We've always had our suspicions about Fitzgibbon. He's one of the 'new breed' of Labor MPs who believe labour history began at the point when they were elected to Parliament. As someone who inherited his seat from his old man, this is an intriguing position to hold. Nonetheless, Fitzgibbon believes that Labor's union ties are a millstone around the neck of the upwardly-mobile young Turks like himself who have attained power by dint of their own personal brilliance. Thus, the logic follows, Labor should liberate itself from the unions' influence so they can appeal to more 'aspirational' voters. Voters like Joel.
Proof of his own aspirations became national news this week when a former staffer claimed Joel had engaged a retired academic to help him complete an essay for an online Master of Business Administration degree he is completing through the University of Newcastle. Fitzgibbon, we hasten to add, has denied the charges, which are being investigated by the University. What he doesn't deny is that he's found time from his duties as both a local member and a shadow minister to pursue study for what can only be interpreted as a career parachute. Regardless of the plagiarism charges, we want to know where this guys gets off doing an MBA on public time.
We're all for self-improvement, but there's something a little sick about a Labor MP trying to squeeze in an MBA. These are the bosses' arts degrees - known in the trade as 'Married But Available' certificates - completed by the upwardly mobile set in an effort to enter the elite class who receive seven figure salaries and tasty share option packages. They may have their place, we just wonder if they are the sorts of extra-curricular interests a Labor MP should be pursuing.
The revelations have got us thinking just how influenced has Fitzgibbon been from his course notes (presuming he's been reading them? Some of his recent public statements read like a standard boss' text. Straight after the election it was a rant against the requirement that Labor Party members join a union. Then he pops up in the Illawarra Mercury attacking Labor Council secretary John Robertson for opposing the Crean agenda of cutting union influence on the shop floor. All that's missing is a rant about the need for individual work contracts, more flexible practices and the greater trust implicit in a direct relationship between bosses and their workers.
Of course, there is a party that meets Joel's requirements. It sees an MBA as a rite of passage to a life in the boardroom. It sees winners as better than losers and sees community as the backdrop for this Darwinian contest. If you need, some help Joel, we'll do the research for you.
Cole has rejected an application from 35 NSW-based union officers that he stand aside on the ground of apprehended bias.
The Commissioner considered the application for four days before releasing a decision which, at its core, contended he had made no "findings" in a preliminary report to Workplace Relations Minister Tony Abbott, before hearing union evidence.
To describe what he had made Cole has come up with the word "evidences", used as a verb rather than a noun. He does not provide any dictionary support, much less case history, for the unusual usage.
Minister Abbott used Coles "evidences" to announce the establishment of an interim industry taskforce with an office in Sydney, and flag changes to legislation that would require parliamentary assent.
CFMEU national secretary John Sutton said Cole's decision "defied logic" and "an ordinary sense of fairness".
"It is an extraordinary statement from the Royal Commissioner. If he made no findings how can he justify the fact he made recommendations which Tony Abbott has leapt on to establish a taskforce?" Sutton asked.
"It is clear to us and our members he has made findings against the union without hearing our evidence or considering all our submissions."
An analysis of witness appearances before the Commission, established to consider illegal and inappropriate activity across the building industry, reveals that 604 employer witnessed have been called, against 34 worker witnesses.
Approximately 97 percent of hearing time has been spent looking at anti-union topics with less than three percent of its time devoted to issues that did not adversely reflect the union.
"Any objective person considering those figures would have little doubt the hearings have been biased against building workers and their representatives," Sutton said.
CFMEU solicitor David Shoebridge confirmed the Federal Court case seeking to stand Cole down would proceed.
"This doesn't deter us in any way," he said. "Any fair reading of the Commissioner's first report would say he made adverse findings against the applicants, without hearing from them.
"We find it inconceivable that the Commissioner could recommend a taskforce, with an office in Sydney, without attaching any findings of fact to support it."
The substantive case has been set down for hearing before Justice Pranson in the Federal Court at Sydney on October 14 and 15.
Labor Council is preparing to roll out the �UnionSafe� campaign � with it�s catchy �Know Union, Know Safety, Know Living� tagline thought up by rank and file delegate Matthew Druce.
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Under law changes, effective from September 1, every workplace has the right to elect an OHS committee to represent it on safety issues. Workers have the right to approach their unions to conduct elections for these positions.
Labor Council secretary John Robertson says the new regulations provide a golden opportunity for unions to organise in areas where they have found it difficult to get a foldhold.
"What these regulations provide is a basic framework for workplace representation. Unions should be actively encouraging members to put themselves forward for these committees and take a leadership role in the workplace," Robertson said.
Labor Council has commenced a series of seminars to train delegates on their rights under the new regulations and ways to organise around safety issues.
A Beautiful Logo
It was at one of these seminars, for Municipal Employee Union delegates, that Matthew - who works for Parramatta Council - came up with the campaign slogan.
A series of potential taglines were provided to delegates for their feedback. One of them was around the 'Know Union, Know Safety' theme. What Matthew did was see the 'no' within these words.
"It was a bit like that movie 'A Beautiful Mind'," Matthew told Workers Online. "I'm not saying I'm a genius but I managed to connect the dots."
The UnionSafe tagline will be used on all materials, information and a new OHS website as the new regime takes effect.
CPSU officials are tight-lipped about the prospect as they continue to seek security for threatened Deloittes staff, whose employer contracts principally to Telstra.
More than 100 IT consultants grabbed the union option after being threatened with 50 percent salary cuts last week. Their decisions paid immediate dividends when the AIRC green-lighted an interim award and over-ruled Deloittes', cop the cuts or quit, ultimatum.
The story, though, has another dimension with increasingly loud industry whispers that the company is considering a sub-contintenal option.
Essentially, a group of multi-national IT contractors, principally Deloittes, IBM GSA and EDS, have found themselves deep in the turbulent flow of federal government's outsourcing shambles.
They leapt at the pot of gold held out by the Howard Government when it decided, for primarily ideological reasons, to push IT oursourcing.
Classically, they entered an entity like Telstra or the ATO and hassled for its IT work; cherry-picked key employees; dumped others and walked away with substantial profits from taxpayers or consumers.
By and large, however, they conspicuously failed to deliver the promised savings to host entities who, once bitten, were much more aggressive in negotiating second-round contracts.
To maintain their earns, the multi-nationals now face the prospect of substantial internal costs cutting, thus the Deloittes move to slash workers incomes by up to 50 percent with a two week, take-it or leave-it, deadline.
With IT workers deciding on collective action to protect their positions, the next logical step is to flick Aussie workers in favour of those from countries which are largely tax and labour law free.
It would make economic sense and dovetail with labour market competition espoused by Workplace Relations Minister Tony Abbott and his Foreign Affairs off-sider Alexander Downer.
Politically, insiders say, Telstra couldn't make that move. By flicking key elements of its operation off to the disguise of sub-contractors, however, pundits believe they might be able to achieve the desired result.
The ACTU has revealed the Federal Government�s eight week cap on redundancy payments has seen ex-Ansett staff short-changed by an average $25,000 a head.
Meanwhile, it continues to slug travellers $10 a ticket on the pretext, according to section seven of its Air Passenger Ticket Levy Collection Tax, of meeting "the cost of payments by the Commonwealth under the Special Employee Entitlements Scheme for Ansett group employees".
The Howard Government is blocking full payment of worker entitlements by clawing back $300 million from company administrators before outstanding entitlements are paid.
The news follows this week's confirmation that former Ansett chief executive Gary Toomey received a $3.5 million payout after the airline was placed in administration last September.
"The government is blocking the full payment of outstanding entitlements to former Ansett workers and misleading the travelling public, who are paying an estimated $10 million a month in air ticket levies for Ansett staff," ACTU president Sharan Burrow said.
Ms Burrow said most former Ansett employees were struggling financially. On average, they had been owed 42 weeks in redundancy payments, but Government's cap had carved 34 weeks out of that entitlement.
Meanwhile, the Air New Zealand annual report reveals that just months before its subsidiary crashed, executives were awarded options over 6.5 million shares.
This came on top of $24.7 million in reported payouts to senior staff, including the Toomey golden handshake.
Shortly after the collapse, in the face of public anger, cabinet ministers Peter Costello and John Anderson, flagged legal action against those responsible for the failure.
This year ASIC closed the book on the Ansett sage without launching a single prosecution. Under Howard's law, it seems, the only ones to be penalised will be the short-changed workers.
The push to induce the workers onto common law staff arrangements has raised concerns that elements within Pacific National are ignoring owner Chris Corrigan s commitment that he would not be running an anti-union agenda.
Rail, Tram and Bus Union state secretary Nick Lewocki says the common law contracts were sent to white collar Pacific National employees, formerly employed by the recently privatised FreightCorp.
Lewocki says the contracts, which purport to transfer the workers onto staff would abolish accumulated sick leave rights, rostered days off, reduced redundancy entitlements and potential loss of public sector superannuation entitlements.
He says the workers have made a clear stand that they won't trade off their entitlements, but are concerned at the tactics of the company.
Workers believe that management see the signing of these contracts, linked to loyalty to the company and the ability to participate in managerial decision making.
Lewocki suspects the push is coming from middle management: "I suspect Corrigan would be horrified if he knew what was going on," he says. "This is clearly in breach of his public statements when he took over the organization that he wanted to work cooperatively with the rail union."
Lewocki says the RTBU is taking legal advice to challenge the validity of the offers .
The strategy emerged after a dozen Hilton workers who will be left with just eight weeks' redundancy pay lobbied Macquarie Street residents this week.
Delegation members reported strong support from Independent Clover Moore and, perhaps more importantly, an "encouraging" response from Health Minister Craig Knowles.
"We want our local MPs on side and we want Bob Carr's Government to bring pressure on our employer to treat us with respect and decency," LHMU delegate and housekeeper Patrick Holmes, said.
"We are asking for a ban on any NSW-sponsored events at the renovated Hilton, along with a ban on any state public servant attending a convention or conference there, until managers sit down with the union and make a fair deal."
The strategy strikes at the heart of the Hilton chain's rationale for upgrading its central city operation.
Hilton management announced, last week, that a massive new convention centre, aimed at pulling in a greater share of the lucrative conference market, would be a centrepiece of the $400 million redevelopment.
Management shocked staff by announcing they would all be cut in November with the federal maximum redundacy payout of eight weeks. Several employees have worked at the hotel for more than 25 years.
It has since emerged that four CFMEU members, employed alongside them on state-based agreements, will be entitled to 16-week redundancy settlements.
Hotel workers are also upset that, at this stage, none will be offered work when the business reopens.
Their first demand is a guarantee of re-employment. They are also seeking redundancy up to at least the NSW standard of 16 weeks, and for the large number of casual employees to qualify on a pro-rata basis.
Holmes told Labor Council this week that the majority of his workmates had been at the Hilton for more than four years.
"The company's attitude is hard to accept," he said. "After September 11, last year, when there was a downturn they asked us to help by taking long service leave and owed holidays.
"Most didn't want to but agreed to help out and their thanks is to turn around and kick us in the backsides.
"That money would come in very handy now."
The bush regenerators, members of the Australian Workers Union, will this week ask the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to reject the cut and enshrine their employment standards in an award.
AWU organiser Gavin Hillier says the 70 regenerators employed by the National Trust employs 70 bush regenerators - all of them casual - have been presented with the following ultimatum:
- 35 supervisor jobs (some of up to 20 years standing) would be abolished.
- 10 of these 35 would be given manager jobs and place don single contracts with pay based on performance.
- Eacyh other employee would lose $5.00 per hour, with the lowest rate of pay now $7.00 per hour and the highest $15.00 per hour.
Hillier says the bush regenerators are committed environmentalist who love there work but are not prepared to be treated like this.
"At the least, they believe they should be given some security by being given permanent part-time status."
He says management wants the workers to believe they only survive thanks to donations and handouts.
"If the National Trust can't afford to employ these workers they should transfer them to National Parks who can.
The case is set down to be heard in the NSW Industrial Relations Commission on Tuesday.
The Settlement Neighbourhood Centre was forced to close its doors on July 14 after more than a century of providing support and services to the largely Aboriginal community inhabiting the troubled area known locally as The Block.
The Settlement made the decision to shut its doors after 12 brokers and 32 insurance companies failed to provide a Public Liability extension for its programs and activities.
Furious Labor Council secretary John Robertson insisted on greater accountability for insurance companies that have taken premiums out of the area for decades.
"Insurance in this country is unregulated," he explained. "You can find yourself in a situation, where having paid premiums for 30 years and never having made a claim, they can just walk away and refuse cover.
"There is nothing preventing them from doing that."
Union members, spearheaded by ASU representatives, will join the Redfern community in urging state government provide short term assistance at a rally outside parliament on Thursday.
Joseph Hamilton, the Settlement's longest serving worker, said the stop-gap measure was necessary.
"We work with desperately underprivileged kids from The Block. Right now they are sitting in the streets and, I can tell you, idle time means dangerous time," he said.
"These kids are stuck behind the eight-ball. The majority have no access to the internet, or even organised sport, without the Settlement.
"We are always fighting, even for essential services that should be seen as a basic right for our kids, such as safe programs and access to educational and social activities.
"Now we are being dictated to by a group of people who don't understand the importance of what we do, yet they have the power to say we are no longer able to provide support to this community."
Hamilton said insurance companies had covered similar set-ups in other South Sydney areas but continually balked at The Block.
ASU assistant secretary, Sally McManus, said it was "outrageous" that insurers weren't required to justify such decisions.
"We suspect it is because The Settlement is operating on The Block with largely Aboriginal clients," she said.
Chief Industrial Magistrate George Miller this week ordered the owners of the Hair Apartment at Mount Druitt to pay AWU member, $13,500 in back pay.
