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Power Plays
Depending on where you sit, the decision by a State Labor Government to sell off the division of the power industry responsible for its long-term planning is either bold or reckless.
Interview: Still Flying
ACTU Secretary Greg Combet looks beyond the bid to save Ansett to a broader union agenda for 2002.
Women: Suffrage or Suffering
Alison Peters marks International Women's Day by surveying the achievements - and shortcomings - of a century of female suffrage.
Industrial: No Coco Pops For Brenda
The working poor get short shrift from the hypocritical Minister For Workplace Relations says Noel Hester.
Unions: Back to the Heartland
Lidcombe, western Sydney. A boring cultural desert, right? Wrong, wrong and wrong again according to CFMEU officials who talked to Jim Marr about relocating their headquarters to a working class base.
Activists: Getting to the Point
Rowan Cahill reports on a development battle that has fractured a South Coast community and the role the union movement has played to drive a just outcome.
International: Push Polling
On the eve of elections in Zimbabwe, trade unionists are paying the price for their commitment to democracy.
Economics: Debt Defaulters
Amidst the colour and movement of CHOGM little was said about the pressing issue of debt relief, writes Thea Ormond.
Poetry: Those Were the Days
The Golden Wing lounges have closed. The last of the commiserating Ansett workers have long since departed those makeshift taverns.
Review: Black Hawk Dud
If you want to find out exactly what went wrong during the US Marines' 1993 peacekeeping operation in Mogadishu in Somalia, do not see Black Hawk Down.
Satire: Fox-Lew Launch Rescue Bid for Beta Video
Businessmen Solomon Lew and Lindsay Fox have shocked the financial sector with a daring bid to rescue the communications giant Beta Video.
Egan Sells His Brains
Spying Bill Targets Strikers
Dunny Wars: Will Workers Carry the Can?
Drivers Appeal To Commuters
New Tack on Asylum Seekers
Go Forth and Multiply � Unions on Women
Howard Shuts Workers Out Of Steel Talks
Questions Remain As Rio Rings Changes
Labor Hire Swifty Exposed
Unions Fight 'Industrial Blackmail'
AIRC in Contracting Debacle
Mayne Chance For A Wage Deal
IT Workers Get Their Own Geek Scopes
PNG Women Visit Australia
Brazilian Unions Study Aussie Experience
No Shangri-la in Jakarta
Activists Notebook
The Soapbox
Love Thy Neighbour
Bruce Childs explains why he's reactivated the Palm Sunday committee to take a stand for refugees. The Locker Room
Debt Before Dishonour
In a week that featured allegations of drugs in footy, fast horses and faster cars, Phil Doyle struggled to keep up. Week in Review
Bullies Rule, OK?
Jim Marr considers a week which highlighted the absolute joy of being big, rich and powerful in a lassez faire world. Tool Shed
Leader of the Free World
George W Bush barricades himself in this week's Tool Shed with the sort of double standards that gives world domination a bad name.
How to Beat the Banks
Collins Goes Cahill
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Evatt Foundation
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News
Drivers Appeal To Commuters
Commuters will be the big winners if state government and Rail Bus and Tram Union officials are unable to strike a deal on bus drivers wages.
The union executive, buoyed by employer moves to lift their wage offer in the wake of this week�s two-day stoppage, will recommend that any further action take the form of fare-free days.
There is growing confidence, however, that scheduled talks will resolve the issue.
The executive has agreed to a 10 percent increase, over two years, but Workers OnLine understands there is still an argument over how that figure will be arrived at.
Employers are proposing four percent backdated to January 1, another four percent from next January, then the remaining two percent over the final six months of the agreement.
The union, concerned by the effect of shrinking rosters on take-home pay, wants six percent upfront, and backdated, and the remaining four percent from January 1, 2003.
The 10 percent figure would give bus drivers parity with state rail workers.
Employers moved their offer from eight percent on the eve of this week's stoppage which effected more than one million commuters but that came too late to prevent drivers walking off the job in Sydney and Newcastle.
Union representatives will take a recommendation on the wage campaign to a mass meeting of drivers on Thursday. If workers accept their union's revised position the ball for resolution will be firmly in the Government's court.
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Issue 127 contents
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