*****
Every good bully understands that there is no point in hitting a strong target when you can beat up on the vulnerable and the weak. That's why this week's revelations that the Office of the Employment Advocate (which strangely doesn't seem to be interested in doing much advocacy that helps people in employment) has set it sights on pushing school leavers on to individual employment contracts.
Jonathan Hamberger, who must be confused as to why people don't want to beg for a living, wrote to 2,500 schools across Australia touting non-union individual contracts to students.
It's a pity the Federal government can't adequately fund the very sector it's using to push its narrow agenda.
No doubt the OEA looks forward to a happy day when a whole pile of school leavers present themselves to employers with a begging bowl, saying "Please sir, can I have some more?"
The bottom line is that negotiating as an individual didn't help Oliver, and it won't help young people.
It was also revealed this week that Hamberger's little office suggests that the boss might be a good person to consult with when working out your employment conditions.
Which is a bit like asking a loan shark for financial advice.
Of course this all makes sense if we view our fellow Australians as merely units of production that can be picked up and put down like a shovel. It must come as a relief to them that these young people aren't human beings who need stability, financial security or who may aspire to the sorts of working conditions their parent's generation enjoyed.
Luckily Jonathan Hamberger is there to assist this headlong plunge into third world working conditions.
To assist in this process Hamberger's little office has a website to explain the wonders of the Australian Workplace Agreement. There is some nice wallpaper and a heartwarming little story about a young Australian who has embraced AWAs. The unfortunate truth is that young Australian has lost his AWA job and is "unsure" about his redundancy entitlements.
Nothing should really surprise us from an administration that is throwing pensioners into the street, but Hamberger's foray into the education sector is a wonderful insight into the depths this mob will go. School leavers are obviously a nice soft touch for this clown, and leaving a sixteen-year-old to get stood over by a boss is obviously a fair thing in his eyes.
It's also refreshing to see the independence of the public service raising its ugly head, with Hamberger able to present a range of options for young people, and not just a narrow, ideologically driven agenda that works for a narrow section of the population.
One can only assume it will be a bloody cold day in hell the day that Hamberger wakes up to the fact that the reason why many Australians enjoy a reasonable standard of living is because of decades of collective effort by trade union members.
No doubt a stint in the Tool Shed will do wonders for the Employment McAdvocate Jonathan Hamberger. Who knows, maybe he might even get to sleep at night, because a person would be stuffed to know how he can after this last little exercise.
Hamberger, whose office promotes the Federal Government�s workplace agenda, struck controversy this week when a teacher blew the whistle on his move to co-opt 2500 schools to the anti-union campaign.
In a letter to every public and private high school in Australia, Hamberger urged teachers to make students aware of his office's youth website which promotes non-union individual agreements.
A feature of the OEA's "youthserve" site is an AWA sales pitch from a Hobart supervisor entitled "Up Close and Personal With Justin Hill".
While Hill admits his job with Antartic Adventure is his first, he advises school leavers that an AWA "takes you one step further than the state or federal award and may contain clauses specific to your individual workplace".
Hill says, "as a young employee", he enjoys an "equal" relationship with management at Antarctic Adventure. He cites "development" as the biggest plus offered by an AWA.
"In our Australian Workplace Agreement, there is a career structure. I have had the opportunity to move up the ranks allowing me to get where I am today."
Workers Online can reveal that where Hill is today is down the road at Hobart's Corus Hotel, working under the terms and conditions of a state award.
When Workers Online rang Antarctic Adventure we were informed the company had gone "bust", closing its doors on October 10, and, under the terms of its AWAs, paid redundancy to only seven of the 19 predominantly young people it had employed.
Hill, the OEA's Australian Workplace Agreements advocate, told Workers Online the reasons for the closure had not been "entirely clear".
"I was one of the lucky ones," he said, "a lot of the others don't have jobs."
When asked what his redundancy terms had been for three years service with the company, he said, "I couldn't actually say".
Nimbin school teacher, Phil Roberts, alerted the public to Hamberger's co-option of the secondary school system, describing the Employment Advocate's letter as a blatant example of the Howard Government agenda "permeating schools".
The letter was sent to 2500 principals across Australia. It touted individual contracts, which have stripped conditions and as much as $10,000 a year off individual workers, as the future for school leavers.
Commentators say it signals Federal Government intention to concentrate their AWA efforts on youngsters who have not experienced union-organised workplaces.
The AWA take-up rate, running at less than five percent across the workforce, is highest amongst those aged 15-21 years where the Employment Advocate claims 17 percent penetration, principally in low-wage industries such as retailing, accommodation, cafes and restaurants.
The Federal Government sold AWAs on the basis of "choice" but Hamberger admits new employees can be forced to accept AWAs as a condition of employment.
In his letter to schools Hamberger wrote: "The OEA (Office of the Employment Advocate) is committed to ensuring that young people and those advising them have access to accurate and easy-to-read information about AWAs."
The letter only promotes AWAs and does not mention the prospect of union-negotiated agreements.
AWAs are opposed by the trade union movement, the Federal Opposition and state governments, including NSW and Victoria.
NSW Education Minister, Andrew Refshauge, told the Sydney Morning Herald, this week, it was "completely inappropriate" for Hamberger to have written directly to school principals promoting them.
