, and that central bureaucracies are not omniscient. Unions also accept that systems of public administration and service delivery benefit from regular review and overhaul, that there are problems of inertia in public services (as in private enterprises), and that if things can be done better they should be.
However, devolution is no cure-all.
The problems besetting inner city housing estates in our major cities cannot simply be rectified by 'the government' devolving all program responsibility to the local communities that live in them.
� there are three levels of government involved in Australia - federal, state and local - each with a policy interest and a suite of policy initiatives on offer.
� for each tier of government, the relevant policy has generally been devised to address a broader range of issues than those confined to a particular estate.
� here, devolution fixes naught without policy coordination between governments.
'One line budgets' for public schools do not address systemic issues of curriculum consistency and development.
� Coherent, consistent, and transparent national standards for literacy and numeracy are essential for public education to be able to deliver a decent education for all.
� There are economies of scale and scope in researching, documenting and promulgating best practise methods of teaching and learning. These can readily be accessed by a public education system, but not by a fragmented collection of schools .
� Schools exist in neighbourhoods, and socio-economic status differs across neighbourhoods. Imposition of one-line budgets shifts a heavy onus onto school neighbourhood communities, but there are immense differences in education and income (not to mention stocks of managerial and technical knowledge, nor special needs of students) across those neighbourhoods. It is wrong (and quite bizarre) to presume that public schools in Kew and Coburg, or Campbelltown and Kuringai, will manage equally well with imposition of one-line budgets.
It is always the case with expenditure of public monies, that devolution of expenditure responsibilities must proceed with care and caution with a clear eye on the need for accountability. There is no surer way to discredit programs intended to benefit a needy group than to have public resources wasted or misappropriated.
Inappropriately introduced, devolution can and does lead to widening inequality and worsening disadvantage in impoverished local communities.
Conclusion
In my view the 'Third Way' is no panacea for perceived public sector malaise. It is not political Viagra. While some elements of the 'Third Way' policy suite have considerable merit, the approach overall is overly and unnecessarily restrictive of the role of government in the modern nation state.
This speech was given at a conference on 'The Third Way' at the University of NSW on 13 July 2001
Combat Cubano |
****************
In the 1970s the legendary Cuban heavyweight Teofilo Stevenson, a three time Olympic gold medallist, was offered $US1 million - a serious amount of money at the time - to fight Muhummad Ali.
Stevenson's moral reflexes - as sharp as his jabs - led him to reject the offers to turn pro and leave Cuba where professional boxing was illegal.
'No, I won't abandon my country for a million dollars nor even for much more than that,' he told the world. 'What is a million dollars compared to the love of 11 million Cubans? I've seen the pros on television and I reckon Muhummad Ali is the best. But there are plenty of pros I could beat right now.'
Fast forward to the 1990s and the Yankee Don Kings are again waving fat financial carrots in front of the new Cuban superstar Felix Savon.
Savon, who at the Sydney Olympics was to emulate his revered compatriot when he picked up his third Olympic gold medal, was offered a staggering 10 million dollars to fight Mike Tyson. Like Stevenson he turned up his nose at the temptation of instant wealth.
'I did it because when you leave the island you lose everything, you don't think about anyone else and no one thinks about you. Here in Cuba I have the confidence of eleven million Cubans. But I could be a professional, I know that for sure because people I have fought and beaten have turned pro and become champions.'
Why these stellar athletes, with easy opportunities for instant wealth before them, choose patriotism and to maintain the integrity and purity of their amateur sport rather than enrich themselves is an intriguing subject of sports analysis.
The stock Western explanation is that these athletes are pampered by the state and enjoy lives of immense privelidge within impoverished societies.
Duncan tells some startling stories of his year in Cuba which strongly challenge this view. One anecdote in particular where he recounts the sad chase by two world champions to find affordable second hand tyres for their Lada while on a trip to Budapest doesn't suggest a hedonistic lifestyle back in Cuba.
And as Duncan points out, while it may be possible to convince yourself that athletes could be bullied into saying the right thing for fear of the consequences, who could bully Teofilo Stevenson?
In The Red Corner has some interesting insights but fails to adequately explain the loyalty of these athletes to Cuba and its revolution. Duncan has difficulty in transcending the enormous cultural gap between the West and Cuba and in understanding how money might not be the be and end all to someone living in a fundamentally different social system.
But he does touch on the reasons for their phenomenal success in the ring. And behind the mystique of that success are very basic reasons - the prominence of boxing in schools and the strata of well organised academies that nurture and develop the talent.
