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With Prejudice
For anyone doubting the ability of an incumbent government to control the political agenda, this week's sitting of the Cole Royal Commission into the Building Industry made fascinating viewing.
Interview: Class Action
NSW Teachers Federation general secretary Barry Johnson on Bob Carr's election budget and what he needs to do to win back the profession.
Safety: A Mother's Tale
Robin McGoldrick relives the tragedy that prompted her to confront Royal Commissioner Terence Cole over workplace story.
Unions: The Hottest Seat in Town
Nostalgia buffs should make a point of catching at least one session of Tony Abbott�s controversial, Royal Commission, playing to increasingly thin houses in Sydney. Jim Marr sat through the opening scenes.
International: Defensive Enterprise
How can men and women working in the unprotected "informal economy" be helped to better defend their rights? The ICTU grapples with the issue in The Congo.
Economics: A Super Deal?
Neale Towart looks at the debate raging within Labor circles around savings and investment.
History: A Radical Life
Stephen Holt gives an insight into one of the Australian Labor Party�s original true believers through his examination of papers held in the Manuscript Collection
Media: Cross Purposes
Stuart Mackenzie looks at the lines spun at the recent Senate committee hearing into media ownership laws.
Review: When the Force Is Unconscious
Cultural Theoritician Mark Morey reports on how a trip to the Sydney Writers Festival became a battle for intergalactic supremacy.
Poetry: Wouldn't It Be Loverly
For seven decades, Queensland aboriginal workers working under government control were 'paid' below-award wages which were placed into 'trust' accounts which were pilfered, levied, diverted and bled dry.
Grieving Mum Turns Cole Around
Hamberger Grilled Over AWA Scam
Government Shrugs Off Death Sentence Charge
Action To Pay Foreign Crew Aussie Wages
Jockeys Face Insurance Crisis
Birds Get More Protection Than Workers
Budget Delivers - But Not For DOCS
Statewide Ban On Grain Loading
Howard Soft On Organised Crime?
UN Honours Building Union Drugs Program
Award-Winning Poet Wins Right To Write
Workers Out For Gay Games
Mahathir Told to Release Labour Activisits
Horta Backs Western Sahara Independence
Activists Notebook
The Soapbox
It�s The Members, Stupid.
Those officials obsessed with union voting power in the ALP are missing the point, writes Luke Foley. The Locker Room
Too Good To Be True
Phil Doyle castes his withering gaze over a week in sport that featured origin square-ups, the World Game in all its glory and a few drunken jockeys. Bosswatch
In The Cauldron
It was another week of pull-outs, profits de-mergers and takeovers in the corporate world; but some bright news with a plan to make executive pay more accountable. Week in Review
The Black Letter
Legal mechanisms, national and international, are throwing up challenges to all sectors of our community but the law is a beast of many shapes and sizes as Jim Marr discovers.
Romeo and Juliet?
Robbo's Rave
Latham Ad Nauseum
Our Home Is Girt By Wire
Hands Off Hooligans!
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News
Award-Winning Poet Wins Right To Write
Mark Reid is an award-winning poet and patient care assistant at Fremantle Hospital in Western Australia. Luckily for Mark, he is also an LHMU member.
Mark recently won a grant from the Literature Board of the Australia Council to work on his third book of poetry.
But Fremantle Hospital didn't want to grant Mark leave without pay to work on the book.
Mark, who has worked at the hospital since 1997, planned to combine leave without pay and accrued leave to make the most of the grant.
Help from LHMU
"I was very disappointed. The hospital had featured me twice in their newsletter and even organised a story in the local newspaper," Mark said.
But the hospital turned down his application to take leave to make the best of the Award.
However the hospital soon backed down and agreed to grant Mark his leave after the LHMU mounted a campaign on its website to publicise the poet's plight.
"This affects all sorts of people - I'm indebted to the LHMU for helping me out," Mark said. "This issue affects not only me but all sorts of people who are doing things outside of work."
Some of the poem's in Mark's last book, Parochial, were inspired by his experiences at Fremantle Hospital. That book won the WA Premiers Book Award for Poetry last year.
GRACE
Intently slow, crane-like
she lifts her feet
to allow me to mop
under the chair.
It's not that I couldn't
work around her
as I do with so many,
but this is a task she
can perform, a test;
this is proof.
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Issue 139 contents
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