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A Place To Call Home
These days the Great Australian Dream is closer to a fantasy, where the chances of owning to your own home depend on either inheriting property or winning lottery.
Interview: Power and the Passion
ALP's star recruit Peter Garrett shares his views on unions, forests and being the Member for Wedding Cake Island
Unions: Tackling the Heavy Hitters
Tony Butterfield became a State of Origin gladiator at the unlikely age of 33. Even that, Jim Marr reports, couldn�t prepare him for the knock-down, drag-em-out world of modern IR.
Industrial: Seeing the Forest For The Wood
Proposals to flog off NSW�s forests have raised eyebrows and temperatures amongst some of the key players reports Phil Doyle.
Housing: Home Truths
CFMEU national secretary John Sutton argues for a radical solution to the housing affordability crisis.
International: Boycott Busters
International unions have issued a new list of corporations breaching ILO sanctions to do business in Burma.
Economics: Ideology and Free Trade
The absurdities of neoclassical economic assumptions has never stood in the way of their being trotted out to justify profiteering and attacks on the rights of citizens. The AUSFTA is the latest rort we are supposed to swallow, writes Neale Towart.
History: Long Shadow of a Forgotten Man
Interest in JC Watson's short time as Labor's first Prime Minister should not detract from his more substantial role as Party leader, writes Mark Hearn
Review: Chewing the Fat
As debate rages in Australia about Fast Food advertising, Julianne Taverner takes a look at a side of the industry that Ronald McDonald won�t tell you about in Supersize Me.
Poetry: Dear John
Workers Online reader Rob Mullen shares some personal correspondence with our glorious leader.
NRMA Reverses Over Turnbull
Privatisation Kills
Crikey: Irwin Feeds Staff AWAs
Nurses Telegraph Fight Back
"Sexiest Man" Plays it Safe
Eureka: Bug Swats Hadgkiss
Macdonald Ponders Asbestos Blue
Latham Gets Late Mail
Murdoch Faces Discrimination Rap
Boss Goes Postal
Oberon Survives Bomb Threat
Howard Out On CD
Telstra Hangs Up On Staff
Activists What�s On!
Politics
The Westie Wing
As the NSW Labor Government sells its first budget deficit in nine years, the real concern for the union movement is the devil in the detail, especially when it comes to procurement agreements, writes Ian West. The Soapbox
Rubber Bullets
Labor's IR spokesman Craig Emerson launches a few characteristic salvos across the Parliamentary chamber The Locker Room
Tears After Bedtime
Phil Doyle says that it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye Postcard
Postcard from Vietnam
APHEDA's Hoang Thi Le Hang reports from the north of Vietnam on a project being fund by Australian unionists.,
Letter From America
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News
Eureka: Bug Swats Hadgkiss
Building Industry Task Force boss, Nigel Hadgkiss, is ducking questions about a listening device found on a Melbourne construction site.
Three hundred building workers walked off Grocon�s Eureka Towers development after the bug was found in their shop steward�s shed.
They handed the device to Victorian Police and returned to work, last Tuesday, sceptical over employer and Task Force efforts to distance themselves from illegal eavesdropping.
The discovery came after CFMEU official, John Setka, was prosecuted by the Task Force following a bitter union-Grocon dispute that drew the attention of leading Coalition politicians.
Hadgkiss' Task Force is also at the centre of allegations levelled in the Senate that it "illegally" and "covertly" bugged workers on a Perth construction site.
Hadgkiss told a Senate inquiry he didn't believe it was illegal for "anybody" to covertly record conversations under WA law.
Last year, a former undercover policeman told another parliamentary inquiry that Hadgkiss had recorded conversations, without authorisation, at the time of the NSW Wood Royal Commision.
Victorian CFMEU spokesman, Jesse Madisson, said workers were particularly upset about the Grocon listening device because of last month's death of a workmate in a motorcycle accident.
The union brought counsellors to the site and they used the shop steward's shed to hold one-on-one sessions with distressed former workmates.
"Our members were shocked to discover their private conversations were being recorded," Madisson said. "The guys would be upset by that at any time, it's an invasion of privacy, but this situation made it that much worse."
Hadgkiss refused to confirm or deny his organisation's involvement in bugging, in general, or planting the Eureka device.
""It's a matter before the Senate Inquiry and departmental inquiry and I am not going to comment any further," Hadgkiss said.
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Issue 227 contents
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