The worker was sacked from her job at the Mount Druitt salon in 1997 after complaining of the long hours for which she was not paid correctly. Her case was taken up by the Australian Workers Union, claiming unpaid overtime on her behalf.
AWU Vice President Matt Thistlethwaite says the ruling sends a message to all young workers - particularly women - that they can enforce their rights to fair pay.
"Being forced to work unpaid overtime is against the law. No employer can force you to work 60 hours a week." Thistlethwaite says.
"The hairdressing industry is notorious for long hours and unpaid overtime. Some employers exploit the fact that there are a large proportion of female employees working in salons with only one or two hairdressers."
"Anyone being ripped off as this worker was should contact their union and enforce their legal rights."
Commenting on a proposal from Qantas to lift cabin crew ratios from 1:36 to 1:50, the Flight Attendants Association of Australia has vowed to fight any reduction industrially and politically.
"We have the safest aviation industry in the world. Why would Qantas want to downgrade that system?" FAAA national secretary Johanna Brem says.
"Until we see evidence showing there is no safety risk in reducing cabin crews, our members will remain opposed to this proposal."
Young, elderly and disabled passengers would be particularly vulnerable if the reduced cabin crews were implemented.
In its submission to the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, the FAAA argues:
� Australia should maintain the highest benchmark in the world, reflecting its position as an international leader in aviation safety
� There is no evidence in the world to show that lower ratios offer an equivalent level of safety
� The arguments for lower ratios are purely commercial arguments to cut labour costs.
"At a time when Qantas is making record profits, this is just another example of its arrogance," Brem says.
Safety Cuts on the ground Too
Meanwhile, licensed aircraft engineers are fighting a push under the same review of CASA regulations that would see pilots conducting their own external safety checks.
The Australian Licensed Aviation Engineers Association has commenced a public campaign against these proposals, which have the backing of both Qantas and Virgin.
The ALAEA believes the push is being driven by costs and a belief in the discredited doctrine of "affordable safety"
"The airlines argue the reduction is in line with international standards," ALAEA national secretary David Kemp says. "We would rather maintain Australia's world best standard."
Billboards warning of the changes will begin going up near airports this week.
NSW MLC Ian West this week accused Suncorp-Medway, the new owners of the GIO, of a swathe of anti-worker practices including forcing workers to put in up to two and a half hours in unpaid overtime every week.
With 2000 employees this arrangement delivers Suncorp Medway an extra 5000 unpaid hours per week or 260,000 hours per year.
NSW FSU state secretary Geoff Derrick has called on Federal Workplace Relations Minister Tony Abbott to urgently move to prohibit the practice.
"This is a form of slave labour," Derrick says. "Workers are being asked to give over their labour for nothing."
"Instead of proposing laws that make it harder for workers to stand up for themselves, Mr Abbott should be clamping down on this sort of bullying behaviour by employers."
Suncorp-Medway is currently attempting to induce GIO workers to accept Suncorp conditions, enshrined in an agreement negotiated by a 'boss's union' funded by the company. The GIO workers are being offered $250 in shares to give up their current union-negotiated conditions.
Ian West, MLC, told State Parliament the Suncorp-Metway agreement includes:
- the 'start before you start' clause
- forces staff to work weekend shifts
- and abolishes overtime rates of pay
Derrick says it's unconscionable to be attempting to bribe staff to give up their conditions.
"I'm confident that when GIO workers look at the conditions they are being offered, they will stay on their current union-endorsed agreement" Derrick says.
The Public Interest Advocacy Centre will next week launch the case on behalf of John Darcy, a 64 year old invalid pensioner, who is short of breath following a heart attack in 1994, and can't visit his local pubs to" have a drink and play the pokies" because they're full of tobacco smoke.
Clubs, pubs and casinos have been warned of a legal, consumer and worker backlash if they continue to deny smoke-free areas to workers and customers at risk from passive smoking.
The LHMU has joined with health groups such as Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) accusing the Australian Hotels Association and managers of smoky pubs of turning their backs on the millions of Australians with heart disease, diabetes, asthma and other conditions worsened by exposure to tobacco smoke toxins.
ASH has asked the Public Interest Advocacy Centre to take on John Darcy's case.
Darcy believes he and many others with health problems are being " ignored and discriminated against" because pubs are refusing to ask smokers to light up outside.
The LHMU, ASH and the Public Interest Advocacy Centre would be happy to talk to any union member in the hospitality industry prepared to bring an action against their employer while they are still working there.
" his would be a negligence action," Tim Ferrari, the LHMU assistant national secretary said.
Grace Grace, Queensland Council of Unions general secretary, warned Beattie that his provocation could have only one outcome.
"By prohibiting police from taking industrial action, it forces them to run a public campaign," she said. "It is the only way left for them to go.
"The Government cannot now criticise the police union for escalating its publicity campaign for better wages and conditions."
Grace said any clarification of police rights to take industrial action should have come from court or tribunal, rather than being legislated away by a Labor Government.
She pointed out that courterparts in NSW and Victoria weren't prohibited from taking industrial action in support of their claims.
Inspired by the World Social Forum, held annually in Porto Alegre, Brazil, the Sydney Social Forum aims to be the broadest possible gathering of progressive community organisations, NGOs, unions, activists, artists, thinkers and others to discuss ideas and strategies for progressive local and global social change. It will also be an opportunity for people to learn, network, exchange ideas and form new alliances.
Over the course of the weekend, the SSF will facilitate a variety of meetings, workshops and other activities, such as music and film presentations, and is being billed as an open space for all those who wish to participate.
The rise of an international "anti-capitalist" movement has mobilised a growing number of particularly young activists and helped breath new life into existing and ongoing struggles and campaigns. The Sydney Social Forum is a result of the willingness of a broad range of organisations to meet, share information and tactics, and explore common ground in response to the rise of neo-liberalism and corporate globalisation.
Specifically, the aim of the forum is to allow participants to:
� gain a broader understanding of activism in Sydney, share experiences and form links and networks to help build movements for change;
� share and discuss analyses of the state of the world, visions of an alternative world and strategies to get from one to the other;
� discuss and learn more about the nature and significance of the international Social Forum movement, from the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre to the emerging regional and city-based Social Forums.
With the announcement of the upcoming mini-ministerial meeting of the WTO in Sydney, the SSF will also be a forum for discussion and planning for meetings and protest action around November 14 and 15.
Thematic forums will cover alternatives to "globalisation", the War on Terror, organising resistance to racism and nationalism, the environment movement, experiences of activism in Sydney, as well as the World Trade Organisation in the light of the upcoming mini-ministerial meeting.
The workshop programme will feature over 50 discussion topics, from the organising challenges we face as a result of corporate globalisation (held jointly by the CFMEU and AMWU) to refugee rights, the Middle East, the environment, Indigenous struggles, youth issues, privatisation, Latin American resistance to neo-liberalism, and alternative media, to GM foods and animal rights. There will even be a workshop on "meditation for social activists".
The SSF aims to become a regular event which can help all of us to improve our understanding of issues of social justice, globalisation and sustainability, how our communities are affected, and how we can work together for positive change.
Organisers encourage all union activists to attend and be part of this most important gathering of thinkers and concerned citizens.
SYDNEY SOCIAL FORUM
September 21-22
University of Technology, Sydney
Participating organisations include:
AidWatch, Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific, Animal Liberation, ATTAC Australia, Australian Catholic Movement for Intellectual & Cultural Affairs, Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network, Brisbane Social Forum, Community Activist Technology, CFMEU, Democratic Socialist Party, Edmund Rice Centre, Greenpeace, Greens NSW, International Socialist Organisation, Mineral Policy Institute, New Internationalist magazine, Now We The People, People for Nuclear Disarmament (NSW), Proutist Universal, Refugee Action Coalition, Research Initiative on International Activism, Socialist Alliance, Student Environment Activist Network, The Wilderness Society, 2SER Community Radio, UTS Students Association, World League for Protection of Animals and more.
For registration and workshop information, programme of thematic forums and keynote speakers, on-line discussion and more, visit the SSF website: http://www.sydneysocialforum.org or email organisers at [email protected].
History Writes
The Sydney Labour History Association is holding a free discussion on the subject of Writing Labour Biography, September 15, 2-5 pm, PSU HOUSE, Level 7, 191 Thomas Street, Sydney.
Speakers include Harry Knowles, Peter Love, Professor Lyndall Ryan; their subjects include Edna and Jack Ryan, Frank Anstey. All welcome. For further information phone Julie on 9557 8097
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Refugee Council of Australia Public Forum
Business for Refugees? - considering the impact of refugee policy on the corporate sector
Speakers:
Neville Roach AO
Chairman, Fujitsu Australia
Ouma Sananikone
Managing Director, Products and Marketing, Sagitta Rothschild
Tony Hewson
Manager, Human Resources, Burrangong Meat Processors, Young
& chaired by Julie Macken from the Australian Financial Review
Monday 9 September, 6pm
The Doric Room, Sydney Masonic Centre, cnr Goldburn and Castlereagh St., Sydney.
RCOA's Members and Friends are also invited to attend our AGM which will be held at the same location from 4 p.m. - 5.30 p.m..
Regards,
Cathy Preston-Thomas
Settlement Policy Officer
Refugee Council of Australia: A Representative Voice for Refugees
Tel: (02) 9660 5300
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September 11: One Year On
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The Pluto Institute has organised a series of seminars in Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney drawing upon a wide cross section of social and political commentators who will examine the impact of the events in the United States on Australia.
What has been the impact on our immigration and multicultural policies?
On our defence and foreign affairs?
How do Australians now see themselves?
This lively and provocative seminar series will begin in Canberra on September 10, Sydney on September 11 and Melbourne on September 26.
Further details in the Events section following.
It will be your opportunity to escape the television re-runs of the World Trade Centre tragedy.
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Sydney Events
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Wednesday September 10 6.00 - 8.00PM
Berkelouw Books
70 Norton Street
Leichhardt
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September 11: One Year After
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What has happened to our nation since then, including the war on terrorism, border protection and internal security?
What about the impact on our immigration and multicultural policies? On our defence and foreign affairs? On how Australians see ourselves?
Speakers include: Kevin Rudd MP, Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister (to be confirmed). Dr Helen Hill, Greg Barns, Rev Dorothy McMahon McRae
Chair: Tom Morton ABC Radio National Background Briefing
$10 and $5
Bookings: [email protected]
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Canberra Events
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Wednesday 28 August: 6.00PM to 8.00PM
Vivaldi's Restaurant
Australian National University
The approval of the Collex waste facility at Clyde may be "a good result for Woodlawn miners and a good result for the people of the Goulburn region" as the AWU claims but its a terrible decision for:
1. The people of the Auburn area who now have a fifth waste facility in their LGA, hundreds more trucks rumbling through their suburb, reduced air quality...
2. Workers employed by Waste Service NSW whose job security will be undermined
3. Local ALP members who have strongly opposed the development, as have Auburn and Parramatta Council and local MPs
4. Anyone who thinks that Labor Governments should uphold the Party platform - the admission of Collex into the putrescible waste industry is a breach.
5. Those who believe that Western Sydney should not be treated as the arse end of the Greater Sydney area - the waste being trucked to Auburn for processing has been generated in the Northern Suburbs of Sydney - why not build a waste facility where the waste was generated?
6. All of those concerned about the dangers of the ALP's over-reliance on corporate donations - Collex is a donor.
Rather than exemplifying "justice" as your headline suggests, the case of the Woodlawn miners highlights the urgent need for an adequate national system for the protection of workers entitlements.
What an insane situation when the only way workers can receive their entitlements is for the union movement to enter into an unholy alliance with a multinational looking to break public sector waste management and impose an inappropriate development on a community in "the heartland".
Kel Livingstone
Dear Sir,
With the recent religious conversions of media magnates such as Rupert Murdoch , and the proselytiseism of the labor right and all the Liberals , I thought there must be a new angle in kissing the ring.
So to satisfy my curiosity, I delved into the machinations of the "Holy Orders", and was not surprised to find one attraction could possibly be the profits to be made from the public purse, in the amalgamation of a captive audience controlled by the benevolent "Sister of Charity", who founded, and with the assistance of the public purse manage the "St Vincent's" hospital complexes.
"The Sisters of Charity were the first professional nurses in the penal colony of New South Wales. They have provided and inspired high quality services within a distinctive Christian environment since the foundation of St Vincent's Hospital in 1857. Today, the SCHS operates five highly regarded and leading health facilities on two Campuses in Sydney"
With this foundation came the current proclaimed ethics:
Compassion: Accepting people as they are, bringing to each the love and tenderness of Christ
Justice: Acting with integrity and respecting the rights of all
Human Dignity: Respecting the uniqueness of each person created in the image and likeness of God
Excellence: Excelling in all aspects of our healing ministry
Unity: Creating a community characterised by harmony and collaboration
It is unfortunate that the "Human Resources "department of this profitable organisation has not been imbued with the same ethics that bind the rest of the organisation.
This department have had tuition from that the illustrious Archbishop of Warringah , who in turn must have been under the spiritual tutelage of and following in the footsteps of such illumanati as "Thom�s de Torquemada.,. . Miguel de Morillo., Martin Ponce de Leon, I�igo Manrique, Francisco S�nchez de la Fuente, Alonso Su�rez de Fuentelsaz in driving those who they come in contact with to the depths of despair , and suicide.
Perhaps this is just another pro-active business proposition , more business for the psychologists to treat the depression and priests to bury the suicides , it has been said the Devil looks after his own?
It would appear that the only excellence this department of the "Sisters of Charity" show any benevolence to is their own inquisitors.
Perhaps when the COLE Royal Commission has probed and prodded the "CFMU", enough to satiate the predatory voraciousness of the Abbotts , they can turn on these duplicitous kneelers and ring kissers , who are preparing these public hospitals for privatisation.
