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John Howard has long championed the Small Picture and when you see him trying to strut the world stage you'll see why. This is a man whose idea of statesmanship is to follow the polls, finding the cracks in the social fabric and then driving a wedge right through them for maximum political gain. This may be proving effective in winning domestic elections, but George Duybya is also discovering, international diplomacy takes a little more finesse.
Howard's last contribution to international diplomacy was his attempt to throw Zimbabwe out of the Commonwealth in his capacity as chair of the committee of review. While we are no fans of Robert Mugabe, we do find it a little ironic that the one issue that moves our leader to act is repression of white people. This is the man who called Nelson Mandela a 'terrorist' and more recently has used desperate Afghan refugees as electoral cannon fodder. But when white colonials get thrown off their land, our man bursts into action.
The only problem was that Howard lacked the stature to carry off his agenda. First Mugabe pulled out of the meeting, citing the 'inappropriate' nature of the Howard invitation. Then the other two members of his panel, the South African and Nigerian leaders, left Howard out on his own when they too rejected his hard-line proposition. Now Howard can complain that he was stitched up by a display of African solidarity, but the fact remains that he couldn't finesse an issue that should be addressed.
Meanwhile he continues to beat the war drum, keeping pace with Bush and his increasingly maniacal determination to see bombs dropping before the mid-term Congressional elections. For Howard the response seems to be more Pavlovian - George the Dumb does it so I must follow. Even with public support heading South, Howard seems poised to support the US going it alone, possible offering a few of our own boys as fodder. Who knows, if we are really lucky we could become a terrorist target and have a new crisis to divert us from the good administration of public policy.
Reading Don Watson's recent memoir of Paul Keating's leadership it was impossible not to be struck by Keating's stellar performances abroad. Here was a man who could match intellect and passion with the best of them. John Howard campaigned on being everything Paul Keating wasn't - and when it comes to diplomacy he's kept this promise and then some. This man is living proof that just because you power walk in a tracksuit doesn't make you a world leader.
Speaking for 900,000 working people and their families, the NSW Labor Council unanimously passed a resolution rejecting any military action without the endorsement of the United Nations.
NSW Labor Council secretary John Robertson says the time is fast approaching when Australians could be sent to war.
He says while George W Bush and Tony Blair are beating the drums of war with untested allegations against Iraq, former UN weapons inspectors are stating they do not believe Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.
"What is required is a process that involves the international community, not the US going one out in total disregard of the existing UN resolutions," he says.
The full resolution reads:
"Labor Council congratulate Bill Hayden, Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke, John Hewson and General Gration, Admirals Beaumont and Hudson and Major General Phillips for their stance with respect to the possible involvement of Australian troops in military action against Iraq.
The Australian union movement has long supported the cause of peace and the use of diplomacy and discussion through the international community to resolve conflict between nations. That the Labor Council does not believe any nation has the right to decide 'regime change' of any other nation by external force.
Labor Council, therefore, supports unequivocally the calls in Australia and the wider international community that there be no military action taken against Iraq by the United States or any other country without the backing of a specific United Nations security council resolution.
In addition, we call upon Iraq to fully and unconditionally cooperate with the United Nations resolutions and to allow the resumption of weapons inspections.
The four-page report based on interviews of 42 detention centre officers and supervisors comes as tensions at Port Hedland boiled over into a four-day strike.
It is based on similar criteria that the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) uses to evaluate detention centres.
The reports findings include:
� Inappropriate use of prison staff (flown in from interstate) to replace detention officers during dispute
� Extremely poor fire fighting training of staff and too few fire drills and smoke detector inspections
� Inappropriate use of fire fighting equipment to water gardens
� Absence of a fire prevention sprinkler system in some areas
� Detainees classified as At Risk are not always being observed according to Port Hedland detention centre protocol; management plans inadequate and suffer from staff shortages
� Only a minority of staff are trained on how to treat a detainee who has harmed themselves by attempted hanging
� Overloaded bathroom facilities; repairs not carried out when reported
� Flawed detainee identification and recording systems, which rely on out-of-date photographs of detainees
� Checks of contractors for dangerous goods and equipment hampered by low staffing levels
The four-day stoppage of detention centre staff, who are demonstrating outside the detention facility, failed to be resolved at today's meeting between the AWU and ACM in the WA Industrial Relations Commission. Further Commission meetings are planned for the weekend.
The AWU is calling for:
� A full search of the Port Hedland facility to find and remove homemade weapons. (the last comprehensive search was May 2001.)
� A minimum agreed manning level shift.
� Escorts of detainees be done with a minimum agreed number of officers
With the court challenge to the Royal Commission hanging on whether Commissioner Cole had made findings without hearing from the union, Abbott has admitted he has set up his Building Industry Task Force on the basis of the Cole�s interim report.
"It is clear from the Royal Commissioner's First Report that unlawful practices, particularly intimidation and coercion designed to secure a closed shop, occur right across Australia," Abbott told Federal Parliament yesterday.
"Over the past nine months, evidence presented to the Royal Commission has justified many of the concerns expressed by participants in the industry.
"Workers and contractors have testified that intimidation and threats are commonplace in workplace negotiations."
Abbott and Cole's looming problem is that the interim report was handed down before the NSW branch of the CFMEU had the opportunity to respond to these allegations.
Defending himself, Cole argued that the report do not contain 'findings', a proposition that the CFMEU is now challenging in the Federal Court. The CFMEU's legal team believes Abbott's comments will only add to this case.
