Even before we open the door to the Shed we should make it clear up front - pedophilia is an outrage that ruins young lives and should be dealt with by the criminal law in the most punitive manner. That is why we have police and courts - to catch and punish wrong-doers.
But having seen the pedophilia debate unfold in this country for some years now - culminating in the Heffernen allegations over the past few weeks - it has become clear that some people making these allegations are driven to the point of zealotry - fueled by their sincere belief that the young should be protected, but sometimes seeming to have an, at best, tenuous grip on reality. One only has to cast the mind make to the franca Arena affair, where the NSW Upper House MP used Parliamentary privilege to make similarly extravagant claims about a high-level network of child abusers only to see the evidence collapse when asked for substantiation.
In a parliamentary system that allows MPs to make allegations without the normal rules of defamation - with the media reporting such statements - you have a situation that is open to abuse. In short, when the appropriate avenues are not followed, allegations of pedophilia can easily be made to attack high-profile homosexuals.
For once it was the Fourth Estate that acted as a buffer against Bill Heffernan's attack on the democratic system. The attack on High Court judge, Justice Michael Kirby was so outrageous and such an inappropriate use of Parliamentary privilege that the story became the messenger. Within 24 hours, the PM's Mr Fixit had stood down from his position and Parliamentary secretary as members from both sides of the House expressed their outrage at the misuse of power. By the end of the week the claims were resting on a couple of pieces of paper, purported to be Comcar records, but on scrutiny found to be forgeries.
Heffernan was left with nowhere to go but to make a sincere apology. The Prime Minister, who had allowed the issue to drift as it wiped his own troubles with the Governor-General off the front pages and then actually widened the scope of the attack with the outrageous comment that the judge could be removed without any proof of criminality, has now wiped his hands of the issue. He refuses to apologise, but has paid a personal price by being forced ot sack one of his closest confidantes.
Which brings us to Piers. While the rest of the media was responsibly scrutinizing the extraordinary actions of Bill Heffernan, Akerman used his column in the Daily Telegraph to repeat the allegations. That's right, vast swabs of the offending speech are reproduced under the cover of the Parliamentary privilege that had been so abused. And in vintage form Piers took pot-shots at the victim of the attack, implying that the rebuttal lacked the vehemence to be convincing, before calling on him to stand down from the High Court.
That was last week. After the revelations of the forgery removed, Piers alone refused to condemn the man who had abused Parliament. Instead he castes Heffernan as the honourable innocent, his "wholehearted and unreserved apology ... set(ting) a political high-water mark". The real villains, in Piers account, are the ALP, the Greens, the Australian Democrat and, of course, the ALP for attacking Howard government over the issue. No mention of Heffernan's impulsiveness and destructiveness, just a cheap swipe at Piers' enemies for having the temerity to be on the side of truth. Indeed, he twists this concept so far that by the end of the column it is these people who seem to be to blame for the whole affair.
What to make of Piers rationalizations? Well, it's not the first time Piers has targeted Justice Kirby. When the judge declared his homosexuality some years ago, he ran the malicious line that as homosexuality was illegal in the sixties, that Kirby had broken the law and should therefore resign. This particularly grubby proposition created its own momentum, culminating in Workers Online's well publicized bounty on Piers' head. But the recent events suggest there may have been a thicker plot. We all suspect Piers has had great access to the PM's office; what latest episode implies is that Heffernan may have been the source.
Whatever, Piers' handling of this outrage is a disgrace. He has allowed himself to become the vehicle for a misuse of parliamentary privilege that will become a text- book example of the dangers of zealotry. It's fine to be a professional skeptic, but a public profile carries responsibility. As Heffernan has failed this test, so has his mouthpiece.
The eight metre rodent debuted in spectacular style at St Luke�s Grammar School, Brookvale, this week, alerting locals to a typical industry rip-off threatening 30 local breadwinners and two family-owned businesses.
Griffith Landscape Management has gone belly-up leaving two sub-contractors facing the wall and workers owed $160,000 in wages and entitlements. All-up, its demise threatens 250 small business which it owes more than $2 million.
CFMEU Labor Council delegate Phil Davey calls Griffith's operation a "classic example of pyramid sub-contracting, leaving everyone below the contractor in serious trouble".
Building industry workers are left out of pocket in similar situations every week. Others are forced into bodgy sub-contracting arrangements, depriving them of wages, superannuation and workers compensation entitlements.
Safety, the exploitation of immigrant labour, and tax avoidance, are other major issues in the de-regulated world envisioned by Royal Commission architect, Workplace Relations Minister Tony Abbott.
The CFMEU's rat has been bred to sniff out these situations and officials say he will "work like a dog" while Cole is in town.
Abbott Goes Missing
Hundreds of striking Manly building workers backed up the Rat's second appearance on the Manly Corso where his height allowed him to peer through the second-floor, electorate office windows of Abbott, who just happens to be the local Warringah MP.
The rodent was unable to report a sighting of the man who has turned his back on constituents affected by the Griffith Landscape collapse. When workers sought assistance from their federal member they were told he was busy and wouldn't be able to see them until the end of April.
"There is a problem in this community that needs attention sometime before the end of April," Davey says.
"Abbott's crowded calendar didn't stop his office ringing the Dee Why police to claim children at St Luke's were being harassed. On the contrary, the rat and his supporters were very well behaved. It was a peaceful protest, something we were congratulated on by the school principle.
Name the Rat
Workers OnLine brings readers the exclusive chance to name the Rat which will go into overdrive when the Cole Commission hits town next month.
Our competition is an opportunity to write your name, well at least the one you make up, into labour history and enjoy a bonus schooner with CFMEU Construction Division secretary, Andrew Ferguson, and the rat's adopted father, Phil Davey.
The pair will sift through entries and announce the winner at the next NSW Labor Council meeting on Thursday, April 7.
Email entries, marked The Rat, to: [email protected]
The Labor Council will ask the Carr Government to toughen up its tendering rules, to stop the tactic that is routine in the construction and contract cleaning industries.
Labor Council secretary John Robertson says it's common practice for a company to go into voluntary liquidation owing payroll tax, workers compensation and leave entitlements.
The owners and directors of the companies then simply apply for a new ABN and go out and bid for more government work.
"The practice is not only leaving workers out of pocket, it is penalising companies that do make proper provision for entitlements and have to compete with the shonks," Robertson says.
"The government needs to take away the incentive of winding up a company and leaving workers to carry the can. Banning directors for life from bidding for government work would certainly achieve that."
The issue will be raised by unions at the May ALP State Conference.
Chain of Rorts
Meanwhile, the CFMEU has highlighted the need for building contractors to take responsibility for the practices of firms they sub-contract to perform government work.
CFMEU state secretary Andrew Ferguson says one of the companies engaged at Concord Hospital had been found to have 20 of its 40 workers engaged under a sham sub-contract agreement.
On the same site 10 illegal Chinese immigrants were being paid below the award with no provision for tax or workers compensation. The company subsequently went bust.
"These companies are being engaged by principal contractors because their prices are cheap," Ferguson says.
Labor Council has called on the Carr Government to make it a condition of all government contracts that the principal not engage sub contractors that breach award or statutory obligations. When they do, the contractor should be liable for any outstanding sums.
Spurred by Bob Carr�s offer of facilities and infrastructure, Labor Council wants to reprise the success of Unions 2000, when NSW and Australia benefited from a centralised, co-operative approach to industrial relations.
Labor Council will convene a meeting of interested unions with a view to developing an industrial award to cover all workers at the event.
In 2000, a range of state and federal awards were suspended in favour of a centralised award which provided flexibility in return for increased pay rates.
The agreement was struck between Labor Council, major employer bodies and Government and was seen as one of the key factors behind smooth Olympic preparation.
"It was fantastic, a blueprint for what can be achieved with genuine co-operation," Council secretary John Robertson said.
"If doing something similar ensures people in this state will benefit from hosting the Rugby World Cup unions will be right behind it."
Federal Employment Minister Tony Abbott�s admission this week that the Government will attempt to stand in front of unpaid employees in the creditors� queue has outraged sacked workers.
Despite collecting millions from its $10 air ticket tax for Ansett entitlements, Abbott confirms Government will seek priority repayment from the administrators of funds paid out from its employee entitlement support scheme.
ACTU Secretary Greg Combet said the Government's move could leave Ansett employees out of pocket by clawing back some $300 million from the asset realisation programme that will be used to fund workers' entitlements.
"The Government scheme only funds up to eight week's redundancy payments, so many Ansett employees will be depending on a successful asset realisation process to receive their full entitlements," Mr Combet says.
"However, in the event of a shortfall in funds, the Federal Government should use the ticket tax money for the purpose for which it was collected and fund any shortfall in entitlements owed to employees.
"The ticket tax money should be used to help Ansett workers - it should not end up in the Government's consolidated revenue fund if that results in sacked employees going without entitlements."
About 4500 Ansett employees are expected next week to receive payment of entitlements including annual leave, long service leave, notice pay, and eight weeks' redundancy. About 7000 workers have already received similar "first tranche" payments. Second tranche payments will be made from the proceeds of the sale of Ansett's assets, last valued at $1.6 billion.
NSW Labor Council secretary John Robertson highlighted the case of an Iraqi refugee, released after nine months at Woomera with only a temporary protection visa and a Medicare card, unable to even meet the Government�s required 100 points to open a bank account.
"It's hard to live in this society without a bank account," Robertson said.
"Our members need to hear, first hand, the problems these people face on a daily basis. To regard them as more than mere statistics they need a real understanding of the human impact of this Government's policies."
Robertson met the Iraqi at a South Coast Labor Party meeting and was moved both by his experiences in Woomera and the reality of trying to put a life together in an unsympathetic environment.
Workplace Visits
He was endorsing a call by the Council's special projects officer, Mark Morey, for affiliates to get involved in a program to have refugees visit worksites.
Morey wants unions to identify refugees who may be delegates or activists from within their ranks and would be prepared to share their experiences.
He has also asked unions to identify workplaces where visits could be organised.
The project grew out of a February Workplace Harmony conference and Morey said it would be modeled on the education program run successfully by the UNHCR.
"Guards are having money deducted just because they need to go to the toilet - and don't get permission," NSW LHMU Security Union assistant secretary, Mark Boyd, says.
"Our members feel like they are back in school, desperately waving their hands saying 'please, please, sir can I go to the toilet'.
" This is not the way to treat workers. It has to come to an end."
State Rail contracted-out, to Chubb Security, the security guards jobs on trains and platforms.
"Union members are telling Chubb to do something about the problems and stop pissing in our pockets. They have had two years of promises on pay and conditions without any action," Boyd says.
Union members want the Carr Labor Government to consider taking the State Rail contract off Chubb if it is not prepared to show some respect for its workers.
The contract - for both on-train and platform security guards - comes up for re-negotiation in July.
A delegation of LHMU State Rail security guards and union officials has met Transport Minister, Carl Scully, to outline their concerns.
Boyd says members are pleased by initial responses from the Minister's office to a range issues.
Water Works
Security members, working on the SRA system, will rally at 9.30am next Tuesday, in front of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission in William St, Sydney, to protest poor conditions and pay.
They want Chubb, the SRA and the Industrial Relations Commission to act now and address a long list of grievances.
Newcastle security guards struck for 48 hours over these issues earlier this month.
The Industrial Relations Commission ordered Chubb and the SRA to report back on March 26 to ensure, finally, that Newcastle problems were taken seriously.
After the stoppage Chubb Security, forced by the NSW WorkCover Authority, began providing Newcastle workers with free bottled chilled water - something they had resisted for nearly two years.
Workers at last Monday's Sydney mass meeting congratulated their Newcastle counterparts and decided to organise the rally outside the Industrial Relations Commission.
The film's director Phillip Noyce addressed a group of indigenous and non-indigenous students this week, speaking for more than an hour about the themes and process behind the making of the film.
The students from St Scholasticas College Glebe and St Mary's Cathederal College were among the first to work through the classroom study materials developed by the film's producers.
The discussion traversed a wide range of issues including the choice of dialect for the
characters, the portrayal of the Aboriginal tracker and the belief by the Europeans that they were acting in the girls' best interests.
