****
Who do you trust to keep interest rates low?
Certainly not the king of diamonds.
What laughably passes as the leadership of this country has made great claim at being great managers of the economy.
Which makes wonderful sense if the economy doesn't include working people, those with a mortgage, the elderly, the halt, the sick and the lame.
Whether of not Peter Costello is any good at managing the economy for people like you and I is another question entirely, and current indications appear to show he is about as competent as a drunken surgeon.
You would think that a prudent treasurer would be keen to invest in this country, but not Peter Costello. As long as he can keep running the place as a third world country, with the sort of debt that would make a problem gambler blush, he seems to be happy.
Well, not so much happy, as overjoye3d.
Costello featured on the front page of the papers this week doing his 'Oh What A Feeling' routine after putting to bed a budget that looks like it will make Attila The Hun look like a nation builder.
This clown likes to crow about his surplus's, without acknowledging they have been built on the back of kicking kids, destroying education, gutting training in the midst of a skills crisis, booting the sick, taking a baseball bat to single mums and flogging cripples back into nthe workforce.
And for this he is grateful.
Costello has all the warmth of a sociopath, with none of the charm. The damage this drongo has done to this country is best measured in the accelerating rates of bankruptcy, failed mortgages, runaway household debt and increasing strain on household budgets.
Out there in the real world people know that the boom that never happened has long been over for working people.
Housing affordability is a joke, especially in Sydney, the job market is great vif you're an incompetent CEO, but full of dodgy individual contracts that cut conditions for everyone else.
For many working families the price of petrol, groceries, and now, mortgage repayments, is a weekly mountain to climb.
Things are great, assures our Tool Of The Week, we've never had it so good.
If things keep getting better like this we'll be living in corrugated iron humpies by Christmas.
Luckily our Tool Of The Week is so out of touch he believes his own spin. The bloke with no economics credentials would like us to believe he is a sage economic manager, when his only foray into the business world, when he used his law degree to attack working people, even sent the businesses he worked for broke.
There was a time when Costello was touted as the next Prime Minister. Luckily this idea is so laughable that even the cocaine-addled stockbrokers that populate the caring side of the Liberal Party can't get their man taken seriously.
He can now go down as Mr 0.25%, the man who tried the boiling frog experiment on the Australian public, slowly trying to boil us in ever increasing interest rates. The man who never had a clue. A sad figure that placed his faith in his own ego above his concern for the bleeding obviouys.
And now, it comes to this.
Remember, when the budget comes down next week, that the man guiding it, this intellectual and moral husk of a man, is sinking. Time is overtaking him.
The only thing about him that is increasing in stature is his qualities as a tool.
In the wake of the Minister's attempts to score political points off the Beaconsfield mining tragedy, he is being urged to �fess up� on what WorkChoices will mean for workplace safety.
CFMEU assistant national secretary, Dave Noonan, says Andrews law specifically ...
- makes it an offence to include union OH&S training in agreements, even where the employer agrees, and
- provides for $33,000 fines if workers ask for paid leave to attend training meetings, either run by unions or attended by union members
Noonan says, traditionally, in high-risk occupations, including construction, that's exactly where the bulk of OH&S training is done.
"What (Opposition Leader) Kim Beazley said during the week is demonstrably true," Noonan says. "It's there, in black and white, in Andrews' own legislation.
"For Kevin Andrews to play semantics with workers lives, like this, is a disgrace."
Andrews' own anti-worker attack dog, the Office of the Employment Advocate, appears to have sided with Noonan and Beazley.
It has been objecting to workplace agreements on the grounds that OH&S clauses are "prohibited content", under Andrews' new regime.
As recently as April 19, the OEA wrote to Newslands Coal, in Queensland, objecting to an agreement with a clause that allowed workers to attend union-backed safety courses.
Noonan says the reality for construction is that if unions are forbidden from running health and safety training, workers won't be trained.