"You can't have it both ways. Either Cole has come to no conclusions and Abbott shouldn't be flying into action. Or Cole has come to firm conclusions and demonstrated bias that needs to be dealt with by the Federal Court in October," CFMEU national secretary John Sutton says.
Task Force Will Provoke Conflict
Meanwhile, the CFMEU has warned that Tony Abbott's task force will herald an era of provocation and potential conflict on building sites around the country.
Sutton says Abbott's announcement comes at a time of industrial harmony in the construction industry, and was more about the Minister's political agenda rather than trying to achieve any positive outcomes for the construction industry.
"Tony Abbott is playing politics with a multi-billion dollar industry that is one of the most productive in the world," Sutton says
"Our industry is a key component of the Australian economy and Tony Abbott and his squads of snoops and spies could do major damage."
Alan Jones Gives Cole A Spray
And as criticism of the Cole Commission grows, talkback king Alan Jones has added his voice to the dissent with a scathing editorial on Channel nine's Today Show this week.
Here it is in full:
'It tends to be fashionable in this country to have a hit at the union movement.'
'And I have to say I've been guilty of that in the past.'
'But when you see the farce that is Ansett and the extent to which companies just go belly-up and leave workers whistling with nothing, then perhaps some sections of the union movement aren't tough enough.'
'There has been a fairly major exercise in union-bashing going on for some months, calling itself a Royal Commission into the building industry.'
'Remember, this is the same building industry that delivered the 2000 Olympic Games and all its infrastructure miles ahead of time.'
'But the Victorian secretary of the CFMEU has been charged and faces a fine or gaol because he refused twice in July and August to give the name of shop stewards who attended CFMEU training workshops in 2001-2002.'
'So a union official is subject to criminal charges because he refuses to give up the names of union activists.'
'He simply said he wasn't going to put the livelihood of them and their families at risk.'
'Well, you might remember that the national secretary of the CFMEU John Sutton, called for the Royal Commissioner Mr Justice Cole to stand down because a report was issued in August critical of the New South Wales branch of the CFMEU, allegedly without hearing evidence from the union.'
'And the union released at the time some unbelievable figures.'
'97 per cent of hearing time had been devoted to anti-union topics.'
'604 employers called to give evidence: only 33 workers.'
'3 per cent of the witnesses from the rank of the worker: 71 per cent from employers or their representatives.'
'And only 2 per cent of hearing time spent on topics which didn't adversely affect the union.'
'Now surely in all of these things fairness has to be real as well as apparent.'
'But a bloke refuses to give up the names of his shop stewards and he faces criminal charges.'
'It sounds fairly un-Australian.'
Details of the bonus � part of a $7 million salary package for the year - have enraged workers who have seen 87- branches closed and 17,000 jobs eradicated over that period of time.
The Finance Sector Union's Peter Presdee says Murray's millions are the equivalent to the salaries of 200 frontline staff, whose four per cent annual increase was dwarfed by Murray's own 27 per cent pay hike.
Indeed, over his ten year's at the top, Murray's annual salary had increased 300 per cent while the average teller's salary had risen by just 40 per cent.
"This is the hidden story of privatisation," Presdee says. "More burdens on workers and enormous gains to Chief Executives.
"Surely, it is time for workers to be given their fair share of the cake and the community to have a banking system that is underpinned by the legal requirement of a social charter".
St George Slashes While Staff Cop Flak
Meanwhile, St George Bank has announce dit will cut another 390 jobs at a time when staff shortages are sparking outbreaks of 'Queue Rage'.
The FSU's Geoff Derrick says the union's research shows that St George is really suffering on the frontline - with almost daily reports from staff of customer abuse because of lack of resources.
"In this light, St George's announcement this week of another $28 million in upcoming redundancies proves that management have missed the point," he says. "We actually need an injection of more staff and we need it now!"
The survey, of 1076 St George employees, found:
- 64 per cent agreed that staff shortages were a frequent problem in their workplace
- 54 per cent agreed that abuse of staff by customers had increased because of staff shortages
- 51 per cent had been personally abused by a customer because of the staff shortages.
The staffing situation was so bad that 65 per cent of staff had to work extra hours to get work done, while 48 per cent of staff said they were reluctant to take days off when they were sick because they would be letting their fellow workmates down.
Mr Derrick says that St George management needed to put the interests of its staff and customers, alongside the demands of the market, when implementing its current 'Even Better Bank' review.
"If St George wants to convince the community it is a better bank, it should start by giving its loyal workforce the resources to do their jobs without being the subject of abuse from customers," Derrick says.
Mick Madden, the president of the Australian Workers Union, says he will approach all his members in Fitzgibbon�s Hunter electorate and encourage them to join the ALP.
And he's called on other unions to do the same as Fitzgibbon continues his one-man crusade to break the link between trade union membership and entrance into the ALP.
Fitzgibbon continued his drive to change the ALP membership requirements at the recent ALP Country Conference, drawing jeers from delegates but vowing to fight on.
Madden says it's time the union movement fought back and increasing the number of rank and file unionists that Fitzgibbon has to answer to at preselection time is one way to hold him to account.
"We know there's an argument going on about union influence in the Party, but Joel is the only one running this radical agenda," Madden says.
"Our position is that if Joel doesn't like the Labor Party rules he should find another Party.
"There is an anti-union rural party and it's called the National Party and I'm sure they would welcome him with open arms. The biggest scrooge in this Party is nepotism and Joel is one of the recipients."
LA-based actor Ian Ruskin briefed delegates in the guise of Harry Bridges, the founder of the International Longshoremen Workers Union, whose members are currently involved in a protracted strike on the West Coast.
