*****
The sweating heaving frame of Peter Costello lurched from the cabinet room, smoke billowing out of the door behind him as the groans and cries of his colleagues emanated from the interior.
"More!" Cried Costello, his face contorted into a grinning rage. "More! I must have more reform!"
"She cannot take it, Peter!" cried the wavering voice of Kevin Andrews, who was nervously toying at his ecclesiastical collar. "She's going to blow!"
"More!" Roared Costello. "I must have more reform!"
Andrews shrunk back from the demented treasurer, cringing as Costello leapt forward once more into the cabinet committee...
A lovely glimpse into life after John Howard retires, or finally disappears up George Bush's fundament, was revealed to us all during the week when the increasingly erratic treasurer blessed us all with his finite wisdom.
Just how finite it is became apparent with a generous self-assessment of his own unfair dismissal proposals.
Readers will be pleased to hear that Peter thinks they're tops. In fact, he doesn't think that unfairness should be limited to just small to medium to rather large employers with under a hundred wage slaves, but his munificence should be extended to all employers, so that every Australian can share in the benefits of unfairness.
The argument that sacking people creates jobs has deeply impressed the Australian public. As has Costello's proposition that most of us don't want holidays, or even a break for that matter.
The Australian public is very forgiving by and large, and many would have noticed that Peter's statements came after he had spent some time in the tropics, and his departure from the script could have been put down to a mild case of Beri-beri, or Ross River Fever. They were certainly received with about as much enthusiasm.
Peter was up in the tropics gritting his teeth as Dear Leader Howard was playing GI Joke in Baghdad and Lords, so no wonder getting someone out of a job has been playing on our Tool Of The Week's mind.
The laugh-a-minute Costello show showed further intellectual alacrity by pushing a line that ran at about 180 degrees from what his hapless colleague, the Rev Kev Andrews was saying.
While the Rev was taking a big breath and attempting again to sell what has fast become a big bag of rotten fish guts, Peter was up in the tropics, catching a tan, grinning like a loon and gibbering into anything that looked like a microphone that we needed workplace reform to fix the economy.
It was a tad embarrassing that the economy that needs fixing is the same one he is assuring us is humming along nicely under his capable guidance.
While this split-personality economy may match Peter's own psychological state, it has become somewhat disconcerting for the rest of us. Let's just hope our Tool Of The Week isn't being left alone with sharp objects for any length of time.
While many of us have grown used to Peter's increasingly erratic mutterings as John Howard has stayed on and on and on in the job, most of what he gibbers on about is considered to be about as engaging as shower mould.
But this exceptional effort over the past week, where he went on the record as saying that he wanted to give people the power to lose their holidays and meal breaks, has been truly remarkable.
It's the closest we've got to anyone in this government publicly acknowledging that negotiating as an individual in the workplace is the 900-pound gorilla at the kitchen table.
What do you say to a 900-pound gorilla sitting at your kitchen table?
Whatever the 900-pound gorilla wants you to say.
"You'd be foolish if you took away that right to negotiate," says Peter.
Which is exactly what the trade union movement is arguing.
Apart from Peter saving the trade union movement a lot of time and money by being an excellent argument as to why these changes should be dumped, he is also a wonderful character study should anyone wish to sketch a character of a man unraveling in the public gaze.
Bob Carr told Workers Online, Canberra's power grab had whittled away the ability of state governments to deliver services.
Canberra has moved aggressively to impose its ideology on health, education, transport and industrial relations - going as far as withholding funds from states who won't toe its line.
After 10 years in power, Carr admitted, it had weighed on considerations of his future.
"It is a pronounced pattern," he said. "They are reducing the power of state governments.
"Industrial relations is only the most obvious example, and I have got to say, it was a factor, yes."
Carr told Unions NSW the federal government's funding model was short-changing the people he had been elected to represent.
He said NSW was being deliberately cheated of $1.9 billion under five-year Commonwealth funding arrangements.
Carr predicted Howard would find he had gone a step too far with his radical plan to strip entitlements from Australian workers.
He described that agenda as "absolutely" a weakness and said it had welded state, federal and industrial Labor together in an alliance capable of winning the next federal election.
"Australia does not need this. Howard is completing an ideological and it is absolutely unnecessary," he said.
