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Issue No. 146 | 26 July 2002 |
Crean-ite Is Not A Dirty Word
Interview: Trans Tasman Cole-Watch: The Full Story Unions: The Right To A Life Bad Boss: Phoenix Rising Politics: The Virtuous State International: The Champions History: Mandatory Mums Corporate: Network Governance Review: Navigating The Doublespeak Satire: Hector The Galah Found Hiding Poetry: Eight Days a Week
League to Blow Whistle on Sweat Shops Rados Shames Ruddock Into Action Virgin Contracts Spark Wage Rage Big Tobacco Turns to Union-Busting Athens Workers Pay Ultimate Price Cranes At Risk in �August Winds� Abbott�s Savings To Cost Workers
The Soapbox The Locker Room Postcard Week in Review Bosswatch
Kangaroo Court Horrifies Reader Site Reunites Redundant Workers Carr Off Course The Banners of Greed Join The Party Shocks and Stares
Labor Council of NSW |
Tool Shed Chunder Buckets
********** It's a bit cosy in the Tool Shed this week. So outstanding has been the performance of a couple of Ministers in the Queensland Government during that State's recent nurses dispute that we thought they might like to spend a bit of time together in the shed comparing notes on how best to bucket workers. And bucket is just the word in this case. Because when Queensland's Health Minister, Wendy Edmond, tried to play a bit of wedge politics by tipping a bucket - a chunder bucket, in fact - on university educated nurses the contents ended up all over her and in turn the State Government. As for the efforts of the Queensland Industrial Relations Minister, and former TUTA tutor, Gordon Nuttall - well we'll come back to them. The nurses' dispute was already running away from the Government, after Edmond left the State for a Labor ministers' pow pow in Darwin on the same day that the largest strike by nurses in Queensland history got under way. Not content with this faux pax Edmond caused further embarrassment to the government when she accused many university-educated nurses of being too uppity to "wipe the brow" or "hold the chunder bucket". With his Health Minister spewing all over a popular group of workers in this way Premier Peter Beattie was forced to mop up the mess through a very public apology to the nurses of Queensland. Thankfully, as he was putting the mop back in the cupboard, he locked Edmond in with it for the remainder of the dispute. That brought the Minister for Industrial Relations into the spotlight for the remaining weeks of the dispute - and things went from bad to worse, with one hapless attempt after another to avoid arbitration in the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. Firstly, the former TUTA tutor regularly tried to insinuate that the QNU leadership was not representative of its members and even proposed sending a wages and conditions offer to a secret ballot without finalising negotiations with the QNU negotiating team. When it was brought to his attention that this was a tactic that not even Joh Bjielke Peterson would have tried and that Queensland nurses were set to overwhelmingly reject the government's offer, he backed down and rushed into the AIRC for conciliation. He then seemed to have trouble understanding the different between conciliation and arbitration (those courses he ran at TUTA must have blockbusters) and when the QNU exercised its legal and industrial right to reject the AIRC recommendations arising from the conciliation he again started frothing at the mouth. Finally, in the ultimate victory of political spin over reality, when the QNU finally exhausted the Government's attempts to avoid arbitration this week he jumped in front of the cameras and lambasted the QNU for having to be dragged "kicking and screaming" into arbitration. What do you say? After a week in the Tool Shed, perhaps he will get a grip.
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