Perhaps this is the next investment for news Ltd......
Tom Collins
by Peter Lewis
You're arguing that it's really the Labor Party interest to take a more active role in rebuilding the union movement, what do you mean by that?
To put it simply, when Frank Walker and Graham Richardson taught me how to count numbers in the Labor Party, it started with three columns; those for you, those agains, and those in the middle that you have to win. For generations the Labor Party has always had a sizeable column of people: 40 per cent of the electorate or more, who we could count on, even in our worst times. These people would generally, though not exclusively, be commonly characterised by union membership, or affiliation to other groups, community or interests groups that had some or common cause with the trade union movement.
It is my hypothesis that the continued weakening of the union movement in Australia has had a causal effect in the demolition of the base Labor vote. In other words, the decline in union coverage across the workforce has seen a lessening of the bonds that have traditionally tied employees across all industries politically to the Labor movement. They are no longer involve themselves with, associate with or identify with the union movement. Identification is probably the most important.
The other interesting trend is that our polling shows that fewer and fewer unionists are actually voting for Labor, so they're really losing both ends, aren't they?
I think that's a distinctly different issue. That is because the Labor Party has moved away from being most commonly and readily identifiable as the party of the employee. And I think its important that we use the term employee, rather than worker, because the middle class do not see themselves as workers. They see themselves as employees. When they are in a work relationship like a contractor, or a permanent part-timer, or even a casual employee, it's seem their identification with the union movement these days is that much the lesser.
The important point however, that is related to what I was saying in the Sydney Morning Herald, is that the Labor Party has become extraordinarily gun shy about defending the very cause of unionism. They have taken the axiomatic belief that sticking up for a mindless industrial campaign by one union or another is a sure vote loser, and extrapolated that out to believe that defending the notion of trade unionism per se is a vote loser.
The more that the Labor Party runs away from the issue the bigger the problem has become. In other words, like the right of the Liberal Party - who's dogmatic anti-union agenda is just so bold and breathtaking that it has managed to capture quite a deal of the middle ground - I believe that the Labor Party has to reverse this process. It has to advocate the cause of trade unionism not just through effective policy, but also in rebutting some of the charges from the right about trade unions. We have to rebuild the legitimacy of the whole concept of unionism.
What are some of the practical steps you'd like to see?
First of all, it's the notion of identification, I think identification is very important. I would like to see Labor leaders like Bob Carr, like Simon Crean, publicly going out of their way to defend the notion of trade unionism, when it is the subject of flagrant attacks, such as it is from time to time by Tony Abbot. The next step is further producing policies that are openly and transparently designed for the consumption of the electorates designed to build trade union membership. Now there are a number of things that can be done in that regard. First of all, the Anti-Discrimination Act in NSW probably needs an overhaul. But I think it would be quite a legitimate cause for amendment that the discrimination against a person because of their trade union membership or belief, is in itself an offence under that Act. In other words, that would go to supplement what anti-victimisation protections there are under state, federal industrial acts or instruments.
Secondly I believe that Labor really needs to have a good hard look at our obligations in respect of Freedom of Association to make sure that in the modern economy, there is in fact freedom for people to openly join a trade union and to advocate that others join a trade union. That's not to be disruptive in the workplace, merely to rebut what is common; many people are so frightened of their employer finding out they are a member of a trade union, that they hide the fact.
The third specific thing I'd like to see, is that there has to be an all of union - and this is where peak Councils need to be involved - assault on the new areas of the labour market. There needs to be a push into the technology sector and service sectors generally. Their needs to be a focus on contract workers and labour hire. But that needs an all of union approach, because half the time unions are competing against each other in those areas. I think there are some very positive models around amongst some white collar unions about how they go about doing their business, and getting members and keeping them.
On other side of the coin we've been witnessing quite a remarkable, public attack on the CFMEU through the Building Industry Royal Commission, and we haven't really heard a word from a single Labor politician in defence of the unions, or unionism in general. Do you think that would have occurred in the past?
No. And that's most notable. The Labor Party has to design for itself an approach whereby it can distinguish between any wrongdoing that may or may not be proven in the long term by individuals, or even by particular union executives and the notion and principles of the right to organise - and the ability of the union to organise in a particular industry. I think if the Labor Party had that sort of base credentials, re-established out there in the electorate, it would make it much easier, in a situation like the Cole Royal Commission for the Labor Party to pick and choose where it wants to defend a particular union, in a particular circumstance, without necessarily doing itself great electoral damage. There is of course, the important point that in the midst of the Royal Commission, its right that the Labor Party is a little reluctant to go in guns blazing. But unless we get to the stage where we've seasoned up the debate about the principles of unionism, we will never be in a position as a political party to support the industrial wing in legitimate circumstances .
Of course, we haven't seen the same caution from Tony Abbot. In fact we really see the activism coming from the conservative side of politics. What's happened to the ALP in the last decade, which has led to such ingrained caution in the way they play their politics?
I think there are many and varied reasons for that. One thing we have to accept is that we in the Keating government, who presided over the wholesale amalgamations of the unions, did not provide the union movement with the necessary mechanisms in that new framework, to make sure that they remained as relevant to the workforces as perhaps smaller unions once were. I know that some people think that that is simply a contemporaneous confluence of events, rather than a cause and effect. But I think we have to analyse what went wrong when we set about encouraging the wholesale amalgamation of the unions, together with the influence of the Accord.
Now did the Accord make unions to lose their organisational ability on the ground? We need to assess that, but we need to do that very quickly in the context of those new industries and new economies. I think when the Labor Party sees the union movement striving for greater relevance, in the new economy, the Labor Party will find in that enough excuse to stop its own mantra that unionism is dying - and that's a commonly held believe amongst a lot of Labor politicians, I've got to say. Many of them will reinvigorate their support for trade unionism, when they can see the unions doing something about it themselves.
We're about to go through the process on the national level, of the debate over the Hawke Rand Review. What would a Gary Punch review into the federal election losses come up with?
I think there are a lot of reasons why we lost the last election. It has to be said, there are too many candidates who are now look-alikes. There are too many people who do not have broader experience in the workforce, or who have been out there in locally elected office. They are machine people, of the Left or the Right, rather than community activists. We now seem to be in some quarters of the party advocating the opposite to that and finding community activists, who have absolutely no history or involvement in the Labor party. Going from one extreme to another when we really need to find people who have a rich tradition and involvement in the party and the union movement and in their community.
We don't seem to have that three-dimension mindset about the candidates we pick. I think overall the reason that we lost the last election, however, was that we tried very hard to make ourselves a small target for the Conservatives, by restricting the differences between us as an O0pposition and the Government. I think whilst Australians have turned hard right on matters of law and order and race, there is no doubt in my mind, that with a properly put together set of policies on the economic and industrial front, the ordinary Australian is looking for a marginal march backwards to what in old terms, we might have described as the Left. I think people want to be more assured about community and community values, I think they want to be more assured that in the age of ultra free enterprise, there is still going to be a safety net, and a community ethos through the taxation system.
Which almost brings us back to your initial thesis, which is that what the union movement stands for should really be popular in the electorate ...
But the unions have got to do a lot of that work for themselves . There is at broad in the union movement, what I regard as the fatal contagion of Peter Walshism. When Peter Walsh was looking to restructure the pension system, for instance, he had a very perverted view about who was wealthy, particularly in relation to the assets test. I mean we need to understand that people earning an income over $100,000 in Sydney, are not the rich, they are not necessarily rich in Sydney with the prices that ordinary families have to battle these days.
We should seize the notion of not disregarding people, merely because they are high-income earners. If they are employees, or if they are contractors, if they are engaged in labor hire from time to time, that all of those classes of people, should be people that the unions are targeting. I'd even go further to say that the franchisee class - that are in many senses indentured workers -should be targets for representation by unions at that end of the small business community. Because those people are in fact usually capital borrowers seeking to carve out a wage for themselves and family members. They often have more in common, in terms of, education, class and even ethnic background, with the ordinary trade unionist than what many in the Labor party and trade union leadership might have hitherto thought.
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How many times do you need to be @#?<$ up the arse before you know you are a poofter?
The eternal question was posed by Peter "Basher" Williams to a recent mass meeting of workers at window manufacturer, Stegbar's, Rowville site in Victoria.
Williams earned his Basher sobriquet in a limited but controversial career as an AFL footballer with the Richmond club. He is apparently so enamoured of the decades-old publicity that he has maintained the identity for his current job as Stegbar's Victorian state manager.
Basher has taken a two-pronged approach to bargaining with his 140-strong workforce - strident personal abuse of individuals, and launching the most offensive weapons in the employer's arsenal, designed and constructed by defence consultant Peter Reith.
Basher has threatened to take outside AWU organiser, Rod Lineham, a man about half his size and, just last week, directed a tirade of personal abuse against a job delegate, so severe that union negotiators got up and walked out of talks.
Demands for apologies from Stegbar's Sydney head office have, thus far, fallen on deaf ears.
Since enterprise bargaining negotiations, with the AWU and CFMEU, began a few months back, Basher has threatened stand-downs; to replace full-timers with casuals; taken legal action against his workers in the IRC: and, just last Thursday, locked everybody out.
Fortunately, he's no Chris Corrigan, and some of the missiles have backfired, like when the Commission ruled against his claim that the CFMEU was not bargaining in good faith.
Another positive outcome of his intemperate approach has been unifying members of the AWU and CFMEU, something beyond most labour activists.
Both groups found common cause in nominating Basher, and Stegbar, for Workers Online's Tony Award and, we have to say, the inter-staters loom as worthy candidates in a strong field.
More importantly, Basher's convinced the two unions to jointly pursue enterprise bargaining negotiations.
They've all but accepted Stegbar's four percent offer on wages but have co-ordinated bans and rolling stoppages in a bid to win justice on outstanding redundancy, super and long service claims.
CFMEU organiser, Clare Burford, points out that Basher is not the lone villian in this piece, that he has raised the stakes on behalf of out-of-state owners.
US-based transnational, Jeldwen, recently bought a significant stake in Stegbar and Burford is convinced that its arrival and a more aggressive industrial relations stance are more than coincidental.
"Since Jeldwen arrived on the scene there has been a marked change in their approach to their employees," Burford reported. "They have become much more aggressive."
It's a view endorsed by the AWU's Bill Shorten.
He points out that Stegbar has thrived on the back of a loyal workforce, some of whom have given the company as many as 38 years of their lives, which goes a long way towards explaining the importance of redundancy, super and long service provisions.
Shorten blasted Stegbar's Rowville campaign as anti-worker and un-Australian.
"Locking out loyal workers is no solution because when it comes to resolve these workers can go one day longer than the company," he promised.
Meanwhile, Tony-nominee Basher is a chance of seeing his name in the headlines again, after all these years.
by Jim Marr
Well, actually, the Hilton's not as posh as it used to be when it attracted the world's A-list to its central city tower bloke. And that, presumably, is why the international chain is ploughing $400 million into extensive renovations.
As usual, the big losers, will be the people who make the place tick. A cosmpolitan bunch who, in many cases, have given substantial chunks of their lives to the hotel.
House keeping supervisor Liliane Decatoire and chef Leonardo Paungao are typical.
Decatoire started at the Hilton not long after immigrating from France. When she walked through the doors for the first time the most common topic of conversation was the infamous bomb blast that had rocked the premises, barely a year earlier.
She is saddened and disappointed by the company's attitude to her workmates.
When she is sent packing, with her eight weeks redundancy, on November 29, it will be friends, rather than the job, that she misses.
"I spoke to my boss just a few minutes ago and I had tears in my eyes," Decatoire told Workers Online this week. "I can't keep myself together.
"It's a bit like moving to another country when you have to leave all your friends behind. But, when you're older, it's so much harder.
"You would think that after 23 years you would deserve some recongition. Some ot these people have been here for more than half their lives."
She says she will survive, she has someone to look after her, but genuinely fears for bread winners paying mortgages or looking after children. And there are plenty of them.
Not only is the Hilton adamant about its eight-week redundancy cap but it is denying anything at all to casual staff. Casualisation, of course, is rampant in the hospitality industry and the Hilton has been no exception.
Phillipino, Parungao, took his talent to George St in 1983.
He is worried for himself, how far the redundancy will stretch and where his next job might come from.
"They're talking eight weeks, it's absolutely unfair," he says.
"I know finding another job will be hard because, these days, they take so much notice of your age. I suppose that's what really worrries me.
"I've enjoyed working at the Hilton. Let's say we're a pretty multi-cultural lot and it's been a good place to meet people.
"The age thing, with employers, is the one discrimination I have found here in Australia. Sure, I'm experienced in the industry but I know my age will count against me."
Like Decatoire, he feels his years of service entitle him to greater consideration.
"They are not closing because they are losing money or their workers have let them down," Parungao says, "They are closing so they can make more money in the long run."
As staff became increasingly restive, prior to notification of the November 29 closure, hotel manager, Andrew Flack, provided the following written assurance.
"Once we have a final date and plan for the building works to start, the number one priority for the management team and Human Resources department will be to give our people all possible support in working through what it means for them personally and providing lots of practical help towards ensuring a secure future."
In practise, this has meant, sticking to the eight week federal redundancy maximum although workers would have been entitled to as much as 16 weeks if they had been employed under NSW terms and conditions.
It has also meant denying any redundancy to large numbers of casuals, and ongoing arguments about accrued sick leave and other entitlements.
Thus far, the Hilton has rejected claims that current staff have first options on jobs when the establishment reopens.
Already, it is clear management will try to use casual, travelling staff to try and frustrate LHMU efforts to gain fair compensation for the people to be ditched in November.
