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Issue No. 254 | 04 March 2005 |
That�s Our Team
Interview: Dot.Com Workplace: Dirt Cheap Industrial: Daddy Doesn�t Live With Us Anymore Economics: Who's Afraid of the BCA? International: From the Wreckage Politics: Infrastructure Blues History: Meat and Three Veg Savings: Super Seduction Politics: Popping the 'E-Word' Poetry: To Know Somebody Review: Off the Rails
Rev Kev: Innocent Shall Be Guilty It�s Official - Taskforce "Hopeless" Hollywood For Tropfest Evictees Experts Back Better Childcare Pay
The Soapbox The Locker Room New Matilda Parliament Postcard
Janet�s Job No Victory Royal Finger Lickers Will $20 Restore Carr? Two Ideas
Labor Council of NSW |
News Hundreds Resist Porridge
Four hundred Bunbury tradesmen who defied attempts to have them fined or imprisoned are on the brink of total victory in their battle for equal pay. Days after contractors at BHP's Worsley alumina plant won Federal Court injunctions exposing 66 strikers to fines, or gaol, two key employers capitulated and agreed to equal pay for maintenance and construction workers. Collex, which employs 48 of the workers, is now the only Worsley contractor holding out but workers have voted to stay out as a group until it folds. CFMEU and MUA members from Perth joined a rally of over 400 tradesmen yesterday, characterising the action as the first major challenge to John Howard's IR agenda. They arrived at Bunbury just in time to hear Downer Engineering EDI and total Corrosion Control had agreed to strikers' demands. Bunbury tradesmen have been out since February 4 after contractors refused to cut permanent tradesmen in on rates being negotiated for the site's expansion project. The contractors won Federal Court injunctions against maintenance tradesmen and, last Tuesday, orders for 66 named workers to return to the site, exposing them to prison or fines of $2000 a day. Workers rejected both directions. AMWU organiser, Tony Lovett, said maintenance tradesmen had voted "overwhelmingly" to ignore that sought to split them off from counterparts on the construction project. "There is a longstanding history, over here, of people getting the same pay for doing the same work on the same job," Lovett said. "It's called a fair go and that's what these guys believe in." Unions WA secretary, Dave Robinson, said the employers' use of punitive laws had lifted the dispute to one of national significance. "What has come across is the determination of employers to target individual workers and that is what we expect Howard to encourage with his legislation," Robinson said. "A lot of workers are saying, if that's the colour of his legislation, we are happy to be tested on it."
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