BHP trumpeted its sign-off on the Global Compact and Global Reporting Initiative, devised by UN secretary general Kofi Annan, but received a letter from the world body, this week, indicating it had not met its obligations.
Inherent in the third principle of the Compact is recognition of collective bargaining but BHP forces new starters at its Pilbarra iron ore operation onto individual Australian Workplace Agreements.
The CFMEU Mining and Energy Division has raised the discrepancy with ASIC (the Australian Securities and Investment Commission), alleging the company is misleading ethical investors.
"They have misled the market," CFMEU secretary, Tony Maher, told ABC Radio. "At their last AGM (chairman) Don Argus said yes, it's a condition of employment for an individual contract and, yes, we thing that complies with the Global Compact.
"Well, the UN has spoken, and if they continue to parade themselves as complying with the UN Global Compact then they are misleading the market and that is a serious matter.
"It's as clear as crystal, BHP has been caught out.
"This company, sooner or later, is going to find out that when it sings something, it has to deliver on it."
The UN letter advises BHP that signatory companies are "expected" to make changes to business operations that give effect to the Compact's principles.
"The intent to bring about positive change is essential," the letter says. "We understand that changing business aoperations to implement the principles can take time and be challenging. Dialogue, learning and networking through the Global Compact can help companies address some of these challenges."
It then points out that Global Compact labour principles are taken from the ILO's Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights of Work, inspired by eight core conventions, one being the right to collectively bargain.
Argus rejected the criticisms at today's BHP Billiton AGM in Melbourne, saying it was his company's right to make AWAs compulsory.
Argus said signing the Global Compact did not require his company to change it IR framework.
The company moved a shareholders meeting from the Marriott Hotel to its corporate headquarters but a dozen people dying of lung diseases tailed it to the new venue where they protested its bid to shift hundreds of millions of dollars of compensation liabilities onto the Australian taxpayer.
AMWU secretary, Paul Bastian, called the campaign an act of "corporate bastardry".
His union blew the whistle when the corporate giant's insurer, Allianz, began lobbying NSW and federal politicians for changes to dust diseases legislation, earlier this year.
Similar changes, absolving asbestos producers of their liabilities, were recently passed by the US Senate after Allianz lobbying.
James Hardie's then refused to top up subsidiaries, AMABA and AMACA, so they could meet claims from the growing number of Australians suffering asbestos-induced lung cancer and mesothelioma.
AMABA and AMACA were left to meet responsibilities to dying Australians by a corporate reshuffle that re-designated the parent company a Dutch operation.
As part of the 2001 rejig, James Hardie put $293 million into a new foundation, the Medical Research and Compensation Foundation, to be administered by AMABA and AMACA.
At the time, unions led by the AMWU, ETU and MUA, protested vigorously that $293 million would go nowhere near the company's liability to Australian victims.
Latest medical information, from Flinders University research, suggests the number of asbestos victims will continue mounting until 2020. By then, it estimates, 30,000 Australians will have died from resulting lung cancers and another 12,000 of mesothelioma.
Australia's other major asbestos producer, CSR, has agreed to put another $400 million into its compensation fund but James Hardie has rejected a plea from Llew Edwards, the man left in charge of its Medical Research and Compensation Foundation.
"James Hardie has no moral or legal responsibility for the liabilities of AMABA and AMACA," CEO Peter McDonald said in a public statement.
Bastian says James Hardie never put anything like enough money into its liability fund and everyone, including their own advisers, knew it.
"Blind Freddy could have told them that," he said. "It was a move to sanitise their name and quarantine the parent company. They can't be allowed to get away with it."
CFMEU organiser, Steve Dixon, credits the inter-union agreement with keeping together workers, paid around $300 a week less than standard industry rates.
"This is the way Abigroup works," Dixon says, "it goes to the bush and picks up blokes doing it tough, denies them the $330 living away from home allowance and then uses it to exploit them.
"In the past it has been able to play off one union against the other but not any more."
Dixon said that when workers demanded parity with others in the industry, Abigroup employed its usual tactic of telling the AWU the CFMEU had approached it for a single-union agreement, and telling the CFMEU its traditional civil construction rival had done the same.
"Trouble is," he said, "we told each other. We were able to go a meeting and tell the employer he was lying."
Dixon said the dispute was the most important in civil construction's recent history because Abigroup was determined to slash wages and conditions in a move competitors would have to take into account in future tenders.
The 60 strikers are employed on road or bridge jobs at Coopernook, Weatherill Park, Bangor and Katooomba. More than half those employed at the last two venues have had to either move out of caravan parks or rented accommodation since the dispute began.
The two unions are holding collections around Sydney, Newcastle and 'Wollongong sites and were this week able to make contributions towards strikers living costs.
AbiGroup is in the process of being taken over by German engineering company, BillfingerBurger, which already owns Australian construction heavyweight Balderstone Hornibrook.
The Left-Right union combination had its first workout in a recent dispute with the Abi-Leightons joint venture building the Western Orbital motorway. Protracted action beat off attempts to introduce AWAs and won significant wage increases.
The unions sealed their new approach in a formal agreement, brokered by NSW Labor Council representatives, and signed last Thursday.
Labor Council secretary, John Robertson, warned the industry the rules had changed as a result.