In town to perform the one-man play 'Bringing Harry Home' as part of the Waterfront Workers Federation centenary celebrations, Ruskin-Bridges outlined how President Bush was threatening to send in the troops to break the strike.
Recalling Bridges' own career, he warned Bush that attempts to break the unions in the past with troops had failed. In 1934, 6000 national guard attempted to break a strike and failed when violence against workers sparked widespread community support.
"They attacked workers in the name of fighting Communism, now they are using the War on Terror for the same purpose," he warned.
Employer group Pacific Maritime Association representatives have threatened to lockout workers along the entire West Coast and the worlds maritime workers have retaliated with the calls for worldwide port protests.
PMA is made up of 80 shipping and port companies - including Wilhemsen Lines, Hapag Lloyd, K'Line, Maersk, OOCL, P&O Nedloyd, Zim Lines, COSCO and CSX, - all of which also operate in Australia.
MUA National Secretary Paddy Crumlin has pledged full backing to the US dockers, as have Japanese dockworkers and other waterside workers of the world affiliated with the powerful International Transport Workers' Federation.
Meanwhile, the push to have foreign ship trading on our coast covered by the Australian award is gathering steam.
In a long awaited decision the full bench of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission today ruled in favour of an application by the maritime unions to rope in CSL Pacific Shipping Inc under the Maritime Industry Seagoing Award.
During the initial hearings CSL lawyers, with the backing of the Federal Government, argued that the Commission did not have jurisdiction to hear the union application.
The maritime unions (MUA, AIMPE and AMOU) and the ACTU are pushing to have the crew of the CSL Pacific (a former Australian flag vessel now trading on the coast under the Bahamas flag of convenience) receive Australian pay rates and conditions. FOC ships currently pay crew about half the Australian wages forcing Australian ships out of business and Australian seafarers out of work. They also avoid Australian taxations and other regulations applying to Australian ships and crews.
The CSL Pacific is the sister ship of the CSL Yarra which was the centre of the major dispute in Port Pirie this May. Both bulk carriers are trading almost exclusively in Australian waters carrying domestic cargo under the Bahamas flag.
Not only does this use of guest labour have the blessing of the Federal Government, the Minister for Workplace Relations Tony Abbott intervened in the AIRC hearings on the side of the foreign ship owner.
"In effect the Commission has found that CSL employ foreign guest
labour in an Australian industry," Crumlin say. "This foreign workforce has replaced Australian taxpayers and residents and put them on the dole to watch on as their ship continues to ply the same domestic trade it has been for over 15 years."
The Commission has now given the parties 15 working days "to show cause as to why the Award should not be varied to include CSL Pacific Shipping Inc "while trading in Australian waters under a permit or license granted under the Navigation Act or on a voyage to or from a port in Australia".
The Municipal Employees Unions has launched the campaign continue to force councils to pay the Community Language Allowance to workers who use more than one language.
The MEU won the Allowance in 2000 but a recent audit of councils shows that many are still not paying the extra money to multi-lingual workers.
Launching a campaign to secure the payments this week, MEU General Secretary Brian Harris says "it's time the freeloading Council's acknowledged their responsibility to both the community and their workforce by paying the allowance."
"It is a disgrace that some councils believe it is acceptable to abuse staff with additional language skills in this way," Harris says.
"While some councils are proud to provide this service to their residents and value the contribution made by the staff who assist, there are those that continue to refuse to pay and it is these councils that we will be talking to - and taking to court if we have to."
The Anti-Discrimination Act 1977 requires councils to provide equal access to services to all residents, regardless of the language spoken.
MEU research shows that council workers across NSW are using their own language skills, therefore allowing councils to meet this vital service obligation. The language skills used are diverse and include over 30 languages ranging from Arabic to Tamil to Greek.
The councils that have been audited include Blacktown, Burwood, Botany Bay, Holroyd, Parramatta, Queanbeyan, Randwick, Ryde, Strathfield and Willoughby. A separate audit is also being conducted on the City of Sydney Enterprise Agreement provisions.
Rabbi Coskey has now got involved in another Australian labour dispute by helping organise clergy across America to send letters to the top executive of the Sydney Hilton Hotel, Mr Oded Lifschit, to protest his treatment of hotel workers.
" I got an e-mail about the Sydney Hilton workers crisis through HERE Local 30 ( the North American hotel workers union). We have worked on several campaigns with them. They are key partners in our work.
" We put the notice about the Sydney dispute out to all of our mass e-mail list, which includes at least 100 clergy and people of faith. I suspect you heard from a decent percentage of them," Rabbi Coskey said.
" Here in San Diego we work closely with low-waged workers in the service sector. Showing solidarity with room attendants and other hotel workers in Sydney was an easy thing for us to support."
In a long interview on the LHMU website she discusses how the alliance between unions and faith communities works in the USA - and how similar coalitions could be built here in Australia.
Rabbi Laurie Coskey is the director of the San Diego Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice, and this week led a group of clergy in a civil disobedience protest at the US head office of Westfield in Los Angeles.
They were thrown out soon after they infiltrated the Westfield private offices and distributed a letter saying they would be relentless in pursuing justice for Westfield janitors.
Frank Lowy - the second richest man in Australia - bought himself some great cheap, positive headlines a few days back when he announced that he was handing over his $11 million in annual wages to charity, to thank Australia for the fifty good years he has had here since arriving as a penniless migrant.
But the immigrant low-waged workers in the USA who clean his shopping malls aren't impressed.
