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Issue No 110 | ![]() |
07 September 2001 |
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NewsMedibank Workers 'Feel Bitter Now'
New rosters by Medibank Private will destroy the lives of health insurer's largely female workforce by forcing them to start work as early as 7am and work back to 9pm. The new rosters - which also include a six day rostered week - have led workers to accuse Medibank of turning back the clock 100 years in their treatment of workers. While the company is attempting to trade-off the extended rosters with a $1000 sweetener, the majority of workers are standing firm in defence of their family lives. Worker Carol Jordan addressed the NSW Labor Council this week, painting a grim picture of her life under the new rostering system. Under the changes, all staff would be rostered between 7am and 9pm, with compulsory Saturday shifts 12 times per year. Major problems include the lack of ability of child care before 7am and after 6pm, problems with getting children to school and the total dislocation of domestic routine by having the shifts varied on a week to week basis. The lack of secure public transport outside the 9-5 spread of hours The staff - who have never taken industrial action before - have begun wearing lapel ribbons to work, emailing their opposition to the managing director and have carried a resolution to consider a possible industrial campaign. Labor Council secretary John Robertson says Medibank Private was emerging as another 'stone-age employer'. "Unions are often accused of wanting to turn back the clock - but more and more it is the employers who are acting in a retro way turning back the clock to a six day week and trashing the notion of ordinary working hours," he said.
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![]() ![]() ![]() Ethnic Communities Council chair Salvatore Scevola gives his take on the Tampa saga and the underlying attitudes driving the debate. ![]() ![]() Jagath Banderra recounts his own experience as a new arrival in Australia entering the workforce. ![]() ![]() Iraqi refugees travel the same tortuous road as Afghans. The refugees on the Tampa have almost certainly endured a similar ordeal. ![]() ![]() Veronica Apap looks at the many difficulties migrants face in having their skills recognised in Australia. ![]() ![]() The CFMEUs Phil Davey surveys the wreckage after 10 years of Brazil's Government doing what the free marketeers want. ![]() ![]() Rowan Cahill looks at how Australia's preferred refugee dumping ground's history is indelibly linked with our own. ![]() ![]() Caroline Alcorso argues the integration of immigrant workers into the trade union movement has been a central issue in Australia’s post-war labor history. ![]() ![]() In the ACTU’S groundbreaking Fifty Families report there is one particularly sobering story. Frank tells how the modern workplace is driving some people to the fatal edge. ![]() ![]() NSW Labor’s century of successes began in 1910, as did the “middle classing” of Labor policy. ![]() ![]() People who are white in colour are being raped by people who are not white, an exclusive Chaser investigation found last week. ![]()
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