E D I T O R I A L

Straw Men
Somewhere between Bangalore and Surrey Hills a story about off shoring of Australian jobs got confused this week; unleashing a round of hand-wringing that speaks volumes about the political and commercial potency of this issue.

F E A T U R E S

Interview: Australia�s Most Wanted
The ACCC is the latest state agency to turn its guns on the construction union. National official, Dave Noonan, discusses the implications.

Industrial: The Fox and the Contractor
With new laws looming for �independent contractors�, Foxtel subbies have had the carpet pulled from under their feet, writes Nathan Brown.

Unions: Industrial Wasteland
A group of inner-Sydney veterans appear to be working to strip their families of retirement incomes. Jim Marr records their desperation.

International: Two Bob's Worth
German and British workers are participating in business decisions while WorkChoices locks Australians out of the conversation, writes Anthony Forsyth.

Economics: National Interest
John Howard claimed that interest rates would always be lower under a Coalition government than under Labor, Neale Towart crunchess the numbers.

Environment: The Real Dinosaur
Economic ignorance remains at the top and the critics are oblivious says Sol Power

History: Only In Spain?
The experiences of self management during the Civil War have been the one positive factor to come from that tragic event, and the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation thrives today.

Review: Clerk Off
Nathan Brown draws solace from some fellow social misfits.

N E W S

Activists Notebook

Money Walks Over Jobs

Classifieds the New IR Attack Dog

States Keep Stakes in IR Blueprint

Meatworkers Boned by WorkChoices

Tune Up for Radio Rentals

Democracy Overboard in Bass Strait

Unionist Targeted for Deportation

Taxpayers Taken to the Cleaners

Staff Sunk By Float

AWB Sets New Low

Heinemann Pushes the Envelope

Giant Catastrophe for Crew

Workers Lose Right to Choose Lawyers

Skill Vouchers A Dud, AMWU

C O L U M N S

Legends
Westie Wing
MLC Ian West ventures beyond Macquarie St and into the desert of the eco rats.

The Soapbox
Testing Times
Former RLPA secretary and Newcastle Knights prop, Tony Butterfield, fires up over dawn raids.

Obituary
Dare to Win
The union movement has lost an inspirational leader of working men and women, writes Jeana Vithoulkas

Fiction
Tommy's Apprentice
Chapter Two - Tommy�s Tale.

L E T T E R S

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Straw Men

The lightening rod was a subbing glitch in Sydney's Daily Telegraph that turned an ANZ IT centre, housing 1400 workers whose work was once done by Australians, into 'a call centre'.

The response from ANZ to this error was ferocious - immediate threats to pull five million dollars in advertising from News Ltd, threats of legal actions, demands for retractions.

Australia's largest exporter of jobs to India used this tactical advantage to construct a straw man and then burn it down. ANZ does not export call centre jobs and had no plans to and any suggestion that it would do so was wrong.

But hold on, who but the sub-editor had ever mentioned call centres?

For weeks the Finance Sector union had been raising concerns about the off shoring of IT and data processing jobs, from the skills drain from Australia to the security of sensitive personal information that is no longer subject to Australian privacy laws.

The reporter involved, Luke McIlveen, is no patsy of the unions; in fact he was the reporter responsible for the scurrilous and damaging attack on the ACTU's IR advertising campaign a few months ago.

But to his credit, on this one he had picked up the story and run with it, all the way to the source of the story, Bangalore, where he discovered the real driver of \off-shoring - university trained graduates who see a $100 per week job as a passport out of poverty.

And there was so much more to find in Bangalore, until some one decided to beat a story that didn't need any embellishment.

Now the broadsheets are having great time at McIlveen's expense, after all he is a big target who has never been scared of hitting up a story. But on this one they are wrong, the same story appeared in other News Ltd titles without reference to the 'call centre'.

But while these high-brow outlets were indulging in a bit of old fashioned one upmanship they were missing the real story - a leading corporate exerting legal threats and commercial pressure to end a campaign that is clearly hurting it.

Off-shoring is one of those classic issues that define the gap between the business world and the Australian people - we know the public hate the idea of off-shoring - they hate the double standard soft Australian companies training on patriotism and then sacking locals; and they hate the idea their information is in foreign hands. We know because when we poll the issue it is not a 45-55 split it is a 90-10 split, crossing political and social divides.

But we also know that business is its own logic and easy ways to cut labour costs, regardless of the human impact, are just too compelling.

After this week we know something else - although the ''quality' media chose to ignore it - the Prime Minister thinks this is all OK.

This is what he told Federal Parliament this week when asked by the Opposition leader his position on the off-shoring of Australians' personal information.

"Perhaps the Leader of the Opposition appreciates it when it suits him, but on occasions when it does not suit him he does not appreciate that in a globalised world lots of tasks flow across borders from one country to another.

" Just as this country wants the advantages of globalisation, so it should be that we must accept that part of a globalised world is a much freer flow of information, and the idea that you can have an effective regulatory regime of the type he is talking about ignores the realities of the modern world."

Sounds suspiciously like Paul Keating on manufacturing jobs just before he got punted from office.

Off shoring is news and, subbing glitches aside, it won't go away.

This is the story that our leaders and business do not want the Australian public reading: humans are economic units; for whom they bear no responsibility. Let's hope the Tele takes the hit from ANZ and keeps on top of this killer yarn.

Peter Lewis

Editor

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Last Modified: 13 Oct 2006