Noyce revealed that having lived in Hollywood for a decade, he had been unaware of the Stolen Generations debate before making the movie. "I was attracted by the universal nature of the story, but the current debate gives it an extra depth," he says.
NSW/ACT IEU (state) secretary Dick Shearman says his union is taking an active role in raising the issue of reconciliation in the classroom.
"Our members work in schools of all denominations, but there is a consistent commitment to social justice," he says. "The film certainly brings the issue to life for students and has already sparked some stimulating exchanges in the classroom.
Education is one of the keys to reconciliation and our members are working hard to address the mistakes of the past".
ACTU President Sharan Burrow says Attorney General Daryl Williams' comments on ABC radio today justifying extreme new powers for ASIO to detain and interrogate people without charge were extraordinary.
"The Howard Government has shown itself willing to falsely accuse people of serious offences based on bogus evidence and lies, and to illegally spy on Australian citizens for its own political ends. Who will be next to be accused and have their basic rights violated?" Ms Burrow asks.
"The Government has also admitted changes to the Intelligence Services Act last year allowed the Defence Signals Directorate to tap Australians' electronic communications without authorisation."
"Terrorism is serious. Civil liberties and democratic rights are also serious. If we are to alter our democratic system to remove individual liberties in a knee-jerk response, then terrorism has won."
Ms Burrow says the ACTU will seek to have the legislation defeated in the Senate later this year.
Puplick, now president of the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board, told Labour Council the record of its affiliates on sexism, racism and other forms of discrimination, while impressive, was not perfect.
He rattled delegates with examples of unions apparently supporting discrimination.
- when two women cleaners had been deliberately exposed to pornographic posters, threats and sexually-explicit grafitti
- in a meatworks where women packers were exposed to racist insults, sexist rumours and harrassment
Puplick admitted the "trepidation" he always felt passing through "the portals of the Labor Council building in that most dreaded of addresses, Sussex St", but warmed to his task.
He warned unions they were not entitled to sit idly by while damage was done, citing the case of an apprentice at a Sydney worksite who had been tied to a tree and sodomised, by bottle, as part of some bizarre initiation ceremony.
Puplick, who has taken an active role in challenging agreements considered discriminatory in the Industrial Relations Commission, also told delegates of the dangers inherent in being party to indirect discrimination.
Council secretary John Robertson, whose organisation helped draft the anti-discrimination guidelines which Puplick was launching, took up the challenge.
Describing the Puplick address as "typically provocative" he urged affiliates to step up to the plate.
"We have a responsibility to address these issues," Robertson said. "Trade unions have a key role to play in ensuring that racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination are eliminated from our workplaces."
Read the full speech from Chris Puplick.
State Cabinet this week voted to overturn ALP policy not to privatise PPI "on the voices" - despite union concern that it would lead to privatisation by stealth by moving the strategic planning arm of the industry into private hands.
But it's been revealed that despite the decision, government cannot force PPI workers to leave the public sector because of their over-riding commitment to no forced redundancies.
Early indications are that large sections of the PPI workforce will refuse to take the redundancy offer and stay on the Treasurers' books. PPI workers at the University of Newcastle have voted overwhelmingly to reject the offer.
NSW Labor Council assistant secretary Mark Lennon says his reading of the workers' entitlements is that the idea of a privatised PPI could remain a pipe-dream of the Treasurer.
"The union movement will certainly not be recommending that anyone lose their public sector conditions so that the Treasurer's budget can look neater," Lennon says.
AWU National Secretary Bill Shorten told workers the negotiated deal - which would give steelworkers the right to choice between the AWU-endorsed Superannuation Trust Australia superannuation fund or the company-preferred fund - was a victory for commonsense.
The AWU has been fighting since last year - when BHP announced it would outsource employees' superannuation - for steelworkers to have a choice over where more than $600 million of their superannuation funds would be invested.
BHP had argued that its preferred fund, a subsidiary of Towers Perrin, should be the only fund despite an independent report by accounting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu finding the AWU-endorsed fund, STA, offered a "similar range of services" at lower cost.
Features of the negotiated deal include:
- Total Risk Management (the wholly owned subsidiary of Towers Perrin) and STA to start information sessions for BHP steel employees
- STA and BHP to set up a team to assist members with the transition from their existing fund to STA
- TRM will be the successor fund in the context of all employees being required to exercise compulsory choice between STA and TRM prior to upcoming BHP Steel spinout.
- STA will be the default fund for new award employees after spinout
- TRM will be the default fund for new staff employees post spinout
- BHP Steel has agreed to consult and seek agreement from unions regarding superannuation arrangements for any future acquisitions
- Unions to be given access and paid time meetings to brief members on superannuation issues
Shorten said the intervention of BHP Steel vice president of human resources Ian Fraser, had contributed to delivering steelworkers the best superannuation options available. The deal will be considered by BHP Superannuation trustees for endorsement next week.
The federal president of the Australian Education Union is writing to Hollingworth on the subject and his organisation will back any school which declares the Governor General persona non grata.
"Teachers have a professional duty of care to their students which extends to mandatory reporting," AEU president Denis Fitzgeral explains. "We take that duty very seriously indeed. Matters of sexual abuse are particularly sensitive."
Fitzgerald said it was in this context that controversial remarks made by the Governor General concerned the teaching profession.
There was uproar when remarks he made on the ABC's Australian Story by the former Anglican Bishop were widely interpreted as excusing an abusive priest and seeking to blame his victim who was 14 at the time.
Fitzgerald said his organisation had been "alarmed" by a range of comments and sentiments attributed to Hollingworth on the subject.
"We note a diverse range of organisations and leaders vitally concerned with child welfare have felt the need to formally distance themselves from the current holder of the Governor General's office. These organisations have taken the view that they cannot continue with their responsibilities to children and continue an association with Dr Hollingworth," Fitzgerald said.
Several Queensland unions, including the IEU, AMWU and ASU Services Branch - are determined to fight the controversial issue at this year's state conference.
Just this week, electrical workers confirmed their stance, on what has been tagged Fair Share Representation Fees.
ETU Queensland branch secretary, Dick Williams, says his union won't wait for party conferences to push the issue.
"Our members want the Beattie Government to commit to such legal change now. Union members, including ETU members, have had enough of people riding on their backs, enjoying improved wages and conditions won by unions, but refusing to join or contribute to the cost of getting those improvements.
"It would not be tolerated in any other sector of society."
He said nothing was being done in the workplace because of "hypocritical ideological reasons" from conservative politicians and "what I suspect is policy cowardice on the ALP side".
As dozens of Korean union leaders languish in prisons and thousands of workers strike against Kim' privatisation programme, the Nobel Committee refused to review its award.
The decision was conveyed to Norwegian union, NKF, which approached the committee on behalf of the Public Service International.
The committee informed NKF, by letter, that it did not meet with outside groups. It said it considered human and trade union rights to be subordinate to Kim's efforts for democracy and the work he had done to establish closer relationships between North and South Korea.
The committee enclosed a copy of the speech made when Kim received the peace prize in which "awareness" of human and trade union rights were recognised.
PSI general secretary, Hans Engelberts, declined a meeting with the Nobel Committee secretary on the basis of the response. He will discuss the issue with Korean affilitates later this month.
The civil suit, filed in Alabama by the Colombian Mining and Energy Union, alleges Alabama-based Drummond Mining and its owner, Garry Drummond, hired rightwing paramilitaries to torture and kill the unionists, last year, to prevent other Drummond workers joining the union.
The action was filed with the support of the United Mine Workers of America, the United Steelworkers of America and the International Labour Rights Foundation.
It follows the March 12, 2001, murders of Valmore Locarno Rodriguez and Victor Hugo Orcasita Amaya - president and vice president of the Colombian union - and the October 6 murder of new president Gustavo Soler Mora.
The union says the activists received death threats and asked Drummond to provide extra security but received no help.
The lawsuit was filed under a law allowing foreign nationals to use US courts to address alleged wrongdoing by US citizens.
Colombia is a dangerous place for union activists. Already in 2002, more than 30 have been murdered and Gilberto Torres Martine, general secretary of the Union of Workers Pipeline Section, has been held captive by paramiliatries since February 25.
In the 21 months since ILO condemnation of forced labour in Burma, whilst a number of companies have taken action, not a single government has implemented mandatory economic measures against the miliatry regime.
The brutality continues virtually unabated. An ILO mission to Burma in February this year failed to reach agreement with the junta on the establishment of a permanent investigative office in the country.
The failure follows an ICFTU report on Burma from November 2001, which revealed forced labour continuing on a "massive" scale. Rangoon, however, has just accepted the posting of an ILO liaison person in Burma, from June.
The ICFTU welcomes this step but stresses that, according to the terms of the agreement approved today, the posting of this liaison officer is only a first step toward a permanent and effective ILO presence, "with all means necessary at its disposal to achieve the complete eradication of forced labour in the country".
Meanwhile, the ICFTU is calling on governments to refuse to extend export credits to companies involved with exporting to Burma. It is urging governments to ban new investments in Burma by multinational enterprises based in their countries, on the grounds that all trade and investment in the country constitutes financial support to the military junta.
ICFTU General Secretary Guy Ryder denounced the international ambivalence, stating that "Burma is being let off the hook by the international community, and foreign investment is propping up a junta that has no right to exist in the 21st century."
The ICFTU represents 157 million workers in 225 affiliated organisations in 148 countries and territories. It is also a member of Global Unions: http://www.global-unions.org
Members of the forestry union SP KahutIndo began industrial action in East Kalimantan last month when timber employers refused to pass on the wage increase for 2002 mandated under a two-year collective agreement signed in November 2000.
Employers have attempted to circumvent the agreement by pressuring the Governor of East Kalimantan to order an inferior wage increase, even though the regional parliament of East Kalimantan has backed the union.
ACTU President Sharan Burrow said the dispute threatened the emergence of democratic unions in Indonesia, the rule of Indonesian industrial law and breached international conventions on collective bargaining.
Ms Burrow has written to the Governor of East Kalimantan asking him to reconsider his position and urge employers in the region to honour the collective agreement in full.
The ACTU has called on affiliates and union members to fax their support on this issue to the Governor of East Kalimantan on
0011 62 541 742111.
The ACTU initiative is backed by the powerful International Federation of Building and Wood Workers (IFBWW) with over 12 million members in 124 countries worldwide.
WEDNESDAY POLITICS AT BERKELOUW
THE DEATH OF LIBERALISM?
6.30 PM WEDNESDAY MARCH 27
There are many who hold that liberalism is now dead in Australia.
Join this provocative and lively discussion.
Speakers:
Hon W.C. Wentworth,
Former Federal Liberal Minister
Greg Barns,
Chair, Australian Republican Movement
Former Senior Adviser to the Howard Government
Chaired by
John Roskam
Executive Director
Menzies Research Centre
Venue: Upstairs, Berkelouw Books 70 Norton Street, Leichhardt
6.30PM
Admission: $15 and $5
Bookings: Email: [email protected]
--
(***************
"UNFAIR DISMISSAL LAWS - A MONSTER OR A MOUSE?"
The Australian Workers Union (AWU) is convening a conference of employment stakeholders to assess the impact of Unfair Dismissal proceedings.
The one-day conference - entitled "Unfair Dismissals - Monster or Mouse?" - will be held on Friday, 19th April, at the Hilton (on the Park) Hotel, 192 Wellington Parade, East Melbourne.
The discussion will bring together representatives from business, unions, the Australian Industrial Relations Commission and politics to analyse the effectiveness of the current laws, the tactics and procedures surrounding unfair dismissals, and the possibilities for constructive reform.
AWU National and Victorian Branch Secretary Bill Shorten is convening the conference, and will be joined by others including:
� Justice Geoff Guidice, President of the Industrial Relations Commission
� Mordy Bromberg, Industrial Relations Barrister
� David Gregory, General Manager - Workplace Relations and Policy, VECCI
� Richard Marles, Assistant Secretary, ACTU
� Senator Andrew Murray, Democrat Spokesperson on Workplace Relations
� Robert McClelland MP, Labor Spokesperson on Workplace Relations
If you would like to be on the media table please contact AWU National Media officer Andrea Carson by email/ fax or telephone before April 12th.