Currently, across Australia, the CFMEU runs safety inductions for new starters and a myriad of safety training courses, including modules on asbestos removal, safe scaffolding and rigging, safe use of equipment including cranes, material hoists and elevated work platforms; specialist safety rep training, and first aid.
"Unions have made occupational health and safety their priority because we have seen members and workmates die and be horribly injured," he said.
"Thousands and thousands of workers, in our industry, have undergone union occupational health and safety training, along with vocational training.
"We have been successful, over the years, in building health and safety into the fabric of our industry."
Noonan said, if anything, Beazley's criticism of WorkChoices, on OH&S grounds, did not go far enough.
Workers at Lucas Heights confirm that is all that is being saved by a controversial move to cease testing for leaks between the hours of 11pm and 7am.
The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) announcedment sparked anger from workers and emergency services.
The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) says the plant is engaging in a cost cutting agenda leaving the safety of workers and the community at risk.
AMWU State Secretary Paul Bastian said ANSTO's claim monitoring was no longer necessary because of restructuring was a furphy.
"Our members, who have done monitoring in the past, say that's a nonsense," Bastian said.
"They're not prepared to risk the safety of workers and the community."
Bastian said a leak was possible at any time of the day for a multitude of reasons, including electrical faults.
"It's a nuclear reactor, not a microwave."
The union estimates the amount ANSTO would save from not monitoring would equate to the wages of two technicians.
Fire Brigade Union Secretary Craig Harris said a ban would be put in place unless ANSTO safety guarantees.
Harris said the move could breach the safety rules of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency and state occupational health and safety laws.
Spotless Services has become the first company to invoke Australian Business Limited's advice to blame the Prime Minister for conditions being whittled away, with a letter to the LHMU (Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union) saying its hands were clean on the paycut.
The letter said the company - which almost tripled its last financial year from $23 million to $56 million - had no choice but to cut rates to stay competitive.
"Spotless' competitors (including future competitors who are new entrants to the defence contracting industry) will have significantly increased flexibility and decreased costs due to the new options under the new Work Choices system," the letter states.
The LHMU is in enterprise agreement negotiations with Spotless for cleaners at army bases in Melbourne and Puckapunyal.
The company offered a four per cent increase each year over three years on the condition work hours be extended and casual and part-time loading be decreased.
LHMU Victorian Secretary Brian Daley said the current base rate of $468.45 was already below the Defence Award rate of $484.40.
"Spotless is the first cab off the rank and their action could lead to widespread undercutting in the industry," Daley said.
The company is also embroiled in a dispute at The Alfred Hospital with the HSU (Health Services Union).
The HSU claims Spotless is planning to cut jobs and pay conditions of 320 workers.
Spotless employs more than 27,000 people worldwide and services 20,000 clients throughout Australia and New Zealand, according to the company website.
�Rural workers were once able to make a living in shearing, grain handling, fencing and the like, but the conditions, the pay and the continuity just isn't there anymore,� said Mick Madden from the Australian Workers Union.
"Now, skilled and dangerous jobs are being done by backpackers and guest workers.
"The worst thing we ever did in this country was give farmers convicts, ever since then they've expected free labour."
Madden has slammed moves to use backpackers in the shearing industry, where there is a shortage of workers.
"In the early 90s there were over 4,000 shearers in New South Wales, now there'd be lucky to be 400," said Madden. "The industry is crying out for shearers because when the rains come and the wool price goes up, there will not be enough shearers to get the wool off.
"Instead of training young people for these jobs the federal government and the Farmers Federation have turned to cheap labour.
"Why should young people from working families in regional Australia who are trying to get a start in life be ignored, while overseas backpackers from wealthy families are given drinking money."
Madden said the suggestion to use backpackers as shearers was laughable and showed how out of touch the National Party and the Farmers Federation was with the realities of hard work
"It takes three to four years to train a shearer, two to three to even earn more money than a roustabout," said Madden.
Madden pointed to the fruit industry, where backpackers have broken down safety conditions, rates of pay and accommodation standards.
"There needs to be award rates of pay," said Madden. "As we've seen from the Beaconsfield tragedy, there needs to be union run safety inductions. In the rural sector there isn't even informal safety inductions.