Just how this tallies with Flack's pledge to provide "lots of practical help towards ensuring a secure future" remains, to put it mildly, somewhat clouded.
Much clearer, is that the Hilton and its 467 staff, are living justification for the ACTU's demand that Abbott and his Government lift maximum federal redundancy payouts.
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The economy should serve the society. It is important to emphasise who should be the master and what should be the servant, because the priorities commonly seem to be reversed today. Our political leaders seem to expect us to adjust our social lives, and our social aspirations, in order to conform to so-called economic imperatives. That is the essence of the 'structural adjustment' process that has been creating such dramatic changes in recent years.
The issue of unemployment and the working poor is a case in point. It seems that we are expected to accept the continued existence of a pool of unemployed people and a growing proportion of casual and low paid jobs as permanent features of the economic landscape. This is a bizarre situation, since the principal role of the economic system should be to provide productive jobs and decent material living standards for all members of the society.
The Australian economy is failing this test, despite a decade of economic growth which our political leaders have trumpeted as indicating the success of their policies and the exceptional soundness of the national economy. True, the official unemployment rate has been clawed back from its recession peak of around 11% in the early 1990's to around 6 �% today. But the official rate is a gross underestimate of the actual underutilised labour reserves. Surveys by the Australian Bureau of Statistics indicate that there could be up to another 6% of 'discouraged workers' who do not identify themselves as unemployed because they have given up on the possibility of finding a suitable job in their locality. People who are working part-time but would like to work full-time comprise a roughly equivalent number. Another 2% might be added, comprising people on disability support pensions who could be considered in the potential labour force if more suitable jobs were being created. Add all those components together and the estimate of total underemployment looks closer to 20% of the Australian workforce.
Newly arrived migrant groups face particular difficulties in these labour market conditions. This is part of the explanation for the notoriously higher incidence of unemployment in areas like Fairfield/Cabramatta with relatively high immigrant concentrations than in northern Sydney areas like Mosman and Hornsby. Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows that higher levels of education are correlated with lower levels of average unemployment but, interestingly, the gap between the unemployment rates of the Australian-born and migrants actively widens at higher levels of educational attainment (presumably because of difficulties migrants sometimes face in having their educational attainments recognised for employment purposes).
There is evidence that the gap between the unemployment rates of immigrants and native-born Australians diminishes as labour market conditions improve. In 1993 the unemployment rate for foreign-born was 12.4% and native-born was 10.1% (a gap of 2.3%), but in year 2000 when the native-born unemployment rate had fallen to 6.2%, the rate for foreign-born people was only a little higher at 6.5% (a gap of only 0.3%). By March 2000, the gap had widened again, as the native-born unemployment rate rose to 6.5% and the foreign-born rate to 7.2% (a gap of 0.7%). These are aggregated figures and conceal the special difficulties faced by recently-arrived migrant groups and people of non-english speaking background. However, they do signal the importance of tackling overall labour market conditions. Migrants are less disadvantaged when labour market conditions are buoyant.
What policy implications follow? Commitment to equality of employment opportunity requires measures to overcome the impediments to migrants accessing jobs. Policies which can help include programs for education and skill development, improving recognition of overseas qualifications, addressing obstacles such as english-language proficiency for NESB migrants, and improving the effectiveness of the Jobs Network as a means of helping people find what suitable jobs do exist.
More fundamental are policies to get the economy on track so that there are jobs for all. Otherwise the policies merely shuffle the unemployment queues. The need for a strategy to create jobs for all is a matter on which all Australians - indigenous, old settlers and newer arrivals - have a common interest.
The Social Costs of Unemployment and Low Wages
Unemployment is particularly damaging to the social fabric because of its personal, social and economic costs. Personally, it causes hardship, not only because of the absence of income from work, but also because of the severance of social networks associated with the workplace. It can be very damaging to morale.
Unemployment can also be damaging to health - mental and physical - which imposes broader costs on society because of the additional demand for health services. To the extent that unemployment is associated with a higher incidence of crime, that creates other social costs. It leads to more and more of society's resources being allocated to dealing with crime and the fear thereof, making the security services sector one of the major employment growth sectors. Therein lies an obvious irony - a major segment of job creation being driven by the adverse social consequences of an increasingly polarised society.
The continuing existence of unemployment also has what economists call an 'opportunity cost' - the goods and services that society foregoes because people are not working in productive ways. A rational economy would mobilise the unemployed people for socially useful production, preferably in areas of their personal expertise and in ways that add to self-respect and social esteem.
The proliferation of casual and low wage jobs also has damaging social consequences. Employers commonly say that it reflects an economic imperative - the need to have cheap labour and a 'flexible' workforce in order to survive in a competitive economic environment. Indeed, the effects of economic globalisation and neo-liberal policies, including the removal of tariffs on imported goods, have undermined the protection of their markets that some firms previously enjoyed. Some businesses have relocated overseas to take advantage of cheaper and more 'flexible' labour supplies: clothing firms relocating to Fiji or buying in garments from Fijian suppliers are a striking example. Does this justify the downward pressure on the already low incomes of Australian clothing workers, including outworkers who are mostly women of migrant background? Low wage production is a slippery slope which may seem rational for individual employers but it bodes ill for the economy and society in general.
For the economy as a whole, low wage production creates predictable contradictions. Low wages undermine people's capacity to undertake the high consumption expenditures on which the buoyancy of the national economy depends. Unless the bulk of production is for export, the resulting problem of demand-deficiency can be a recurrent cause of economic recession, as J. M. Keynes emphasised more than half a century ago. And, if all other countries are pursuing the same low wage strategy, even export-orientation provides no escape from this problem - the contradiction simply becomes globalised. The economy, both nationally and globally, becomes ever more dependent on the luxury consumption of wealthy elites to continue driving the system. So growing economic inequalities come to be embedded into its normal functioning.
Therein lie other contradictions. An increasingly unequal society is one in which social stresses intensify - leading to even more economic resources being allocated to 'social control'. A growing proportion of people become welfare-dependent, but the wealthy elites have become increasingly reluctant to contribute the taxes that would be necessary to finance an adequate social safety-net. Greater economic inequality is also not conducive to working together for common purposes. The willingness of society to address inherently collective concerns - most obviously the looming environmental crisis - is undermined by the growing emphasis on individualism and short run economic self-interest.
Restoring Full Employment With Equity
Changing political economic direction is not easy. But tackling the problem of unemployment is an obvious place to start. Capitalism has always been bedevilled by this problem, except for periods of war and, notably, the period from the end of the second world war until the early 1970's.
What 'full employment' would mean today is probably quite different from the latter period when it was the norm in the Australian economy. That unusual post-war 'long boom' was a period of steady growth in 'blue collar' jobs as manufacturing industries were expanding. It was also an era when the 'male breadwinner' model was characteristic of the division of labour within households. These features gave 'full employment' a historically distinctive character. Now, manufacturing is no longer the engine of employment growth and many more women have entered waged work. So both demand and supply conditions in the labour market have fundamentally changed.
A modern conception of full employment must stress the more equitable distribution of work and its link to a more equitable distribution of incomes. The French social scientist Andre Gorz has written extensively about how we might seek to reduce total lifetime working hours, giving more flexibility to workers themselves to determine inter-temporal patterns of full-time work, part-time work, education and leisure while maintaining a relatively steady wage-income stream (see for example Reclaiming Work: Beyond the Wage-Based Society). More pragmatically, the French government has legislated to impose a ceiling of 35 hours on the length of the working week. Thus runs counter to the Australian trend which, in recent years, has seen an increasing number of people working longer than standard hours, including unpaid overtime. There is evidence that both under-work and over-work is associated with a greater propensity to ill-health, so anything that produces a more equitable distribution seems worthy of consideration.
Job creation could also be promoted by more actively interventionist industry policies. Harnessing the growing volume of savings in occupational superannuation funds for an integrated program of national industry investment is one avenue through which this could be pursued. At present, the short-term orientation of superannuation funds' investment strategies is counter-productive, both for retirement incomes and for national economic development. Channelling workers' savings through a national investment scheme would also open up the possibility of linking industry policy to restructuring for ecologically sustainable development. Therein lies the possibility of significant job creation, contributing both to a more positive national balance of payments and to harmonising economic and environmental goals.
The principle of 'productive diversity' also warrants more attention. It is a basis for taking advantage of the diverse skills and economic capabilities of a multicultural society. A society genuinely committed to equality of employment opportunities should see ethnic diversity as an asset rather than a problem. This has been stressed in an important book by Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, Productive Diversity: a New Australian Model for Work and Management, and its policy implications are being increasingly discussed in forums concerned with both economic productivity and equality of employment opportunities for different ethnic groups.
These are just a few examples of principles and policies that an alternative economic strategy could emphasise. They provide a counter to the prevailing neo-liberal policy program which has shown itself to be a class-biased strategy, generating vast incomes for some privileged people but ignoring the economic needs of less advantaged socio-economic groups. Chief executive officers in large corporations have been rewarding themselves with massive remuneration packages, with no evident connection to productivity, claiming that such rewards are necessary in an internationally competitive marketplace. This 'race to the top' contrasts strikingly with the 'race to the bottom' imposed on their lower-wage employees. The current round of corporate collapses reveals the shaky rationale for this strategy. It does not provide the basis for a viable economic and social future.
TINA: RIP
Our political leaders, wedded to the neo-liberal perspective, have often said that 'there is no alternative'. This has been labelled the TINA syndrome. But in economic and social policy there are always alternatives. As the problems of economic and environmental crisis bite harder, it now seems particularly appropriate to consider some progressive alternatives. Let's bury TINA and let her 'rest in peace'.
Frank Stilwell is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Sydney
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The floor of the convention at the Washington State Labor Council (WSLC) in Spokane, Washington was hushed when Gil Veyna took the mike to support "A Resolution Against the War, Attacks on Civil Liberties and Cuts in Public Services. "As a Chicano and a unionist," Veyna said resoundingly "I resent Bush's war on terrorism which is a war on working people and immigrants."
Veyna, a 22-year Veterans Administration hospital employee, was at the August 19-22, 2002 convention as a delegate for the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 3197. His union is one of several which has raised objections to the governments plan to remove civil service protections and collective bargaining rights from the 170,000 federal workers in the newly formed Department of Homeland Security.
In his comments, Veyna criticized the national leadership of the AFL-CIO for its unstinting support of the military actions in Afghanistan. He noted that now the administration has turned its guns on dockworkers, referring to the threat to call out troops in the name of "national security" in the eventuality of a strike by the International Longshore Workers Union.
Veyna was no less critical of what he termed "federally sanctioned
racial profiling following 9/11" which put immigrants under the spotlight and led to many unfairly losing their jobs.
When Veyna sat down, not a single delegate of the 500 unionists representing locals throughout the state rose to speak against the resolution, and it passed overwhelmingly. Thus Washington became the first State Labor Council in the country to call on the AFL-CIO to seek repeal of the USA Patriot Act and oppose the U.S. government's war without end.
The American Federations of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 304 from Seattle brought the resolution to the convention after it was proposed by rank and file members active in the Freedom Socialist Party. Following its passage, AFSCME Local 304 President Rodolfo Franco said, "I urge other unions and labor councils to pass similar resolutions and send a message to President Bush: Stop wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on military spending and war, money that is urgently needed to fund decent health care, housing, education, job training and social services for millions of unemployed and low income workers and the poor in this country and elsewhere."
The resolution urges the government to redirect federal funds from the military budget to laid-off workers and public services, to promote global justice by providing humanitarian and economic aid to workers in other countries and to release the hundreds of Middle Easterners, Arabs, and other immigrants detained over the past year without due process and/or legal representation.
It also directs the WSLC to defend civil liberties by pressuring local and state law enforcement not to cooperate with FBI spying on political, labor, and anti-globalism activists or with INS harassment of immigrants.
Rank and file pressure for a change in the AFL-CIO's pro-war position has been building for some time. Passage of this resolution is the culmination of work by many, including San Francisco's Labor Committee for Peace and Justice, New York City Labor Against the War, and Seattle's Organized Labor Against the War. A similar resolution, co-sponsored by AFSCME Locals 304 and Local 2626 (Los Angeles), garnered about 1,000 votes at the national AFSCME convention in June, 2002 and saw the creation of AFSCME Workers Against the War.
Resolution Against the War,
Attacks on Civil Liberties and
Cuts in Public Services
Resolution #6
Adopted by the Washington State Labor Council Convention, August 19-22, 2002, Spokane, WA.