"If I was an employer in civil construction I would be very nervous," he said. "For the first time, in a very long time, these two unions are focused on the main game. Things will be very different as a result."
CFMEU representatives made a light-hearted presentation to AWU secretary, Russ Collison at last Thursday's Labor Council meeting with CFMEU president, Peter McLelland, apologising to delegates in advance for ruining much of the entertainment they had come to expect.
"The only place most delegates ever expected the CFMEU and AWU to bury the hatchet was in each other's foreheads," McLelland admitted.
Buckland will this week ask ANZ shareholders to send her proxy votes ahead of the December 19 Annual General Meeting, arguing Goode�s bid is contrary to good corporate governance.
Goode is also director of Woodside Petroleum, a director of Singapore Airlines and was a director of Air New Zealand when it made its fatally disastrous bid to takeover Ansett and remained on the board as it crashed to earth.
Support for Buckland, who is also the NSW president of the Finance Sector Union, is growing amongst trade unions who have representatives on key industry super boards.
Meanwhile, the Australian Shareholders Association has flagged it will also oppose the Goode bid on the grounds he holds multiple chairmanships, while yet to indicate whether they will recommend a vote for Joy.
In contrast to Goode, Buckland has vowed that her commitment to ANZ shareholders, staff and customers will be her sole focus.
"After 27 years working for the ANZ, I know that this bank needs the undivided attention of its corporate leaders," Buckland says.
"I won't be juggling my time between this Board and other boards, I'll simply be committing to the one organisation that I know as well as my own family - the ANZ."
In her statement of candidacy, to be distributed to all ANZ shareholders, Buckland makes out the case for worker representation on the Board.
"It is not enough to talk about stakeholder needs through carefully messaged publications," she writes. " It is necessary to work with and experience first hand the issues confronting ANZ stakeholders on a daily basis. It is this experience that will be of benefit on the ANZ Board.
"Many of the communities which the ANZ is established to serve have in my view been let down by branch closures, service cut-backs and fee increases instituted in recent years.
"Both customers and staff of the bank are affected by these measures in their financial wellbeing and in the trust and confidence they place in the bank. The long term health of the business, and your investment in ANZ, depend on these measures being reversed."
The proposal to extend the use of Developer Contributions is one of the recommendations of a report into the future of public transport in NSW prepared by the Labor Council of NSW.
Under the proposal, the government would hit developers for the increased value of land due to rezoning or the provision of improved public transport services.
The report also calls for the Carr Government to implement planning proposals to link all land releases with public transport plans, form the time development commences.
Launching the report, Labor Council secretary John Robertson said the proposals were part of a community vision for public transport that went way beyond the economics of the Parry Inquiry currently under discussion.
The report 'Our Public Transport' commissioned by the Labor Council of NSW and the Rail, Tram and Bus Union, draws on more than 100 submissions from community organisations and individuals, warning that NSW is at a crossroads.
"Already, we have seen how a road-dominated transport system in California has led to a system dominated by private motor cars, with high pollution and gridlock being the community costs," Robertson says.
Road and car parking currently takes 40 per cent of Sydney's total land area - some of which could otherwise be dedicated to public space and affordable housing.
The report details proposals to improve public transport including:
- tax breaks for employers who offer public transport fares as part of salary packages
- changing the formula for budgeting road and transport funds, to take better account of overall costs and benefits to the community
- and an action plan for regional NSW that links transport with economic development, including maintaining rural rail services.
"Increased investment in public transport pays off, because it reduces public spending in other areas including road maintenance, care of accident victims, improved health and increased public space," Robertson says
"What this process shows is that by talking to the community, rather than a small group of vested interests, we can develop a sustainable vision for transport over the next 25 years. "
Safety Laws Strip Worker Rights
Meanwhile, rail workers are up in arms about new state legislation that would strip rail workers of their basic civil rights before the Carr Government's new Rail Safety regular.
The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union says that officers of the regulator will have greater powers than the police in investigating rail safety issues.
These power include the right to enter private property without a warrant and removing the right of people being investigated not to incriminate themselves - with fines of up to $55,000 for people who refuse to answer questions. There are also concerns about the protection of 'whistleblowers' under the new Act
AMWU state secretary says there was no consultation with unions in developing the laws, which were rushed through Parliament last week.
Announcing the 2004 Minimum Wages Case, ACTU Secretary Greg Combet said the claim was an opportunity to help reverse the growing inequality of incomes in Australian society.
For full time workers, the claim would boost the Minimum Wage from $448.40 per week to $475 per week, before tax.
The claim is the next step in the unions' wages strategy adopted at ACTU Congress in August, which set a target to progressively increase the Federal Minimum Wage to $14.50 an hour or $550 a week.
Combet says that to prevent further increases in inequality, debt and to address the crisis of low pay in Australia, substantial increases were needed in the incomes of low paid workers.
"More than half of award workers earn less than $15 per hour. Many cannot afford basic household expenses. It is no surprise that Australians are being forced into record levels of household and credit card debt," Combet says.
"Most award workers are women in part time and casual jobs. Their work often entails serving the needs of others in the hospitality, retail, health, childcare and community sectors. They deserve and need a decent pay rise next year."