Finlay's engineering owner, Jim Sutton, caved after operations at his Heidelberg factory were disrupted by a community protest, last week.
Within 36 hours of residents and union supporters launching their action, Sutton agreed to reinstate shop stewards, Harry Rai and Vince Pascuzzi, along with another worker, punted while on sick leave.
AMWU state president, Chris Spindler, confirmed all three had returned to the job on pre-sacking wages and conditions.
"We are rapt that these guys have all gone back on their original terms, that's the most important thing," Spindler told Workers Online.
"There are issues to be resolved and we will be working our way through them with the company as part of the agreement."
The men were sacked, three weeks ago, after Sutton told a meeting of workers the federal government's new industrial laws gave him control over them and, if
"you people are not prepared to make the production rates that we require then your services won't be required".
After getting rid of the union reps, he dropped AWAs on the rest of the workforce.
One of the dismissed activists said Sutton alleged he had had a "smirk" on his face.
Sutton denied sacking anyone for smirking but, told ABC Radio, he had taken exception to the "facial expression" of one the workers.
He said Howard's laws had made it easier to "control the workforce".
Workers Online understands, Finlay Engineering has submitted AWA for rubber stamping by a federal government agency but that their validity is being checked out by the AMWU.
"We had nothing to do with the protest but it is worth recognising how effective the community can be," Spindler said.
"They did mobilise in support of those workers.'
Sutton was quoted in the Melbourne media as saying Finlay had not backed down.
Unions NSW secretary, John Robertson, has urged affiliates to provide practical support to Sumatra palm oil workers who were fired en masse and had their children expelled from schools for attempting to form an independent union.
"In an era of globalisation, this fight is our fight," Robertson said. "We must stand alongside people, everywhere, who want to improve their lives through strong, independent unions.
Send off an e-mail protest today with the LabourStart Justice for Palm Oil Workers - Free the Musim Mas Six campaign
"Australians can no longer pretend Indonesia is a long way away. They are being subjected to the same pressures that we are facing and it is in our own interests to lift the wages and conditions of workers everywhere."
IUF regional secretary, Ma Wei Pin, said Indonesia's largest palm oil exporter, Musim Mas took action after employees refused to join the "yellow union" it had established.
"They were met with ferocious repression," he said. "Despite being ordered by the Department of Labour to pay going rates and conditions, management simply focused on getting rid of the union," he reported.
More than 1000 workers voted to strike in support of their demands for core Indonesian labour standards including maternity leave, social security registration for daily workers and the availability of copies of their employment agreement.
Ma Wei Pin said, last September, management got local police to arrest six union leaders who have imprisoned ever since.
Meanwhile, 700 permanent employees and 300 contract workers who backed the union were sacked. They were evicted from company-owned homes and their children were expelled from schools within the plantation.
"With the emergence of WorkChoices it is even more important for workers all over the world to stand together," Ma Wei Pin said. "Or pro-employer governments will take advantage of the differences between countries and drive standards down in a race to the bottom."
Unions NSW agreed to endorse a global campaign on behalf of Sumatra palm oil workers. The first step in the campaign is putting the heat on trans-nationals that use palm oil not to be associated with such exploitative practices.
More information on the Musim Mas campaign is available at: IUF website
Forget the claims and counter-claims of politicians and paid union officials. The truth of the Workchoices pudding is in the eating and for Narrabeen Sports High teenager, Amber Oswald, it tasted foul.
She, and her disgusted father, Phil, left the spin at the door of Unions NSW, and furnished delegates with the truth of what AWAs meant to Amber and youngsters like her.
Pow Juice, in Warriewood Square, dropped a take-it or leave-it AWA on the 16-year-old that slashed her weekly earnings from $97 to $65 overnight. Her Sunday rate plummeted from the award specified $14.27 an hour to $8.57.
"We had a meeting on Monday and on Wednesday they told me my wages had dropped from $97 to $65," Amber explained.