WHEREAS, President Bushs ever-expanding "war on terrorism" has been cynically used to justify a $48 billion hike in next years military budget, bringing it to $383 billion, in addition to the $15 billion bailout of the airline industry and $25 billion in tax refunds for corporate America; and
WHEREAS, Congress is forcing union members and other working and poor people to pay for this war drive and subsidize corporate profits by raiding the Social Security Trust Fund and cutting funding for economically distressed states and vital government programs such as subsidies for low income housing and services to the homeless; and
WHEREAS, the billions spent on armaments, domestic repression and bailouts could be better used to provide re-training programs and jobs to the 800,000 workers across the nation who lost their jobs after September 11th, and to plug the $50 billion deficit in state and local budgets that has resulted in a major loss of union jobs and cuts in essential socials services such as fully staffed libraries, education, quality public transportation with reliable access services to the disabled, providing clean water and air, healthcare and treatment for the mentally ill; and
WHEREAS, in the aftermath of September 11th over 1,000 immigrants were imprisoned in detention centers, thousands of airport workers (many of them immigrants of color) were fired simply because they were not citizens, and Muslims, people of Middle Eastern descent and other immigrants suffered increased violence sparked by racial profiling by the INS and FBI; and
WHEREAS, the federal "USA PATRIOT" anti-terrorism act and similar state measures undermine labors right to organize and fight anti-immigrant attacks and other union-busting tactics by expanding the governments ability to detain non-citizens based on mere suspicion, to conduct telephone and internet surveillance and secret searches, and to define people engaged in political protest as "domestic terrorists;" and
WHEREAS, the national AFL-CIOs uncritical support for this profit-driven war has derailed labor opposition to increased military expenditures, corporate subsidies and government spying and provided political cover for Democrats to jump on the anti-terrorism bandwagon;
WHEREAS, the AFL-CIO's support for the war has led to the callous withholding of solidarity from labor's working class and poor allies in other countries who are suffering and dying as a result of this conflict; therefore, be it
RESOLVED that the Washington State Labor Council expand its efforts to defend civil liberties by taking the following actions and urging the AFL-CIO to do the same:
---Campaign for the repeal of the USA PATRIOT Act and defeat of similar "anti-terrorism" measures in state legislatures;
---Pressure local and state law enforcement to refuse to cooperate with FBI spying on political, union, and anti-globalism activists or comply with INS harassment of Arabs and other immigrants and people of color in the U.S.; and
---Demand the immediate release of the hundreds of Middle Eastern, Arab and other immigrants who are still being detained without due process and/or legal justification; and be it finally
RESOLVED that the Washington State Labor Council urge the AFL-CIO and its affiliates to oppose the U.S. government's open-ended "war on terrorism" and participate in rallies, marches and other activities to pressure President Bush and Congress to stop the war and redirect money from corporate handouts and the military budget to assist laid-off workers, restore and expand public services, and promote global justice by providing humanitarian and economic aid--administered by unions--to our brothers and sisters in other countries.
Fred Hyde is from Seattle, Washington and was a delegate to the Washington State Labor Council Convention from AFSCME Local 304. He can be reached on mailto:[email protected]
With the Earth Summit in Johannesburg currently winding up, the consensus amongst environmentalists is that of defeat to the interests of the corporate world.
Much has been made of the salubrious conditions enjoyed by Earth Summit participants. From all reports, Johannesburg organisers have gone to great lengths to hide the poverty and destitution of South Africa from their high profile visitors. In the Sydney Morning Herald's 'News Review' of August 31, Australian youth delegate, Alan Yu, was reported as saying, "I haven't taken in the fact that I'm in Johannesburg at all. It's very insular and unreal. I could be in Australia."
Yu could be forgiven for forgetting that he is actually at the Earth Summit. Australian and US representatives don't seem to want to be there at all. The challenges facing participants and the global community are gargantuan, and yet in the face of these, our own delegation have been unwilling to commit to any reform which may even slightly impinge on business interests.
At the Rio Summit in 1992, 150 countries signed up to the Climate Change Convention. The ultimate goal of the convention was to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions at a level that would not dangerously upset the global climate system. There was a broad recognition that the major source of emissions emanated from the developed world. To combat this, a target was put in place stipulating that the 1990 levels of greenhouse gas emission would be the appropriate level to comply with.
The Rio Summit also recognised that for developing countries, economic reliance on fossil fuels was a major problem. To assist in helping them to overcome this reliance, richer nations were supposed to pay a leading role in fostering and developing the uptake of renewable energy sources, and provide finances for monitoring and controlling the release of greenhouse gasses.
For the convention to take root, more than 50 nations were required to ratify its principles. The 1997 Kyoto talks were the forum in which this ratification took place. Eighty-six nations signed the convention, with the US agreeing to cut their emissions by 7% of 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012. Since their withdrawl, (one of President Bush's first acts in the Oval Office) the effectiveness of the convention has been put into serious jeopardy. The United State accounts for 25% of CO2 emissions on their own. The time-lag between the original agreement in Rio and subsequent ratification has also been a huge problem. Far from reducing to 1990 levels, the last decade has actually seen them rise by ten percent.
In this context, the failure of the recent Johannesburg Summit to deliver any meaningful reforms is of concern. The US delegation has insisted throughout the course of the summit that any resolutions should not be legally binding, leaving them virtually toothless, and reflecting the Bush Administrations penchant for unilateralism.
A clear example of this was the horse-trading that occurred over renewable energies. Brazil, with the support of several Central American states, proposed that by 2010, all nations have a ten percent renewable energy mix. The EU, with strong backing from European corporations already specialising in the production of these energies, wanted 15% by 2015. The US, Japan and OPEC countries- all heavily reliant on fossil fuels- were opposed to any targets.
The end result? A Japanese compromise position whereby targets of halving the number of people without access to sanitised water was accepted by the US in return for no targets on renewable energy. The final text calls on all countries to act with 'a sense of urgency' in adopting renewable energy, but there is no mention of targets.
NGO's and other representatives of civil society have been shocked by the pernicious influence and clout of the US at this conference. Despite George W. Bush's reluctance to attend, the shadow of US oil dollars has clearly pervaded the collective conscience of the delegates. Amongst most of these representatives, the consensus is that the progress of the Rio Summit has not only been lost, but that we are now moving backwards. On 4 September, Naomi Klein commented that,
"When Rio hosted the first earth summit in 1992, there was so much goodwill surrounding the event that it was nicknamed, without irony, the Summit to Save the World. This week in Johannesburg, nobody has claimed that the follow-up World Summit on Sustainable Development could save the world. The question has been whether the summit could even save itself"
With no real progress being made at this conference, the outlook for the environment is increasingly bleak.. From an Australian perspective, Russia's decision to now ratify the Kyoto protocol positions us as the US' lapdog more than ever. Unless a significant change is made, Australia not only risks international condemnation, but also the chance to develop a competitive advantage in the renewable energies market - an opportunity lost indeed.
****************
The son of socialist journalist, R.S. (Bob) Ross, and younger brother of union leader, Lloyd Ross, Edgar was, without doubt, one of the most significant and controversial Australian labour movement intellectuals of the twentieth century. My purpose, though, is not to reflect on the totality of Edgar's life of activism - for I cannot claim to have anything other than a rudimentary knowledge of the full canvass of his life. Rather, I want to reflect on the one phase of his life about which I do, I think, have some understanding, namely the decade which he spent working as a labour journalist and activist in the mining town of Broken Hill between 1925 and 1935. For both Edgar and Broken Hill, this was a decade of remarkable significance.
For Edgar, it was the decade of his '20s, with all that that signifies in terms of emotional and political maturation. For Broken Hill, the decade from 1925 marked the final passing of the era of syndicalist militancy (which RS Ross had helped to usher in twenty years before) and a turn to militant economism and localism overseen by union moderates and the increasingly powerful Barrier Industrial Council (the BIC), formed in 1923. For both Edgar and the Broken Hill labour movement, it was a decade of tension and transition. In a very real sense, they changed together during these years - though, as it happened, their political trajectories diverged dramatically. I'd like to explore this decade-long relationship, firstly by offering a brief narrative account of Edgar's 10-year odyssey in Broken Hill; and then by offering an assessment of the relationship. What impact did Edgar have on Broken Hill? What impact did Broken Hill have on Edgar? As he remarked in the opening lines of his autobiography:
The place - and its people - which undoubtedly had the greatest influence in determining the outline of my life, politically, socially, and in character building was ... Broken Hill...1
How did person and place shape one another's identity, outlook and agency at this moment in time?
Broken Hill Childhood
This, of course, was not Edgar's first sojourn in Broken Hill. He spent the first four years of his life there with his parents and elder brother Lloyd between 1904 and 1908. In fact he should have been born there, but wasn't. He was born in Brisbane - on 20 November 1904. The year before, Bob Ross had relocated his family to Broken Hill when he had been appointed editor of the local labour movement newspaper, the then bi-weekly Barrier Truth. But his mother, Ethel, had apparently baulked at giving birth in such a primitive place and 'fled' back to the security of her native Brisbane to give birth to her second child.
Presumably, though, Edgar was conceived in Broken Hill - and this may have been the reason why his parents decided to call him Edgar Argent - since Argent (French for silver) was the name of Broken Hill's main street and its main thoroughfare for union street processions.
It was an eventful infancy! His father's tenure as editor of the Barrier Truth was short-lived. The paper was owned by the Barrier Branch of the Australian Labor Federation and its biggest shareholder was the local branch of the Amalgamated Miners' Association (AMA), the largest of the Broken Hill mining unions. Ross was ousted from the editorship in late 1905 on the vote of the AMA rank-and-file. At that stage, the AMA membership was predominantly Methodist and the cause of his removal was his advocacy of birth control and the violation of the Sabbath by holding pubic political meetings on the day. His outspokenness triggered a joint campaign against him by the Protestant Ministerial Association and the Catholic clergy.
But there were successes as well: RS Ross helped found the Barrier Socialist Party and the Barrier Social Democratic Club. He published the Club's paper, The Flame, positioning it as a more radical alternative to the Truth (which in 1908 became the nation's first daily labour paper.) Perhaps his greatest contribution to local consciousness-raising though was his work as local municipal librarian. The shelves of the town's free lending library were stacked with thousands of radical works.
In November 1908, the Rosses left Broken Hill for Melbourne where RS was to take up the secretaryship of the Victorian Socialist Party and the editorship of its paper, The Socialist. Edgar was just four years old, so the influence of this first encounter with Broken Hill must be seen as largely vicarious. What we can say is that for Bob Ross himself, the pre-war Broken Hill experience left an indelible mark. According to Edgar's biography of RS:
Had an enduring love of the Barrier, not only its militant industrialism but the very atmosphere of the city, with its easygoing hospitality that became legendary. He loved, too, the sprawling outback ... the rolling saltbush plains, invaded here and there by red sand-dunes, cut by dry creek beds sprouting majestic swamp gums, the stark gorges that frames the landscape.2
A Melbourne Education
After a two-year stint in New Zealand in 1911-13 (where RS edited the Maoriland Worker), the family returned to Melbourne. There, Edgar attended Fairfield Public School, then to the selective University High School, where he edited the school paper and displayed a penchant for debating, music and the stage. He dabbled in the theatre and music, but politics was never far from centre-stage. He enrolled in the People's Conservatorium (run by Annie and Dr Stuart Mackay), attended the VSP's Socialist Sunday School, and rubbed shoulders with Adela Pankhurst, Dick Long and others on Yarra Bank during the anti-conscription campaigns of 1916 and 1917. He also wrote book reviews for The Socialist (Melbourne) and serving as sporting editor for the Geelong Industrial Advocate, both of which were edited by his father. By now the political die was well and truly cast.
During the war years, the Rosses maintained their links with Broken Hill. RS returned briefly in 1915 to act as relieving editor of BDT. This was the year in which the underground miners won the first of two extraordinary industrial victories - a 44 hour week. The second - a 35 hour week - came as consequence of the 18-month long 'Big Strike' of 1919-20.
Rather than follow brother Lloyd into university, though, Edgar decided to take up journalism and in 1922 became a cadet journalist on the conservative Melbourne Argus, where he joined the Australian Journalists' Association (AJA). Sacked at the end of the cadetship in 1924, he worked briefly on the staff of Will Smith, the Secretary of the Victorian Branch of the Australian Railways Union, and then, (equally briefly) as a journalist and printer's offsider for Webb's Reporter (Footscray).
Back to the Barrier
Then, in 1925, aged 20, he accepted a position as a sub-editor of the Barrier Daily Truth, now owned and published by the AMA's successor, the Barrier Branch of the Workers Industrial Union of Australia (WIUA).
The Broken Hill to which he returned was a very different place to that in which the Rosses had moved 20 years before. The 'Big Strike' of 1919-20 had delivered the miners their greatest ever victory - a 35 hour working week for the underground miners and a generous compensation scheme for all mine workers affected by industrial disease. But, for the WIUA syndicalists, victory came at a high price. George Kerr, undoubtedly their best strategist, lost the presidency to a moderate. His charismatic associate, Percy Brookfield, was shot dead in 1921. The 1921-22 recession stalled underground re-employment and gutted union membership, leaving the radicals' old adversaries - the craft unions - in a much stronger position. Forced to compromise, the WIUA joined with the largest of the craft bodies, the Engine-Drivers, to reinstitute a closed shop on the mines by means of quarterly badge show days. Then in 1923 the craft unions invited the WIUA to join their own peak body, the Broken Hill Trades and Labour Council. This the WIUA eventually did, but only after the forced absorption of its underground rival, the Trades and Trades Labourers Union. The absorption of this moderate union served to undermine the WIU radicals further still. The new peak body, with the WIUA on board, was known as the Barrier Industrial Council.
By mid-1924, the BIC had consolidated its authority within the local union movement, and under the leadership of Paddy O'Neill had begun a process which would see economism and extra-arbitral peak level collective bargaining become the defining features of local union strategy. O'Neill himself was an ex-miner, a night soil carter and the leader of the local Municipal Employees Union. He was militant and strategically savvy but staunchly Catholic and anti-socialist. In early 1925, under O'Neill's guidance, the BIC finalised a triennial mines agreement with the mining companies - the first of many to come. Emblematic of the turn to economism, the 1925 agreement also provided for a profitsharing scheme in the form of a bonus linked to the global lead price - the so-called 'lead bonus'.
At the same time, O'Neill's BIC moved to unionise the town workforce - and along the way to reshape the local working population in the image of O'Neill's own brand of Catholic social conservatism. Married women were removed from all paid employment and the ideal of the male breadwinner enshrined in local union policy.
This was the Broken Hill to which the young and idealistic 'EAR' returned in 1925. In farewelling him, RS's advice was to beware of the town's predatory women who, he said, had a reputation for 'aggressiveness'!
Working for the Barrier Daily Truth
It was the wrong advice altogether. Edgar would have been better advised to be alert to the fact that his appointment to the staff of the BDT had made him the object of an intense political and personal squabble.