Under the claim, award workers would receive an average annual pay rise of 4.5 per cent, compared with 6.2% in Average Weekly Earnings in the year to August and 7.3 per cent for CEOs in the year to June, according to this month's Australian Financial Review's annual salary survey.
Combet called on the Federal Government to break with tradition and support the ACTU's claim next year to help improve the living standards of the lowest paid workers.
The Howard Government has opposed the ACTU's Minimum Wages Case every year since coming to office, despite a robust economy. If the Government had had its way since 1996, workers on the minimum wage would be $35 a week worse off than they are now.
Combet says that the ACTU's claim is economically responsible and would have a negligible impact on employment levels. The claim is costed to add 0.1 per cent to economy-wide earnings and 0.08 per cent to inflation. The Australian Industrial Relations Commission will hear the case next year.
The PSA says standards for apprentices will be eroded by moves to cut a quarter of State Training Services field staff - the people who monitor and regulate apprentices, trainees and their employers-.
"It is unbelievable that at the very time WorkCover's accreditation failures and scandals are before an ICAC inquiry, education management is planning to loosen controls over training and accreditation', says John Cahill, General Secretary of the Public Service Association.
State Training Services provides advice to people who may find themselves in inappropriate training arrangements. It also provides support for employers who find they can no longer deal with their trainees and apprentices who have gone off the rails.
"State Training Services makes a very real contribution to keeping all players honest and to providing accountability for expenditure from the public purse," says Cahill. "The proposed 25 percent reduction in field services staff will have a significant impact on the quality and regulation of training provided to apprentices and trainees"
The Industry Training Service Centres are the only body of people in NSW who are charged with particular responsibilities under the Apprenticeship and Traineeship Act, 2001 including:
* ensuring/confirming the capacity of employers to train for all declared trades and callings;
* ensuring/confirming the competency of those emerging from their apprenticeships and traineeships;
* issuing all "trade & calling" qualifications in NSW;
* assessing and reporting to Vocational Training Tribunals on the adequacy of trades and callings training (especially in the workplace);
* assessing and reporting to "Trade Recognition Tribunals" -- qualifying, quantifying & validating applicants' experience, on-the-job training and current level of competence -- to enable the Tribunals to properly determine the issue of a trade qualification
When there are abuses in the training systems the field staff are the people who find them and deal with them. Examples of abuse dealt with by field staff include:
* A national tyre franchisee employing apprentices across NSW as spare parts interpreters. Actual job was tyre fitting. No apprenticeship training from the employer or registered training organisation. There was no trade work available at any site.
* Apprentices and trainees left without supervisors.
* Electrical and automotive apprentices signed up to the wrong trade to match the off-the-job training, not what is happening on the job.
* Apprentice carpenters building roof trusses on production lines.
* A company with 40 staff are all signed up as trainees. When the company is investigated it is found that several are not actually working in NSW, one was working in New Zealand.
* Group training companies suspending apprentices for months at a time - some sought times in excess of 12 months - and not advising the apprentices of their options or advising the department that no training is taking place.
"When the Apprenticeship and Traineeship Act was a Bill in 2001, the unions of NSW spoke strongly of the need to maintain the integrity of training in NSW and the role of the independent umpire," says Mr Cahill. "It is difficult to see how either can be maintained with the current proposals."
Education cuts target children with disabilities
Meanwhile PSA General Secretary John Cahill today called on the NSW Education and Training Minister, Dr Andrew Refshauge, to recognise the vital role of educational support staff of the Department of Education and Training in delivering a program to assist community-based early intervention services for young children with disabilities.
Mr Cahill demanded the government maintain these important community services and reverse the planned job cuts in its misnamed Lifelong Learning restructure.
The Intervention Support Program administers $10 million of Commonwealth funds, which are used to support approximately 6,000 young children with disabilities and 500 community-based pre-schools, long day care centres and early intervention services including the major peak disability organisations. The community-based services to be affected include those provided by local councils.
The Association yesterday wrote to affected organisations, urging them to complain to the Minister about the cuts.
The program helps supports the cost of educational services for children in non-profit early childhood settings, children and adolescents in residential care, and capital grants for non-government centres to benefit children and students with disabilities.
"The community has a right to expect that these important community services will be maintained at their current level, especially with all of the news about childcare centres failing to meet appropriate standards for children without special needs. None of the position cuts to this important community service area of the Department of Education and Training can be justified, especially after job cuts in previous restructures".
Staff of the Intervention Support Program, one of four program areas of the Community Grants Unit, learned on September 24 of the loss of two of their four dedicated staff members plus vital administrative support clerks for all four programs.
"Dr Refshauge has said that the 1,000 job cuts announced in June were about slashing non-essential 'bureaucratic' jobs but it's not true. The only "fat" to cut in the Department of Education and Training is in the ranks of senior bureaucrats, but these positions have been increased in the proposed new structure, while educational support staff are been cut back drastically", said Cahill.
The CFMEU has imposed an interim Green Ban on the Sydney Water Police site at Elizabeth McArthur Bay Pyrmont, preventing development while negotiations on the future of the prized site continue.
Former BLF secretary and Green Ban champion, Jack Mundey, was on hand for the announcement of Sydney's first Green Ban in more than two years.
The move puts the CFMEU at loggerheads with the Government's Harbour Foreshore Authority which is moving to flog off the publicly-owned land.