"The ironic thing is that we are rediscovering the nature of a Labor Party out of this. The state and federal parties are united and we are with you all the way."
He congratulated unions on taking the battle up to Howard, saying their community campaign was "thrashing" federal government's taxpayer-funded campaign.
Carr said politics had always been about competing interests.
"We governed for all the people in NSW but with special attention to the needs of working people. It was their interests I was elected to represent," he said.
Reviewing his years in office, he said, he had been especially proud of successes won in partnership with the trade union movement.
He highlighted the Sydney Olympics - delivered in co-operation with a strong, unionised workforce - and last year's campaign that forced James Hardie to compensate asbestos disease sufferers.
Working with nurses, teachers, transport workers and "our wonderful fireys" to improve the services they delivered, he said, had been an "honour".
Reports from Amberley suggest many workers there were not told, or didn't realise, they were being flown into the centre of a dispute over Boeing's refusal to give the Williamtown workers a collective agreement.
"Workers at Boeing Amberley don't wish to be used as political pawns in Boeing's fight against a collective agreement," a spokesperson for the Queensland based employees told Worker's Online.
Less than half of the original 23 strike breakers flown in by Boeing returned for a second week after being escorted to and from work by police during their first week.
Boeing's ads for Aircraft Tradespersons - Avionics And Structures make no mention of individual contracts, and mislead about working conditions, according to John Boyd from the Australian Workers Union.
"What they don't mention is the individual contracts, the 43 hours a week before overtime, or even that overtime is only ever paid at time and a half," he said.
"We'd urge anyone interested in those jobs to call in at the picket line or visit our website at www.williamtown.org.au, and find out the truth."
Boeing has already lost the dispute, according to AWU National secretary Bill Shorten, but they are too arrogant to admit it.
Shorten warned any potential strike breakers that they should remember what happened to the strike breakers in the waterfront dispute, who were abandoned by employers after the victorious MUA members returned to their jobs.
The locked out Williamtown workers are calling for Australians to help them through their dispute by being a part of an Adopt-A-Family scheme being run out of the union's Newcastle office.
Members of the public can sponsor a family of a locked out worker to help them make ends meet during the dispute. Details can be obtained by phoning the AWU Newcastle office on (02) 4967 1155.
They placed their demand for accountability on political advertising before the court, after Workplace Relations Minister, Kevin Andrews, snubbed lawyers' letters seeking authorisation for his $20 million spend on behalf of Canberra's beleaguered workplace agenda.
Shadow Attorney General, Nicola Roxon, said the Howard Government has spent almost a billion dollars on "information to citizens" since it was elected in 1996.
The taxpayer-funded IR campaign, however, she argued, was fundamentally different because there had been no parliamentary authorisation.
"The Constitution makes clear that the Government can only spend money that Parliament has given it," Roxon said.
"This is not some constitutional technicality, it goes to the very heart of our parliamentary democracy."
The action, which opened in Melbourne last Wednesday, asks the High Court to block further public spending in support of workplace changes that will green-light unfair dismissals, drastically reduce basic entitlements, and allow employers to force workers onto secret, individual contracts.
It has been filed on behalf of Roxon and ACTU secretary, Greg Combet, and names Andrews and Finance Minister, Nick Minchin, as defendants.
It seeks a ruling that the spend is illegal under sections 81 and 83 of the Australian Constitution.
The case breaks new ground because it will see the court examine what boundaries should be placed around party political spending of taxpayers' money.
Roxon argues government's move to rush forward the defence of its workplace agenda is different from previous advertising splurges because, rightly or wrongly, they had been ticked off by Parliament.
"The details of Mr Howard's extreme industrial relations changes have not even been announced, let alone put before the Parliament, but that hasn't stopped the Liberal Party putting its hands in our pockets," she said.
"Even though he now controls both houses of parliament, Mr Howard is not above the law."
The Prime Minister over-rode his Workplace Relations Minister to rush his defence onto television, radio and print after polls revealed community campaigning, led by unions, was inflicting serious political damage.
Ex-military officer Kieron Wain's bizarre behaviour as manager at Port Waratah in Newcastle culminated in him removing a meal room door to stop drivers �hiding�.