FAX: (03) 9329 2871
Tel: (03) 9329 8733
Email: [email protected]
FURTHER COMMENT: AWU National Secretary Bill Shorten 0419 105 263 or AWU Media officer Andrea Carson 0407 041 933
www.vicnoticeboard.com
Dear Prime Minister
I refer to the money allocated by the previous Health Minister, Dr Woolridge, to the Doctor's Union.
Knowing that you are a fair man and that you stand strong and tall in the application of justice for all, I am delighted to write to you seeking parity for my union with the Doctor's Union.
I can assure you that the money that you allocate to my union will be particularly well used by my membership, and no doubt the benefit of such shall apply to all people within New South Wales. I eagerly await your Government's cheque for five million dollars.
Yours faithfully
Maurie O'Sullivan
General Secretary
Public Service Association
Dear Prime Minister
Would you please pass a copy of this letter to your Attorney General.
I have watched with intense interest your verbal gymnastics over recent weeks and particularly your oral callisthenics regarding Justice Kirby.
Equally I have watched your Attorney General's screaming silence and his abject failure to do what is his job, both by tradition and by morality. His failure and your failure to protect a member of the judiciary, indeed, the entire judicial system, is a splendid demonstration of the most deplorable cowardice.
I shall send you shortly the address of the abattoir that is nearest to Parliament House and I suggest then that you and Attorney General Williams might stop by the back door of that abattoir as the slaughtered animals' guts are being removed and see if you can get a truckload of those guts for yourselves, because up to now such parts of your bodies appear to be a very sparse commodity.
Yours faithfully
Maurie O'Sullivan
General Secretary
Public Service Associarion
Dear Prime Minister,
I write to you regarding a matter of National importance. For some time now I have lived in the leafy riverside suburb of New Farm in the inner North of Brisbane.
It has become increasingly obvious to me over recent times that scores of Upper Class, Socially Conservative, Economically Well Off individuals having been moving into our once "Working Class haven" and changing the social fabric of our neighbourhood.
They are moving in by there thousands in their Mercedes M-Class 4 Wheel Drives and Range Rovers and appear to have no respect for the laws or values of our lovely little community. They are erecting high rise slums and basically changing the whole ambience of our community so as that we are now left to feel like foreigners in our own suburb.
These people have moved in with their socially divisive politics and racial intolerance and have shown absolutely no regard for the generations of workers and their families that have made New Farm such a great place to live.
May I request Mr Prime Minister that you remove New Farm from Australia's Migration zone so as to avoid the continual moral and social decay that we are subjected to. May I also suggest that you have the Australian Federal
Police conduct a sweep of the area to round up all these horrible people (they might even uncover some evidence against Justice Kirby).
Maybe these awful beings could be stored pending a decision on their status in that wonderful new detention centre that you are building on Christmas Island. Given the overwhelming success of your Governments Pacific Solution
it obviously won't be needed to house those pesky boat people and it would be such a shame to see it go to waste.
I know this request may seem a little out of left field, but I understand there is some precedence for it.
Yours sincerely
Gerard Carlyon
Hi,
I am very concerned regarding the current trend here in Australia, where large firms here in Australia, in the interest of their bottom line, are using the excuse of downsizing and restructuring. to legally get rid of employees. Is there a job in Australia that is safe at the moment. I would encourage all workers to look for alternatives out there before the bottom line of a restructure hits you. There are many alternatives out there and you could have something in place that may be even better than your current work situation.
Personally, I am in an industry that I fear for my job security every day, and for that reason I took the steps of starting a home based business, without affecting my current work situation. There are many opportunities out there guys where you can have something in place to secure your families future prior to the boss saying "this merger won't affect you".
Ray
by Peter Lewis
|
*************
Was there a specific event that prompted your decision to pull the pin?
Not a specific event, no. A whole range of issues and just watching the performance of the Party at State and Federal level. I mean there has been some major blows that would have to be considered as insults to the movement - the announcement after the Federal election obviously prompted by others within the Party, draw a view that is relevant for Trade Unions. They can talk about modernising the party and the like but for our ordinary members, they took it as a slap in the face that the Party was trying to distance itself from their trade union.
So that was a blow?
We've been to a Federal election where racism won the day and all of a sudden trade unions have been blamed for it and I just couldn't believe it.
What's been the response from your members since you made the decision?
Unbelievable, unbelievable support and not just from our members but from all sections of the community and all sorts of places. Yesterday it was mad. The amount of emails, messages, calls of support - people saying 'can I join a new party?', there isn't even one around. But if you wanted to make your life's work starting a new political party representing what is clearly just Labor values, you could certainly easily get one up and running.
What do you understand Simon Crean means when he says he wants to modernize the ALP?
He means he's going to have a review to pacify, I suppose, political expedience. But will Simon Crean have the guts to tackle the branch stackers who run the ALP? I don't really think he will. Branch stackers aren't true Labor people, they're careerists who, for their own ends join up lots of people who have no particular love for Labor issues or unions. If he tackles that, and gets through to branch stacking - I'll be amazed.
But do you accept there has been a change in the dynamics of the workplace in the last two decades and that Labor would need to address that?
No, what do you mean by dynamics?
Well, Crean would say there a lot fewer people who are in unions now and that effects the way that a Party for workers would operate.
I disagree. Crean says that then that's fine. But look at our Union - we've increased our membership in the last six years. I don't accept the argument to be different. Although people may in some industries work differently, I don't accept the workers issues are any different now then they were essentially at their core 150 years ago.
You've got a lot more casuals out there now, there's a lot more people fearing for their jobs. You've got a Federal Government that is putting the fear across to workers, bosses who want to intimidate people who even attempt to join a union. Ss for the ALP to make any play on that at all is just not on in my view.
Defenders of affiliation would say it's much better to be inside the tent than outside. In NSW unions blocked the privatisation of the Power Industry a couple of conferences ago, isn't that proof of the value of actually having unions inside the tent?
What you've got to understand is our union is inside the tent. The Secretary of the Union made a very personal decision not to remain affiliated. The ETU will not make a decision on this based on what I've done, but they'll make a meritorious decision on the performance of the Party, particularly at a State level.
But would that argument weigh on them do you think?
No, I honestly believe that if we went to a vote, our members would leave. And I think they would leave very readily. I mean I look at Unions like the AEU, the Nurses, the CEPU have all done exceptionally well out of the State Labor government and they're not affiliated and I think that what our union has to do is revert to traditional tactics and start treating them like any other employer. The only stairway to heaven is through a good kick in the arse
It's been reported you joined the Greens this week, what's the attraction in the Greens?
What I do politically now I'm going to keep fairly personal so I'm not going to speculate on my own membership with the Greens. But the Greens in general have been an organization that has really assisted our union in Victoria in the last 12-18mths in particular when we've been trying to push for a Renewable Energies Industry Manufacturing Base in Australia and to get jobs in the La Trobe Valley in Melbourne. Just the amount of time and effort they've put in when working with us to assist creating hundreds of jobs for workers in an industry, which is our industry, that has lost so many. I've just found they're brilliant to work with, they're social justice policies and their industrial relations policies are just fantastic.
So what's the difference in the way they do business and the way the ALP operates?
I think with the Greens, what you have is a whole range of policies that are based on protecting our environment, protecting human rights and trade union rights. The good thing about the Greens is that they don't listen to talk back radio and change their policy on the run depending on what Alan Jones is saying on a given day. And they're solid in their belief and they're very clear and outspoken, you know exactly where you stand. In terms of representing my political beliefs they've done exceptionally well and I found a real accord with them.
Are you, on a bigger picture, seeing the Greens as an alternate vehicle for unions to be politically active?
No, not necessarily actually. I think it's a debate that I'd like to have with the input of a lot of other unions. There's a lot of discontent and disquiet amongst trade union movement in Australia about the performance of Labor and a lot of us feel really let down. However, I don't know the best vehicle forward to represent our members' interest in terms of the broader political stuff.
The Greens represent social justice issues that have an enormously strong influence obviously on the environment and they do that extremely well. The last thing I'd like to see is trade unions, in any way detract from the work the Greens do. I think we have to be careful that we don't try and make the Greens something that they don't want to be. So I just think the whole emphasis of Trade Union as joining the Greens for something other than for them to be basically, a strong environmental social justice Party, would be misplaced. I think it's up to us to maybe look or talk to the Greens, maybe there's also other options.
What would the ALP need to do to win you back?
Well, get Ben Chifley back as leader. Gough Whitlam would be nice. If Gough Whitlam takes over the Federal leadership of the Labor Party I'm back in. I'm a traditional Labor person you know, and I think that the ALP just has to prove that it is committed to representing workers. I don't want a half-arsed Party where you get them to say "we love workers" but "we really want to do everything for the boss". I think sometimes they have a identity crisis and I think they are having a huge identity crisis right now. I think they need to work out who's side they're on and declare it as clearly as John Howard and Tony Abbott does, unashamedly and then start getting on with the job of representing working class issues without embellishment.
What's the single policy issue they could take that would make you think they are on that track?
I don't think it would be a single policy issue. I just think that traditional Labor values are clear. I would just like to see Simon Crean stand up in Federal parliament and say "I'm a Trade Union member and I'm bloody damn proud of it" and a lot of his other people do the same. Not be embarrassed by the Union members but see it as a positive strength and I think they need to assure working people that they're on our side and I think that the ability for Crean and others to do that in Federal parliament is very, very easy. If that's what they believe in, they should stand up and say so.
by Andrew Casey
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The German SDP, the British Labour Party, the ANC in South Africa, the NDP in Canada and the Democrats in the USA are all on the nose when it comes to their long-standing and, some would say, natural union allies.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Meanwhile in South Korea - where the union members regularly go on hunger strikes in a desperate bid to be legally recognised - we see trade unions wanting to actively jump into bed with a political machine.
The moderate FKTU has announced they will run hundreds of independent union candidates in the forthcoming Korean elections, while the militant KCTU has just set up its own Democratic Labor Party to run in the elections.
Here is a quick and dirty ( and sometimes sloppy) over-view, for Workers Online readers, of some the brawling going on between unions and their political allies.
I'll leave it up to some of my more intellectual readers to draw together some of these threads and expound a new treatises on the future relationships between trade unions and labour/social democratic parties.
But one word of warning to the theorists among us - at least in some of these case studies there is a huge dose of posturing by union leaders who like to see their names in the media, or who like to use the media headlines as part of their negotiating tactics.
Now does any of this sound familiar to Australians?
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It's just six months till the German general elections and the SDP has just been told that it can't rely on its natural allies to get out the vote - the trade union movement.
Recent statements by prominent German trade unionists suggest a growing disillusionment with the market-friendly, "third-way" policies pursued by the SDP's Gerhard Schr�der' in government.
The president of the German nation trade union center, the DGB, Dieter Schulte , says the policies pursued by the SPD-led coalition government with the environmentalist Greens, had not fully met the unions' standards in terms of their effects on labor and social justice.
Meanwhile the big German manufacturing union, IG Metall, which represents 3.6 million workers, and is currently running a series of rolling strikes in support of a 6.5% wage claim, is angry with Schr�der for undermining their wages' push.
The German government, with one eye on the elections, has very publically appealed to the unions to back down on their pay claims because of rising unemployment and rising inflation figures.
Jurgen Peters, vice-president of IGMetall has accused the SDP leader, Gerhard Schr�der, of moving away from his base towards a right of centre neoliberalism.
Workers may well decide that there's no point in voting, Jurgen Peters told the German media
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In the UK Tony Blair finds himself under attack from the normally sedate TUC leader, John Monks, who called the British PM ' bloody stupid' for aligning himself with the right-wing Italian PM in calls for new EU workplace flexibility laws.
Monks went on to warn Blair that unions are no longer prepared to act as the government's "long-suffering stooges", and he went on to warn the government that ' an explosive cocktail of issues' could lead to a 'haemorrhaging of trade union support, especially at the polling booths.'
Most of this 'explosive cocktail' is based on the Blair government's headlong rush to seemingly bring under private sector control whole slabs of the civil service - including schools and hospitals.
Earlier PM Blair had attacked left-wing union leaders opposed to his privatization plans calling them ' wreckers' in a Labour Party conference speech.