CFMEU secretary, Andrew Ferguson, said the Green Ban should provide a "breathing space" that allowed residents, and the wider community, input into future plans for the area.
"The Foreshore Authority doesn't own this unique site," Ferguson said. "They merely administer it on behalf of the people of Sydney. We intend to ensure the people have some opportunity to have a say in what that future should be.
"Building unions have a long tradition of defending our parkland, public space and built heritage. In recent years the CFMEU has placed successful bans on a proposed McDonalds restaurant in Centennial Park and at the MCA site in Circular Quay."
Workers Online understands the Foreshore Authority has already filed for a Development Application that would pave the way for a purchaser build on a site which is a prime recreational area for nearby residents.
The LHMU believes the ruling will help bosses who seek to side-step award obligations by shifting their workers to contracts.
The case before the Federal court involved a Canberra contract cleaning company, Endoxos, who had shifted workers into individual contractors arrangements.
The Federal Court has found that Endoxos 'held the position of responsibility and wielded the power in the employment relationship.'
In making its ruling the Court also concluded that the Full Bench of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission "shut its eyes to uncontested evidence which demonstrated the reality of what occurred" in the workplace and on the job.
"A win for Endoxos in Canberra would have had a wave effect across the country," LHMU national secretary Jeff Lawrence said today.
"This is a blow to the militant employer culture that the Howard Government has been promoting."
This ruling now clears the way for LHMU member, Riste Damevski, to fight his unfair dismissal in the Australian Industrial Relations Commission.
It will also allow at least 75 other cleaners, who were forced into the same situation, to recover money owing for underpayment of wages and for portable long service leave.
Lawrence says the win reinforces the successful campaigning by the ACT LHMU Cleaners Union to establish a Code of Practice for responsible cleaning which has the support of 85% of Canberra contract cleaning firms.
Endoxos - a company which has now been wound up - was owned by a Canberra identity, Lindsay Burke, who was probably best known for being the husband of prominent local Liberal Territory MP, Jacqui Burke - who was also at one time a director of the cleaning company.
At the time Mr Burke was quoted in the local media saying he had found the perfect solution to cutting costs by ordering around 75 Endoxos workers to set themselves up as individual companies to whom he would then provide work.
The workers, former employees of mining operator Denehurst, were relying on the redevelopment of a former gold mine at Woodlawn in southern NSW as a 'waste bioreactor'. The former mine closed following the collapse of Denehurst in 1998.
The redevelopment of Woodlawn as a land fill dump is dependent upon the waste transfer plant terminal at Clyde.
The Transport Workers Union (TWU) had struck a deal with Woodlawn's administrators and the proposed operator of the dump, waste management company Collex, for a payout of 100% of the worker's entitlements once the mine commenced operation as a 'waste bioreactor'.
"The Woodlawn miners and their families cannot be denied again,' says Tony Sheldon, state secretary of the TWU. "After almost six years of waiting for what is rightfully theirs, these latest developments are an absolute disgrace."
NSW premier Bob Carr has told the media that the government would ensure that the worker's entitlements would be paid.
The TWU is working to ensure the premier is able to deliver on his commitment.
The NSW Labor Council is supportive of any initiative that would see the Woodlawn miners receive any outstanding entitlements.
Both houses of Congress responded to an AFL-CIO campaign appeal by rejecting Bush's attempt to cut overtime pay for 8 million American workers. Bush is refusing to withdraw his pay cuts and says he will veto legislation protecting overtime pay.
Bush's Labor Department could put the overtime pay cuts into effect as soon as January.
After both the Senate and the House of Representatives passed measures to block what the AFL-CIO has dubbed as "President Bush's overtime pay take-away" last month, a committee of members of both bodies hammered out differences between the two versions of the overtime pay protections.
House Republican leaders - working with President Bush's lobbyists - stacked the committee with legislators who support Bush's overtime pay take-away. Despite congressional votes to block the move millions of America's workers are likely to lose overtime pay protection soon.
The AFL-CIO is calling on American workers to lobby senators and U.S. Congress representatives, telling them "not to come home for the holidays without acting to protect overtime pay".
"The sweeping changes in America's work life President Bush is pushing will hurt millions of working families. Paychecks will be smaller. Work hours will be longer. Job quality will be worse," says an AFL-CIO spokesperson. "This is a sad moment in U.S. history. President Bush is taking America back nearly 70 years."
It is believed the move is an attempt to return to the provisions of the Industrial Relations Act 1991, which saw employers use the Court of Appeal to bleed unions financially and to stall rulings of the Industrial Relations Commission.
"Under the 1991 Act the employers consistently appealed decisions of the Commission as a deliberate tactic to frustrate the processes of the Commission and to make life difficult for the unions," says Bernie O'Riordan, NSW state secretary of the Electrical Trades Union (ETU).
The situation degenerated so much that it was addressed in the1996 legislation.
The ETU have called for the matter to be raised as a matter of urgency with the NSW government.
NSW Upper House MP, Tony Burke, has expressed his opposition to any proposed legislation that would allow decisions of the IRC to be appealed in the court of appeal.
"Such a provision [appealing IRC decisions] opens a window for unscrupulous employers to be unreasonably litigious," says Burke. "Labor has always supported the Commission as providing a means for justice at the work place. Departing from this position would require a compelling reason."