The most enjoyable chapters of the book are the potted biographies of the great Cuban boxers from before and after the revolution such as Kid Chocolate, Angel Espinosa, Kid Gavilan and Adolfo Horta as well as Stevenson and Savon. There is also the story of one boxer - Joel Casamayor - who did follow the siren call to Miami to join the professional ranks and at least to some extent fulfilled the prophesies of Stevenson and Savon.
Neale Towart |
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Casual Employment
The Australian Bulletin of Labour takes up the debate on who is a casual worker, with John Burgess and Iain Campbell critiquing the discussion paper released by Greg Murtough and Matthew Waite from the Productivity Commission. Murtough and Waite questioned the ABS category of casual worker (something the ABS was looking at also). One major point of contention was the way people self-assessed themselves as casual or not. Burgess and Campbell want to look harder at the facts of the matter ie the reality of their employment contract and working conditions, rather than a "feel OK" approach. Murtough and Waite respond to the critique and defend their characterisation. They make a distinction between "true casuals" and "ongoing casuals". Ongoing casuals can accumulate some leave entitlements and some unfair dismissal protection. Burgess and Campbell strongly question the validity of these categories of casual employment.
Rosemary Owens looks at the legal concept "long term or permanent casual" and wonders how this apparent category has been transferred to the industrial law arena. Is it seen as different from short term or true casual employment in industrial and common law.
Owens looks at recent Metals Casual case, the Clerks (SA) Award cases, and the Parental Leave (casuals) case. She argues that until the legal aspects are clear, there is no reason to remove long term casuals from the category of casual worker in the ABS surveys.
Richard Watts from the ACTU outlines the ACTU approach to the rapid increase in casual employment, and in particular explains the approach taken in the Parental Leave (casuals) case.
(Australian Bulletin of Labour; vol. 27, no. 2, June 2001)
Parental leave for Some Casuals
The AIRC decision of 31 May 2001 expanded parental leave to include some casual employees.
Eligible casual employees are those:
� employed on a regular and systematic basis for an ongoing period of employment during a period of at least 12 months.
� who can, but for pregnancy or the decision to adopt, can reasonably expect ongoing employment
Employers must not fail to re-engage a casual employee because the employee or employee's spouse is pregnant; or;
the employee is or has been absent on parental leave.
The AIRC also addressed the situation with labour hire companies. "An eligible casual employee who is employed by a labour hire company who performs work for a client of the labour hire company will be entitled to the position which they held immediately before proceeding on parental leave.
"Where such a position is no longer available, but there are other positions available that the employee is qualified for and is capable of performing, the employer shall make all reasonable attempts to return the employee to a position comparable in status and pay to that of the employee's former position."
(CCH Work Alert; June 2001)
Trade Unions Say NO to racism and Xenophobia
The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) has accepted an invitation from the UN to attend its World Conference Against Racism, Xenophobia and related Intolerance in Durban, South Afica from 31 August to 7 September. Here the worldwide trends of increasing violence and intolerance are outlined, and union actions on the ground throughout the world are presented, with examples from South Africa, Australia, the USA, France, Spain, Great Britain, Brazil, Ecuador and the Czech Republic.
(Trade Union World; no. 7-8, July-August 2001)
Education in a Global Economy
Education International is a union, a professional association and a human rights organization. It has just completed a Third World Congress in Thailand. Some of its key concerns which were discussed are the commercialisation of education services which some states seem to be pursuing at the expense of education for all citizens. Public education is a basic component of democracy.
Education for all must be an international priority. In 1990 world leaders agreed with UN agencies to work for this by 2000. Illiteracy rates of of 113 million children and 800 million adults attest to the failure of this goal.
Globalisation, commercialisation and the proposed general Agreement of Trade in Services (GATS) are threats to any improvement in education standards.
(Trade Union World; no. 7-8, July-August 2001)
Bad Downsizing Leads to Deskilling
Companies planning to downsize should do so strategically and after consulting employees or face the loss of core skills and employee commitment, according to a new study.
Downsizing: Is it working for Australia?, by Peter Dawkins and Craig Littler, says downsizing in the 1990s had mixed results, but where it was done as part of a strategic re-organisation to re-focus and improve a business, it had a much less negative effect on employees.
A finance industry case study by the authors found that after successive restructures there was a high incidence of "survivor syndrome" and reduction in organisational commitment among employees. The change program had broken employees' "psychological contract" with the bank.