Her father went to the heart of AWA argument, explaining key elements of the document Amber had been ordered to sign.
The AWA, he said:
- cut hourly rates back to $8.57
- stripped penal rates for Saturdays and Sundays
- lasted five years, with no wage adjustments during that period
- referred workplace disputes to the private agency that drew up the AWAs for the company
Finally, he said, the AWA contained a clause stating that bringing bad publicity to the company would result in dismissal.
Phil Oswald said there was "no way" that he or Amber could have understood the 15-page document without help.
He said a Pow Juice manager had revealed the truth about AWAs, in media statements during the dispute.
Famously, he told a Sydney radio audience: "It's not about what's fair, it's about what's good for the company".
"I am so proud to be Amber's father because she has shown concern, not just for herself, but for her workmates as well," Phil Oswald said.
"I appeal to other young workers to come forward and bring this shocking treatment of our kids to light."
The SDA won Amber a stay of execution when the Australian Industrial Relations Commission ordered Pow Juice to pay her, and others who had refused to sign AWAs, their original rates.
SDA assistant secretary, Bernie Smith, said that only occurred because the company had bungled its AWAs, if it had got the paperwork right, there was nothing that could have been done under Howard's new IR regime.
In shades of the 1998 waterfront dispute, the juice company went into liquidation on the eve of WorkChoices coming into operation. The same day, as Pow, it offered staff AWAs that undercut award wages and conditions.
In another extraordinary development, a clearly embarrassed company director, Cherily Coad, denied being Cherily Coad, when approached by the Sydney Morning Herald after she was identified by employees.
Amber Oswald told Unions NSW, since the IRC ruling, her manager had been instructed to cut her out of Sunday work.
Brodene Wardley, a crane driver and safety rep at Roche Mining, near Hamilton, was sent a warning she would be gaoled if she did not front the Australian Building and Construction Industry Commission and answer questions about a day and a half safety stoppage.
Workers at the Western Victorian site took action when a bus taking them to the mine almost into a train.
Only last week, Melbourne media was reporting a death, and injuries, after a train and truck collided at a level crossing in the state.
Wardley said she could not speak about details of the hearing or the incident but said the process had been intimidating.
"For me it was a very scary thing, I couldn't understand why I was being called up," the mother of three said.
Workers in the construction industry can be gaoled for six months for not turning up to hearings, not providing all relevant information, or speaking about commission hearings to anyone but their lawyer.
"I'm just a working mum, I'm not political, I'm just doing a job on site which I was elected to do ... to take care to the OHS aspects of the job."
Wardley said though she would "absolutely" not back down over speaking up about safety, the Howard Government's laws intimidated people out of OHS roles.
"Someone needs to do it or someone's going to die," she said.
One person is killed every week on average in the construction industry.
The June 28 rally will take the campaign to the doorstep of local Liberal MP, Louise Markus, who has defended the new laws.
The Week of Action will also see rallies in capital cities across the country as workers step up their opposition to the government's laws.
In NSW, unions are targeting federal seats held by government members, including Penrith based Lindsay, held by Liberal MP, Jackie Kelly.
The Lindsay campaign has even enlisted retirees, who say they are going into bat for the future of their grandchildren.
"Jackie Kelly is fighting for a cr�che in parliament house but I don't see how that's supposed to help working families in Penrith," says Linda Everingham, a casualty department nurse at Nepean Hospital.
Community opposition to the workplace laws has even spread to the local ice hockey team, the West Sydney Ice Dogs, who will be sporting the Your Rights At Work logo on the playing shirts, and promotional material at their Blacktown Stadium.
The rally at Blacktown Showground on Wednesday June 28 will commence at 9am.
The flying kangaroo is advertising on international industry website 'Flight Global' for pilots for long haul routes overseas and domestic routes on Jetstar, which pays its pilots 40 per cent below Qantas.
The Australian and International Pilots Association (AIPA) says Qantas is going overseas at the expense of local pilots and Australian safety standards.