"There were never people hiding in there," says Stephen Wright, a locomotive driver with Pacific National.
The Port Waratah drivers installed their own door on the meal room, measuring five inches by five inches, on one of the remaining hinges - and dubbed it the 'Kieron Wain memorial door'.
"The military style regime was something we weren't used to," says Wright. "Since he left, morale has returned to where it was before he arrived."
During his time at Port Waratah, Wain came under a cloud over an alleged anger management issues, with drivers claiming he threw furniture and office equipment about.
Workers Online understands that Wain accompanied army reservists who were to be used as strike breakers in the 1998 waterfront dispute to Dubai.
Wain moved to Pacific National's Melbourne Freight Terminal at the beginning of this year.
In his brief time in Melbourne Wain has been forced to apologise to another Pacific National employee, Phil Allen, over an argument about drivers' uniforms.
He also allegedly told a female customer that if staff didn't perform "their penis' would be on the line".
Safety Torn Up
Meanwhile Pacific National drivers have blown the whistle on another senior manager who dumped a damming safety report in a garbage bin.
In a meeting with Pacific National employees, manager Doug Grimmond opened an envelope containing an external audit of Pacific National safety. The report was a damning indictment of declining safety standards between 2003 and May 2005.
Andrews promised Queensland employers this week he would legislate to end roping-in provisions that unions have used to ensure people outside the reach of awards received minimum conditions.
In 2003, the SDA sought to rope-in Victorian retail bosses who had used Jeff Kennett's legislation to put workers onto individual contracts.
The Australian Industrial Relations Commission ruled on January 17, 2003, that it was "beyond doubt" that the Kennett "safety net" had fallen below federal awards and that employees had been disadvantaged because they did not receive overtime, penalty rates, annual leave loadings, nor severance entitlements contained in the award.
The Kennett legislation was a forerunner of what the federal government intends imposing nationally, where individual contracts are only measured against a handful of minimum conditions.
University research into the Victorian situation, showed employees on Kennett's schedule 1A were "significantly disadvantaged" when compared with workers on award minimum rates.
Only six percent of Schedule 1A workplaces paid shift allowance; less than a quarter paid weekend penalties; barely a third paid annual leave loadings; and only 40 percent recognised overtime.
The situation was more dramatically outlined in the hospitality sector where only eight percent of such employers paid weekend penalties, and 19 percent paid overtime.
Andrews said Victorian retailers had been "forcibly roped-in" to paying award minimums.
"That doesn't make any sense at all," Andrews told a Commerce Queensland audience in Brisbane.
Andrews also told them that centralising industrial relations, under Canberra's control, "was not about centralisation".
In fact, he suggested, it was more like Australian Rules football.
"In the 1970s if you lived in Melbourne and followed football you watched the Victorian Football League," he explained.
"However football, along with the rest of ther world, has changed - to survive it got bigger, it crossed borders and it delivered several premierships to Queenslanders but as part of the Australian Football League."
Move over Merrick and Rosso, Workers Radio is set to hit the airwaves on 88.9FM from 5.30 to 9.00 on weekday mornings.
Presented by North Coast radio legend, Craig Bulley, the show is set to be a lively mix of music, entertainment, and information pitched at Sydney's early starters and travelling public.
More than a dozen unions have joined together to establish the program as a way of getting a message out to workers in an entertaining format.
The show has already attracted a great deal of interest with rumours that several big name radio celebrities could be set to make appearances.
Backers are looking for further financial support to keep the show on air. Individuals are taking out annual memberships at $20 each.
Unions NSW welcomed the radio's arrival and agreed to forward information to its affiliates.
Postcards telling people to lock up their dogs will find their way into two million letterboxes across the state.
According to Australia Post there will be a particular focus on Sydney's North Shore, where the risk of a dog bite or being hit by a car is the highest.
CEPU Victorian Secretary Joan Doyle said while she would welcome the postcards in her state, posties have more to contend with than their traditional canine foes.
She said high volumes of mail to sort, and getting deliveries in on time is leading to injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome and accidents on bikes.
"It's a time and motion pressure cooker - the minute a postie gets to work the pressure is on."
Doyle said dogs were a perennial problem for posties.
