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Labour Calls Labor to Account

ALP Members of Parliament should commit themselves to the trade union movement or lose preselection and financial support, according to unions angry at the Carr Government's continued push towards competitive tendering.

	Bernie Riordan Fires Up Delegates

Two key ALP unions, the Australian Workers Union and the Electrical Trades Union are leading the charge, foreshadowing changes to pre-selections rules at state conference.

Russ Fires Up

AWU state secretary Russ Collision has written to all NSW union secretaries, raising fundamental concerns about the Carr Government's competitive tendering agenda.

Collison says the policy is creating 'unnecessary heartache' on thousands of employees across a range of industries including Forestry, National Parks, Roads and Traffic Authority, State Rail, Rail Services Australia and Land and Water Conservation.

He says he'll be writing to all NSW ALP Ministers, MPs and any future candidates informing them that "unless they support the AWU and the trade union movement in NSW either through Hansard in the NSW Parliament or public acknowledgment, then those ALP members will receive no financial, physical or moral support from the Australian Workers Union."

"NSW ALP politicians must acknowledge the concerns of their constituents and supporters of face the possibility of their own political demise," Collision writes.

Bernie Adds Spark

ETU state secretary Bernie Riordan has gone further, arguing that preselection rules need to be reviewed to ensure Members of Parliament are committed to the trade union movement.

"What's occurring in the public sector in NSW is nothing more than privatisation by stealth," he says.

"It's our Party and it's time we reclaimed it," Riordan told delegates at this week's Labor Council, signalling that the battle would be taken up at October's State Conference.

And he's asked all unions to gather examples of where services have been contracted out by the public sector and are now being performed in a more costly, less productive, inefficient or unsafe manner.

Social Audit gets NCOSS Backing

Another debate earmarked for this year's State Conference, the union movement's call for a social audit, has received the backing of the peak welfare lobby NCOSS>

NCOSS director Gary Moore has proposed a community forum by held to look at the importance of a social audit of Government service funding and provision in NSW.

The Forum would be jointly hosted by NCOSS, the Labor Council and the Ethnic Communities Council and would be held in the lead-up to State Conference.

  View entire issue - print all of the articles!

  Issue 22 contents

»	Workers' Rights Butchered
»	Unions Back Shaw Plan
»	Buddy�s Buddy Still Singing Blues
»	Labour Calls Labor to Account
»	Olympic Gear - Labor Standards Should Apply
»	Ship of Shame into Darling Harbour
»	Cardboard King Seeks Warehouse Showdown
»	Nurses Enter New Years Fray
»	University Under Fire For Union-Busting Tactics
»	Inquiry to Lift the Lid on Public Service Bargaining
»	Currawong Back on Agenda
»	APHEDA Seeks Campaign and Marketting Officer

»	Guest Report
»	Sport
»	Trades Hall
»	Piers Watch

»	Youth Wages Campaign a Must for the Union Movement
»	Cheers for Piers
»	Cheers from Geneva

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