The leader of the Transport and General Workers' Union, Bill Morris, another union moderate has backed the TUC saying that Blair's Labour government is " working very hard to lose the core support of the ordinary working people they enjoyed during the past two elections."
The Opposition Conservatives have been enjoying all this brawling and very cheekily offered to open talks with the TUC about the problems with privatisation.
Monks surprised both the Tories and the Labour Party by saying he was very willing to sit down and talk with the political children and grand-children of the union-bashing Margaret Thatcher.
But while a range of 'moderate' union leaders are prepared to attack the Blair Labour government a group of so-called 'new generation' union leaders are talking of walking out of the Labour Party and co-operating with the Greens, the Lib-Dems and even forming their own party.
Billy Hayes, recently elected general secretary of the Communication Workers Union and one of the so-called 'new-generation' union leaders who is not a member of the Labour Party is particularly angry with Blair over plans to privatise and introduce competition to the Royal Mail.
After being elected to lead the CWU he vowed that: "not one penny will go to any organisation unless it guarantees to support our call for a publicly-owned, publicly-funded Post Office."
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In New York the union-aligned NY State Democrats have collapsed in shock to find that one of their strongest allies - the powerful get-out-the vote machine of Local 1119 of the SEIU - has just crossed the party line to back, for the first time in its history, the Republican Governor George Pataki.
Dennis Rivera, the dynamic leader of New York state's largest health care union, Local 1199/SEIU, has switched sides after Gov Pataki delivered on a deal that provided $1.8 billion in raises for health care workers to his largely immigrant, low-waged, Spanish-speaking membership.
The shock is huge because the NY Democrats are much closer to our idea of a labour party than almost any other section of the Democrats in that huge nation.
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COSATU the South African national trade union centre has spent almost all of the last twelve months angrily blueing with the ANC government of Thabo Mbeki over its privatisation plans.
COSATU had threatened to bring the country to a halt with a general strike over privatisation if the ANC didn't stop and listen to its long list of complaints.
In response government operatives leaked documents to the South African press maligning the character of COSATU leaders and suggesting union leaders were traitors to the post-apartheid rainbow nation.
The COSATU leadership reacted angrily with pointed statements telling Thabo Mbeki and his ministers that they would not become his uncritical lap dogs, or lead unions that served only as a transmission belt for those in power.
Throughout most of last year the unions focused most of their vocal campaigning against the ANC on the government's plan to privatise the country's electricity utility, Eskom.
Eslom's privatisation is part of a broader governments agenda of privatising the country's four big state-owned firms - defence group Denel, power utility Eskom,
transport group Transnet and phone firm Telkom.
While there has been a lot of anger targeting Mbeki most of the union bitterness has focused on the South African Communist Party minister Jeff Radebe who is responsible for the sale of these public assets.
Only in recent days have the two sides come to an agreement which will see them step back from the brink because the ANC had begun to engage seriously with Cosatu's demands.
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In Canada the social democratic NDP, which is a little over 40 years old, spent most of the last six months wracked by internal fighting over which way it should head - and what role there should be in the party for labour unions.
Many of the party's union allies are angry with the NDP for moving towards the centre and away from a working-class base in an attempt to garner new supporters and new votes.
Though the NDP has never formed a national government it has been very influential in some Canadian provinces where it helped to establish free education and free health systems.
At its national conference at the end of last year a group of unions and rank-and-filers, organising under the banner of the New Politics Initiative, attempted to shift the party back to the left - or threatened to split off to form their own party.
This left-caucus had as its most prominent member the charismatic Canadian union leader, Buzz Hargrove, head of the Canadian Autoworkers.
While not all the Canadian unions agree with him Hargrove has regularly threatened to break away, and has irregularly campaigned to support the end of union contributions to the NDP.
Note: There is a so-called Naomi Klein wing of the NDP based around the very popular Canadian progressive newspaper columnist.
It is interesting to note that most of the Naomi Kleiners shout community politics as the key to revival of their party - and few of this group want anything to do with Canadian trade unions.
Ah, It all does sound very familiar for us here in Australia. Now I'll leave you to analyse what it all means for the many and varied inquiries set up by the ALP to discuss its own revival - and how trade unions will fit into this revival.
But just before I go let me remind you that last weekend in Korea the KCTU celebrated the second anniversary of the formation of its very own political party - the Democratic Labor Party . That convention made preparations for an assault on political power at the coming local and national elections.
The KCTU is eager to get its party into power so that they can create laws which will legitimate unions such as the civil servants union which is currently an 'illegal' union because local laws ban public servants from associating as industrial organizations.
The other, larger, Korean trade union centre, the FKTU, has decided not to join in the formation of the DLP, just yet, instead they will back 400 FKTU 'independent' candidates running in the coming elections.
Leigh Hubbard |
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On the surface the resignation from the ALP of senior Victorian unionist and Secretary of the Electrical trades Union, Dean Mighell, shouldn't be an issue of major consequence. He is just one person and individuals are constantly joining and leaving the ALP for a variety of reasons. Even unions have disaffiliated in the past.
But the resignation masks a deeper dissatisfaction within the ALP - both amongst individual members and many affiliated unions. Only time will tell whether that dissatisfaction results in further resignations from the ALP or whether the ALP, through its national policy review (headed by Deputy Opposition Leader Jenny Macklin) and the Hawke-Wran Review into party organisation, is able to convince party members that it will seriously address the underlying policy and organisational causes of the discontent.
And discontent there surely is. In the 2001 national election the ALP recorded its lowest primary vote in 70 years. It is my sense that itt simply doesn't attract or inspire the activists who would have once seen it as the first step in their political lives. For the ALP there is a crisis of core values, of knowing what it stands for and ensuring that it is clearly distinguished from the Coalition parties. The blurring of the lines between the ALP and the Coalition was never more evident than at the last federal election. Despite some great policies on paper and some real differences in such areas as industrial relations, many members and supporters perceived the ALP as standing for free trade, for youth wages, for handouts to the private health insurance industry, for mandatory detention and a host of policies that were clearly out of the Coalition locker.
This discontent applies in relation to both federal and state ALP and across a range of issues. For twenty years the ALP has either lead the shift toward the right, and since the advent of the Howard Government it has been pulled toward the right. To many activists and long term members Gough Whitlam now looks like a radical. The accommodation in the 1980's with economic rationalism, free trade and privatisation has been followed in the late1990's by poll driven, small target strategies which inspire few and anger many. Added to this is the failure of the party to seriously address the issues of branch stacking, which has alienated many ordinary party members. At the state level the ad hoc industrial relations policies of the Bracks Government and the perception by a number of unions that the government has failed to consult them or address key social and industry issues, while listening attentively to the needs of business, has led to further discontent.
As a mostly inactive member of the ALP for over 20 years I too am struggling with the future of the ALP and my place in it. The one truth is that the ALP is the only mass party that has a traditional relationship with workers and which is capable of winning government in its own right. The chances of successfully starting another workers party are small and a split labour movement is not a positive step forward. For unions and individuals to move outside the ALP is to court marginalisation. For that reason alone, there will be very few unions that decide to leave the ALP. But the few who do will join the ranks of a significant number of unions - the education, nursing, finance sector, police and public service unions - who are not ALP affiliated and who concentrate on campaigns on behalf of their members regardless of which political party is in office. In the case of the public sector unions most have made great gains, despite non-affiliation and despite their battles with the ALP in government. For those who move outside there is also the option to form strategic alliances with other parties and progressive independents.
As an individual I am constantly torn between the reproach that to change something for the better you must work from within, and the gradual realisation that the values and processes of the ALP today are not those of the ALP that I joined in the early 1980's. Not that the ALP has ever been perfect. It is a party of constant struggle between competing factions and ideas. But gradually the progressive elements in the party have been sidelined by the pragmatists, just as the 'wets' in the Liberal Party were virtually eradicated by the 'dries' in the 1980's. The great strength of the ALP had been that as a broad church it allowed plenty of scope for ideas, debate and participation. Much of that space and policy tension seems to have disappeared.
For some in the ALP the disappearance of Dean Mighell will be the cause of celebration. I would argue that the gradual leaching of diversity from the ALP weakens it and weakens the strength of the whole labour movement. It should be a cause of concern. In some respects the policy and values vacuum in the ALP reflects the decline of politics generally. Long gone are the days when organizations like the Communist Party and the National Civic Council stimulated debate amongst unions and the community and those debates were mediated through the ALP. Today, a less ideological and increasingly corporatist approach prevails. If a policy can't make it in the opinion polls, forget it. Little wonder that Senator Brown and the Greens sound attractive to a new generation of activists and socially conscious voters.
Opposition leader Simon Crean says nothing will stop him modernizing the party and its relationship with unions. But what does that mean? Isn't the real issue about how the ALP regains its relevance for workers, families and communities? Isn't it about how the ALP conveys a sense of passion and inspiration through policies that sometimes challenge the status quo, rather than by continuing to adopt policies that conform to the right wing economic and social agenda.
I agree with Labor frontbencher Lindsay Tanner, who in his submission to the Hawke-Wran review, said that the ALP house doesn't just need a coat of paint; it needs a complete restumping. Many of us are waiting to see if this complete overhaul actually occurs and, if it does, what form it will it take. In that context the ALP leadership would be wise not to simply dismiss the Mighell resignation as the one off act of a disgruntled individual. It should be used as a trigger to rebuild the relationship with unions, to speed up the policy review process and to return to clearly stated core values. Many will be watching the ALP response closely.
by The Foundation of Labour
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In the late 1880s and early 1890s, some parties of a quite new type appeared in a few small countries at opposite ends of the earth. The called themselves labour parties. As their name implied they saw themselves as representing in particular 'the workers' of their countries; that is, those who gained their living by working for wages. Not surprisingly, they were closely associated with the trade unions to which many of these workers belonged. Unions not only took the leading part in establishing these parties but, actually belonged to them, through the process of affiliation. Such parties were founded in Norway in 1887; in Sweden in 1889; in Queensland and New South Wales in 1890; in Victoria in 1891; and in the other Australian colonies during the next few years. All used the title 'labour', though the Swedish party called (and still calls) itself the Swedish Social Democratic Labour Party.
Although the Australian Labor parties (to use the spelling which most of them adopted from a very early stage) were thus not quite the first in the world, they were certainly among the first and clearly preceded those of Britain and New Zealand. Moreover, they gained strength very quickly, winning parliamentary majorities in the Commonwealth and in all States except Victoria by 1915.
These simple facts reflect two very different aspects of the Australian Labor Party (as it was called after federation in 1901) which have marked it, and similar parties, throughout their history. On the one hand, they seemed to be, in a very direct and obvious manner, parties of the working class. At that time nearly all unions were of manual workers and this was certainly true of all those which, either directly or through colonial union federations, helped establish Labor parties. But the parties' very rapid rise to electoral success shows that they could not have been supported only by unionists and people like unionists. And, indeed, the parties themselves made no secret of their wish to secure the support of many sections of the community as well as of unionists.
Was this a dilemma or, worse, a recipe for betrayal? Was such a party bound to desert its essential core of supporters, they working class, in its attempt to secure the votes and support of others? This is an old question in Labor history. V. Gordon Childe wrote in the early 1920s:
To avoid giving offence to middle class supporters Labour Governments have followed a vacillating policy and have tried to govern in the interests of all classes instead of standing up boldly in defence of the one class which put them in power.
Nearly 40 years later, Robin Gollan spoke of the party 'moving away from a distinctive Labour position' early in the 20th century because its leaders 'adopted purely opportunistic policies' in the pursuit of marginal votes. And, of course, some who would not say this of labor's earliest years say that it has occurred more recently.
Thus Dean Jaensch has argued that Labor has now changed from a 'mass' to a 'catch-all' party and his study 'concludes that the Australian Labor Party is in the process of becoming "something entirely different".'
The paradoxes which face Labor parties which wish to gain majority support are real enough; there are problems in giving a special place to trade unions while at the same time trying to maximise support from the rest of the community. But these are in no sense new problems; they go back to the parties' very earliest days.