"It's no laughing matter - everyone will be able to tell you their dog stories," she said.
"When I worked as a postie there was one blue healer that would come out like a bullet and grab your foot."
Doyle said current statistics on postie injuries were unreliable and the CEPU would be conducting a survey in coming months.
The Federal Government letter gives senior staff the "choice" between an AWA or a 30 to 40 per cent pay cut - a policy which has been enforced by the Howard Government since 1999.
Andrews had accused Beazley of campaigning against AWAs while endorsing them for his senior staff.
But a spokesman for Beazley said the Howard Government had changed the law so there was no real choice but to sign AWAs.
"The Howard Government requires senior staff to go on AWAs as a condition of employment," he said.
"The Labor Party remains in opposition to AWAs."
Andrews has been spruiking the Government's industrial relations changes on the basis that they will offer more choice for employees.
Earlier this year it was revealed new staff in his own department were being forced to sign AWAs.
HT Lee was a left wing ALP activist for over 30 years. In the 1970's and 80's he was in the thick of factional wars in inner Sydney, often accompanying future MP's Peter Baldwin and Peter Crawford door knocking.
Marian Wilkinson, in her definitive biography on Graham Richardson "The Fixer", made much of the bravery of HT Lee. The diminutive HT won plaudits from Wilkinson for his courage- being involved in more than one angry confrontation with colourful local ALP identities such as Tom Domican. HT by all accounts didn't take a backward step during such confrontations.
HT Lee worked loyally for many years for the CFMEU. He edited the CFMEU journal "UNITY" managing its transformation from Pravda style broadsheet to a full colour glossy magazine.
1999 saw what was arguably HT's finest moment. He was in East Timor in the chaos before and immediately after the referendum that ultimately resulted in that nations independence.
HT worked as a freelance journalist in Dili during these dangerous days. He did innumerable radio interviews with Australian radio stations, expressing a compassionate perspective on the apocalypse engulfing the East Timorese people and advocating UN intervention.
HT was on the last Hercules of evacuees out of the UN compound in Dili. A magnificent photo he took of a crying local boy was run on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age. HT maintained an active interest and involvement in the East Timor solidarity movement for the rest of his life.
A few years later HT assisted in the production of a documentary DVD about the unfairness of oil and gas royalties between Australia and East Timor in the "Timor Gap". The documentary was central to educating the Australian people on the issue. The recent settling of this issue -providing a fairer distribution of oil and gas royalties- will have been of immense satisfaction to HT.
Over the last few years HT Lee was also active in support of the Burmese people. He made repeated trips to Thailand to work with and for Burmese refugees on the Thai/Burma border.
A memorial service for HT will be held next Tuesday August 2nd at Le Pine, 716 High Street Thornbury (Melbourne) at 9:30AM, followed by a lunch at Sukhothai Restaurant in High Street Northcote.
Anyone seeking further information about the memorial service or lunch can call Neil on 0407 057 081.
Department of Workplace Relations employees have voted to take industrial action this week to force the Government to back away from its ideological agenda.
The CPSU has been negotiating a new enterprise agreement with DEWR since last year.
The department improved its pay offer and salary progression following a union campaign last month, but it is still holding out on access to the Industrial Relations Commission and its policy of employing all new staff on AWAs.
People can support DEWR employees in their campaign for a fair agreement by sending a protest letter to Andrews. Visit http://www.cpsu.org.au/campaigns/DEWR/protest/index.html for more information.
Meanwhile, Centrelink has been advertising for graduate jobs with "a generous remuneration package ... depending on your qualifications, an Australian Workplace Agreement and a permanent full-time job."
Centrelink has also been holding out on an enterprise agreement with its staff and have been active in pushing the Government's AWA agenda.
Longtime union and left activist HT Lee died in Melbourne this week from complications arising out of heart surgery.
Secretary Greg Combet has rejected the Prime Minister's call for employees to "trust" business to exercise its new-found powers responsibly.
"Tell that to a James Hardie mesothelioma victim," Combet responded.
He called on the government to maintain a system of safeguards and entitlement in the form of enforeceable legal rights.
Canberra is preparing a rewritten Workplace Relations Act that will strip away the right to a range of workplace protections, including negotiated rates of pay, unfair dismissal rights and conditions such as penalty rates and four weeks annual leave.