The Labor Council of NSW has also expressed its concern about any moves to allow for appeals from the Industrial Relations Commission to the Court of Appeal, Supreme Court or any other place.
Labor Council secretary, John Robertson, said that under the proposed legislation unions would be forced to employ expensive Senior Counsel and whether or not to run cases would be decided on their economic merits rather than the justice of the issue.
The issue was a big talking point at the recent public service association (PSA) Women's Conference held in September.
"Members who attended the conference identified bullying as an emerging and serious issue in the workplace, says Sue Walsh, president of the PSA. "Association members employed by the department of education and training were recently surveyed to determine whether bullying was widespread in the Department. The results of the survey are alarming and show the devastation of this unacceptable behaviour."
"It is obvious the problem is not contained to one department but is rife across many public sector Departments and Agencies."
Recently the Department of Education and Training was fined over a bullying case.
The NSW Labor Council and its affiliates look set to consider a campaign against bullying in the workplace.
The website UnionSafe has produced a fact sheet on Bullying for the information of union members.
Filmmakers, actors, artists, academics, mining and maritime workers will be gathering at the Australian Maritime Museum on Wednesday, November 19 for the launch of Fighting Films: A History of the WWF Film Unit.
The book launch and screenings are a celebration and a renewal of the union links with the arts community, which celebrates its half-century relationship this month.
The story of the Waterside Workers Federation's Film Unit began in 1953 when two struggling filmmakers working under the hook on the Sydney wharves were put on the union payroll to make films 'by workers, for workers and about workers'.
These films, which drew on the talents of Australian actors of the time, are now recognised as an important contribution to our cultural heritage by the television and film community.
The Waterside Workers Federation is now a part of the maritime Union of Australia.
Support Indonesian Workers
Please take 2 minutes to support young women and men who have been unfairly fired from the PT Busana factory in Indonesia by going to this web-page - http://www.cleanclothes.org/urgent/03-10-23.php - and adding your name to the petition there.
The factory has dismissed 166 people, and is in the process of dismissing a further 8, for their participation in a four-day strike in July this year.
The workers went on strike because they are subjected to verbal intimidation and sexual harassment, are frequently paid less than the
Indonesian minimum wage and because they work in a dangerous environment where serious accidents are commonplace. PT Busana makes sportswear for US and European brands, including: Bear USA, Le Coq Sportif, Head and Lotto.
Your support will make a difference.
Crowded Lives - A New Agenda for Social Sustainability
Lindsay Tanner , Federal Labor Communications Spokesperson discusses his new book, Crowded Lives, which argues that relationships need to be at the center of government policy.
Dr Ariadne Vromen, Lecturer in Government,University of Sydney
discusses the family/work/public life pressures on people and the
changing political participation of young people.
Dr David McKnight, left activist and Lecturer in journalism, UTS,
discusses the conservation of the human in progressive politics.
Where: Gleebooks, 49 Glebe Point Road, Glebe
When : 6pm for 6.30pm, Monday 17th November
Concluding at 8pm
Entry Fee : $10/$5 Fabians and concession
To book phone Gleebooks on 96602333 or [email protected]
About Crowded Lives, published by Pluto Press
HEAR! Shadow Attorney General Robert McClelland MP on Howard's IR agenda
and Industrial law experts from Turner Freeman Solicitors on recent IR changes and what they mean
FREE! all welcome
Meeting room
Newcastle Trades Hall Council
Devonshire House
406 King Street Newcastle West 2302
5 pm Thursday 20 November 2003
Refreshments served
Call 02 4929 1162 or email [email protected] to register or make enquires
Trade union futures - Sydney symposium
Thursday 27 November, 2:00 to 5:00pm Darlington Centre
A symposium to examine contemporary problems faced by the trade union movement and to discuss a number of key questions about future directions: Partnership or organising; What future for the factions; What of the link with Labor; What visions are there for regulating wages and work; How do unions speak to and for new constituencies.
Speakers include:
� Greg Combet, Secretary, Australian Council of Trade Unions
� John Robertson, Secretary, NSW Labor Council
� Kristyn Thomson, Secretary, NSW Branch, Australian Services Union
Convenors: Dr Rae Cooper & Dr Bradon Ellem
To register for this free symposium please complete the following and
return to Vera Differding by email([email protected]) or
fax (02 9351 4729) or go to
www.go-direct.com.au/usyd/freesymposia.htm and download the faxback.
Australian Writers' Muster Update
Less than a month to go until The Australian Writers' Muster in Sydney on
5-7 December.
Check out the latest additions to our illustrious list of speakers and
panellists:
SUE WOOLFE author of the enthusiastically reviewed "The Secret Cure" (and
previously "Leaning Towards Infinity") is joining PETER GOLDSWORTHY on the
Arts & Science = Great Leaps of the Imagination panel.
TONY McNAMARA playwright ("The Virgin Mim", "The Unlikely Prospect of
Happiness" which is in the 2004 STC Season) and screenwriter ("The Rage in
Placid Lake") is taking the Playwrights' Master class and is a panelist on
the Global/Local discussion.
