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Issue No. 227 | 02 July 2004 |
A Place To Call Home
Interview: Power and the Passion Unions: Tackling the Heavy Hitters Industrial: Seeing the Forest For The Wood Housing: Home Truths International: Boycott Busters Economics: Ideology and Free Trade History: Long Shadow of a Forgotten Man Review: Chewing the Fat Poetry: Dear John
Crikey: Irwin Feeds Staff AWAs Macdonald Ponders Asbestos Blue Murdoch Faces Discrimination Rap
Politics The Soapbox The Locker Room Postcard
Labor Council of NSW |
News Crikey: Irwin Feeds Staff AWAs
The Zoo, an official AWA ambassador, has signed up its 450 staff to the non-union agreements which pay all staff equally from reptile keepers to labourers and have abolished penalty rates for weekend and public holiday work. Irwin caused a media storm last year by dangling his month old son in front of a hungry crocodile and, more recently, drew criticism for his behaviour in Antarctic wilderness areas. "AWA's are excellent in terms of keeping it simple. As a base document to build our policy on, I couldn't ask for anything better," his HR manager, SandyWhitehead, said. The announcement that Irwin had been co-opted to the AWA campaign was the last official engagement of controversial Employment Advocate, Jonathan Hamberger. The federal government has used AWAs to undermine collective agreements and attempt to write trade unions out of the employment relationship. Hamberger has promoted their use, even when they cut workers' earnings by thousands of dollars. Despite the support of Hamberger, and advocates like Irwin, less than three percent of Australian workers are covered by AWAs. As employment advocate, Hamberger conducted a long-running campaign against the CFMEU and his 11-page report into the construction industry was responsible for the federal government establishing the Cole Royal Commission. His office was castigated by Justice Marshall for putting up witnesses who had "artificially manufactured a confrontation" and told "untruths" in a court case against the CFMEU. Hamberger, an ex-staffer of Industrial Relations Minister Peter Reith, will take up his appointment as a senior deputy president of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission.
The Howard Government was accused of "stacking" the bench in the lead-up to the last federal election. So far, it has made 17 appointments to the IRC, the vast majority from employer backgrounds.
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