Bede Nairn, to whom we are indebted as the major historian of New South Wales Labor, refers to 'inherent conflict between trade unionism and politics', with reference to the time of the party's foundation. Such a conflict is always potentially present and sometimes, such as during the inter-war period, has been disastrously prominent. But the problems it raises are not insuperable, as can be seen from the fact that at the end of its first century the ALP is still largely composed of unions and is in office in the Commonwealth parliament and in five of the six States. For our present purposes, I shall concentrate upon the party's very early days in New South Wales, but with some glances at more recent times.
When Labor first appeared in the New South Wales parliament in 1891, George Black made two speeches on successive days which, among other things, have provided many a question for university exam papers. Black was a man of paradoxes, which may have made him an appropriate representative of the party at that time. For example, he announced that Labor would give its support to whichever of the old parties offered it the greater concessions; but in the same speech predicted, only a little optimistically, that after the following election the other parties would be forced to combine against Labor.
He also made two rather different statements about the sort of people (or, as he said, 'men') who would support Labor. 'The men we represent are the wage-earners - those who labour with either hand or head, with either mind or muscle...' but on the previous day he had said:
We have been told that we have come into this House to represent a class. Well, that may be; but that class is the class of all classes. It is a class as wide as humanity - so wide that you may describe it as the class out of which all other classes are built up.
The first of these quotations seeks to emphasise that Labor was particularly concerned with the wage-earners, although not merely with the manual workers. The appeal to the common interests of employees, irrespective of differences of status, has been a very old Labor and socialist theme but, until recently, it has not been a very fruitful one. In 1890 the Queensland socialist and union leader William Lane hopefully drew attention to the fact that the strikes of that year had been set off by the determination of the Marine Officers' Union to remain affiliated with the Melbourne Trades Hall Council. He wrote:
Here is an opportunity to show that all workers can rally round one banner whether they wear gold lace or sweat rags, for the officers are honest workers claiming the right to organise and insisting through organisation on a living wage.
Some 18 years later Andrew Fisher, as federal leader of the ALP, was being similarly hopeful. 'Under Socialism', he said ambiguously to the party's 1908 Commonwealth Conference, 'we find that the very men who were against us are coming to us. I refer to the clerical workers, who find that their skill does not protect them.'
In fact the party has had a very long wait for these 'men'; but not a fruitless one. By the 1920s there was a considerable range of white-collar unions. It took until the 1980s to bring them under lane's 'one banner'. If joining the ACTU can be so regarded. Very few such unions have ever shown any sign of affiliating with the ALP; but perhaps that is no longer of great importance. More seriously, non-manual workers on the whole remain non-labor voters, though to a diminishing extent.
Nevertheless, the bringing together of blue and white-collar workers in a single trade union movement is one of the most notable achievements of Australian labour during the last 15 years. And it is important to note that, although it was not achieved quickly or easily, it was truly a basic objective of the movement in that it dates from the earliest days of the Labor Party. This is one respect in which Australian labour could now be said to be well ahead of many other countries. The trade union movements of West Germany and of Sweden have often been forward as models from which Australia could learn - and so they are in many respects. However, neither has so far brought about that linking of 'those who labour with either hand or head, with either mind or muscle' of which George Black spoke in 1891 and which was largely achieved in Australia in the late 1970s and early 1980s. What the early Labor parties sought to achieve was inevitably related to the people from whom they sought support. The original Labor platform in New South Wales was limited and down-to-earth. Many of its 16 planks were clearly related to conditions of employment such as the introduction and enforcement of a Factories Act and the amendment or repeal of legislation used against employees; a legal maximum eight hour day; the stamping of Chinese-made furniture; and, more broadly, 'Any measure which will secure for the wage earner a fair and equitable return for his or her labour'. But there were other planks not specifically related to employees, such as electoral reform; 'free, compulsory and technical education - higher as well as elementary - to be extended to all'; mining in private property; the taxation of land values; and a few words of municipal socialism, hidden away under the heading 'Local Government and decentralisation' and reading 'the extension of the principle of the Government acting as any employer, through the medium of local self-governing bodies'.
It was not surprising that the platform had this heavy bias towards industrial questions and union demands, since it was a slightly modified version of one adopted by the Trades and Labor Council some months earlier. Yet the limited range of this platform did not prevent the success of the new party at the 1891 election. It gained 22 per cent of the formal votes and won 35 of the 141 seats, or 25 per cent. Clearly many people outside the unions had voted for the party; indeed, many who were not unionists were elected as Labor candidates. Nairn tells us that 12 of the 16 metropolitan members were unionists but only 9 of the 19 country members. At all levels, the party had emerged as one with a recognisable trade union component but able to appeal successfully to many for whom union membership was impossible or irrelevant. So it has remained and its success has depended on its ability to maintain this sometimes difficult balance.
While this was going on it New South Wales, something similar but not identical was going on in Queensland. In August 1890 the General Council of the Australian Labour Federation held its first meeting, producing a very different document from the spars and industrially orientated platform of the New South Wales party. It had a preamble of some 7900 words, followed by a longer and more general platform than in New South Wales. It showed the authorship of William Lane.
Much of this text has an attractive and a 'modern' ring, and should have appealed to broad sections of the community which received no specific attention in the New South Wales platform. It included 'The pensioning by the State authority of all children, aged and invalid citizens.' It also paid specific attention to women, noting that 'Women are working for miserable wages and often for slavish hours.' Like the New South Wales Platform, it provided for various electoral reforms; but, unlike the New South Wales platform it specifically demanded votes for women. (It also illustrated the racism of the time, and especially of Lane, but putting this in the form of 'Universal White Adult Suffrage'.)
These were ways in which the Queensland party could be said to have widened its appeal and to show that its concerns were much broader than the specific industrial demands of the trade unions. In fact, this Queensland platform contained no specifically industrial planks at all! What it did contain was an unequivocal endorsement of socialism. By this it mean, to quote the first of the party's 'political aims', 'The nationalisation of all sources of wealth and of all means of producing wealth'. This was not presented as some ultimate goal, which would follow from a period of less sweeping reforms. On the contrary, 'The Reorganisation of Society upon the above lines [is] to be commenced at once and pursued uninterruptedly until social justice is fully secured to each and every citizen.'
Viewed from a century later, it is clear enough that this was an objective which, if publicised and believed, would greatly limit the new party's appeal. To subordinate immediate benefits to workers in favour of an immediate quest for universal state-dominated socialism would seem to confine support for the part to a radical minority, probably a small minority. But is that the way it seemed in the 1890s? Was such a party consciously turning away from the majority of citizens, and even the majority of trade unionists, in pursuit of a particular type of socialist goal which is not only unpopular now but was unpopular then? Was it, in fact deliberately putting ideological purity above mass support?
It was indeed doing just that, as can be seen from a comment in the Brisbane Worker on this platform:
What the Council aimed at was evidently to lay down a basis defining as clearly as possible the ultimate aim of the labour movement so that from the moment of its adoption, if it be adopted, labour in politics would take up a position which would place it at once beyond the narrow party lines with which the masses have hitherto been deluded, and would raise a distinct political issue which none but workers or true sympathisers with the workers would pretend to adopt.
This was indeed a different spirit from that of the prosaic New South Wales platform but, with its preoccupation with total state socialism, not a more productive one. In this respect it represented a different kind of narrowness, but a narrowness all the same. Labor in Queensland, even in its earliest years, was never wholly composed of extreme nationalisers; any more than the New South Wales party was composed only of down-to-earth industrial reformers. But there were differences of degree and they lasted for a long time. Thus in 1906 the New South Wales Labor politician and future Premier, WA Holman, spoke of the Queensland Labor Party as consisting 'almost wholly' of socialists, in contrast to his own party, in which many members 'did not profess themselves to be Socialists at all'.
In 1893, the year in which Lane departed to found his socialist colony in Paraguay, Labor faced the Queensland electors for the first time. In terms of votes it did even better than Labor in New South Wales in 1891, gaining just one-third of the formal votes. In terms of seats it did a shade worse than in New South Wales, winning 16 out of 72, or 22 per cent.
Perhaps what this early history of Labor in two States shows is that, fortunately, the electors do not take too much notice of party platforms! Certainly Labor made a very impressive start in both States, despite having in one case a platform that was too narrow and industrially orientated, and in the other a platform that was unrealistically radical. A Labor Part must be able to maintain a special relationship with unions, or it ceases to be a Labor Party by definition. But it will never gain the support of all unionists and unionists are likely to be, as they certainly where in the 1890s, a minority of the electorate. It must therefore seek to gain other support; as the 1905 Commonwealth Conference report put it, the support of 'every interest in Australia...except the interest of the parasitic classes'.
This, as the past century has shown, is easier said than done. But, as the century has also shown despite its failures and disasters, it can be done. The union movement of 1990 is not simply a larger but a far broader and more representative basis for such a venture than the movement of 1890. The balance between union interests and broader social interests continues to be difficult to achieve and continually changes in content. Gender and (especially) environmental issues are the most obvious current illustrations of this. But gender issues, at least, go back to the party's earliest days, as can be seen from Queensland confronting and New South Wales evading the question of women's suffrage in its platform in 1896.
Labor parties need to avoid a preoccupation with narrow industrial ends on the one hand and fruitless ratbaggery on the other. The first party platform in New South Wales illustrates the first; that in Queensland the second. Fortunately, neither proved to be a mortal weakness.
The Foundation of Labour, Lloyd Ross Forum, published by Pluto Press in 1990
by Jim Marr
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One wife and mother has risked even more. She told Workers Online, on condition of anonymity, that her family was splintering.
"We haven't been paid for four months and it's put terrible pressure on us all. My husband has gone away to find work so we can look after the kids and keep up payments on the house" she explained.
"If we go back to work, I hope he will come home but, honestly, I don't know."
Packer's company is backing a four-month lockout with an application to the Queensland Industrial Relations Commissionj to set aside the workers' enterprise agreement and have them revert to the Federal Meat Award.
For skilled boners like Gary Donald that would slice more than $230 out of a before- tax weekly pay packet of around $800.
Donald, who started at Rockhampton's Lake's Creek abattoir in 1969, had his Falcon station wagon re-possessed last week. It has only made him more determined to stare down the polo-playing billionaire and his representatives.
"We are sticking up for ourselves to make sure they can't do this to anyone else," Donald says. "Make no mistake, every company is looking at this dispute. If they can knock us back to the award safety net they will do the same right across the industry.
"We're pretty staunch but some of us are doing it tough. I'm not the only one who has lost his car and some others have lost their homes.
"If Packer showed his face around here I reckon someone would probably cut out his kidney."
Workers give a variety of reasons why they think Consolidated Meat, which also operates plants at Innisvail and Katherine, has singled them out for massive clawbacks.
Mismanagement is a recurring theme and there is talk of lessening capacity to drive down inflated cattle prices. The end-of-year shutdown is a time when meat companies traditionally test out workers who have just survived Christmas.
Consolidated Meat Group spent millions of dollars on introducing new technology to its plant, during 2000, only to run into a series of expensive teething problems.
It had been negotiating a new enterprise agreement with the Meatworkers Union since the last document expired in December, 1999. Worker reps say those talks were characterised by constantly changing employer claims.
Frustrated site official, Les Cook, got a reputation for greeting the u-turns by asking - are you serious or delirious?
Still, on January 9, the company was ringing workers at homes as far away as Sydney and asking them to report for a January 14 start to the new season. Instead, they kept the gates closed.
Knife hand Cheryl Peacock says it's the "blatant dishonesty" that annoys her most.
"They knew what they were going to do long before we finished work but they rung people up and strung them along," she says.
For their part, workers have told Consolidated Meat Group they are prepared to return on 1999 terms, without improvements in wages or conditions. They have agreed to lift production and extend working hours but they won't cop a safety-net contract gutted by Peter Reith's 20 allowable matters.
Community support is helping keep their heads up. Understanding the significance of the fight, Queensland members of the AMWU Mining Division have levied themselves $10 a week; local councilors and MPs have spoken up on their behalf and Rockhampton business have come to the party, making donations and stretching credit facilities.
Three weeks ago more than 3000 Rockhampton people demonstrated solidarity in a march across the town's old bridge.
Cook describes community support as "magnificent".
