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Issue No. 168 | 28 February 2003 |
Abbott�s Rules
Interview: Agenda 2003 Peace: The Colour Purple Industrial: Long, Hot Summer Solidarity: Workers Against War Security: Howard And The Hoodlums International: Industrial Warfare History: Unions and the Vietnam War Review: Eight Miles to Mowtown Poetry: Return To Sender Satire: CIA Recruits New Intake of Future Enemies
Unions Target March 14 For Peace Neanderthals Roll Back Safeguards Warning As Barrier Council Turns 80 Faint Praise for Labor Education Stand
The Soapbox Postcard The Locker Room Politics
Misled Artist Penalty Shoot-Out More Talk Needed on War
Labor Council of NSW |
News Sparks Fly at Sydney Uni
The 13 staff, members of the National Tertiary Education Union, will stop on Tuesday over plans to cut a raft of leave entitlements, including one for menstrual stress. The NTEU says the Labor-controlled SRC is pushing for a reduction in working conditions by offering pay rises a full four per cent lower than those achieved in the last agreement, demanding a cut in the existing sick leave entitlements and threatening to cease negotiating the agreement with the Union. Tensions boiled over after a hearing in the AIRC last week when solicitor for the SRC, Turner and Freeman's Sian Ryan said that the existing leave entitlement for menstrual stress was discriminatory and "denigrated women". Ryan refused to seek advice from the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission despite this being suggested to her as "common sense" by Senior Deputy President Duncan. The NTEU has advice from HREOC that the leave entitlement was not in breach of anti-discrimination but was in fact a "special measure" aimed at eliminating indirect discrimination against women. NTEU Industrial Officer Mark Dolahenty says that recent tactics of the Council, controlled by members of the Labor Party, are "the latest example of ALP members, purporting to be progressive and supporting rights of workers, acting quite to the contrary once they don the boss' cap". "NTEU members at the SRC perform a vital function for the welfare of students of the university," he says. "It is a disgrace that Joanna Haylen and her predecessor, Daniel Kyriacou, see fit to use perhaps their first occasion in the role of an employer to try and drive down conditions, and use student money to finance expensive legal tactics to attempt to do so."
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