Analysts say, essentially, Canberra is preparing enabling legislation that won't, of itself, write existing conditions out of existence but will enable employers to get rid of them.
Combet says the Prime Minister's agenda "lacks humanity" and would set Australia on a path of increased inequality and exploitation.
He said it was dishonest to promote the community campaign against the changes as being just about unions.
"Our opposition is about all working people, their democratic rights and living standards, and the future direction of our country," he said.
Meanwhile, key senators have revealed that more than eight million people will lose their guaranteed rights to meal breaks and paid public holidays, under the proposed regime.
They say, pay for Christmas Day, Good Friday and Anzac Day will no longer be an automatic right for workers not covered by an award.
Family First Senator Steve Fielding and Queensland National, Barnaby Joyce, have both opposed the clawbacks.
Melbourne's Herald Sun, last week, quoted a spokesman from Andrews' office confirming public holidays would be excluded from its list of minimum conditions.
The rights of working Australians are not "charity" to be dispensed at the whim of business leaders, according to the ACTU.
Telstra's head of regulatory affairs, Kate McKenzie says the funding for the universal service obligation - an industry funded regulatory safety net that makes a standard telephone service and payphones reasonably accessible to all Australians - was not adequate to cover the cost of what needed to be done.
"In the longer term, it's not sustainable".
McKenzie also said the regulatory framework that guaranteed services to the bush was starting to crack under pressure.
"The Nationals can complain all they like but this is what privatisation is all about," says Colin Cooper, president of the communications division of the CEPU. "This exact problem has been coming up for 20 years and people have been in denial about it."
Cooper accused the Federal government of concentrating on privatisation rather than regulation.
Record Profit As Jobs Axed
The revelations came as the Australian Stock Exchange announced a record net profit of $165 million for the last financial year.
At the same time the ASE announced that 61 jobs would be axed from the organisation.
Three days after starting work as an apprentice roof plumber with Gary Denson Roofing, Joel Exner, 16, died from internal injuries sustained when he fell from the roof of a construction site at Eastern Creek on October 15, 2003.
Detective Senior Constable Ronald Tarlington said the national occupational health and safety manager for the Australand site, Charles Harper, said he had found Garry Denson to be someone did the job quickly with minimum costs.
Tarlington also gave evidence of how Joel's shoes - a pair of sneakers - were found near his body. The soles were worn and his laces were not tied.
"We raised the issue of workplace safety at the Cole Royal Commission into the building industry," says NSW construction union secretary Andrew Ferguson. "We were afraid there would be a copycat death after seventeen year old Dean McGoldrick was killed,"
"His mother pleaded with the commission to investigate what had happened to her son. Cole gave a commitment to visit a building site, but because the developer on the chosen site didn't want to be scrutinized, he didn't go."
"This two faced approach to safety reveals the double standards of the Howard government."
An arrest warrant has been issued for Exner's supervisor on the day he died, Andrew Jones, who has not been able to be subpoenaed to give evidence at the Coronial inquiry.
Detective Tarlington told Westmead Coroners' Court that he had considered laying charges of involuntary manslaughter but thought a coronial inquest was the best way to proceed.
Last week NSW Deputy State Coroner carl Milovanovich made a number of recommendations coming out of the inquiry, including preferring the NSW Code of Practice for safe Work on Roofs part 1 be a minimum standard.
The Deputy state Coroner did not find sufficient evidence for a charge of manslaughter or involuntary manslaughter to be laid.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) have split from the AFL-CIO over differences of opinion on organising priorities and methods.
The SEIU is the largest AFL-CIO affiliate with 1.8 million members.
The two unions announced they were forming a competing union coalition designed to reverse declining union membership.
Service Employees International leader Andrew Stern said the decision to disaffiliate was not an easy one.
"At a time when our corporate and conservative adversaries have created the most powerful anti-worker political machine in the history of our country, a divided movement hurts the hopes of working families for a better life," said AFL-CIO president John Sweeney.
Two other unions -- United Food and Commercial Workers and UNITE HERE, a group of textile and hotel workers -- joined the Teamsters and the SEIU in boycotting the AFL-CIO convention
The four unions represent one-third of the AFL-CIO's 13 million members.