"Given the availability of local pilots only one conclusion can be drawn - this is another attempt to drive down wages and conditions by off-shoring work," AIPA Vice-President Jeff Lunt said.
Lunt said Qantas had turned its back on training its own pilots coming up through the ranks and put at risk Australia's safety reputation.
"It is the experience, training and qualifications gained during this process that make Qantas pilots the highly skilled professionals that they are."
Qantas established Jetstar as a low-cost carrier, paying pilots 40 per cent less than Qantas rates in a deal negotiated with an in-house association, rather than AIPA.
AIPA is the professional and industrial association representing more than 2300 pilots and flight engineers employed by Qantas and its associated entities.
CFMEU assistant national secretary, Dave Noonan, said Independent Contractors Australia (ICA) should publish accounts and membership lists, as unions are required to do, by law.
Kevin Andrews is expected to fulfil an ICA wishlist when he introduces independent contractors legislation to parliament.
Worker representatives expect the bill to deny contractors the right to union representation, and to shift the burden of entitlements such as super, holiday pay, sick pay and insurance from employers to hundreds of thousands of dependent workers.
"It is clear that the people who give this government its instructions are pushing this line," Noonan says. "They want another massive transfer of costs from corporations to Australian citizens.
"We are entitled to know who these people are but nobody knows who funds them or who supports them."
ICA is hellbent on turning employees into contractors but all that's known about the organisation is the identity of three front people with the federal government's ear. They are:
- Economist Angela MacRae. ICA chairman who was formerly attached to the Prime Minister's Office and is a member of the Treasurer's Taskforce on Reducing the Regulatory Burden on Business that floated the idea of denying super payments to more than a million low-paid Australians.
- Building Compay owner, Bob Day, who doubles as president of the aggressively anti-union Housing Industry Association (HIA) and is a member of the federal government's Work for the Dole Advisory Committee.
- ICA executive director, Ken Phillips, who recently published a book called Independence and the Death of Employment.
The identities of funders or supporters isn't revealed on their website or in their literature.
Unions fear contracting legislation will greenlight massive tax evasion, as well removing basic workplace rights from another large group of Australians.
The government's own Building Industry Royal Commission heard evidence from the ATO that millions of dollars a year was being evaded by sham contractors.
Last year, WA roof tilers joined the CFMEU to overcome a cartel of building products firms, and the CEPU spearheaded a successful campaign by broadband and pay tv technicians against some of the country's biggest corporates.
Andrews will deny those groups the right to choose union representation, and also intends taking them beyond the reach of state industrial laws through which they can access unfair contracts remedies.
About 100 cleaners marched from LHMU offices in Haymarket to the three-tower Darling Park in Sussex St, last Friday, where they called on owners, tenants and office workers to look at cleaning practices introduced by contractor Baytons.
The amount of time cleaners have to keep the offices in shape has been slashed by 116 hours a week, in a contract agreed to by Baytons.
"Our research indicates that these practices do not just hurt the nearly 100 cleaners who work in the 73 floor 132,000 square metre complex," says Mark Boyd from the LHMU Cleaners Union. "We believe they hurt the workers in these offices.
"It is our view that the consumers of this service, as well as the cleaners who provide this service, are both being unfairly treated by the contract cleaning company Baytons,"
Friday's noisy rally is part of the continuing Clean Start: Fair Deal for Cleaners campaign that was launched last month.
More than 1500 cleaners and their supporters - including leading religious and community figures - attended the Clean Start: Fair Deal for Cleaners launch across the country in April.
Since then additional successful protests have been held in Adelaide, Brisbane and New Zealand.
The Clean Start: Fair Deal for Cleaners campaign was launched because of concern that the radical and harsh new workplace laws introduced by the Federal Government will hit hardest the more than 90,000 low-paid cleaners employed by outsourced contractors around Australia - most of whom are women or recent immigrants.
"Australia's low-paid cleaners know they deserve to be treated with more respect and decency - and they are ready to have their voices heard," Mark Boyd said.