You can read a long Q&A with Rabbi Coskey at the LHMU website, where she discusses how and why clergy work closely with the US labour movement in their campaigns for a decent Living Wage for low-wage workers.
ACTU Secretary Greg Combet has called on Prime Minister John Howard to order that the $110 million so far collected through the levy be paid to former Ansett employees in accordance with the legislation establishing the tax.
Former Ansett employees are still owed an average of 34 weeks pay each in outstanding entitlements because of the eight-week cap on payments under the SEESA scheme.
Combet says the Government's insistence on recouping all monies advanced to the Ansett administration is the main obstacle to further payments to former airline employees, who are still owed $370 million in unpaid entitlements.
"Further payments are needed urgently because most former Ansett employees have not found new jobs on equivalent incomes and are struggling financially," Combet says.
"The Government is tying the hands of company administrators by forcing them to repay all funds advanced through the Special Employee Entitlement Scheme for Ansett (SEESA).
"The Government should stop trying to double-dip by reclaiming funds from the Ansett administration and instead use the ticket levy to pay for employee entitlements."
The Government's Air Passenger Ticket Levy Collection Act passed last year says: "The purpose of the levy is to meet the cost of payments by the Commonwealth under the Special Employee Entitlements Scheme for Ansett group employees."
The workers will strike until 6.00am tomorrow and on their return will impose work bans including refusing to remove animal faeces anywhere within the Zoo
The workers are angry that they are being denied a three per cent rise negotiated under a public-wide agreement with the NSW Government.
But Taronga Zoo management have told them they will not receive the rise because they have not achieved productivity targets.
Australian Workers Union state secretary Russ Collision says the productivity targets had been met at Zoo management was simply attempting to stall the wage rise.
"What has outraged the workers is that management have given themselves the three per cent pay rise but are denying it to the workforce," Collison says.
"Something stinks at the zoo and, come tomorrow, the public will be able to witness it for themselves."
The event has been prompted by Virgin Mobile's continued reticence in developing a clear set of policies protecting union delegates' rights in the workplace.
The NSW Industrial Relations Commission recommended Virgin meet with the Australian Services Union to develop a set of procedures this week but the company has continued to drag the chain.
Virgin appeared in the NSW Industrial Relations Commission after a union delegate resigned.
The delegate said management had harassed him over his union activities.
The barbecue will be held between 11am and 2pm at 33-35 Pitt Street. NSW Labor Council and its affiliates have been invited to attend.
The 120 LHMU Baking Union members had told Goodman Fielders they were prepared to stay out for two months - and hit the important Christmas pastry trade - if the company were not prepared to offer up a good deal for the workforce.
The decision to walk out followed a stalemate in negotiations for a new enterprise agreement at the site.
Members at Pampas were disgusted by the initial 2.8% per year wages offer by Goodman Fielder.
So they told management they had vowed to stay out for an unprecedented eight weeks or until Goodman Fielder offered something reasonable.
Earlier this week, Goodman Fielder improved their offer sufficiently to get their workers back to work.
The offer includes a pay increase of 4.25% in the first year and 4% in the second year, a personal leave bank of 104 weeks and improvements to long service leave.
The provision of 6 weeks paid parental leave has been increased to 12 weeks - eight weeks at the commencement of the leave, and another four weeks upon return to work is seen as a huge victory. There are a majority of women at the Pampas site.
The 12 weeks moves Goodman Fielder toward the International Labour Organisation's standard of 14 weeks
The report, produced by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions to coincide with the 23-25 September WTO review of Australia's trade policy, condemns serious violations of workers' trade union rights, even including incidents of violence against trade union activists.
The report also highlights the seemingly intractable problem of discrimination against women and indigenous people in the country.
According to the ICFTU-affiliated Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), unemployment amongst indigenous people is around six times the national average, and their earnings are only half those of other Australians on average.
The report highlights continuing discrimination against women, citing two recent studies which estimate the gender pay gap -the difference between average male and female earnings- at between 66% and 85%. According to the report, gender segmentation in the labour market "remains a substantial problem in Australia."
Australia has one of the worst records of any OECD country in this respect, "with large concentrations of female workers in jobs which have a narrow skills base in casual work." There is also a growing concentration of women in home-work, where regulation of wages and conditions of employment is at best poor. The report also points out that "there are indications that the position of women, indigenous people and migrant workers is worsening."
In terms of trade union rights, although Australia has ratified ILO Conventions 87 and 98 on freedom of association and collective bargaining, numerous pieces of federal government legislation significantly undermine the application of international labour standards on freedom of association and collective bargaining, although some progress has recently been made in bringing laws in the individual states into compliance with ILO standards.
These laws deprive workers of effective protection against exploitation, and undermine the position of employers which behave responsibly. They have also given rise to sustained criticism from the ILO for Australia's violation of the core labour standards concerned, including for using the maintenance of trade and commercial activity as a justification for violating workers' basic rights.
One such piece of legislation is the Workplace Relations Act, which provided for the making of enforceable individual agreements called Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs). The establishment of AWAs, taken in conjunction with a range of other provisions of the Act, among other things, restrict the rights to strike, limit redress and compensation in cases of unfair dismissal and constitute a clear contravention of ILO Convention No. 98.
Companies have been taking advantage of this and other legislation to try to de-unionise workplaces and stop workers joining unions. In just one example, the Australian multinational BHP (Broken Hill Proprietary), which has since become BHP-Billiton, active in the steel, iron ore, coal, oil and gas sectors sought to use the new legislation to force its employees at an iron ore plant in Western Australia to abandon collective agreements in favour of individual contracts. Because the majority of employees were keen to retain the collective agreements, the union staged a series of sit-down strikes in BHP's Australian plants.