A new book on this era, A Turbulent Decade: Social Protest Movements and the Labour Movement, 1965-1975, edited by Beverley Symons and Rowan Cahill, was launched earlier this month in Sydney by Professor Verity Burgmann of the University of Melbourne.
The book is noteworthy because it brings together veterans of the period who recall and reflect upon the decade, often candidly, at times vulnerably so.
The focus is Sydney and New South Wales, and a great deal that is new is added to the public record. The book covers the Anti-Vietnam War and Anti-Conscription Movements, the Student, New Left and Counter Culture Movements, Women's Liberation, Gay and Lesbian Rights, Aboriginal Land Rights and Civil Rights, the Anti-Apartheid Movement, the Trade Union Movement, and the Australian Labor Party.
The thirty-nine contributors include Meredith Burgmann, Jack Cambourn, Bruce Childs, Graham Freudenberg, Hall Greenland, Bob Gould, Suzanne Jamieson, Race Mathews, Tom McDonald, Jack Mundey, Sue Tracey, Lyndall Ryan, Paul True, Barrie Unsworth.
An Introduction by co-editor Rowan Cahill, an activist of the period and a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, firmly places the period 1965-1975 in the context of Australian political and cultural history and argues that the radicalism of the period was very much a homegrown product and not a foreign import.
A Turbulent Decade is published by the Sydney Branch of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History and is available from the Branch at PO Box 1027 Newtown NSW 2042, for $24 per copy (including postage).
Peter Kennedy's abusive rant (Workers Online #273) against environmental campaigners is unbecoming of a unionist. There is no need to engage in these tactics if your intention is to mobilise working class people against their exploiters. Traditional union organising methods will do just fine for that. On the other hand, distortion and abuse ARE necessary if you're trying to mobilise working class people BEHIND their exploiters.
Gunns are attempting to get the courts to rule that profits are sacred and that people can't take any action that causes a business to lose money. A moment's thought should be enough to demonstrate that, once the principle is established, the bosses would use it against unions mercilessly. All unionists should therefore be appalled that the Tasmanian Forestry Division of the CFMEU is supporting this. I oppose the Gunns suit, just like I
opposed the law-suit of some Victorian environmental groups against the CFMEU a couple of years ago.
And, finally, let's take a look at the so-called "REAL community group" Timber Communities Australia. I went to their web site and found this little gem, their most recent press release. It's a pain to John Anderson, on his retirement from the National Party leadership:
http://www.tca.org.au/pdfs/2005%2006/2005%2006%2024%20John%20Anderson.pdf
What was it that Peter Kennedy said about being the voice of the workers, not their persecutors?
Greg Platt, Victoria
Your editorial on the now official split in the US labor movement is timely. Nevertheless, while I too am sad at the split and worry about what it might mean for the movement in the US, we should remember that the movement there has split before, notably in the 1930s when the Congress of Industrial Organisations split from the more staid AFL, to go on to organise workers in the mass industries of steel and auto manufacture. Admittedly the context was different-a dreadful economic slump, but a political wind blowing at their back in the form of the Roosevelt administration and the passing of the Wagner Act. Only time will tell if this current move by a number of unions representing around 30% of the affiliates of the AFLCIO will result in better and more innovative organising strategies, or whether it is simply a bunch of egos looking for a smaller sandpit within which to fight. It is a pity though that the US movement can't seem to figure how to build co-operative structures that would permit a better focus on building industry strength, without having to go and split.
In my view the current impasse for working people depends very much on the capacity of the US union movement and I wish them well.
Linda Carruthers, NSW
About John McShane's poem - "Life on a Low Wage": in 13 lines you undercut every jackass's argument against raising minimum wage. I would love to see those fools struggle on what they call a "living wage", as you are doing & I am doing and far too many people in the world are doing.