There to meet him at the station was his sponsor, Paddy Lamb, an old friend of Ross's father. Lamb was a founding member of the Communist Party. He was also a WIUA delegate to the Central Council of the Miners' Federation and had actually championed the WIUA's reluctant move to closer unity with the local craft unions via the BIC. He was also brother-in-law of WE Dickson, manager of the BDT. Lamb had engineered EAR's appointment in the face of opposition from the paper's editor, one-time Industrial Workers of the World activist, Ernest Wetherell. To add fuel to the fire, Dickson and Wetherell were evidently rivals for the hand of Lamb's activist sister-in-law, Alice Cogan. (The Cogan's were one of the blue-blood families of Broken Hill radicalism.) Wetherell himself had a formidable intellect and, to Dickson's dismay, simply revelled in the possibility of liable action by those he targeted. Wetherell was also a stayer and survivor- editing the paper until his entry into State parliament in 1949.
When Ross arrived at the BDT office, Wetherell accused him of being a plant to usurp his job and showed him the door. Despite the inauspicious beginning, the two eventually settled into a business-like and even close working relationship, but with Ross cast firmly in the role of subordinate and subaltern. For the first few years, he spent most of his time on court- and race-reporting and writing theatre, film and book reviews.
As a denizen of town doings he witnessed first hand the BIC's drive to unionise the non-mine workforce and to impose a closed shop, using the weapon of the blacklist and the consumer boycott. He also witnessed some of the more ham-fisted efforts to enforce union rules in town employment. For instance, the town was almost bought to a stand-still when the owner of a local dance hall (the Palais de Danse) refused to sack a banjo player who he had employed in contravention of the Musicians Union's seniority list. On another occasion, while standing in for Wetherell, he was hauled before the WIUA for refusing to publish a decision by the local unemployed organisation declaring a pub 'black' because it employed a married women in contravention of union policy. The union found in his favour, arguing that only unions could impose such a ban.
'Agitprop' - the Militant Minority Movement & WEA
Under Wetherell's influence, Ross's political affiliations were directed towards the Labor Party, of which he became a member automatically on taking out membership of the WIUA. (He held dual membership of the AJA and the WIUA.) From about 1928 on Ross also assumed a greater role in producing BDT editorials, standing in when Wetherell was otherwise occupied.
This, though, was also the period of the Ryan-Kavanagh leadership in the CPA, with its solidarist approach to the Labor Party and its emphasis on agitation and propagandising within the existing labour movement. Ryan, Norman Jeffery and other CPA activists visited Broken Hill in 1927-28 and encouraged the formation of a local Militant Minority Movement (MMM). Ross was a willing adherent. He joined the local MMM, became one of its principal public speakers and served as president in 1929. He also seems to have forged a solid working relationship with the Movement's main local militant, Harry Kelly. Like Paddy Lamb, Kelly had deep roots in the Broken Hill labour movement. He was an old Wobbly and had been a close associate of Percy Brookfield. Like Lamb, Kelly seems to have been something of a mentor to Ross. Initially, the MMM enjoyed good relations with the local unions, and had persuaded the BIC to sponsor local May Day celebrations. At Lamb's urging, Ross also became active in the WEA, serving as local secretary and earning the epithet 'WEA Ross'. He also played a part in getting the BIC to support the International Class War Prisoners Association.
Taking on the Splitters
Between 1927 and 1929 the WIUA itself also came under serious challenge from within. While the exact motives for this internal challenge remain unclear, its chief public instigator was one Richard Gully. Gully had arrived in Broken Hill from SA about the same time as Ross, was a Boer War veteran, had links with the Nationalist Party, the Returned Soldiers' Association, and (it seems) with the owners of Broken Hill's anti-labour paper, the Barrier Miner. Ross himself refers to Gully as an 'agent provocateur' and the circumstantial evidence suggests that this is a reasonable assessment.
Gully worked on the mines, joined the WIUA and proceeded to build a support base among the rank and file by running an anti-foreign labour line directed mainly at southern European immigrants. Gully made several unsuccessful attempts defeat the incumbent WIUA president, Dick Quintrell. Quintrell was of the Labor left and is, in my view, one of the unsung heroes of the Broken Hill labor movement. It was in the context of this anti-foreign fracas that Ross made his debut as a pubic speaker in Broken Hill, supporting a determined effort by Quintrell and Wetherell to stave off the racial exclusionists. In the end, Gully made a tactical blunder in calling for a complete closure of the mines until all 'foreigners' were sacked.
Gully, though, made two further attempts to destabilise the WIUA. When the union imposed a 12.5 per cent levy in support of the coalminers during the lockout on the Northern coal fields in 1929, Gully and his supporters mounted a campaign of opposition to the levy, but were again rebuffed. Again, Ross and his comrades in the MMM rose to the challenge, and on this occasion they, rather than Quintrell and company, made the running. Significantly, Ross was of the view that Quintrell and company buckled under the pressure and that it was the MMM which won the day. This may be rather too self-congratulatory a reading of the episode, but it is not without some foundation.
Gully's final grab for power took the form of an attempt to drum up support amongst the local unemployed. Gully had figured in the formation of a local unemployed organisation in 1927 and in 1930 he attempted unsuccessfully to take control of the organisation from Labor moderates.
Third Periodism and Beyond
The rise of Third Period separatism in the CPA under Moxon-Miles-Sharkey posed a major dilemma for Ross. Between 1930 and 1933 he walked an ideological tightrope between the new dispensation in the MMM and his ties to the local unions and the Labor Party.
By 1930, the amicable relations which the MMM had enjoyed with the Broken Hill unions had collapsed. In late 1929 the BIC, at the instigation of the craft unions, declared that the MMM had no place in Broken Hill. In 1930 CPA militants and the BIC organised rival May Day celebrations. Significantly, Ross and Kelly chose to speak at the BIC celebration.
By this time, there was a new group of hard-line CPA cadres on the local scene - WJ Thomas, SJ Coombe, W Axelby and others - supporters of the Moxon-Miles-Sharkey leadership. There is some evidence that this group may have been orchestrated by Herbert Moore (aka Harry Wicks), now known to have been an intelligence plant. The Thomas group made their own bid for control of the local unemployed movement, but the Labor moderates, backed by the BIC, retained the upper hand. Thomas also used allegations of sexual impropriety in an unsuccessful effort to discredit the leadership of the largest of the town sector unions, the Town Employees' Union.
Ross, though, remained true to the Labor moderates, publicly attacking the communists' sectarianism. In reality, he had little choice but to adhere to his union connections. The WIUA was, after all, his employer! For his trouble, Ross was denounced by Thomas and company in the CPA paper, Workers Weekly, as a 'social fascist'. Thomas was a very shadowy and erratic figure. A one-time socialist journalist from Brisbane, he was expelled from the Australian Socialist Party in 1921 and, in 1923, made the improbable allegation that he had been offered a bribe by a prominent anti-Labor politician to fabricate evidence that the Communist Party was plotting violent revolution.
Incidentally, one of their most successful tactics was the so-called 'breaking into gaol' campaign. This involved acts of civil disobedience by the unemployed designed to flood the local lock-up as a protest against the parsimonious treatment of the unemployed by the newly-elected Stevens-Bruxner government.
However, Ross and his colleagues were powerless to stop one of the most fateful decisions ever made by the Broken Hill unions - the WIUA's decision in 1931 to close its books permanently against 'outsiders'. The introduction of a residential qualification for union membership (and hence a local job) signalled the town's final retreat from the wider solidarity and internationalism which the syndicalists had once championed. The miners has rejected Gully's blatant racism but embraced another, more subtle form of social exclusion.
With the fog of Third Periodism lifting, Ross finally joined the Communist Party as an 'undercover' member in 1933. With the end of Third Periodism, he launched out on a new round of local broad-left activism. With teacher and future communist activist, Bill Gollan, and brother Lloyd, he injected new life into the local scene. Amongst other things, the group organised 'Summer School' on local Aboriginal culture at Mootwingee. He was prominent in the formation of a local Anti-War Council. This included progressive members of the local clergy, though the relationship was not without its tensions. There was his involvement in the Movement Against War and Fascism.
As elsewhere, the MMM provided the basis for the emergence of rank-and-file job committees in 1933-34 and Ross was a significant part in this process. He edited the CP's local rank-and-file bulletin, The Line of Lode, also called The Plod. By 1935 there were underground job committees at all of the major mine sites, with the committees looming as a serious alternative to the existing union structures and a direct threat to the power of the BIC. This involvement brought Ross into contact with the leading figures the local job committee movement, including AR (Floss) Campbell.
Departure
With Wetherell showing no signs of relinquishing the BDT editorship, Ross's journalistic career prospects in Broken Hill remained extremely limited. It was logical, therefore, that Ross, now with a young family to support, should seek out a larger role elsewhere. His opportunity came in mid-1935, when he was invited to edit the revived version of the Miners' Federation journal, Common Cause by the Federation's newly elected communist leaders, Bill Orr and Charles Nelson. The other front-runner for the post, Esmonde Higgins, had equally solid labour movement credentials, but Orr favoured Ross, while Communist Party leader Lance Sharkey was also evidently impressed by Ross's editorialising in the BDT. Ross accepted, relocated his family to Sydney to take up the post, and held the position until his retirement in 1966.
1935 was a turning point for Broken Hill as well as for Ross. In his final months in the town, the BIC negotiated a new agreement with the companies which reversed the losses which the mine workers had incurred during the depression and introduced a far more generous lead bonus. At the same time, the BIC moved to co-opt the burgeoning job committees by incorporating them into the agreement as adjuncts of the existing unions.
Ross's parting observations indicate a strong unease with these developments - and remarkable prescience:
Lack of action industrially, the absence of struggle, the getting of things too easily, have lulled the workers of Broken Hill into a feeling of security which one day will stand starkly revealed as false. Attributable largely to past militancy, the comparative success in maintaining conditions in the worst trough of the capitalist crisis has been at the expense of present militancy.... The business of unionism to-day is being carried on by a mere handful ... Unionism has become institutionalised as a formal part of the daily routine instead of being a live, aggressive, expanding force, while the policy of closed books ... give it the aspect of a sort of free-masonry and lull its leaders into a false idea of solidarity.3
And this:
Did we force from the mining companies recognition of unionism to make or unions mere formal machinery for the collection of union dues and to facilitate class-collaboration? Did we see non-union labor crushed merely to guard unionism so zealously as to erect barriers between members of the working class and create scab armies? Can it be that in militantly rejecting open Mussenism we have allowed a more insidious welfarism to creep into our industrial relationships? Can it be that in crushing, reactionary attempts to raise national and racial barriers we have allowed the self-same principle to become part and parcel of our union's life?4
It was not a wholly amicable separation!
The Private Sphere
Amid all of this, though, Ross still found time to pursue other, more intimate interests. On these counts, at least, his years in Broken Hill were wholly felicitous. In 1928 he became publicity office for a newly-formed repertory group. Here he met Patricia Josephine (Tess) McLauchlan. A miner's daughter and dancer, Tess was herself from an activist family, her mother having been a Labor Volunteer Army activist with Brookfield in WWI. The pair married in 1929 after an 18-month courtship, honeymooning at Mootwingee. With Tess and others, Ross also formed The Realist Players, staging several successful plays, including an adaptation of Thressall's The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Broken Hill was also the birthplace of their two children: Robert (1931) and Fleur (1934).
Despite Broken Hill's remoteness, family links were maintained. Brother Lloyd visited in 1928 and again in 1933. Bob Ross also kept up his links with Broken Hill until the end. He revisited in 1928 as relieving editor of BDT. He returned in failing health in 1931 to bid farewell, dying in Melbourne that September. Edgar also entertained an unlikely taste for speed, buying a succession of fast cars, one of which he rolled on a return trip from Melbourne - with wife and mother aboard.
Person, Place and Moment: A Summation
So what conclusions might be drawn about Ross's ten-year relationship with Broken Hill?
In terms of his impact on Broken Hill, it must be said that he was not a main player in the local labour movement. He was essentially a gifted (and perhaps frustrated) subaltern. He was, after all, only 30 when he left Broken Hill. What can be said of his time there is that he supported the cause of union solidarism against both the racist splitters and the Third Period sectarians. As an editorial understudy, he freed the more experienced Wetherell to take on the splitters in public. He maintained his father's emphasis on literary pursuits and consciousness raising, especially via his interest in drama and the WEA. He also assisted in the emergence of job committees.
How was he himself affected by his Broken Hill experience? Clearly, the experience reinforced his militancy, informed his Marxism and directed his eventual move into the Communist Party. There was also the benefit of three activist mentors: Paddy Lamb, Ern Wetherell and Harry Kelly. And then there was his marriage to a local and the birth of his children. However, it is clear that the Broken Hill experience also fostered disillusionment with Laborism and union economism and narrowness and it was this which finally propelled him into the Communist Party. Broken Hill radicalised Ross at the very moment that the town itself appeared to be turning away from radicalism and turning in on itself. Why, then, did he persist for so long? A series of historical feature pieces on Broken Hill unionism which he published in the BDT in 1933 and 1935 may hold the answer. One remark, in particular, may explain his lingering attachment to the place:
the militant outlook in Broken Hill has been more influential than in most places, and the moderate outlook probably more militant...5
Notes
1. Ross, E.A. (1993), 'Edgar Argent Ross. His Life', unpublished typescript, p.1. Much of the information in this piece is drawn from this document.
2. Ross, E.A. (1988), These Things Shall Be! Bob Ross. Socialist Pioneer - His Life and Times, Mulavon Publishing, West Ryde, p.68
3. Common Cause, 9 November 1935
4. BDT, 18 September 1935
5. BDT, 8 September 1933
by David Peetz
Australia was the last one standing in support of US intransigence after four other key nations reversed their earlier position and signed up at this week's Earth Summit. George W continues to show his great respect for Australia's position by treating our farm exports like asylum seekers. Still, it must be nice for George W to be able to get through the Earth Summit with a little help from his absent friend.
WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIEND
What would you think if I said we're immune?
Would you come here and stand up for me?
Lend me your air and I'll fill it with pong
You just try not to smell or to see
Oh, I get by with a little help from my friend
Mm, fill the sky with a little help from my friend
Mm, not gonna try thanks to some help from my friend
What will I do when your lands float away?
Does it worry me to be alone?
How will I feel at the end of the day?
I'm not sad, as there's one friend I own
Oh, I get by with a little help from my friend
Mm, justified with a little help from my friend
Mm, little lies with a little help from my friend
Do I need anybody?
I've got John Howard to love
Could it be anybody?
It's just John Howard I love
Could you believe we could turn day to night?
Yes, I'm certain clouds will thicken all the time
What will we sing when they block out the light?
I don't know the words of Auld Lang Syne
Still, I get by with a little help from my friend
Mm, petrify with a little help from my friend
Mm, say good bye with a little help from my friend
Do I need anybody?
I've got John Howard to love
Could it be anybody?
It's just John Howard I love
Oh, I get by with a little help from my friend
Mm, gonna try with a little help not to bend
Mm, I got high, wouldn't budge, to the end
Yes I get by, won't do a thing, to amend
'Cause I'll be gone, when it all ends
Bye bye
by The Chaser
The leader of the pariah regime of Libya said he was sick of coping shit about his rank, and that he deserved the promotion due to recent diplomatic achievements. "The number of times old mates, especially from North Korea, Iraq and Syria brought it up I just thought, why the hell don't I just change it? Even Nelson Mandela used to bring it up."
"The only downside to my promotion was the call I got from Colonel Sitiveni Rambuka of Fiji," said Gaddafi. "He sounded miffed, but aging dictators can be that way.
"I told him that since the free publicity of Lockerbie has died down, and most of the country is being swallowed by the Sahara, I needed something to raise my profile. The next step is to become Field Marshal, there aren't many of those. Maybe that will stimulate tourism."
by Noel Hester
Want to be a sales assistant in America? First take the personality test, then the drug test, then endure an orientation day consisting of anti-union videos and hard-core corporate ideology. Now try living on six bucks an hour when your rent's $250 a week plus.
In this brilliant investigation - Nickel and Dimed, Undercover In Low-wage USA - Ehrenreich took jobs as a waitress, a house cleaner, an aged care worker and a Wal-Mart sales assistant in places as diverse as Florida, Maine and Minnesota to find out how people survive on the minimum wage in America.
She told bosses she was a divorced housewife returning to work, and rented the cheapest accommodation she could find. In Key West, Florida, she worked as a waitress and couldn't even afford to live on a caravan site. "It is a shock to realise that 'trailer trash' has become, for me, a demographic to aspire to," she says.
She soon discovered that one wage wouldn't cover her bills and took a second job, as millions of Americans are forced to do. Her conclusion is that only those resilient enough to work two jobs or who can share rooms and rent can manage at all.
As a shop assistant at Wal-Mart she found she couldn't even afford to buy discounted clothes from the store she worked in. This world, she says, is a dictatorship, where companies intimidate their employees, through drug tests, surveillance and public humiliations.
As a cleaner in Maine, she toils away in the homes of those too rich and busy to clean for themselves and where her workmates are crippled by the back breaking labour and scrimp by on Doritos for lunch.
The killer in the US for the low paid is rent and Ehrenreich says you don't need to be a pointy head economist to work out the problem.
'It's the market, stupid. When the rich and poor compete for housing on the open market, the poor don't stand a chance. The rich can always outbid them, buy up their tenements or trailer parks, and replace them with condos, McMansions, golf courses or whatever they like. Since the rich have become more numerous thanks largely to rising stock prices and executive salaries, the poor have necessarily been forced into housing that is more expensive, more dilipidated or more distant from their places of work,' she writes.
The myth of 'economic man' is exposed - the low-paid are too poor to shop around for jobs. When you are living from hand to mouth you cannot lose a week's pay between jobs - the discipline of eviction or hunger kicks in.
But while rents were sensitive to market forces, wages were not. 'Every city I worked at in the course of this project was experiencing what local businesspeople defined as a 'labor shortage' - commented on in the local press and revealed by the ubiquitous signs saying 'now hiring' or more imperiously 'We are now accepting applications.' Yet wages for people at the bottom of the labour market remain fairly flat, 'even stagnant', she writes.
Ehrenreich points out that the historical long view -low wage workers are earning less than what they were in 1973 -suggests the trend is for increasingly tough times: 'In the first quarter of 2000 the poorest of workers were earning only 91 per cent of what they were earning in the distant era of Watergate and disco music.'
While serious in subject and sad in fact, Nickel and Dimed is written with brio and excellent humour. Particularly funny are her attempts to confound the WalMart drug tests. Apparently most drugs are fat soluble and can be washed from the body with large quantities of water fairly quickly. Marijuana however is fat soluble and remains in the body's fat residues for months. There having been 'a chemical indiscretion' in the weeks befor her WalMart application she is not at all sure she can pass. A web seach reveals dozens of sites offering help to the would-be drug-test passer, mostly in the form of ingestible products although one site promises to send a vial of pure drug-free urine, battery-heated to body temperature.
Ehrenreich writes warmly and sympathetically of those Americans working day in, day out for poverty wages. A well known feminist writer and journalist, married to a union organiser, she cuts through the cant, denial and self-interest of American capitalism and spotlights the underbelly.
Nickel and Dimed - Undercover In Low-wage USA by Barbara Ehrenreich (Granta Books)
Former Hawke and Keating Minister Gary Punch's contribution to the reform debate this week should have been unremarkable: unions are the vital link between the ALP and the shopfloor and that it is in the political wing's long-term interest. To ensure the movement thrives.
That it seems so original says much about the attitude of Labor's political class. To them 'attitudes to the union movement' is just a line item in the opinion polling that these days passes as ideology.
As Punch points out, the task for Labor MPs should be twofold: helping set a climate for unions to organise and resisting the Tories' attempts to monster the movement.
One of the saddest factors of the Royal Commission into the Building Industry has been the almost uniform silence from Labor MPs in the wake of the remarkable political attack on its industrial wing.
It's as if ALP members accept the underlying premise of the Commission rather than view it as a set of loaded dice. With the limited exception of Robert McClelland, the silence has been deafening; we cannot recall a single MP even taking the time to view the proceedings for themselves.
It's like Tampa with a Hard Hat: political timidity means that now the tables are turning and real issues of bias are being raised in the courts, Labor is in no position to take the political opportunity on offer.
It's the perennial risk of white bread politics - don't stand for anything and then watch the issues of principle sail by. While there are obvious short-term benefits in this risk-free strategy; there are also obvious long-term risks.
Which is really what Punch is talking about. If Labor doesn't keep a strong tie to the shop floor - both traditional and emerging - what does it stand for? And if it doesn't have the unions as this link, what is there except opinion polls and focus groups to guide them.
The point about Labor's Light on the Hill was not that it was a campfire that could be used, then packed up and lit somewhere else more convenient; it was a beacon to give labour politics a direction and sense of integrity.
If the accepted wisdom is that Labor has lost its way the question should not be - where do we go now? - but - how do we get back on track?
Peter Lewis
Editor
by NSW Legislative Council Hansard of 03/09/2002
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I draw the attention of honourable members to the case of an employer union telling staff what to do. At a time when freedom of association is being trumpeted, this is an alarming case of a large company acting against the interests of its employees by trying to reduce their entitlements and shift them into the company's own employee council.
Last week Suncorp Metway, which describes itself as the sixth largest bank and the second largest insurance company in Australia, announced a $311 million profit. Suncorp's Chairman, John Lamble, credited this result to the performance of the GIO business, which Suncorp bought last year. Mr Lamble believes GIO will continue to be profitable for Suncorp in the future. This profit is no surprise when Suncorp's human resources tactics are revealed.
Mr Lamble wants to cut the conditions of some 2,400 GIO employees and to use the employer union, the Suncorp Metway Employee Council, to do it. GIO employees are being offered a bribe to transfer to Suncorp before June 2003. What is the generous offer? A $250 share option.
The Industrial Relations Commission previously found Suncorp's staff association, or employee council, to be management driven and fully funded by the company for the sole purpose of avoiding employee unions and the wrath of the commission. Suncorp's unique employee council is now incorporated and is seeking to extend its influence to GIO workers.
It pays the salaries and expenses of the industrial staff who travel around the country spreading the message of Suncorp and how wonderful the company is to its employees. It proudly claims to represent employee interests while offering them inferior working conditions.
The only thing the employer union seems to do is promote the company's interests at the expense of its employees. For example, the enterprise agreement contains a "start before you start" clause: Employees must turn up for work anywhere between 15 minutes to half an hour early and not be paid for it. The agreement covers more than 2,000 employees, some 1,500 of whom work full time. If each of these employees were to work without pay for only 30 minutes every day, it would amount to two and a half hours unpaid work every week per employee. At a base rate of $15 an hour, the company would save $37.50 per week or more than $1,800 per employee per year.
No wonder Mr Lamble is optimistic about spending $250 for a share offer and saving $1,550 in unpaid wages. That constitutes a very profitable bargain indeed. Employees can also be required to work any day of the week, seven days a week. The New South Wales Minister for Industrial Relations, the Hon. John Della Bosca, intends to legislate to allow Saturday trading for banks in New South Wales, but only if employees are protected against exploitation. I say tongue in cheek that Mr Lamble or Mr Della Bosca need not worry about Suncorp because it is generous enough to offer them single time for weekend work! It is ironic that yet again the employer union is representing the interests of employees.
I am told that in Queensland the employees sought representation from the Finance Sector Union but that the union rarely receives a return call from Suncorp. Suncorp will not deal with the union and the company's own union has already said that the agreement is appropriate to cover GIO staff. However, GIO workers have a different view. In July a majority of GIO workers voted to keep their current GIO agreement and conditions. Suncorp Metway recently competed with the Bank of Queensland for prime sponsorship of the Queensland Reds rugby union team. Suncorp seriously considered topping the successful bid of $3.5 million by the Bank of Queensland. It could find millions for a logo on a football jersey but can only provide GIO workers with unpaid work under the "start before you start" clause.
Instead of chasing rugby jumpers, Suncorp Metway should be more concerned about what the community thinks of its employee council attempting to cut staff conditions after a record company profit. I call on Mr Lamble to give GIO workers a fair go. They are entitled to proper union representation when negotiating their conditions and they should not be told what to do by their own employer. After all, a majority of them voted that way and, therefore, they are entitled to join the union of their choice and to have that union recognised by their employer.
There is a documentary called "Year of the Dog" which illustrates perfectly the pressures faced by modern football club.
The documentary was made about Footscray's 1996 season. Footscray are now known as the Western Bulldogs. In 1996 the Bulldogs sacked their coach, Alan Joyce and installed his assistant, Terry Wallace.
Wallace left the Bulldogs in dramatic circumstances the other week, the most notable feature of which was the coach ejecting his mobile phone out the window of his vehicle.
Anyone who has owned a mobile will recognise and appreciate this behaviour.
Since then speculation on his appointment as the Swans coach for 2003 has grown, leading to no small support for the temporary incumbent, Paul Roos.
Several scientific surveys conducted at the Court House Hotel in Newtown have revealed levels of coaching support for Paul Roos of up to 100%. This is all very well and good, but people should understand the consequences of this decision.
Paul Roos is a Royboy. He played over 250 games with the Fitzroy Lions, when they were Fitzroy and god was in heaven and life was good and the sun shone on the faces of smiling children. Or something like that.
Paul Roos is a Royboy, and as such he is cursed.
Royboys have no luck. Fitzroy ended up being sold to Brisbane as part of a job lot for $18.75 and a slab of beer. The alternative would have been to take Fitzroy out the back behind the shed and put a bullet in it. That would have been a more merciful course of action.
But Royboys are cursed; of this we can have no doubt.
Grown men would weep and mother's eyes cloud with anger upon hearing their offspring had embraced the most lost of lost causes.
Those who were born into the Royboy fold treated it as some kind of congenital disorder, like inherited madness.
This is Paul Roos fate. It is why he inherited the mantle of the Swans, who continue to suffer from the curse that continues to afflict the ghost of South Melbourne.
Wallace will bring with him the albatross of Footscray.
Since 1945 the combined luck of Footscray, Fitzroy and South Melbourne has realised one premiership.
If it was not for bad luck they'd have no luck at all.
If a contract has been signed then Wallace will come to coach the Swans next year and there's nothing Swans fans can do about it, after all they don't have a vote. The Swans' board can act with impunity with no threat of recall from any quarter, except the AFL, but more on them later.
Wallace is all right as a coach. He is an interesting guy who thinks about the game, and he has the added advantage that he is not Rodney Eade. No one in Brisbane wanted Robert Walls either. There were North Melbourne diehards who never trusted Ron Barassi despite the fact that he more or less gave them a premiership.
Paul Roos has brought the luck of Fitzroy with him, which will help.
Sydney supporters will now learn the humility that stems from having their hopes dashed over and over again. This is a good thing. It will be much like as before, only this time it will have a spiritual resonance.
The Swans are doomed. It is better to accept it now and come to terms with it. Denial will only bring grief. As the Bhudda says, "when you are eating, know that you are eating".
If Sidartha Gautama had of coached Fitzroy he would have said, "when you are being beaten, know that you are being beaten".
Any idiot can run a club that can attract quality players, many supporters and have a history of unbridled success. It takes a special genius to start with a giant market, passionate supporters, tremendous goodwill and years of tradition and then run it into the ground.