At the Newman site, pickets were attacked during the night by baton-wielding police, with a number of arrests. Meanwhile, at BHP's Port Hedland factory, 80 police were used to disperse pickets. Among those arrested was Gary Wood, Western Australia branch secretary of the CFMEU (Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union). He was later released on bail on the condition that he did not return to the picket lines. In another incident, a unionist from the AMWU (Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union), John Mossington, was run over by a BHP car and had to be hospitalized.
"The Australian Federal Government has shown a determination to undermine trade unionism, even pushing companies to deprive their workers of union protection," explained the report's author, Collin Harker, "these actions, coupled with legislation which actively discriminates against unions and their members, put Australia near the bottom of the class in terms of workers' rights in the OECD."
* Editorial note: This report evaluating Australia's adherence to internationally-recognised core labour standards is part of a series produced by the ICFTU since the Ministerial Declaration adopted at the first Ministerial Conference of the WTO (Singapore, December 1996) and re-affirmed on November 4, 2001 in Doha, by which all WTO members stated their commitment to respect core labour standards. It is submitted to the WTO trade policy review board.
http://www.icftu.org/displaydocument.asp?Index=991216494&Language=EN
On November 14-15 an "informal" meeting of World Trade Organisation (WTO) member governments will be held in Sydney. Only 25 of the 144 member governments of the WTO have been invited. The WTO is dominated by the economically powerful: the USA, Canada, Europe and Japan. The Australian government has joined with them to pressure selected governments to support an agenda dominated by transnational corporations.
The WTO major Ministerial meetings are held every two years: the next one will be in Mexico in September 2003. In between these meetings there is a process of negotiations through committees. The meeting in Sydney is an attempt to lobby selected governments to speed up the negotiations leading to the Ministerial Meeting in Mexico .
The Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network (AFTINET) is a network of 55 organisations, including unions, church groups, environment groups, human rights groups and other community organisations which supports fair trading relationships with all countries. We recognise the need for regulation of international trade but we want a different and fairer trade framework: one which is open and accountable and which supports United Nations and ILO agreements on human rights, labour rights and the environment.
AFTINET has convened a broad group of unions, environment organisations, church groups, human rights and development groups and other community organisations to organise events around Sydney WTO meeting. We plan to hold an educational seminar on Sunday November 10 and a large, peaceful rally on November 14. The NSW Labor Council gave in-principle support to these events at its last meeting.
Why are we complaining about the WTO?
We live in a world where 2 billion people live on less than US$2 per day, with little access to health, education and water services, where workers rights are violated in many countries, and with continued destruction of the environment. Poverty and inequality are also increasing in countries like Australia.
In this context of increasing global and local inequality, governments are making the political decisions to transfer economic powers to global economic bodies like the WTO, often behind closed doors and with little public accountability. These bodies create uniform economic conditions for global trade and investment but can actually remove local policy options for addressing poverty and inequality. For example, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) makes loans to countries experiencing temporary crises. The loans are conditional on the implementation of economic rationalist or neo-liberal policies: trade and investment deregulation, reductions in business taxes, removal of workers rights and lower wages, consumption taxes and user pays for essential services, cuts in government expenditure and privatisation. The IMF only recently produced a report on Australia which argued against the role of the award system in setting minimum wages, which it said were a cause of unemployment The IMF recommendations would be a return to nineteenth century conditions which Australia rejected a hundred years ago when it established the award system. Unlike many indebted developing countries, Australia is not obliged to follow IMF recommendations, but the IMF report is part of the ideological push for such policies.
The World Trade Organisation makes binding legal agreements for trade and investment which can impact on many areas of government regulation and policy. These agreements seek to apply commercial rules to all areas of policy, paying little regard to social or environmental impacts. In the context of increasing poverty and inequality this can mean global policies which actually reduce the capacity of national and local governments to act for greater equity .
The WTO agenda puts free trade and corporate rights before worker and human rights. Some examples of this agenda are:
� Further tariff cuts regardless of their impact in terms of job losses and economic insecurity.
� Restricting governments from using government purchasing to assist local jobs and development, through a proposed new WTO agreement on government purchasing which would prevent policies to favour local firms.
� Treating essential services like health, education and water purely as commercial goods, weakening regulation to ensure access to them and opening them to privatisation, through proposed changes to the WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).
� Reducing the right of governments to have social and environmental regulation by allowing objections to them from transnational investors through a proposed new WTO agreement on investment, resurrecting the discredited OECD MAI defeated by community campaigns in 1998.
� Double standards about free trade in agriculture to benefit subsidised agribusiness in rich countries, especially the US, Europe and Japan while undermining food security in poor countries. The recent US decision to increase agricultural subsidies at home while arguing for other countries to move to further reduce their agricultural subsidies and tariffs is an example of this
� Giving corporations patenting rights regardless of the impact on basic needs, such as medicine and seeds. WTO rules on intellectual property rights enforce the payment of royalties on patents for 20 years. Last year pharmaceutical companies persuaded the US government to make a WTO complaint against Brazil to try to prevent the local production of low priced medicines for the AIDS epidemic. The complaint was only withdrawn after campaigns by community organisations. There is still a debate in the WTO about how WTO rules can allow the right of governments to act in the interests of public health and to protect rights of indigenous people to the plants and seeds that they have developed over centuries.