Jennifer Cirino, USA
Re: article regarding split in US unions. I feel totally in sympathy with the sentiments. I feel the current unions seem to be stuck somewhat in a big business mindset. Even though I realise this is a busy time I have called two officials at my union office (USU) and left messages four times each without getting an answer. I have called many other times when they are simply not available. I have signed up twice for the ACTU activist campaigns and have heard nothing. There seems to be nobody who is organising on the ground people who want to do something. I have asked to be put in touch with any other activist who wants to community campaign together in a hostile electorate and have been referred back to the activist website registration. I have seen people handing out pamphlets twice only and I work in the centre of the city. I asked for hundreds of stickers to stick up on the buses and although once I was sent about 30, the second time I was told that I would have to pay for them and referred back to my union who then sent me about 30 of their own. These stickers have now been removed by whoever. U marched (and got four of my workmates to march) in the march that seemed to fizzle out. I have recruited a third of my workmates but have hit a wall with some people who have had bad union experiences where the union was too slow or incompetent to help them in the past and I could not assure them that it was now any better. I suggested to my union (where I cannot get onto the person who is supposed to help) that she get an assistant. She has not and due to meetings, RDOs and more meetings she is rarely available. Other people there seem to be only able to do their jobs (whatever they are) and cannot help and say they have asked for a call centre! What kind of union is this? Why can't they answer their own phones, especially during this critical time? I have been a member for less than three months and already I am losing faith in the current union movement. I am passionate, committed, ready, willing and able but for what? Apparently i am not needed and my union fire and ire is dying through lack of oxygen. As Ross Gittins (Sydney Morning Herald) said maybe workers need to look elsewhere for solutions.
Pat Francis, NSW
But, with respect, it is only quibbling.
Why, from a family-friendly viewpoint, you would arc up over individual statutory holidays and let plans to rip out two full weeks of guaranteed annual leave go through to the keeper, is not immediately clear.
Howard's Workplace Relations spokesman, Kevin Andrews, has made it crystal clear he wants employers and employees to be able to "trade away" a fortnight of existing four-week entitlements.
It is part of a broad-ranging rewrite of workplace laws that seeks to strengthen the hand of business at the expense of working people and their families.
Business pressure groups, like the BCA and Chamber of Commerce and Industry, must view John Howard as the closest thing to Santa Claus that has ever crawled out of Bennelong.
He has given them everything they wished for and a few unexpected bonuses, for good measure.
Just where the proposal to scrap unfair dismissal rights for everyone at a workplace with less than 101 people came from, is still a mystery. Even the business lobby was only agitating for the right to discriminate against Australians with less than 20 workmates.
The scope of the proposed changes is so broad and fundamental that criticism was inevitable.
Much media, and for that matter, union attention has centred on annual holidays and unjustified dismissals.
Yet, like Christmas and Good Friday, they are merely icing on business' cake.
The active ingredient in this recipe is individual workplace agreements - secret deals that will be used to undermine collective bargaining and the core conditions it has delivered.
Howard and Andrews are arguing, vociferously, that they won't strip anything away from anybody and, technically, they may have a point.
What they are proposing, essentially, is enabling legislation.
Their laws will enable employers to slash wage rates, eliminate overtime payments, do away with weekend rates, and over-rule established conditions and holiday entitlements.
It is on individual contracts, that their plan to Americanise Australian society will stand or fall.
Business understands that and so do its champions.
International law-makers also understood it and that's why they wrote the right to collectively bargain into International Labour Organisation standards that Australia has signed.
Australia, prior to Howard and Andrews, accepted it was a fundamental human right.
What these people also understood was that, for all its apparent sleepiness, the only thing standing between them and the elimination of collective bargaining was the trade union movement.
That's why they have engaged in a decade-long orgy of union vilification. They have used dogs and mercenaries; a travesty of a Royal Commission; and special legislation to deny building workers basic legal protections.
Conservatively, they have spent more than $100 million taxpayer dollars to denigrate unions and union members.
All this, at a time when, to the outside observer anyway, unions had become victims of their own successes, unable to convince large numbers of workers that there was a clear and present need for their services.
The game-plan, clearly, was that, when it came time to rip away the safety net of collective bargaining it could be shrouded in anti-union camouflage.
Well, that time is here and Howard and Andrews are playing their trump for all it is worth.
Their problem is that the attack has been so sharp it has thrown a lot of old truisms back into focus - the sort of things our fathers and grandmothers would have accepted without question.
One of them is that collective bargaining is the central prop for our families' living standards and, another is, that we won't keep it unless we can strengthen our unions.
Jim Marr
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