Retaining and building skills were key factors in an organisation's ability to grow.
Downsizing always led to a loss of skills, but if companies failed to monitor their skill sets during change processes, they faced the risk of "dumb downsizing".
Dumb downsizers: downsizing organisations which both cut their head count and rely on contingent labour, leading to severe deskilling. These firms de-skill the most, and tend to be concentrated in manufacturing.
http://www.ceda.com.au/Publications/010725Downsizing:Is it working for Australia?, by Peter Dawkins and Craig Littler, July 2001
http://www.workplaceexpress.com.au
Surveillance and the Low-trust Workplace
Persistent, intrusive surveillance of a workforce is likely to lead to a sense of insecurity, loss of trust, inhibition, stress and discontent. ACIRRT's Betty Arsovska told a privacy briefing that workplace surveillance was sending a message to employees that 'We don't trust you'.
Given the findings of a recent US survey, this could mean a lot of unsettled workers. The survey showed:
� 78% of US companies monitored their employees in some way;
� 63% monitored internet use;
� 47% stored and reviewed employees' email messages;
� 15% viewed employees by video;
� 12% reviewed and recorded phone messages;
� 8% reviewed voice-mail messages.
Rather than surveillance, management should be looking to create a positive workplace culture, because the moral costs of surveillance may far outweigh any benefits.
http://www.workplaceinfo.com.au
Privacy: Getting the Balance Right
Darren Gardner, a partner with Cutler Hughes & Harris, told an ACIRRT briefing that while there was strictly speaking no 'right' to privacy in common law, employees did have the expectation of being treated with decency and dignity at work. These 'rights' included being left alone; quiet enjoyment of their work; not having personal matters disclosed; and tolerable working conditions.
Video surveillance, and email and internet monitoring, may cut across those rights. But employers too had rights - to protect property and persons; monitor employees' performance; improve customer service; protect against false workers compensation claims; promote occupational health and safety; monitor production; and staff training and development.
Getting the balance right is important.
http://www.workplaceinfo.com.au
The line was thrown out during the PM's National Press Club address where he purported to lay out his vision for a third term in government. Admitting there was an aging population that threatened to swamp the nation's social services, Howard's answer was to keep people in the workforce longer.
This is an intriguing argument from the champion of laissez-faire government, who has sat back nonchalantly while a generation were thrown out of work in their forties and fifties by big corporations in the name of 'restructuring'. Intriguing that is, until you consider Howard's own plight.
Here is a man who has spent most of his working life in the same job - one of the few jobs that has been buffered by the winds of change. As colleagues prepare to tap him on the shoulder - regardless of the result of the upcoming election - it's all too convenient to start playing the 'wisdom with age' card now. Howard is on the record saying he'll reconsider his future when he turns 64. His latest play suggests he could do a Hawkie and demand to hang on long after everyone else has grown tired of him.
Beyond the self-interest , the big flaw in Howard's argument is that even with retirement at 55 and 60 years there aren't enough jobs to go around. Far more visionary would be a federal government that really worked to utilize the skills and talents of mature people through the community sector and gave them something meaningful to do beyond calculating their superannuation rollover and whinge-ing about how the world's changed
The Howard agenda is also the ultimate nightmare for anyone born after 1960 and is still waiting for the Baby Boomers to vacate center field and give us a little bit of space to shape the world. After dominating our society from the cradle (where they were weaned on Dr Spock and taught they were the center of the universe), through their self-centred adolescence (where they convinced themselves they could change the world) through their years of stability (where greed suddenly became a positive character trait) to their maturing age (where the only political issue is how much tax do I have to pay?) they've been a generation of takers whose self-obsession has been all-consuming. Still they dominate all sections of society - from the media where Kerry, Ray and George have been sitting in the same chairs for nearly 30 years to music where MOR rock dominates and even JJJ is programmed by a 50-year-old to the arts and politics. The only place you'll find young people in the public eye are on sporting fields and in the Big Brother house.
Personally, rather than extending their working loves, I'm all for occupational euthanasia - the equivalent of Logan's Run - that sci-fi classic from the seventies where everyone over the age of 30 was put out of their misery. As a teenager, this seemed a reasonable enough proposition, although having past the age of expiration, I can see how the plan could have been a bit restrictive.
But in political terms, it is sound - two terms only - for all elected officials. If you can't achieve what you want in two terms then you never will. If you still want to be there after that period, you're just their to warm the bench and collect the super. If it's good enough for the American president, it's good enough for a hack like Howard: eight years and you're out!
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