
Issue No 31		17 September 1999

News

Cost-Cutting Puts Clinical Waste in Landfill

The Department of Health has relaxed requirements on the removal of clinical waste in a bid to cut costs - raising union concerns about the dangerous material may be dumped as landfill.

The Department has released a list of items that no longer need to be classified as "clinical waste" - including sanitary bins in hospitals, shopping centres and nursing homes, which often contain used syringes.

The TWU and HREA have raised concerns about the dangers their members - responsible for removing and transporting the waste may be exposed to.

They claim the change in policy is driven purely by dollars, with general waste costing six cents per kilo to dispose of - compared with 90 cents per kilo for clinical waste. That's because general waste is dumped as landfill, whereas clinical waste must be incinerated or dropped in acid.

The unions have called on the Department of Health to immediately halt the changes, which were introduced with no consultation with the affected workers.

""The safety and environmental implications of this new policy are horrific," the unions say in a letter to Labor Council.

"Clearly items assigned from a medical institution as clinical waste and noxious, potentially infectious and highly dangerous to those people handling it. To disguise such substances by mixing it with general waste exposes workers to obvious unnecessary health risks."

The unions are also concerned the dumping of extra waste contradicts the Government's stated policy on reducing landfill.

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Issue 31 contents

Interview: Sadly Vindicated
Labor�s foreign affairs spokesman Laurie Brereton has spent the past year warning that East Timor would explode without a UN peacekeeping force. Now he�s had to watch his predictions come true.

International: In the Bunker
One of the last reporters to leave East Timor, Workers Online's HT Lee remembers the week that Dili burned.

Republic: Tarred With the Same Brush
Neville Wran asks why it is that the most fervant monarchists are also the most eager union-bashers.

Unions: Hard Labour
Prisoner educators argue more attention needs to be given to rehabilitation through teaching, but they�re facing an uphill battle to convince authorities.

History: Labour and Community
A history conference in Wollongong next month will look at the changing role for labour into the next century.

Review: Bobbin' Up - 40 Years On
Forty years after its first publicaton and several European translations Bobbin Up, a classic of industrial fiction, is coming home.

Satire: East Timor Poll Triumph: Support for Jakarta Up 21 Per Cent
The Indonesian Government has declared that it is pleased with the result of the independence referendum in which 21% of East Timorese voted in support of maintaining links with Indonesia.

» Asylum Call for Independence Supporters

» Nurses Collect Vital Medical Supplies

» Industrial Faction for Pre-Conference Caucus

» Lees Backs Freeloader Laws

» Outsourcing Decision - Banks Under the Gun

» Reith Forces Truckies to Speed

» He Talks the Talk - But Can He Walk the Walk?

» Commission Tells AGC to Get Into the Nineties

» Cost-Cutting Puts Clinical Waste in Landfill

» Prisons Reject Free Computers

» US Defence Giant Eyes Welfare Sector