� The WTO ignores the violations of workers rights which occur in many countries as governments compete for transnational investment by reducing workers' rights, as advocated by the recent IMF report.
Fair Trade: a better world is possible
We believe a better world is possible. We support international regulation of trade through open and democratic processes with all nations freely participating. Trade is not an end in itself, but should support social and environmental objectives. We argue that
� Trade agreements should support not undermine United Nations standards on human rights, labour rights, indigenous land rights and the environment.
� Essential public services should not be included in trade agreements.
� Governments should retain full rights to regulate for social and environmental reasons, and to have industry policies to support local jobs and development.
� Corporations must conform to United Nations standards on human rights, labour rights and the environment
Key events
Seminar on Alternatives to the WTO Agenda featuring local and international speakers Sunday November 10 , 10 am to 5pm, Tom Mann Theatre, 136 Chalmers St, Surry Hills (South of Central Station).
Peaceful rally 12 noon, Thursday November 14, Hyde Park, City.
More information will be available soon at www.aftinet.org.au
CONSUMERISM AND COUNTER-CONSUMERISM
Wednesday 9 October, 6-9pm
University of Technology Sydney, Broadway Campus, Building 3 (Bon Marche, cnr of Harris + Broadway), Floor 5, Room 510
Disabled Access. Refreshments available. Entry by donation ($10/$5). Enquiries: James Goodman, 95142714.
Panel: Tim Connor (NikeWatch), Peter Lewis (BossWatch), Julia Murray (FairWear), Vicki Sentas (Midnight Star Social Centre), chair, David McKnight (Research initiative on International Activism)
Thomas Frank is the author of 'One Market under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy' and 'The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism'. He is a founding editor of 'The Baffler', a magazine of cultural criticism (thebaffler.com).
Hosted by the Research Initiative in International Activism (international.activism.uts.edu.au) and the Transforming Cultures Research Group (transforming.cultures.uts.edu.au) with the support of the Australian Centre for Public Communication (acpc.uts.edu.au), Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (acij.uts.edu.au), and the Sydney Social Forum (www.sydneysocialforum.org)
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UTS Social Inquiry Graduate Program Launch
Friday 11 October 2002, 5.00-6.00pm
Panel Discussion - 'Ideas in Social Change'
Tom Morton - ABC Background Briefing, Broadcaster and Author
Lynette Thorstensen - NSW Government Premiers Department,
Director, Social Development and the Environment Program
Damien Spry - Amnesty International, Media and Public Relations Coordinator
Leah Godfrey - Western Sydney Community Forum, Executive Officer
UTS Gallery - Building 6, Level 4
Harris Street, UTS City Campus
Refreshments provided. Disabled access.
RSVP Essential by 8 October 2002
Ph: 02 9514 2729 or email: [email protected]
The launch will be immediately followed by the Faculty of Humanities and Social
Sciences Postgraduate Information Evening 6.00pm, Building 1 (Tower), Room 406.
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Social Sciences As Never Before, by Colin Menzies
09/26/2002, Sydney Morning Herald, Copyright of John Fairfax Group Pty Ltd
With a plethora of postgraduate courses available at Australian universities it's hard to find one that's truly innovative. The University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), claims to have implemented a unique social-science curriculum with its social-inquiry courses. This year saw the introduction of a graduate certificate in social inquiry, which combines practical social research training with theoretical bases centring on sociology, politics, cultural studies and political economy. In 2003, UTS plans to introduce a postgraduate diploma and master of arts in social inquiry. The MA can be undertaken as coursework or a research degree.
Dr James Goodman, a UTS lecturer and course co-ordinator for social inquiry, says the bulk of current graduate certificate students are seeking social-research skills. "It's not just teaching people concepts and theories, but actually there's a big practice component," he says. "At least half of the courses are practice-centred." The courses are also unusual in the extent of their interdisciplinarity which, he says, differs from what other universities do in this area. Goodman says many of the inquiries UTS has received for next year's masters degree by coursework have come from people who don't feel confident enough to do a masters by research. "They want to strengthen their research skills through the course as a stepping stone to further research," he says.
One person considering the move to a masters degree is Teri Calder, who's now in the second semester of a part-time graduate certificate in social action and globalisation at UTS. She was accepted into the course on the strength of her years of experience in social action, as well as a previously gained diploma of journalism. Calder worked for Greenpeace for six years and now works part-time for Jubilee Australia, a non-government organisation (NGO) campaigning to cancel the debts of the world's 52 poorest countries. Calder says many NGOs aren't handling globalisation effectively. "One of the reasons I wanted to do the course was to get a better understanding of how global governance conditions work and be able to critique them in an intelligent way," she says.
Calder sees the UTS course as an effective way to arm people for the challenges of a rapidly changing world. "I think that global deregulation, privatisation and the so-called free-trade corporate agenda are concentrating power and wealth into fewer and fewer hands. There's a need to critique and revise that structure." A postgraduate information day will be held at the Gallery at UTS's city campus on October 11 during which the new courses will be launched. More information on 9514 2300
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Rally For Truth
A rally to draw attention to the truth about refugees and the threatened war on Iraq will be held Saturday 26 October.
The Rally will commence at 12pm from Town Hall, in Sydney.
Unionists are encouraged to attend the event which has already been endorsed by NSW Labor Council, the FSU, the AWMU, the CFMEU, Labor for Refugees, Children Out of Detention, Jews for Ethnic Tolerance, Refugee Action Committee, Free the Refugees Campaign and the Palm Sunday Committee.