TIM PYE Deputy Commissioning Editor ABC TV Drama 1999-2001, Executive
Producer "Changi" and whose credits include "White Collar Blue", "Water
Rats", "Wildside", "Seachange" to name a few and winner of a handful of AFI,
AWGIE and LOGIE awards joins the Pushing the Envelope panel.
Actor AARON PEDERSEN (Water Rats, Wildside, Floodhouse) who has played an
active role in pushing writers and producers to create story-lines that more
accurately reflect our times (especially issues of urban aborigines) also
joins the Pushing the Envelope panel.
NOTE:
Due to the length of the film 'MASTER AND COMMANDER - The Far Side of the
World' this session will now start at 6.30pm which means the previous
session 'Billy Sind - a Week on West Wing' will now start 30 minutes earlier
at 4.30pm Saturday, 6 December.
There are a number of really terrific writers still to be confirmed in the
next few days, so WATCH THIS SPACE!
AND DON'T FORGET TO KEEP CHECKING THE WEB-SITE: MUSTER PROGRAM UPDATED
REGULARLY.
To register go to www.awg.com.au to download a brochure or call us at the national office on (02) 9281 1554.
ARM CHRISTMAS DRINKS
With Special Guest Senator Natasha Stott Despoja, Australian Democrats'
Spokesperson on the Republic
Date: Friday 12 December 2003
Time: 5:30-7:30pm
Venue: The Glover Cottages
Address: 124 Kent Street Sydney
Tickets: $15 / $10 concession (finger food provided; drinks to be purchased
on day)
RSVP: Friday 5 December 2003
Further details and booking form at
http://www.nsw.republic.org.au/downloads/Christmas%20drinks.PDF
Better Leaders For A Better World - International Youth Parliament 2004
Call for Applications
The International Youth Parliament is a dynamic global network of creative young people working for social change - people turning ideas into action.
Run by and for young people it is a global network of the next generation of social change leaders working to build a peaceful, sustainable and equitable world. The second sitting of the International Youth Parliament, IYP2004 will take place in Sydney, Australia from 5 to 12 July 2004. We ask you to assist us find the right delegates. Applications close 15 January
2004.
Application form > www.iyp.oxfam.org
Delegates selected to attend IYP 2004 will receive a unique opportunity to exchange their experiences and the strategies they employ to confront local and universal challenges. They will leave with skills, networks, inspiration and an international context to assist them with their endeavours in their own organisations and countries.
The Parliament agenda will focus on twelve major areas; education, HIV/AIDS, labor and employment; indigenous rights, migration, trafficking and displacement, agriculture and sustainability, peace building, human rights, health and clean water; youth culture, technology, and global trading systems. Across these areas special attention will be paid to the themes of diversity, equity, governance and basic social services.
We are seeking applications from people aged 18-25 who are passionate about and have been actively involved in projects aiming at positive social change in the above areas.
Please forward this message to other organisations and individuals you believe might be interested.
Please contact me if you need further information. I look forward to hearing from you.
Yours sincerely
Kelly Betts
International Youth Parliament 2004
www.iyp.oxfam.org
Catching up with Workers Online from London I saw your story on BAT, the tobacco multi-national. Just to say that although BAT has sold its production in Burma, it continues to have a financial exposure there.
It sold its 60% investment in Rothmans of Pall Mall Myanmar to its junior Singapore-based partner, Distinction Investment Holdings. Your coverage picked that up.
However, this sale also includes the licensing of production by DIH of BAT brand cigarettes. In other words, they will still earn a good return from investment in Burma.
According to the BBC: "The new owner will continue to produce London and State Express Brand 555 cigarettes in Burma under licence from BAT."
Further, the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF) says: "While the campaign goal has been achieved, we cannot claim total success in view of the principle which the IUF had sought to establish in its submission to the OECD: that investment as such, under the conditions prevailing in Burma today, is a violation of international human rights standards and of the OECD's own investment guidelines."
It's good to get this victory against a giant like BAT, but we have to keep pressing on against them."
Marcus Strom
London
We all know the drill - a big company slashes thousands of jobs and its share price immediately rises. Who makes money out of this situation? Not you? What - never thought about how your superannuation makes you one of those ruthless shareholders making money at the expense of others?
While most people's superannuation has been shrinking for the past two years, a couple of things have been happening so quietly that most people may not have even noticed. One is that from March next year, superannuation funds will have to report on whether they have considered "labour standards and environmental, social and ethical factors" in their product disclosure statements. The other is that "ethical" or "socially responsible investments" (SRIs) have been steadily growing, although not yet as popular in Australia as they are in the UK and Europe.
Mind you, the Australian government has not made investing in socially-reponsible superannuation easy: current legislation requires superannuation funds to put making money first. But some super funds have managed to overcome this by proving that ethical funds can make good returns or, in recent years, at least no worse than the rest of them.
It would be great if the union movement supported an SRI choice for existing super funds, as well as improvements to legislation to make it easier for super funds to offer this choice. Solidarity must be more than just talk. As always, the individual must be prepared to put their money where their mouth is, and choose to become wealthy in a way which does not cause human misery or environmental destruction.
The media it seems wants to assist the rise , fall, reserection of one Pauline Hanson.
If only they were to treat Howard ,Abbott, Costello, Downer, Anderson half the same.
(In the fall section that is but the Lib-Nat Coalition are immune to this questioning and the recalcitrant media continues to overlook this it seems.)