Almost 40,000 Queenslanders joined unions last year, a four per cent jump in membership across the sunshine state.
"We have had people walking in off the street and ringing up who a month ago never would have come near a union," Electrical Trades Union state secretary Dick Williams told media.
Over 35 000 workers and their families gave the thumbs down to the federal government's new workplace laws at the annual Mayday march in Brisbane, up on the average of 10,000 in recent years.
For the first time in almost 20 years, the 2006 celebrations were held at the RNA Showgrounds to accommodate the increase in numbers.
Union tents, stalls, kids rides and food stalls were all set up in the main arena making for a lively, carnival-type atmosphere after a winding march through the city and Fortitude Valley.
In regional Rockhampton and Mackay crowds of over 5000 turned out, where normally rallies were measured in hundreds, while a procession was held in Toowoomba for the first time in many years.
Queensland Unions state secretary Grace Grace says the 4 per cent increase in union membership is measured to August 2005.
"This continued membership growth is proof of the need for unions and it is understandable that people are seeking the protection of unions in this new, hostile working environment."
Angry council workers converged on Onkaparinga Council last Tuesday, where CEO Jeff Tate wants to strip conditions from staff locked in a dispute over a new collective agreement.
Tate, whose kingsize salary is the largest in South Australian local government, and even outstrips that of the state's premier, wants to dump negotiations and start again under new federal laws.
Council workers slammed the move to take away existing employment rights.
"Prior to the new laws coming in we had reached agreement with Council on protecting employees' existing conditions" said Australian Services Union Branch Secretary Andy Dennard. "Then Howard's new laws came in and Council Management advised us that they had now decided to look at what existing entitlements they may want take away from their employees."
"ASU members are not prepared to sit idly by and watch their hard fought for conditions taken away by John Howard's new laws or anyone else."
"Council workers have been negotiating since last September," says SA Unions secretary Janet Giles. "It appears intent on maximising its bottom line by reducing workers' entitlements. The Council is also stalling the issue of giving staff a reasonable wage rise."
"The highest paid Council CEO in the state is hardly endearing himself to the planners, health officers, administrative staff, librarians, and community service personnel who actually keep Onkaparinga functioning.
SEDITIOUS INTENT Short Film Collection
Online now at http://spinach7.com/si/
Seventeen short films - some sad, some funny, some gentle, some illuminating - from the slick to the raw and edgy, ranging from fiction, faction, animation, claymation, subverts to adverts - they make up the exciting web-based SEDITIOUS INTENT short film collection site.
The collection is the result of a call to filmmakers across the country to "create a short film (from 30 secs - 5 mins) that responds in some way to the Australian Government's draconian new anti-terrorism laws".
When we initiated the project, we knew it wouldn't prevent the
anti-terror laws from being implemented. However, 'SEDITIOUS INTENT' is
aimed at keeping the discussion alive and enabling filmmakers to
participate in actions that provoke debate that leads to change.
We have partnered with EngageMedia(http://engagemedia.org), a group distributing video stories about social justice and environmental issues in Australia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. We are proud to be their first collection.
Rock the Block music festival Saturday May 6
The 'Rock the Block' Festival, on Saturday May 6, 2006, boasts 5 hours of non-stop music, from rock and hip-hop to acoustic and electronic pop, as well as the Blackscreen Indigeneous film-series.
The festival is being put on to raise money to refurbish a community dance studio at the Tony Mundine gym, and will play host to well known acts such as Wire MC and Andorra, as well as nationally recognised acts like Combat Wombat and Ozi Batla, from the Herd.
Other acts include Indigenous acoustic musician James Henry, Tribal Ashes, the Urban Guerillas, Jesse Morris and the Project and Gisele Scales.
The festival also includes the Australian Film Commission's Blackscreen film series, including a wonderful documentary on Sydney's original Black theatre, from the 70's, and a number of moving and beautifully shot recent productions, such as 'Green Bush' featuring David Page.
Rock the Block will kick off in Lawson St Redfern at 1pm, although people are encouraged to come a bit early if they want to grab some lunch before the music starts.
