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Issue No. 308 | 26 May 2006 |
If the Answer is Nuclear �.
Interview: Out of the Bedroom Industrial: Cloak and Dagger Unions: Lockout! Legal: The Fantasy of Choice Politics: Labor Pains Economics: Economics and the Public Purpose Corporate: House of Horrors History: Clash Of Cultures International: Childs Play Culture: Folk You Mate! Review: Last Holeproof Hero
Lets Get Physical, Building Bosses Sparkie Vote Will Go To the Wire Nine Vanish in Melbourne Triangle Labor Roots In Graft Allegations
The Soapbox The Locker Room Parliament
Noll On Riders on the Strom No Gerry Can Insight Fires Up
Labor Council of NSW |
News Sparkie Vote Will Go To the Wire
ETU Victorian secretary, Dean Mighell, is confident that, when the Australian Electoral Commission finishes its count, proposed industrial action will be endorsed.
"Look, we know our membership and we believe the ballot will get up," Mighell told Workers Online. "But it will be a close run thing. "I'm picking there won't be more than a single vote in it." Mighell bases his analysis on the fact that the lone ETU member at Amcor's can manufacturing plant will be forced to vote one-out by WorkChoices laws that forbid him joining workmates who are members of the AMWU. The AMWU fought its way through WorkChoices red tape to win 53 members the right to resist clawbacks being pushed by Amcor. It beat off days of Amcor objections in the AIRC, last week, and members responded with a 40-1 vote for action in a ballot supervised by the Australian Electoral Commission. But the plant's lone ETU member was barred from that vote. Instead, the AIRC has ordered a separate "secret" postal ballot in which the electrician will be the only voter. The Electoral Commission has consulted unions about how long the count would take and when the result might be formalised. Mighell said the one-man ballot seemed like a joke but had serious implications. "It's stupid, bureaucratic and expensive but it has its own logic in the context of legislation that is designed to destroy our ability to win," he said. Former federal politician, Phil Cleary, said the one-man vote had WorkChoices Minister, Kevin Andrews, fingerprints all over it. "Nothing dreamed up by Kevin Andrews would surprise me," Cleary said. "I used to have to catch a plane back from Canberra with him in the 1990s and it wasn't a very pleasant experience. "He spent more time whingeing about how he was being victimised by party factionalism than any politician I have ever met."
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