Let me be as concise as possible. You watch C-Span or tune in to those "talking heads" shows, you invariably come across politicians "posturing", especially during election cycles. Okay, we progressive minded a.k.a. practical, well read working folk, we know where the Republicans are coming from. They are candid in their harsh anti-working folk rhetoric. They tell ya right out loud that they represent the wealthy, and will do whatever they can, through legislation (or lack of) to protect the rich and "tax" the rest of us.
Now, with a handful of exceptions, like Dennis Kuchinich (Ohio), Barney Frank (Mass.) and Jim Mcdermott (Wash. State), most Democrats are professional "posturers". They stand up in the Congress and rant and rave about the need for prescription drug reforms for seniors ("crumbs" from the table), while 40+ million of us walk around with no health insurance, and another 100+ million have lousy inadequate coverage! Where are the Democrats on this issue? Why do we not hear Senators Daschle and Gebhardt demanding universal Medicare for every American? After all, Congress has the best medical coverage our tax dollars can buy!
Instead, they force us to play the "health lottery": when your "number" comes up and you get too ill to work, you lose - everything! "Yipee yi yo, isn't the free market grand!?"
We have an election system so corrupt, yet all the Dems shout about is "right to vote" and procedural fiascoes like Fla. 2000. Where are they on the key core issue a.k.a. money in politics? Why are they not demanding a National Clean Election law following the Maine model? The McCain-Feingold bill is, with all due respect, a diversionary "snail step". Only when we take all the money out of campaigns will we have true reform .On state and county levels, where are the local Democrats demanding those same clean election laws?
They can't. They are too busy running around 'sucking up" to donors to keep pace with the Republicans.
Why are the Democrats so afraid to bring up the issue of "so few earning so much" while the rest of the nation struggles? Why aren't they shouting in the halls of Congress that any nation where 1% of the population controls over 85% of the wealth is strictly "Third World". Shouldn't they be demanding either a maximum income ceiling (say up to a few million per serson), or legislating an income "surtax' on that elite 1%? Think of all the new schools, hospitals, roads, teachers, police and firepeople those revenues would create. Yet, all we hear is silence from the Democratic Party.
Finally, we have, since WWII, been living in a "War Economy". For decades, defense contractors have been feeding at the public trough, stuffing their wallets with our taxpayer dollars. Eisenhower himself warned us all, upon leaving office, of this "Military Industrial Complex". That was 1961- 40 years later the "War Economy" is a hundred fold worse!! Check out how much of each tax dollar goes into this "black hole". Where is the Democratic Party to demand less money for defense, less "smart bombs' and no multi billion dollar"Missile Defense Shield" con job? Why aren't they asserting that America needs to pull back our overwhelming worldwide military presence?
Think of all the billions of dollars we'd save, plus what better way to soothe fractured international relationships? Where is this "jackass" party to tell the "man who would be President" to "cease and desist" Iraq baiting and threats of sending tens of thousands of working class soldiers to die in some middle eastern "power play"? Instead, they follow him like "lemmings off the cliff of reason". Few of us admire or respect Saddam Hussein - except of course Reagan and Bush Sr. during the "me 80's", when he was busy doing our dirty work vs. Iran. Where do you think Iraq got all that military hardware from anyhow? It seems that Ike's warnings fell on too many deaf ears.
Alas, if we had such a Democratic Party two years ago, American would not be in this current mess. Isn't it time for all decent hardworking Americans to say "enough is enough - shame on you Democratic Party!"
Philip Farruggio, son of a longshoreman, is "Blue Collar Brooklyn" born, raised and educated (Brooklyn College, Class of '74). A former progressive talk show host, Philip runs a mfg. rep. business and writes for many publications. He lives in Port Orange, FL. You can contact Mr. Farruggio at e-mail: [email protected]. His op-eds have been published in various publications, including: The Ft. Lauderdale Sun, The Daytona News-Journal, Counterpunch, The Progressive Populist, Buzzflash, Whose Florida and others.
Why is the Australian Government so concerned about the possibility that Iraq has / may use "weapons of mass destruction"?
What are the short, medium and long term threats to our National security - including the scenario where we follow the USA into a war?
Consider this: Australia too has "weapons of mass destruction". They are already in use to devastating effect. Not on some menacing offshore invader but the farmers and rural communities of our own "Lucky Country".
The names of these weapons? Free Trade Policy and National Competition Policy. Both are steadily progressing the extinction of Australian farmers, small business and country towns.
What are the short, medium and long term threats to National security - including the scenario where once domestic primary producers are eliminated, food production is controlled by huge foreign conglomerates?
Please, please, please - support the people who make it possible for you to eat clean cheap untampered food before it's too late ....
R Lowrey
Dear Sir,
While fully understanding of the reasons for a change in direction of "Workers Online", and perhaps the need to apply the editorial skills in more auditable pursuit to placate the philistines, I must express my sadness at, if not the dramatic change, but the fact that it was deemed necessary.
It would appear that the vision of the Labor Council, when visioning this communication strategy, was and still is years ahead of the "remittance men an women" , who continue to exert Dickensian control over the evolution of this vision of those who within their own paradigms , choose to see the stars , rather than the bars .
Your reference to the necessity of "Flicking the Switch", vaudeville, sounds too much like Luther apologising to the Pope for nailing his thesis to the door. C'mon Peter, your genuflection to the mob is akin to my tug of the forelock to the Mayor, nothing more than an extension of "Professional Piss Taking".