The festival is a family day with kid's entertainment provided, along with the music and films. Entry is by donation, with a discount drink and sausage ticket for those who donate.
Please contact Lani at the Aboriginal Housing Company on 9698 9249 or Joel Beasant at [email protected]
Rock the Block is an alcohol-free event.
Labor Tribune
You are invited to the launch meeting of Labor Tribune
Labor Tribune
IS MARXISM RELEVANT TO THE LABOUR MOVEMENT?
Speakers:
Meredith Burgmann, MLC, president of the NSW upper house
Jack Mundey, environmental campaigner, former NSW secretary BLF
Andrew West, SMH Online columnist, political biographer, Fabian Society executive
Marcus Strom, editor Labor Tribune, secretary Summer Hill ALP
Tuesday May 16, 6.30pm
Mitchell Theatre
Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts
Level 1
280 Pitt Street, Sydney
www.labortribune.net
MELBOURNE DECLARES PEACE ON THE WORLD
National Peace Conference Invitation
Thursday, May 25, 7pm
Public Meeting, Storey Hall, RMIT, Swanston St, City
Saturday, May 27 Registration from 9am
Maritime Union of Australia, 46 Ireland St, West Melbourne
The conference seeks to foster better international connections and
develop a clearer coherent national strategy for peace. It will coincide
with tours by significant international players in the peace movement
including:
Hassan J'umar: President of the Iraqi Oil Workers Union, Cindy Sheehan,
from Goldstar Families for Peace, USA. Sabah Jawad, Iraqi Democrats
Against Occupation. Dr Salam Islmail, From Doctors for Iraq, Muslim
Association of Britian and Stop the War Coalition.
Cost :
$50 for one or two delegates,
$20 (waged observer) $10 (unwaged observer)
Conference Dinner Saturday $20 waged, $15 unwaged
Contact the conference roganising committee on:
Phone: 0418 316 310
Email: [email protected]
Mail GPO Box 1473, Melbourne VIC 3001
HISTORY AND CULTURE EVENTS COMING UP
Work, Industrial Relations and Popular Culture Conference
Monday 25 September 2006, Brisbane
Work and Industry Futures QUT, and the Department of Industrial Relations Griffith University are convening a one-day conference that explores
Work, Industrial Relations and Popular Culture.
David Pope, the cartoonist behind the Heinrich Hinze cartoons will be Keynote Speaker with his presentation -
"Is the pen mightier than s356? Cartoons and Work"
(www.scratch.com.au)
We welcome any paper that explores the manner in which popular culture is used by unions, management or policy makers or alternatively, how work and industrial relations is represented within popular culture.
Sub-themes for the conference include:
- Policy, Influence and Modern Mediums
- Which is Reality, Work or TV?
- Popular Music: Is it the End of the Working Class Man?
- Working in the Movies: What do we see?
- Popular Culture as a Teaching Tool.
Call for Papers.
Abstracts are due 14 July 2006
Full papers are due 11 September 2006
Location; Southbank, Brisbane.
The convenors would welcome participants to submit proposed titles earlier to assist in preparations. For further information please contact Keith Townsend ([email protected]) or David Peetz ([email protected])
Rekindling the Flames of Discontent: How the Labour and Folk Movements Work Together
A CONFERENCE / DINNER / CONCERT
The Brisbane Labour History Association is holding a Conference/Dinner/Concert on Saturday 23 September. This event will explore the historical relationship between the labour movement and the folk movement in Australia with a particular emphasis on Queensland.
Why? To celebrate the history of the interaction between the Folk and Labour movements, and promote its longevity.
When? Saturday 23 September. Conference from 1pm. Concert from 7pm.