Despite repossessions, foreclosure notices, and some workers seeking alternative employment mass meetings are still drawing upwards of 1000 workers. A welfare committee is operating and women support one another at coffee-fueled gatherings.
Packer, meanwhile has opened a new 5000-head feedlot in Indonesia.
"We've got to stick it out," Cook says. "If we are forced back on the award it would mean more industrial action to get anything like reasonable conditions because of the clauses the Government has forced out.
"Processing companies around the country are watching this situation. It would be a terrible precedent for a lot of other people."
The Rockhampton dispute hasn't got a lot of traction in the southern media but it is big news in Central Queensland - for very good reason.
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Aussie icons. No longer. Well known recent Aussie products which have swapped ownership and thus moved profits out of the country include Arnotts, Streets, Rosella, Edgell, Peters and Malleys, developers of the Esky.
Just because things are Australian owned isn't a good enough reason to buy them, as the ethics and labour standards of the companies may well leave a lot to be desired. Dick Smith has been a champion of Australian ownership in recent years, and backs the
Australian Companies Institute (which has a lot of good information on its website and in its guide available at most newsagents) but it didn't stop him attacking unions for defending the rights of workers this week.
However Australian ownership does give Australian law a bit more leverage, and allows more of the profits to return to the Australian public purse rather than disappear into tax havens elsewhere.
"An Australian Taxation Office review of 207 companies, which generated $30 billion in annual revenue, showed they paid less than $40 million in company tax."
In the Australian food industry the level of foreign ownership is pretty high
Abattoirs 80%
Baby Food 100%
Baked Beans 80%
Beef Processing 75%
Beer 50%
Biscuits 90%
Bread (Major) 50%
Breakfast cereals 65%
Cheese 50%
Frozen vegetables 85%
Meat Pies 40%
Pet Food 85%
Eskys and cold beer are two mythical Australian icons. For some reason Aussie blokes are supposed to be deeply attached to both. The history of the two things is intertwined certainly stick to Australian tradition with great Aussie ingenuity shown in their development and then we later see them sold off to overseas firms.
Keeping it Cold
Being a hot place thirst fired innovation.
Australia was the source of the first refrigeration system, that is the Coolgardie safe. It was a wet hessian box that used evaporative cooling to keep food cool.
In 1837 a journalist named James Harrison moved to Geelong Australia from Glasgow and set about designing his own refrigeration machine. His first machine did not work so he took it to England and with help got it working. Harrision returned to Australia in 1856 with the working machine, he was commissioned by a brewery to build a machine to cool beer and this was the first practical use of a refrigeration machine.
Heat processing was the first major innovation in food technology in the nineteenth century; the second was refrigeration and though others in other parts of the world had successfully lowered temperatures mechanically, the first mechanical ice making machine was put into operation in 1851 by Harrison at Rocky Point on the banks of the Barwon River at Geelong in Victoria.
Harrison was a Scottish-born journalist who established the Geelong Advertiser for J. P. Fawkner, of wool industry fame. His real love, however, was in solving the problems of mechanical refrigeration. He was successful in part with an ether compression machine; he secured patents in England, and a refrigerator based on his design was installed in a Bendigo brewery in 1860. Contemporaneously, he made ice commercially in Geelong and then in Melbourne but failed financially because he could not beat the vested interests who imported natural lake ice from North America (a great Australian habit as well. Lets get the cheap mport rather than support and develop a local great idea. (See C.J. Dennis' The Glugs of Gosh for a wonderful tale of our import habits and our economic dependence). A second venture, the Sydney Ice Company formed in 1860 with P. N. Russell, was bought out in 1862 by a group which wished only to suppress it in favour of a development of one of them, Eugene Dominique Nicolle, who used the principle of heat exchange by liquefaction of ammonia. Harrison's funds had been exhausted by his experimental work and during the 1860s, while much work was being done in Sydney, he returned to journalism.
ESKY'S HISTORY
The Nylex web site has a bit of a summary of this.
The first cooler sold under the trade mark Esky was manufactured by Malley in 1884. Malleys was a manufacturer of household metal products.
It was natural for a portable version of Malleys' ice box to adopt the Esky brand made famous on the company's popular domestic refrigerator. Made of metal and finished in green baked enamel and chrome, the first Esky cooler featured a removable three-tray food rack and boasted space for six, one pint bottles.
Dubbed the 'Esky Auto Ice Box' the product was widely promoted to car owners in motoring journals, claiming that the product was: "Just as essential in the boot as the jack"! The Esky cooler indeed proved a winner as vast numbers of Australian families, enjoying new-found mobility with the postwar boom in care ownership.
Within three years the Esky cooler had adopted a new shape and a smaller version was created for people who walked or took public transport. Two new colours were added the following year and, by the end of the 1950's, it was claimed that '500,000 happy picnickers' were now users of the Esky brand cooler.
The smiling Eskimo who became the familiar Esky brand character for the next 30 years made his first appearance near the end of 1959, uttering the words: "Cool, man, cool". Appearing with the slogan: 'You can take it with you', the advertising campaign that ushered the Esky brand name into the next decade featured a host of equally likable characters, from adventurers to astronauts, all shown enduring isolation, but all heroically cheerful because they had taken along their Esky coolers.
Nylex first manufactured Esky brand coolers in plastic, with some metal components, in 1984. Since then, the Esky cooler has shed virtually all of its metal parts. Insulation materials have also changed over the years from the original cork sheeting to the CFC-free, foamed in place rigid polyurethane used today.
Nylex has become firstly part of BTR Nylex, which became ACI Packaging Services, owned in turn by Owens-Illinois (Australia) Pty. Ltd., which in turn is owned by Owens-Brockway Glass Containers Inc., an American company.
Esky Under Threat
The Esky is still a great source of Aussie innovation with designs around for a mobile esky, using old fashioned go-carts with special space for an esky or two. The Mt Panorama races seem to have inspired the designers. There are also other places to buy fancy version already manufactured.
Over summer James O'Loghlin and (I think) Steve Cannane on Saturday night on ABC Regional Radio in NSW had a phone-in about eskies, and, after lamenting the arrival of the esky with wheels (manufactured by Nylex) which represented a softening up of Australians and our lie on the couch attitude, someone rang up to say the blame rested with his brother. This person's brother was excused from causing laziness because he had displayed innovation. He had decided to walk into Wilpeena Pound in the Flinders Ranges, but couldn't bear to leave the beer behind. So he rigged up a golf buggy (not a motorised one) for the task. This was acceptable Aussie innovation.
The esky's versatility is also shown in recent great escapes.
"SURVIVORS! Amazing escape as two cling to esky!...
They drifted in the shark and crocodile-infested waters for 12 hours before staggering on to a reef 20km away near Eagle Island later that day."
(Sunday Mail 9 April 2000)
Diver saved by Esky lid in 15-hour swim for life
By Penelope Debelle
Howard Rodd, a 44-year-old abalone fisherman from Port Lincoln, had a miraculous escape after his boat capsized, swimming for 15 hours through shark-infested waters off South Australia clutching an Esky lid.
His ordeal began on Monday at 11 am when his seven-metre abalone diving boat turned over in heavy seas west of Ceduna. He and a 47-year-old deckhand clung to the upturned hull for several hours, drifting within sight of nearby Saint Peter Island. Mr Rodd decided to try to swim to the land but his mate - fearful of encountering a shark in a particularly treacherous area of South Australia's waters which are a breeding ground for the great white - refused to leave. He remained clinging to the boat's hull, wearing two life vests.
Mr Rodd swam off in a wetsuit, flippers and with an Esky lid for extra flotation.
SMH 16-1-01
Jonathan King summed up the iconography.
The [Australian] community encourages drinking to the point of addiction... it goes without saying that most leisure pursuits are accompanied by compulsive drinking, few would think of going to the cricket, football or tennis without an Esky full of cold cans and fewer would go yachting or picnicking without a trusty supply. For many, leisure equals drinking.
(Waltzing Materalism, 1976)
TheAustralian Beers page also has a go at this.
"Mate, grab the esky for the footie. After, me oldies are having a barbie out woop-woop somewhere. Bit of a shocker, but we'll have a few coldies and a couple a snags and it'll be right.
Rightio mate, no worries."
They also track a recent development - the threat of the first disposable esky.
Esky Left out in the cold, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 January 1999
According to reports, Lion Nathan will soon be releasing a "Polar Pack" beer carton with the capacity to keep the beer within cold for hours longer than your standard carboard carton. Its secret? Extra thick cardboard and a reflective laminated polyester. Which, to be honest, would be a bloody ripper. Stuff the icon.
At a barbecue, picnic or any other outdoor event, you'll be able to enjoy a cold beer straight out of the carton and then simply dispose of the empty box. It certainly saves lugging the esky home.
Tony Jones, SA Brewing's head brewer, January 1999.
Tony Jones has since reported that this idea hasn't made it to the starting line
The motorised esky made it onto ABC radio this year, as this report from the Victorian Country Hour shows.
"If you're worn out from dragging that heavy esky along to parties this summer this might be an idea for you. A motorised esky. We're not just talking about a few wheels and a small engine, we're talking turning your esky into a tractor and literally driving it to your party destination. It's the brainchild of Quentin White from Dookie. He and his brothers got together and decided to make the most portable esky yet and the design was so good, it won him an award at the Mountain Cattlemans Get Together."
The word Esky is seen to be so Australian that it was given a definition during the Olympics on the SMH"s Olympic Web site
Esky - Australian for cooler.
The Macquarie Dictionary gives the word's derivation, and a couple of (that word again) innovative spinoffs.
Esky: (noun) a portable icebox. [Trademark; from esk(imo) + -y]
esky lid - noun Surfing (Derogatory) a bodyboard.
esky-lidder -
noun Surfing (Derogatory) a bodyboard rider.
The y (or ie as some use) on the end to me also shows the Australianness of it. A great habit is to add a "y" or an "o"to the end of words in Australia, after first shortening them. So we have "reffos", Robbo, footy. Cutting Eskimo back to esk then adding the y is a terrific example, and one that the current overseas owners would never be able to match.
In Kmart the other day I saw what to my eyes was an esky, made in Australia, but labeled a cooler.
Sigh, time for a coldy.
(You can also find lots and lots of webpages about Esky web software, mostly in various Eastern European languages).
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On support for Spain
in 36 - the wharfies
were right - the Right
was wrong...
On Pig-Iron for Japan
in 37 - the wharfies
were right - the Right
was wrong...
On 'blacking' Indonesia
in the 60s - the wharfies
were right - the Right
was wrong...
On opposing apartheid and racism
over many decades - the wharfies
were right - the Right
was wrong...
and in standing up to Patrick's
in 98 - the wharfies
were right - the Right
was once again - wrong.
Won't the greedy
right-wing wrong-headed
slow-learning bastards
ever learn?
Bill Anderson
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"I don't care how many times he sends it to us," said NSW Police Commisioner Peter Ryan. "It's still just one dodgy statutory declaration and a CommCar receipt proving that he once visited the suburb of Darlinghurst."
Sen. Heffernan defended his evidence, and the process by which he collected it. "Everyone knows that whenever a CommCar goes to Darlinghurst, it's invariably visiting The Wall," he said. "Mine always does. I go down there every couple of weeks to try and find some desperate kid who'll sign a statutory declaration without reading it," he said.
Heffernan's lack of evidence against Kirby left the government with their backs to the wall, and they have ordered Heffernan back to the Wall to try and save their position.
Despite the dodgyness of the evidence the Prime Minister has stood closely behind Heffernan. The Senator is said to be very nervous about this, although he is in no way homophobic.
by Tara de Boehmler
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Revolving around a large weekend hunting party in the 1930s, upper class guests, and their personal valets, arrive in droves. The guests come seemingly not because of any great affection for their friends, but rather as a desperate bid to break the boredom of their painfully easy existence. In contrast, big parties just mean hard work for the hired help.
The audience experience of Gosford Park is like watching events unfolding on both sides of a two-way mirror.
On one side exists the refined elegance of the hoity bloody toity dinner quests enjoying a supernaturally sublime party in wondrously ornate surroundings. They are completely oblivious to the effort involved in ensuring the weekend goes without a hitch.
