*****
One would have thought covering a story would be the bread-and-butter of news organisations.
Filipino guest workers paid $27,000 a year - $13,000 less than they were promised - and charged four times the market value to live in a cramped house, under a controversial Government policy, has a touch of news value in it.
What's more, the sacking of some of the guest workers for approaching a union, while the Government preaches the advances to freedom of association in its workplace laws, would have any non-News Limited journalist asking questions.
So you would think it would be quite reasonable for the ABC's Lateline to send a camera crew to one of these cramped houses as the workers prepare to start work at 4am.
But the Minister for Mars Bars, Amanda Vanstone, disagrees.
The Liberal Party-nominated axis of evil had struck again - that unholy duo, the national broadcaster and the union movement.
Van the Man said the fact the workers received calls from - shock horror - their wives while the ABC was there, proved it was a set up.
"Just fortuitously, these things all came together at the time," she said.
This sort of paranoia explains the munchies she must get on a fairly regular basis.
It also explains the kind of muddle-headedness that would have the Minister attacking the union over the story, rather than the company that is responsible for the situation.
Vanny blasted the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union taking the story to the media, saying the union should have come to her personally.
Not because bringing it to the media's attention might make the Government's guest worker program look like a farce.
Rather because Vanny is a big girl with a big heart and is as interested as unions in stamping out exploitation.
That's obviously why she voted for the 21st Century equivalent of the Masters and Servants Act.
It's also why when a Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs report discovered a slaughterhouse in South Australia had rorted the guest worker scheme earlier this year, Vanstone sat on it.
If there's anything the Toolshed does not want to be reincarnated as, it's a DIMIA report.
Or a guest worker, for that matter.
The swim home might be dangerous, but not as dangerous as Amanda Vanstone's offer of help.
That's the math done by an Australia Post mail officer, when confronted with a wage offer of three per cent per annum.
""this would not even buy a banana a day to consume at the morning tea break - if we are still going to have a morning tea break," the CEPU member wrote in an email to the union.
Annual report figures released this week confirm a before-tax profit of $515.6 million, up nearly 10 per cent on the previous year, with productivity up 3.7 per cent.
CEPU national secretary Ed Husic says the figures show that Australia Post's workers are putting in the hard yards for the company.
"Across the board Australia Post is performing well and continues to be seen as a world class service," Husic says.
"But this performance is not a fluke - and it's not delivered by one or two people."
"It's delivered on the backs of nearly 35,000 employees who have worked together, made changes to their operations and put in many long hours - and now Post reaps rewards."
�It's got nothing to do with the Indians, they are nice people,� collections department worker, Anna Korpouzas, said today. �It's our reaction to corporate greed.
"St George is shafting Australian people. They are the ones they should be looking after, the people who keep their doors open."
Staff at the bank's Kogarah office voted not to train the Indian advance party, sent to Australia to learn jobs their compatriots will take over next year.
They arrived at Kogarah on Wednesday, after Aussie staff had been informed they would lose their jobs, sometime next year.
St George has indicated their services could be dispensed with in January, February or March but given them nothing in writing.
One worker told the Sydney Morning Herald St George's training program was like "being asked to dig your own grave".
She said workmates had families and mortgages and their treatment made her "feel sick".
Karpouas fields calls from St George clients who have fallen behind in their loan repayments. Under the bank's plan those customers will deal with staff in India.
"St George is telling us to keep the boat afloat until other workers up and running.
"It's the government's fault this is happening and it will only be a short-term solution," she said.
Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews spruiked the figures as a victory for 'freedom of choice' for workers to enter into the full range of agreements.
But Professor David Peetz, industrial relations expert at Griffith University, disagreed - saying only workers in unionised workplaces had any choice over the kind of agreement they sign.
Of almost 440,000 employees covered by agreements registered since March, 30% are on Australian Workplace Agreements, 58% are on union collective agreements and 12% are on non-union collective agreements.
The rise in non-union agreements is significant because it offers employers a way around union involvement in negotiation and doesn't require all workers' agreement, said Peetz,
"Before WorkChoices was introduced an average of 18,000 employees a quarter were covered by these agreements. This has risen to 33,000 in the quarter to September," he said.
"They're a means by which unions can be bypassed. You don't have to agree to be covered by it... you can vote no but if 50% plus one of people in your workplace vote for it you're covered."
Workers in unionised workplaces had the most choice in the kind of agreement they entered into - with most choosing unionised collective agreements.
"Employers realise that there's not much sense in offering AWAs to a unionised workforce, in most cases if workers have got union coverage they'll get a collective agreement, so will the non-union members in that workplace," said Peetz.
ABS figures showed that while 23% of Australian members were unionised, 38% are covered by union agreements.
The American aerospace giant that locked engineers out of its Williamtown operation, near Newcastle, for 265 bitter days has offered employees a collective contract.
AWU official, John Boyd, has labelled Boeing's decision the "biggest backflip in Australian industrial relations history".
"It's extraordinary," Boyd said. "They locked these guys out for 265 days because they wanted a collective agreement.
"Boeing told the public collective agreements did not fit into its business model.
"They flew in scabs to run their operations.
"They sat through a three-month NSW IRC inquiry and wouldn't budge.
"Seven months later, they table a document that is, basically, what our guys wanted all along."