Where? East Brisbane Bowls Club, Lytton Rd, East Brisbane, Next to Mowbray Park
It is still in the formative stages, but to date the following are confirmed:
1-5pm CONFERENCE (will include music with the presentations):
Doug Eaton on John Manifold & the Communist Arts Group in Brisbane, Brisbane Realists
Bob & Margaret Fagan on Sydney Realist Writers
Mark Gregory on trade union & labour songs/music, nationally/internationally
Lachlan & Sue on international perspectives
5 - 7pm Drinks followed by DINNER
7 - 11pm CONCERT
Combined Unions Choir
Bob and Margaret Fagan
Mark Gregory
Jumping Fences
For more information contact the BLHA President Greg Mallory on [email protected], or Secretary Ted Reithmuller on [email protected], or Dale Jacobsen on [email protected]
I fly to Canberra twice a month and have eaten at Milk & Honey many, many times, however I am not a politician! But NEVER AGAIN!!
Anyone that abuses, takes advantage of, underpays their employees and therefore probably doesn't pay the correct amount of tax when I work my backside off, will never ever get my patronage again! And I live in Melbourne, the home of decent food. I know lots of restaurateurs and I'm telling every body!! Typical that Howard's mates would eat there and fit right in too! The chef and the owners are migrants themselves and obviously racist too! How dare you?!?!?
Kylie, Vic
These laws will risk going under the radar because, by their nature they are so complex as to induce slumber in even the keenest student of industrial relations. But seasoned observers warn their impact could be even more profound than WorkChoices.
So what is being proposed? Couched in the language of 'freedom' and choice' these laws are designed to break the link between labour law and contractors. It is this link that has provided a modicum of protection for workers forced from secure jobs onto sham contract arrangements in recent years.
By allowing contractors who are dependent on a single business for work to be 'deemed' as employees, industrial tribunals have ensured these workers have had access to superannuation, workers compensation and some legal recourse when treated unfairly.
All this will end under the ICA, due into Federal Parliament this session. Industrial tribunals lose the right to 'deem' contractors as employees and the unfair contracts jurisdiction is abolished, meaning any disputes have to go through the altogether more expensive avenues of Supreme Court action.
The laws also continue the attack on unions. If you are contractor you will have no 'choice' about being represented by a trade union in negotiating a contract. You will be truly on your own.
The good news this week is that outworkers in the textile industry and transport industries have won exemption from the laws for time being, following effective lobbying of the Coalition back bench.
The outworkers scored a win on moral grounds, the truck drivers more on the political realisation that those being done over are Howard battlers. But the question must be asked, if these laws are bad for outworkers and truckies, why aren't they bad for everyone?
The loudest advocates of this legislation, mysterious commentators like Ken Phillips from the secretive Independent Contractors Association, wrap their arguments with a fervour not seen since the end of the Cold War - 'contractors are happier' he claims, while publishing titles such as 'Independence and the Death of Employment"
Phillips would argue that contracting is a pure expression of the desire of workers to break free of their bonds of employment - that attempts to legislative labour rights are a dangerous constraint on this freedom.
But the evidence suggests otherwise. It is corporations that are driving contracting out regimes in a bid to cut labour costs, not the workers seeking some form of free enterprise nirvana.
It was not the Optus technicians who bowled up the idea of trashing their jobs security, super and compo, so they could lease the vans the company used to provide them and go out and compete with each other.
How many of the migrant women at Kemalex were agitating with the idea of quitting their job, getting an ABN and rejoining the process line as a small business operator?
Of the million Australians currently deemed 'contractors, University of Melbourne research suggests up to 40 per cent do all their work for one boss - they are not entrepreneurs, they are employees without rights.
They are the victims of this legislative double-whammy that nobody saw coming before the last election. WorkChoices provides the mechanism to expel unions from the workplace. These laws provide the mechanism to send basic rights out the door by taking away the ability to expose a sham contract.
Ultimately, the Independent Contractors Act is the legislative expression of free market ideology, as championed by Hayek, who believed that every human interaction could be boiled down to a market transaction.
Its merit rests squarely on a values call - whether the spread of contractors is the ultimate act of freedom or the ultimate act of control. While those with freedom in the hearts may yearn for a world where the former prevails, evidence clearly suggests the latter.
Peter Lewis
Editor
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