Hanson is not and has not been a party Animal. That is why she finished in jail. She was an independent that the hurting or disaffected or dissenting could associate with. Danger bells were sent ringing through the Liberal and National Parties. They stole her repugnant 1950,s white Australia policy-threw in the Tampa and Children overboard. won an election, then jailed her and blamed the Queensland Labor Party. Why don�t the Australian media have the guts to say it as it is?
Are they too shackled to the right? Are they too shackled to the Media bosses led by Packer and Murdoch ? Or are they like most other employees in the 2000�s just too shit frightened if they open their mouth against what the boss believes they will or their family will pay for it with a demotion or worse.
DO WE HAVE AN INDEPENDENT UNBIASED MEDIA ANY MORE IN AUSTRALIA ?
This is Howards Australia. Silence the dissenters. Silence or sack the ratbags.
Make them pay.
Anyone who disagrees say the most righteous in the Australian media must be from the "Looney Left".
If the Australian media were to offer anything of advice or wisdom to Ms Hanson they would advise her to dump all the hangers on and go back to her beginnings as an Independent, Independent and represent the Australians she first set out to represent.
I for one have always disagreed with Pauline Hanson, One Nation and their views but in a democracy it is hers and their right to be heard whilst at the same time it is my right to tell her she is wrong.
I just wish this recalcitrant Australian media would challenge the incumbents with the same gusto they continually provide to the challengers.
I must believe in Utopia or Fairies in the bottom of the Lodges Gardens.
Steven Presley
While there are several thousand union members employed providing transport services, the vision of the report commissioned by the Labor Council and transport unions goes way beyond wages and conditions.
Their's is an agenda that looks at the way the transport system impacts on the lives of every worker in the state
- how they get to work and get back home, how much time they spend with families, their stress levels, their general health.
What the report, prepared by the Institute for Sustainable Futures, shows is that governments make decisions that affect our lives in such fundamental ways guided by a narrow view of the public interest.
While the Carr Government applies a crude economic analysis to determine whether the system is cost-effective, unions join the community in demanding a broader vision.
Our challenge is to shift the transport debate from being about a problem to be solved to looking at how to enhance this valuable public asset.
It's an important shift to make. In the problem model, rail services are cut because they cost money, new projects are shelved and more toll roads are 'privately built to meet our transport needs'.
But if we use the asset model, we invest in regional rail because it strengthens communities, we encourage workers to use public transport because it makes our air cleaner and we realise that for every bum on a train seat there's one fewer driver clogging our city arteries.
We invest in public transport and we fund it through our taxers, targeting those who benefit from the billions ploughed into road: including the developers whose projects add to the demands on our infrastructure every year.
The message is loud and clear: NSW has a choice - a connected series of communities, with public investment and strategic planning; or a series of wastelands where the private motor vehicle is the only transport option.
In leading this debate unions are staking out a broader agenda than the workplace - an agenda that should over time move into housing, health, education.
Working people don't just need a bargaining agent, they a need an advocate for their interests in an era when big business and compliant governments with deficit fetishes run the world.
Peter Lewis
Editor
CFMEU organiser, Steve Dixon, credits the inter-union agreement with keeping together workers, paid around $300 a week less than standard industry rates.
"This is the way Abigroup works," Dixon says, "it goes to the bush and picks up blokes doing it tough, denies them the $330 living away from home allowance and then uses it to exploit them.
"In the past it has been able to play off one union against the other but not any more."
Dixon said that when workers demanded parity with others in the industry, Abigroup employed its usual tactic of telling the AWU the CFMEU had approached it for a single-union agreement, and telling the CFMEU its traditional civil construction rival had done the same.
"Trouble is," he said, "we told each other. We were able to go a meeting and tell the employer he was lying."
Dixon said the dispute was the most important in civil construction's recent history because Abigroup was determined to slash wages and conditions in a move competitors would have to take into account in future tenders.
The 60 strikers are employed on road or bridge jobs at Coopernook, Weatherill Park, Bangor and Katooomba. More than half those employed at the last two venues have had to either move out of caravan parks or rented accommodation since the dispute began.
The two unions are holding collections around Sydney, Newcastle and 'Wollongong sites and were this week able to make contributions towards strikers living costs.
AbiGroup is in the process of being taken over by German engineering company, BillfingerBurger, which already owns Australian construction heavyweight Balderstone Hornibrook.
The Left-Right union combination had its first workout in a recent dispute with the Abi-Leightons joint venture building the Western Orbital motorway. Protracted action beat off attempts to introduce AWAs and won significant wage increases.
The unions sealed their new approach in a formal agreement, brokered by NSW Labor Council representatives, and signed last Thursday.
Labor Council secretary, John Robertson, warned the industry the rules had changed as a result.
"If I was an employer in civil construction I would be very nervous," he said. "For the first time, in a very long time, these two unions are focused on the main game. Things will be very different as a result."
CFMEU representatives made a light-hearted presentation to AWU secretary, Russ Collison at last Thursday's Labor Council meeting with CFMEU president, Peter McLelland, apologising to delegates in advance for ruining much of the entertainment they had come to expect.
"The only place most delegates ever expected the CFMEU and AWU to bury the hatched was in each other's foreheads," McLelland admitted.
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