On the other side the servants barely have time to break wind as they constantly toil to keep well oiled the cogs keeping the wheels turning smoothly behind the scenes. Each member of staff is painfully privy to events as they unfold on both sides of the class divide.
But don't think for a minute that life is easy for the rich. Most of them are so terminally bored that finding activities to keep them stimulated and stave off sleep provides a daily struggle for which they need every assistance from the hired help.
And when the boredom threshold is at its highest the servants get to see a side of their employers that would never be shown to people of higher station.
Yet for real hard yakka the plight of the servants, valets and other assorted members of staff stands alone.
For these people the hours are long, the work is sweaty and the employers often abusive. Shirts must be ironed, pressed, starched and stuffed within an inch of their lives. Employers' needs must be predicted and met at least 10 minutes in advance of them knowing it themselves.
Boundaries must be observed and respected. Except the boundaries of the servant-types because, as we soon learn, they have none. They can be called on at any hour of day or night to engage in all manner of tasks whether they be mindlessly menial, simply mundane, or so mammoth as to render them practically impossible.
Many are expected to provide sexual favours for their employers in addition to their usual duties. All are required to keep their employers' secrets, and listen intently, making all the right noises in response to the streams of poison frequently found escaping their lips.
And for poisonous one liners you can't go past the wicked old cow played by Maggie Smith, who reveals with a sigh that there really is "nothing more exhausting than wearing in a new maid". Smith's character may be a vile employer, but at least she makes entertaining viewing.
There are few such fun and games for the help. For them the punishment is summary dismissal should they forget their station and accidentally reveal themselves to be more than a one-dimensional convenience.
However on the screen, at least, one-dimensional is something director Robert Altman at no time lets the help become.
Full points to this movie for personalising the plight of the individuals sitting on either side of the class system. By the end of the movie there is a feeling of knowing them all.
This is a workforce in serious need of a good union rep to come in and sort out their dreadful conditions, read them their rights, grant them leave, loading and a salary increase. What ever they are being paid, it is not enough.
Score: 7 out of 10 (organisor's delight)
Victorian unionist Dean Mighell decided to get some fresh air this week in the most public way and the spray he's delivered the Party is causing waves.
Mighell announced he was quitting the ALP and joining the Greens and threatened to take his union with him.
His reasons are hardly revelations for Workers Online readers: the party has lost touch with its roots, it treats the union movement with contempt and has become the sort of relation that it is embarrassing to be seen around.
Few would argue with his sentiments, the question is whether union affiliation with the ALP is part of the problem or one of the solutions.
Affiliated unions would point to their demonstrated ability to influence Party platforms - in NSW, unions combined to overturn the proposal to privatise the power industry.
For these unions the real issue is the extent to which this policy should bind Labor Governments, while some in the political wing seek to dilute their influence on the Conference floor.
With these issues currently under review in the post-election post mortems, some would see Mighell's decision to pull the pin as premature.
But his move does add another factor into the mix for Hawke and Wran to consider: that is, what can the ALP bring to its relationship with the union movement?
In a climate where the ALP primary vote is at an all-time low and unions actually have a higher standing in the community than either political party, it is a point well made.
As the wings of the labour movement look at ways of improving the tent that they have shared for the past 100 years, the ALP needs to recognise that it is only one side of a relationship.
Being the lesser of two evils is no longer enough for a union movement that is prepared to look further afield for political allies to promote its members' interests.
In this climate, the ALP needs to work out how much it wants a trade union base and what it's prepared to do to keep it.
Otherwise, the tent could soon seem more like a urinal.
Peter Lewis
Editor
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I am sure that most of you are aware of my own political background before I got a real job as President of the Anti-Discrimination Board, and so you will understand the sense of trepidation that I always feel as I pass through the portals of the Labor Council building in that most dreaded of addresses : Sussex Street.
I am even more concerned this evening as tonight is the anniversary of the day in 1556 when Archbishop Thomas Cranmer was sent to the stake for the sin of having recanted his previous opinions. Actually Cranmer recanted twice (or as Churchill once remarked - "it takes little skill to rat but a great deal to re-rat") so perhaps he deserved what he got. For my part, there is no recantation since I have always been committed to the defence of fundamental human rights, and in that respect I hope I share what is also your commitment and the historic commitment of the Trade Union Movement.
This evening I have the pleasure of launching Guidelines for Union Representatives on How to Deal with Workplace Discrimination and Harassment.
The Board has worked closely with Labor Council in the preparation of these guidelines. The guidelines reflect this work and the importance of the Board working closely with industrial parties to work towards the elimination of discrimination and harassment in the workplace.
I do not intend to take you through these important Guidelines in detail this evening, but rather to say something to you about the background from which they have emerged and the issues which confront Unions and which are covered in them.
The Board has taken an active role in industrial relations. Many of you will be familiar with the role that I, as President of the Board, have under the NSW Industrial Relations Act. I have intervened in a number of test cases before the Commission. For example, the Board has worked closely with industrial parties to ensure that the principles for the making or varying of awards and enterprise agreements in this State properly take into account discrimination matters and I made detailed submissions in the relevant test cases before the Commission.
I took an active role in the NSW Industrial Relations Commission's pay equity inquiry and the pay equity principles test case to ensure that women have accessible mechanisms open to them to gain pay equity as is their entitlement under the NSW Industrial Relations Act. We now wait with interest for the outcome of the first case that has been brought by the NSW Public Service Association regarding library and archives workers under that new pay equity principle established by the Commission.
In some instances I have intervened in individual award variation applications. I have intervened when industrial matters have raised discrimination issues that are of broad application and I have taken the view that these issues need to be articulated and awards varied to ensure that discrimination does not occur.
Not all of my interventions have been welcomed by Unions and indeed (with the image of Archbishop Cranmer still in mind) I did find myself in a curious position some months ago with just me on one side (which of course I would say was the side of right and justice) against a Union and Archbishop George Pell on the other.
However I have no doubt that we all share the view that the elimination of discrimination requires a commitment to advancing human rights. Unions are well placed to take a key role, both in working to prevent discrimination, and in assisting to redress it when it occurs. Unions have often sought to protect many fundamental human rights. The right to freedom of association is a key right that unions have sought to protect. In many instances unions have also championed human rights and under the Anti-Discrimination Act unions have sometimes made use of the representative body provisions of the legislation to bring complaints of discrimination on behalf of their members. In other instances unions have assisted members to lodge their own discrimination complaints.
Unfortunately there have also been examples of union members, delegates or officials themselves engaging in discrimination, failing to provide assistance to victims or at best turning a blind eye to discriminatory conduct in the workplace.
There are many cases about hostile workplaces. Consider these.
Example 1
Two women cleaners are expected to clean a crib room with pornographic posters in it. When they complain to the union and management about it things get worse. The posters become more explicit, they are threatened and sexually explicit graffiti appears about them. Rather than the union assisting them with their complaints and acting to improve their working conditions they found that the union took no steps to stop the conduct and by that inaction encouraged the conduct to continue. There was evidence that a union representative had discouraged the women from expressing their concerns. Indeed there was evidence that there was a pornographic poster in the on site union office above the organiser's desk. In this case employer and union were both found liable for the discrimination and substantial damages were awarded against the Union. (Horne v McIntosh v Press Clough Joint Venture)
Example 2
A woman is employed as a packer in a meatworks. At the meatworks all the packers were women and almost all the jobs as boners and slicers, the better paid ones, were occupied by men. The women had to put up with racist insults and sexist rumours. One woman was sexually harassed by her supervisor. She was also prevented from training as a slicer because there was a "shed agreement" that the men would not train women as slicers.
The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission found that she had been discriminated against. The Commission was very critical of the union's role. Here was a highly organised union work force and a union that was happy to take the women's dues. Yet the union did nothing to challenge the racist and sexist behaviour of its members. The woman was seen as a troublemaker and when it finally came to her dismissal the union and management combined to secure her termination. She was not properly represented at the meeting with management that led to her dismissal and the union refused to lodge an appeal against her dismissal on her behalf. (Djokic v Sinclair & Anor)
Under discrimination law it is clear that unions and union representatives can and will be found liable for discriminatory conduct that occurs in the workplace where it can be shown that they have caused, permitted, aided or abetted discrimination or harassment. Unions need to take an active role in ensuring that workplaces are discrimination free and that if allegations of unlawful discrimination are brought to the union's attention they are dealt with appropriately.
The guidelines provide a very useful tool for union representatives to understand discrimination law and how it relates to their role. Each union will no doubt have their own policies about the extent to which matters are deal with by union representatives in the workplace and when it is appropriate to involve paid officials. What is important is that union representatives understand their particular role and are well trained to recognise discriminatory conduct or practices.
To operate well they need to understand what direct discrimination is so that they will know that treating someone less favourably than others because of a particular attribute that is covered by discrimination law is against the law. They need to be able to recognise it when they see it - for example the harassment of an apprentice because they are young or the harassment of a person because they are gay or have a disability.
They also need to understand indirect discrimination. This is critical when considering awards and enterprise agreements or the adoption of policies in the workplace which may appear on the surface to affect everyone equally but have an unequal impact on some groups. One of the leading cases on indirect discrimination was about the application of the "last on first off" rule by BHP. In fact there had been previous discrimination in recruitment practices against women which meant that women were more likely to lose their jobs than men as women had only recently been recruited by BHP. Unions need to ensure that terms and conditions of award and enterprise agreements that they propose or agree to do not have a disparate or unreasonable impact on those protected by discrimination law. Traditionally one of the groups that has lost out in the industrial bargaining process has been women.
The Amery case (Amery and Others v State of NSW), a recent indirect sex discrimination case, provides an example of discrimination that can arise when pay rates are set for casual staff. The issue in that case was that a group of female teachers who were long term casuals did not have the access to the full incremental salary scale - they could only go to equivalent of step 8 on the permanent scale, permanent teachers could go to Step 13. All but two of those complaining had given up permanent teaching positions to care for children and their families. (Note - This decision is now on appeal.)
A close examination of some industrial instruments also raises concerns for real equality of other groups - people of some racial backgrounds, people of particular ages, people who are gay or lesbian and people with some disabilities.
There are many instances where union representatives are consulted on workplace policies and again it is critical that they are able to point out any discriminatory implications.
Victimisation is no stranger to unions. I am sure that you are all well aware that is against the law to victimise people because they have made a complaint or raised allegations about discrimination or harassment. It is important for workers wanting to raise allegations about discrimination to know that victimisation is unlawful. It is also important for union representatives to also know that they have some protection under the law if they are victimised because they raise allegations of discrimination in good faith - even if in the end they turn out not to be substantiated.
Unions must also be mindful of the stage at which they get involved in allegations of discrimination. In some instances the Board hears of examples where it is union members themselves that are responsible for the discriminatory treatment that is alleged to have happened. The union has been aware of the conduct and done little to raise the issue or protect people in the workplace and then becomes involved if management decides to intervene to stop the conduct.
The union may then end up coming in to represent the person alleged to have done the wrong thing. We all appreciate that it is important that people have someone to represent them when there are allegations against them, particularly if disciplinary action is likely. It is important that any disciplinary procedure is fair and unions have a role to play in this.
That does not excuse unions sitting by until the damage is done, someone has made a complaint and management acts on it. This is tantamount to condoning the conduct. Take for example treatment such as that metered out to the young council employee that came up in the Paris v Bankstown City Council case. Here it was clear that many employees knew of the conduct that the young man had to endure - serious and on going harassment such as pantsing and being tied to a tree and assaulted. We would prefer to see the union getting involved in raising the allegations with management in a proactive way rather than coming in at the end when a member has contacted them to represent them in disciplinary proceedings.
In many instances unions do play a pro active role in raising issues in the workplace and ensuring that they are dealt with properly. They exist to protect worker's industrial and employment rights. An important part of this is advocating for human rights.
I commend the guidelines to you as a practical tool to assist you in preventing discrimination happening and for dealing with it if it does occur. I thank the Labor Council for providing the Board with such valuable input to the guidelines and for steps being taken to ensure that union representatives will have clear guidance on how to deal with workplace discrimination and harassment.
It is my great pleasure to launch these guidelines and the Board looks forward to continuing to work with Labor Council and unions on the elimination of discrimination and the promotion of human rights.
