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Issue No. 130 | 05 April 2002 |
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Lights Out on The Hill
Interview: Change Agent Industrial: Balancing the Books Unions: Breaking Out Politics: Pissing on the Light on the Hill History: Of Death and Taxes International: Now That's a Strike! Satire: Mugabe Voted Miss Zimbabwe: Denies Election Rigged Poetry: Flick Go The Branches Review: Red, Red Clydeside
The Soapbox Sport Week in Review Postcard
 Puplick's SermonChikka's LegacySocialists in the UKOrganising GloballyGrape DisappointmentUnion Resignations : Crisis or Opportunity?
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News Melbourne Faces Budget Day Gridlock
The attendants are considering using budget day to highlight the failures of the Living Wage Case - and the way the Federal Government goes about ripping off the lowest paid in this country. LHMU Victorian branch secretary, Brian Daley the Government might want to use the budget to portray itself as a sound economic manager but the hypocrisy of this claim is underlined by its consistent failure to support a decent minimum wage increase.
He says a likely option is for attendants to lock up carparks in Melbourne's CBD on budget day in mid-May - and bring the city to a standstill. Daley made the announcement the same day the ACTU went before the Industrial Relations Commission to argue for a $25 a week wage rise for low income earners. "If the Living Wage Case won't deliver decent increases then union members, such as our car park attendants will have to look at direct action," Daley says. Car park attendants are paid $11.10 an hour . The LHMU has worked with the city's car park attendants over the last 18 months to organise more than 200 into a united workforce committed to improving working conditions. Struggling to Keep Above Poverty Line Australia's lowest paid workers are struggling to keep their heads above the accepted Melbourne University Poverty Line, Daley told the Living Wage Case hearing. "The Living Wage increases handed down in recent years, by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, have fallen way behind the increases needed if many of our members are not to be forced into poverty," Daley said. "The system is structured in a way that it pushes the low-paid further and further behind acceptable living standards. " We've invited Dr John Buchanan, the Deputy Director of the University of Sydney's Australian Centre for Industrial Relations Research and Training, to brief our membership with an analysis of past Living Wage Cases and why they have not delivered the decent increases Australian workers have a right to expect." Dr Buchanan joined Daley, immediately after opening statements, to brief members on the latest ACIRRT data. Dr Buchanan will also outline new research, which the LHMU has commissioned, to look at how LHMU members have faired under the Living Wage, and to test anecdotal evidence of members that they are falling further and further behind.
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