Which brings me back to the AFL.
As a bloke said to me in the RobRoy hotel in Gertrude Street Fitzroy one sunny Saturday afternoon, "you'd have to work really hard to bugger up football, and they are".
Phil Doyle - breaking serve early in the second set
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On September 11, 1973, the democratically-elected Chilean Government of Salvadore Allende was blasted from power by a US-backed military coup. After Allende was assassinated, his replacement, General Augosto Pinochet, launched one of the most repressive regimes seen, even in bedeviled, Latin America.
Thousands were killed or tortured as US-trained and supported troops ran amok. Interestingly, the American prot�g� brought state sponsored terrorism to the northern continent, much as a similarly trained and financed villain would do 27 years later.
Pre-World Trades Centre the most sensational foreign-led terrorist action on US soil was mounted by Pinochet operatives. On September 21, 1976, DINA (Chile's National Intelligence Directorate), used a car bomb to murder one-time Allende Government Minister Orlando Letelier and assistant Ronni Moffitt, just blocks from the White House.
The assasinations of the outspoken anti-Pinochet activists gave the world notice of Operation Condor, a network of six repressive Latin American intelligence agencies who collaborated in tracking, kidnapping and killing political opponents.
Chilean secret police, in league with Condor partners, carried out a number of hits on foreign soil. General Carlos Pratts was murdered in Buenos Aires and, in 1975, DINA operatives attacked and wounded Christian Democrat politician, Bernardo Leighton, and his wife in Rome.
Papers discovered in Paraguayan archives revealed that Operation Condor was also responsible for the assasination of a Brazilian general, two Uruguayan MPs, and literally dozens of political activists, including trade unionists.
But the largest-scale terror, of the time, was visited on the Chilean people as Pinochet's men launched a widespread campaign of kidnapping, murder, torture and sexual assault to dissuade opponents.
Pinochet, interestingly, was the first world leader to embrace the economic theories of Milton Friedman and his Chicago school, setting the standard for Margaret Thatcher, Roger Douglas and John Howard.
The Clinton Administration's release of thousands of declassified documents, from the Allende-Pinochet period, gave some insight into how deeply involved US politicians and the CIA had been in the atrocity.
This Wednesday we can remember all the victims of terror throughout the Americas and, perhaps, remind ourselves that while a Chilean, Cuban, Paraguayan, Honduran, Nicaraguan, Salvadorean, Guatemalan or Argentinian life is worth no more than that of a New Yorker, nor is it worth one cent less.
...............
Speaking of which, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, is wholly unimpressed by those out to make commercial capital from the devastation his city suffered 12 months ago.
Speaking of a growing trade in momentos and graphic photos of the World Trade Centre site, Bloomberg complained: "I don't know whether I find the people who sell some of this junk or the people who buy it more despicable. It's not what I think should happen."
Wonder what he would make of the feeding frenzy of ratings obsessed television channels, inviting Australians to a September 11 orgy?
.....................
Not a million miles from ground zero, plans for a new generation of widows and orphans crystallise in the minds of Dubya and his No 2, Big Dick Cheney.
The vice president leads this week, categorically rejecting suggestions that possible Iraqi agreement to US weapons inspections might forstall a military strike. On the contrary, he argues, such agreement would increase the danger by providing "false comfort".
Israel, always seemingly cut in on US plans for its neighbours, orders security and emergency services to complete preparations for a US strike on Iraq by November 1.
Ra'anan Gissin, advisor to Israeli PM Ariel Sharon, confirms his understanding that Israel will be kept in the loop when it comes to war in the region.
"The President of the United States will give us ample warning so that we can prepare for the possibility of an Iraqi attack on Israel," Gissin tells AP.
.......................
Back in Canberra Gun-Ho John Howard takes a small step back from whole-hearted support for unilateral US military action against Iraq. Seemingly spooked by doubts expressed in RSL quarters, he changes tack to the extent that he now says he will need to be "completely convinced" such action is in Australia's interests.
A spokesman for the PM says his Government also wants "full and frank" Parliamentary consideration of the issue, but refuses to say whether such consideration would take place before or after the event.
Meanwhile, Labor leader Simon Crean completely avoids the central issue by urging Howard to do as British Prime Minister Tony Blair says he will, by presenting a dossier on Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction".
Crean's identification with the Brit leader is most interesting for the fact that Blair is the one non-US leader, outside Israel, who seems to be baying for the be-jesus to be bombed out of Baghdad.
If Crean had wanted to take an alternative position, he might have suggested that Howard follow in the footsteps of Helen Clark who, after-all, leads our closest neighbour and Anzac pact partner, rather than a pallid Pom hung-up on the quaint, if somewhat ridiculous, notion that his island is still a military super power.
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It goes somewhat against the grain for this column to follow meekly in the verbal footsteps of Member for Werriwa Mark Latham but it is increasingly difficult to find fault with his analysis of the physical mechanics of the Howard-Bush relationship.
Not only did the duo present the Johannesburg Earth Summit with the political equivalent of an extended digit, opting to stay away, but their Governments' policies ensured the once-in-a-decade event was a rousing failure.
The Earth Summit passed up the chance to deal seriously with economic disadvantage and environmental degradation, caving in to the demands of big business on touchstone issues.
The renewable energy statement was a near shut-out for the conservation lobby, the final statement allowing countries to define nuclear energy, fossil fuels, "clean coal", and large-scale hydro developments, as renewable energy.
Even with China, Russia and possibly Canada belatedly signing up for the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, Australia and the US held out.
Howard did, however, suggest that he might reconsider as big Australian energy companies suddenly realised they could find themselves frozen out of lucrative trading markets and began to make their concerns known.
Disgusted Australian Green senator, Bob Brown, conceded his country had been the "chief villain" in the summit's failure to deliver on key issues.
Trust Reform 'Too Hard
A pledge by the Coalition to crack down on the use of trusts to avoid tax has been rejected by the Howard Government's own advisory body, which will instead recommend only minor legal changes to curb abuse. In a victory for private businesses, farmers and wealthy individuals who use trusts, the Board of Taxation has rejected a central recommendation of the 1999 Ralph business tax review - to tax the country's 450,000 trusts as companies, a move that was forecast to reap $350 million a year in extra revenue. After a year-long review, board chairman Dick Warburton said the advisory body would propose that tax laws governing trusts be better enforced by Tax Commissioner Michael Carmody. The board was asked by Peter Costello to examine the best legislative means to prevent abuse of trusts, but has taken more than 12 months to conclude legislation is unnecessary. (Source: The Australian)
Execs Resist ASX Disclosure Plan
Leaders of Australia's biggest listed companies plan to battle an Australian Stock Exchange proposal to force them to respond publicly to media speculation. The ASX is proposing to introduce the requirement from the middle of next year. It believes the move will plug a loophole that appeared when continuous disclosure regulations replaced fragmented legislation in 1994. Australian business is being briefed by legal firms, including Allens Arthur Robinson, about the ramifications of introducing a fourth leg to the obligation to disclose. The additional requirement will force companies to clear the air if media speculation creates a false market. Company executives are concerned that they will be forced to answer mischievous reports which could be based on speculation spread by rivals or "inspired" analysts.
(source: SMH)
Telstra Faces Falk Despite $3 billion Profit
Telstra is under fire after unveiling a $3.7 billion dollar annual profit, with investors disappointed by the result and workers concerned it will lead to more job cuts. The $3.7 billion annual net profit has come partly from a 15 per cent drop in capital spending and the shedding of 4,000 jobs, but market share and revenue are also down. The profit has been attacked by the Federal Opposition, which says consumers should be alarmed by the decline in staffing levels and capital spending. And the Communications Union also says the drop in staff and investment is putting the network at risk. (Source: ABC)
Qantas Chair Says Aussie CEO's Underpaid
Qantas chairman Margaret Jackson has defended high salaries and option packages for chief executives in Australia, and criticised the level of debate on corporate governance. CEOs or executives in the US received hundreds of millions of dollars worth of options, whereas in Australia it was tens of millions of dollars. "The magnitude is significantly different," she said. She's also suggested that the Federal Government veto on increased foreign ownership in Qantas meant the airline was focusing sharply on labour costs and their effect on profitability. Arguing the case for a freer share register, Ms Jackson told a Melbourne Press Club lunch at the Windsor Hotel that aviation was a very capital intensive industry, and Qantas' cost of capital would now be 1 to 2 per cent higher because of the government's decision on foreign ownership.
"If labour rates are not competitive, we will not be in a position to compete on fares," she said.
(Source: The Age)
Greenpeace Slams SPP Over Trees
Greenpeace has slammed a plan by alternative fuel producer Southern Pacific Petroleum to plant 116 million trees as part of its strategy to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.The operator of the $340 million Stuart demonstration project near Gladstone is working on the formula to unlock 17 billion barrels of shale oil from the rock in central Queensland to reverse Australia's dependence on overseas oil. SPP acknowledges its production formula of baking shale to 750 degrees to extract oil creates greenhouse emissions. But the Brisbane-based company aims to reduce its emissions to lower than that of conventional oil companies once the plant is up and running commercially in about eight years' time. SPP had been having trouble securing buyers after a sustained campaign by Greenpeace, which claims shale is the dirtiest form of crude oil. (Source: Nine MSN)
Union Carbide Factory Unsafe
In the central Indian state of Bhopal, at least two former employees of the American chemicals giant, Union Carbide, have given more damaging evidence against the now-defunct company. A court is hearing the landmark case of one of the world's worst industrial disasters. In his testimony, one of the employees told a court that the safety equipment and all three safeguards against the leak of toxic gas in the Union Carbide factory were not working and that all gas storage tanks had been overfilled. The gas leak ultimately killed hundreds of thousands of people in Bhopal, and the former Union Carbide chief, Warren Andersen, was clearly held responsible for the disaster in 1984. Survivors and relatives of those of died are now bitterly opposing the petition from India's chief intelligence body, the Central Bureau of Investigation, to reduce charges against Mr Andersen from culpable homicide to death caused by a negligent and rash act. Unlike homicide, negligence is not covered under the provisions of the extradition treaty shared between India and the United States and the victims fear that reducing the charges would prevent Andersen from standing trial in India. (Source: ABC)
Enron Workers Awarded $52m
About 4000 former Enron Corp employees abruptly laid off when the company plunged into bankruptcy should receive more severance pay, a New York judge has ruled. US Bankruptcy Judge Arthur Gonzalez approved a $US28.8 million ($52.34 million) plan that will fund payments of up to $US13,500 ($24,530) each for workers who lost their jobs between December 3, the day after Enron filed for bankruptcy, and February 28. Any severance already paid to the workers will be deducted from that amount, the judge ruled. Most workers received $US4,500 ($8,180) in the weeks after the bankruptcy reorganisation filing, and another $US1,100 ($2,000) earlier this year.
Workers who accept the money will give up their right to pursue more severance pay owed to them under Enron policy.
(Source: The Australian)
China Deals With Shonky Execs
Finally, dodgy corporate executives should conbsider themselves thankful they are not in China. Forget about a five or ten year banning as a director. Cop this: Yang Ning, a deputy chief in Air China's accounting division nicked 24.3 million yuan ($5.3 million), according to Bloomberg, citing the Legal Daily. He was executed on Tuesday after four years on the run. (Source: SMH)
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On Wednesday night this week IBM Australia were presented the Gold Award in the National Work and Family Awards by Workplace Relations Minister Tony Abbott. With 10,000 employees, IBM provides 6 weeks paid maternity leave and one week of paid paternity leave, part time work, job sharing, flexible start and finish times, breastfeeding arrangements and a program to particularly help men balance their responsibilities.
While IBM should be congratulated on their award there has been virtually no media coverage and I still can't find the details of who the other winners or finalists were on the web sites of ACCI or DEWRSB, the major sponsors of the awards (in fact, IBM haven't put this up on their site yet either).
It may be that I have unrealistic expectations about website updates but it is particularly annoying to still not have this information given the Federal Government's focus on work and family in recent months (and in particular using work and family as a way to deflect attention from a national scheme of paid maternity leave). You'd think that the Government would be keen to promote all the wonderful initiatives happening out there in workplaces as a way of showing its support and delivering on its commitment to make things better for families.
I guess this lack of information and interest sums up my frustration with these sort of awards. The recognition they provide is unfortunately still largely limited to those with a particular interest in work and family issues (and while it's a quality bunch of people there is not enough of them!) and the attention that the awards generate is fleeting as we all turn to the next issue.
Such award events also give no sense of how widespread interest is in promoting and implementing various workplace practices that make a real difference to people in managing their work and family lives. Nor do they revisit previous winners 12 months or 5 years down the track to see what's happened since.
On the positive side such events do provide useful ideas of what others can do. It would be nice if we could be sure that it made more than those who are committed to the idea of providing family friendly work practices think about what they could do.
The sad reality is that there are way too few workplaces where work and family strategies are a fully integrated part of the workplace culture and practice. There are way too many workplaces where "flexibility" means increasingly long hours and job insecurity. Workers don't feel they are able to take their annual leave let alone refuse overtime or ask for changes to their roster so that they can meet their family responsibilities. Where they do stand up they are often threatened with the sack or find that they are overlooked for promotion or training.
This is a major issue for workers and unions. The union movement has stated that these are priority issues for unions but progress is often slow and patchy. All too often its thought of as a "women's issue". Of course it's an issue for women but it's also an issue for men and all unions regardless of the industries or occupations that they cover have a role to play.
It's time for all unions to organise around work and family strategies and to build on our successes. We need to do this so that there is an unstoppable momentum that will see fairer, family friendly workplaces for all working people.
We may even get to the stage where we don't need awards to try and encourage the sorts of workplace practices that are long overdue.
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