Chris Puplick is President of the Anti-Discrimination Board of New South Wales
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With the action for the country's major winter codes moving from the law courts onto the playing fields the time has now come for those students of a bit of argy-bargy to concentrate on what they love best: blokes chasing a bit of leather around a paddock.
Or at least you'd think this was the case...
That great Scion of the Riverina, Wayne Carey, continued to prop up the sports media's fascination with everything unsporting by being the first man in known history to cut his mate's lawn.
The fact that Wayne is on the very public record for grabbing a woman by the tits in the not too distant past seems to have slipped everyone's very short attention spans.
A great deal of concern was shown for Carey's mental state. At least the media shows the same concern for people who lose their jobs and stare down the barrel of losing everything else in their lives; or those people whose jobs demand more of them than their families can stand. Yes, it's good to see that the media isn't driven by some prurient fascination with the misery of another.
Of course when you start with the ego of a league footballer, especially one that's often lauded as the best in the game, you have to start wondering about how long it is before those that live by the sword...
Speaking of egos, Bill Harrigan absolutely slaughtered Souths last Friday night. Admittedly the James Packer Roosters ran away with it in the end, but I switched off after it was obvious that Souths' kickers were getting no protection, and that the haircut with a whistle gave Easts every opportunity for possession in the first twenty minutes. After that the Bunnies were never in the hunt.
Something is seriously wrong with South African cricket. To see a side roll over like a dead cow in a flooded river in the first two tests was mystifying. Crikey, the Australians aren't that good, as the third test showed. Pick up the Proteas at good odds for the one-dayers which start tomorrow, where they'll put in more of a show.
Mark Waugh likes a punt, and why shouldn't he? The fact that he's remained in the Australian test team as long as he has shows what a lucky bastard he is. I am doubtful that he will be picked for the upcoming test series against Zimbabwe, where pitch invasions take on a whole new meaning.
Then again, the wildest Waugh mightn't be racing off to back quinellas against the field just yet. There may be more to this than meets the eye. As we've found out of late, there's more to sport than what happens on the playing field - much more.
Just ask Anthony Stevens.
Phil Doyle is the Back Pocket/Interchange specialist with the Cooma Cats
: Mrs Na Lone (Vice President, Hatsaifong District Women's Union), Mrs Vhan Pheng (Project Manager for Vientiane Municipal Women's Union), Phillip Hazelton (Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA) |
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I arrived in Vientiane, the capital of Lao PDR (Peoples Democratic Republic), in mid-January 2002 to set up the project Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA is undertaking with our local partners, the Lao Women's Union. The preparation for this program has been going on though for many years.
In 1997 staff from the Cambodian office of Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA researched needs for vocational training in Laos and funding was sought from AusAID to begin a program of support. It wasn't until 2000 though, with the help of donated funds from Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA supporters, that we started a small pilot project in vocational training for young women in Vientiane. This pilot is now being expanded with funding from AusAID and individual donations.
In this first 2 months since I arrived, one of the first activities besides setting up the office has been the negotiation and tendering for the building of a new Vocational Training Centre located 20 kms south of Vientiane. A partially built and currently unused building (pictured) has been donated by the District and will become over the next 4 months a four classroom training centre with dormitories. Training initially will be in skills to enable young women and men to raise their own families' income. This includes tailoring, hairdressing, handicrafts and food processing.
A feature of the project is to help the local women's union build their own capacity - so training of trainers, developing curriculum, improving facilities, supporting effective management and monitoring of what's working best - all form part of the project.
Another early activity is taking representatives of the 2 Provinces involved in the project to Cambodia to review what Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA has been supporting there over the last 14 years. A group of 7 of us will head off on 24th March 2002 to Cambodia to visit a range of women's and education centres in Cambodia. The group includes 2 current trainers from the project who will be placed for a week in centres in Cambodia to work with local trainers.
Over the next year we will also be recruiting Australian trainers to help with upgrading curriculum and teaching methodology.
Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA has been keen to begin a program in Laos as it is one of the poorest countries in South East Asia (with an average income per person of just $360US per year in 1998) and is still very directly affected by the aftermath of the Vietnam war in the 1960s and 1970s.
Aftermath of War
While not a problem here in Vientiane, there are thousands of unexploded bombs left over from the war in most other Provinces - and clearing them will still take many many years. Over 1.9 million metric tonnes of bombs were dropped on Laos between 1964 and 1973 - part of Kissinger's secret war - and the broader Indochina war. This has earnt Laos the distinction of being the heaviest bombed country per head of population in the history of warfare - 10 tonnes per sq kilometre.
Country Profile
Laos is a small country with only 5 million people, sandwiched between China, Vietnam Thailand and Cambodia. Only 3% of the land is cultivated for agriculture and the Mekong River provides important food and transport links for much of the population. Tourism too is increasingly important to the economy. Since the end of the Indochina war in 1975 Laos has been a communist state with close political and economic links to Vietnam and China and more recently Thailand. Laos has been a member of ASEAN since 1997.
For now that's all from me her in Lao PDR. Perhaps another postcard after the Cambodia study tour - and from some of the participants.
For more information about the work of Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA go to:
For more information about what Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA is doing in Lao, go to:
http://www.apheda.org.au/campaigns/lao.htm
RC investigators to remain in WA "for as long as is necessary"
The Cole Royal Commission into the Building and Construction Industry opened its four weeks of hearings in Perth this week. But Counsel Assisting Mr Agius said the Commission envisaged visiting WA on at least two more occasions and its investigators would remain in the State, conducting their activities "overtly and covertly .... for as long as is necessary".
Same messages with some new spin
The range of issues to be examined in the Perth hearings is not dissimilar from those already heard in other States. But there are a number of new points of interest.
For example, the Commission is looking at the practice of fixed Rostered Days Off (RDOs) to see if there is "room for modification of this practice so as to permit an efficient rotation or splitting of rostered days off". Workers might be wondering if the Commission will consider that RDOs have to be fixed in the construction industry to ensure that they are allowed to take the day off.
The Commission will not only investigate whether the use of 'No Ticket No Start' banners on CBD construction sites in Perth, is "a code for compulsory unionism"; but also "does it stem from a desire to advance the interests of union members, or is it more a weapon in a struggle for power within the union movement?"
Safety being used as a "bargaining chip or weapon on construction sites" will come up again, according to Mr Agius. But the Perth hearings are also investigating the role of the shop steward on construction sites.
That led to the following exchange:
Mr Agius: Can you think of what it is that gives you the authority to ask somebody, when they come on a site, whether they are a member of the union?
Fox: Well, I believe it's part of my job as a shop steward.
Agius: But where is the authority that permits you to do it?
Fox: No-one has ever told me that it is illegal to ask someone whether they are in the union or not.
Agius: Do you ask somebody what their politics are when you are doing this process?
Fox: Sometimes.
Agius: As a matter of course?
Fox: As a matter of a conversation. The majority of people who come on to these sites, I've been around for a while and I know most of them.
Agius: Do you ask them what their religion is?
Fox: No. [Tr p4183]
EBAs and anti-competitive behaviour
Counsel Assisting Agius has indicated that the Perth hearings will continue the line of argument put in Queensland and Tasmania, that major builders have been complicit with unions to compel subcontractors to sign Enterprise Bargaining Agreements. But the Perth hearings are taking the anti-competitive arguments further:
Mr Commissioner, you will hear evidence that major builders in Perth have enforced a policy of no EBA with the union, no tender, the practical effect of which is not just to drive up the cost of construction, with the flow-on effects for the community at large, such as higher rents, inflation and the presentation of Perth as a less attractive place for investment involving the building and construction industry, but to drive out competitors and create a closed shop for some builders.
Cole RC pitches for women?
The Perth hearings will also investigate whether women are being prevented from joining the industry because "the lack of appropriate part-time employment provisions in awards and restrictive casual employment clauses in awards".
The Commission is not asking why builders are not employing more women workers. The target of this exercise, according to Mr Agius' opening, is purely the CFMEU: "does the CFMEU oppose the expansion of part-time employment in the industry and, if so, is this discriminatory against women and inconsistent with the union movement's stated commitment to principles of equal opportunity ....".
This approach fits neatly with the Federal Government-backed push by construction employers to get part-time and extended casual provisions into the ACT and National Building and Construction Awards.
Construction has always been a casual industry and workers have been more concerned to gain protection from abuses of the daily hire system than with creating opportunities for more job insecurity.
When virtually all of the 950,000 new jobs created over the past 10 years have been either part-time or casual, few could doubt that this push for part-time work in construction is more about reducing minimum working hours and cost cutting than anything else.
Sorry Seems to Be The Hardest Word (but you can bloody well say it) .... Johnny Howard and his Masters of Deception.
The little hellraiser at his best. Strident punk opening in which longtime associate Billious Heffalump barks anti-homosexual, anti-judiciary sentiments while undermining respect for parliamentary democracy. Threatening Howard backing vocal adds power before the maestro pulls his trademark switcheroo to leave audiences bemused about just where, if anywhere, the songsmith stands on issues of principle.
Five mill, Five mill, Five mill, Five mill ..... Johnny Howard with Michael Wooldridge on his organ
The frontman's lack of respect for convention shines through in this audacious challenge to traditional views about service and responsibility, rendered to the repetitive tune of a triumphalist British football chant. Howard raises the bar by refusing to release reports into how sidekick Mike The Medic spent millions to ease his departure from the big band to a nice little earner across town.
The track title is seen as a slap in the face to "pinko do-gooders" concerned that The Medic's escape route may have been fueled by funds the Masters of Deception raised at charity gigs for asthma sufferers and rural health services.
Outrageous? Maybe not by comparison with previous offerings, but there can be no doubt it is straight from the Johnny Howard Songbook.
Here's To You Mrs Robinson ... Johnny Howard and the Liberal Caucus
Video smash because of the superbly choreographed two-finger salute which accompanies every chorus. This folksy number tells the story of how ordinary people outwit an "interfering Irish tart" who makes offensive insinuations about conditions in the guest house they operate on the edge of the South Australian desert. The owners, with a little help from kindly Americans brought in to run the place, slap about some cheap paint, plant a few trees and the trouble maker is made to look foolish. It's Howard in story-telling mode.
Guest appearance by former Masters strongman Peter Reith is a plus but the project can't shake claims of a private video featuring bodies swinging from razor wire. Knockers say faint background sounds of weeping, wailing and "something which sounds like people having the shit kicked out of them", jar with the cute lyrics.
I've Got You Babe ... The Clerics
Anglo reprise of an old Roman favourite, featuring support vocals from the anachronistically titled Head of State. The controversy rolls on.
I Wanna Get Out of This Place ... Victorian Principles
The wildly different vocal styles of Dean Mighell, Craig Johnstone and Doug Cameron suggest this novelty song will be remembered a bit longer than most of its ilk.
Mighell, famous for introducing Big Bopper Beazley to the hard-hitting Johnstone in dodgy circumstances, steals the show with a contribution that has fans divided. Some hear it as a heartfelt plea for a return to heartland values while others are convinced that, in the words of one insider, it is a "piss-take of gigantic proportions".
As per usual, Johnstone rages while Cameron treads a more melodious line. How long the "terrible trio" will hang together is a subject of intense debate amongst fellow artists and hangers-on.
If I Were A Rich Man ... Massed Farmers Choir with Chris Corrigan
"If I were a rich man
This would be my plan
Give real workers the arse
Shower the scabs with brass"
The chorus just about sums it up. While Corrigan gets his name in lights he fails to bring new understanding to one of the most controversial events in modern Australian history. Listeners can only speculate on passing references to "Reithy" and Dubai. The most telling line - "eight million is the inflated-adjusted rate for 30 pieces of silver" - only appears in the cover notes.
Hush, Not A Word To Anybody ... Johnny Howard and his Masters of Deception
This one is a fused remix of previous releases "Ankle Biters In The Drink" and "Tampa Up Solid" in which, some critics argue, the vocalist begins to give off the odour of a one-trick pony. It's predictable stuff, based on the repetitive chant "forget the lie, it's the cover-up that matters".
Howard develops the premise that if investigators are blocked from hearing the truth "it'll all be okay on the big day". The principle, he argues, applies equally to "union bums" or "towel heads in leaky boats".
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