Having said that, if there is pressure on your publication, from the Neanderthals, who are intent on the demise of the Union Movement, concurring with their own, if only in a futile attempt to prevent an objective examination of their sabotage by future Labor Leaders, then the type of one eyed hibernation as planned by Workers Online may be the best strategy. Patience is an attribute lacking in this land , perhaps if only through our brief European History , this is a load that requires patience , a land were most seeds need to be consumed by fire prior to their germination, perhaps new ideas or visions are in this category.
Workers Online, could be compared to the grain of sand that originally through accident found its self in the oyster, with the constant irritation of the sand forcing the oyster in an attempt to sooth this irritation forming the "Pearl", Workers Online, through its sometime confrontational articles has been creating the "Cultured Pearls" of course the primary assumption here is; that the oysters are alive, which can be ascertained by smell. I take it you have sniffed the wind?
You also gave a reason of insufficient article submissions, is this not indicative of some great chasm of knowledge, perhaps when Howard came to power, the great nothingness overtook the land, or perhaps the union movements "Fair-weather Friends " have either jumped ship , or like a Bastille Mob , pillaging the resources in anticipation of irreversible changes to their worlds.
Perhaps (Seneca 4 BC - AD 65 ) phrased it best when he stated "
The fates lead him who will - him who won't they drag.
Or
Once upon a time.. In a poor peasant village.. An orphaned child could find nothing.. But stones.. To eat.. As a last resort.. The child filled a pot with water and stones.. And sat it on the fire.. Hoping.. Beyond hope.. To receive some kind of nourishment from this batch of stone soup!
Before long.. A hungry friend walked by.. And inquired as to what was in the boiling pot.. "It's stone soup!". Came the reply.. "If you'd like a bowl.. Add whatever you have to it.". The second child said.. "All I have is this onion!". Into the stone soup the onion went!
A few minutes later.. Another friend appeared.. Clutching one last precious potato.. Which was soon added to the stone soup!
The hungry crowd gathered around the pot of stone soup.. Soon grew to a dozen or so.. Each child having thrown at least one vegetable into the boiling pot!
When the stone soup was ready.. Each hungry child received a bowl.. How wonderfully delicious.. Was this soup made from stones!
Reflection: If every Union Contributed just one Article, Workers Online would be a tome!
Tom Collins
Why does it take a 9-11 to move people to help?
Concerned citizens took their cheque books out faster than the twin towers fell on Sept. 11/2001, raising more than US$2.4 billion to assist families touched by this terrorist-driven tragedy. President George W. Bush called these attacks an, "act of war." A greater tragedy, though, is that many more people die each year in Africa from acts of war and receive no compensation at all. Is an American life worth a million times more than that of an African?
Individuals who are able to give don't, believing their small contribution will do little. It only takes a little, however, by many, to do a lot.
Universal primary education is a good start. Estimates place the cost at around US$8 billion a year. This represents about four days worth of global military spending, or half the amount American parents spend on toys each year.
It is refreshing, then, to hear about Canadians like Shelvan Kannuthurai and his school, the Canadian College of Business and Computers (CCBC). Shelvan has been providing scholarships to third-world students so they can study IT in Canada. Now, the CCBC is leading an initiative to provide online education to as many as 92 million African students at no cost to them. Governments and business should be supporting efforts like this and perhaps we'll never experience another 9-11 again.
Sincerely,
Sean Mason
80 St. Patrick Street
Toronto, ON.
Canada
In pursuing his ill-defined War on Terror, Bush has already wreaked the most destructive of collateral damage before a single bomb has dropped on Baghdad.
Faced with an ultimatum from the leader of the world's remaining super-power to yield to an attack on Iraq or be side tracked, UN delegates are now in a fatally compromised position.
Even if the UN grants George Dubya his wish and approves military action on the grounds of a breach of UN resolution, they still face the sad reality that dozens of other resolutions - notably those pertaining to Israel - have been ignored for decades.
After ignoring the UN, failing to pay billions of dollars in dues and walking away from the attempt to forge a global partnership on the environment, the United States has now told the UN its future is contingent on it bowing to America's will.
Whatever the outcome, the era of a central world body with the moral authority to rise against bi-lateral disputes is in the balance.
All in the name of fighting Terror - an amorphous concept that casts anyone desperate enough to load themselves up with explosives as the equivalent to a rogue state.
Bush's overriding problem is that he is fighting a war that can never be won: terrorism is globalisation applied to geo-politics - the collapse of the power of the nation state means that new rules of engagement need to be written.
The tragedy of the current power play is that in recent years the United Nations has attempted to adapt to this new world - Koffi Annan has been fighting hard to establish a Global Compact that would entrench core environmental and labour standards into all legal systems.
But the corporations that fund and prosper from the Bush War juggernaut have conspired to frustrate these efforts to recast the United Nations for a new century on the grounds that it infringes of the national sovereignty that they now have.
And now the UN faces its killer blow - a new form of global diplomacy where the umpire has a gun to its head. Some would call it terrorist tactics. And this is the ultimate Bush Doctrine as enunciated this week: the USA will take whatever steps necessary to ensure its position of global dominance is not threatened.
As for Australia, how far we have travelled from Doc Evatt's triumph in 1945 where he successfully fought for rights of small nations at the UN founding conference, in a way never envisaged by the big powers who had intended to carve the world up in their own image, establishing for the first time an independent foreign policy for Australia?
While we get caught up in the intricacies of weapons inspections in Iraq, we should not lose sight of the broader picture - the collective decision-making processes of the global community are being subverted to the will of its most powerful individual member.
Peter Lewis
Editor
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