Boeing has put up a non-union collective agreement for a staff ballot and Boyd says the AWU won't be advising anyone to vote it down.
It includes increased wages, a 38-hour week, overtime penalty rates, fuel tanks allowances and a classification structure - key elements of the union claim Boeing rejected.
"This is a major improvement," Boyd said, "the guys can't knock it back.
"Everyone knows it wouldn't be on the table if it wasn't for the nine month strike by union members and the support they got from the community."
Unions NSW secretary, John Robertson, accused Boeing of putting up philosophy as a smokescreen for union-busting, during the dispute.
"Why else would you agree, in essence, to virtually everything the union members were asking for?" he asked.
"In philosophical terms, this a win for the union. It's an admission on the part of the company that the individual contracts on offer were inadequate."
Arrowcrest Group Pty Ltd is the parent company of Tristar Steering and Automotive which used John Howard's IR laws to go after the retirement nest eggs of staff, with up to 43 years service, in the AIRC, this week.
After keeping workers in the dark for months about its intentions, Tristar made application for its employment agreement to be terminated.
Termination would see an insurance bond, taken out three years ago as part of an agreement between the company and unions, evaporate.
In the interim, Tristar has made hundreds of workers redundant and virtually closed up shop, leaving its oldest and longest-serving employees without the industrial muscle to resist the planned heist.
Workers predicted Tristar would try it on when it became clear who wasn't being offered redundancy packages.
Unions made repeated requests for the company to be honest about its intentions but Tristar refused to comment.
This week's application was strongly opposed by employees and their unions.
Sixteen-year sparkie, Gavin Avery, gave evidence on behalf of workmates.
AMWU organiser, Martin Schutz, says the company's own figures suggest it owes remaining staff around $5 million.
If the company is allowed to renege on its 2003 agreement, under Howard's GEERS scheme, that figure would be carved back to around $500,000.
Workers Online understands some grandparents at Tristar would see retirement packages, built up over decades, slashed from nearly $200,000 to between $12,000 and $15,000.
"It would be a disaster for many of these people and their families," Schutz said. "They have earned this money and they were banking on receiving it.'
The AMWU opposed the Tristar application on the grounds of public interest, arguing a business that routinely broke its own agreements shouldn't be able to evade undertakings by terminating an agreement.
In separate actions, the AMWU is prosecuting Tristar for breach of agreement in the Industrial Magistrates Court and is running a dispute, in the IRC, around alleged breaches of the agreement.
Tristar parent company, Arrowcrest, is headquartered at 334 Burleigh St, Woodville North, and headed by prominent South Australian businessmen Cheng Hong and Andrew Gwinnett.
The workers, who last week appealed to the their union for help over underpayment and substandard conditions, claimed their employer stood over them yesterday and told them the Prime Minister was on his side.
The welders were picked up from work as usual yesterday afternoon but instead of going home were taken to the offices of their labour hire employer, Dartbridge Welding.
Their boss Dennis Hickman denied access to union officials who attended at the men's request.
AMWU state secretary Danny Dougherty said the welders were held in the office for over two hours while Hickman made them sign the new contracts for their rental accommodation.
"They were told that they either signed the letter or they weren't allowed to go home, and if they didn't sign they would be kicked out," said Dougherty.
"The men didn't understand the content of the agreement, English is not their first language, and they weren't allowed to take the contract home.
"Hickman told them that John Howard was on his side in this dispute, that the Prime Minister was backing him."
The welders were brought to Australia two months ago on 457 visas under the Government's skilled migration scheme by Dartbridge, who on-hired them to Ipswich-based Kador Engineering.
The workers signed contracts before they left the Philippines, but were not shown details of their employment conditions.
Union representatives told the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission yesterday they were promised $40,000 a year. Instead they:
- were on $27,000 a year, about $15,000 below the industry average
- were accommodated eight to a four-bedroom house and direct debited $175 a week for rent , about six times the market rate
- were employed as casuals giving them no sick or holiday pay, despite being on four-year visas
- regularly worked 55 hours per week with no shift allowances or penalty rates
- were illegally charged for their own health insurance
Three of the welders were sacked this week after appearing on ABC television and appealing to the AMWU for help in improving their conditions.
"The government has allowed this to happen. It's a system that the government has put in place, but it doesn't force employers to be accountable," said Dougherty.
Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone has complained of a 'set-up' and told the workers they should have complained directly to the government instead of the union.
But the AMWU provided the Department of Immigration with a list of concerns regarding maltreatment of workers on 457 visas in June, and has received no response, Dougherty said.
Vanstone said this week that 180 employers, 2 percent of those using workers on 457 visas, were being investigated for alleged breaches of the scheme including inappropriate deductions from wages, underpayments and the kind of work being carried out.
But companies face no penalty for exploiting workers on 457 visas.
The most recent figures available from the department - for 2004-05 - show that just 19 employers were warned over employee mistreatment and nine were excluded from the guest visa scheme for improperly treating workers but faced no prosecution.
Since Wednesday state-based 7pm TV news bulletins, midday news bulletins, and the national morning radio current affairs show AM have variously been pulled as employees in different sections walk off the job without warning.
The Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA) and the Community & Public Sector Union (CPSU) - which cover 2,500 ABC employees between them - are co-ordinating the rolling strikes in a bid to win an acceptable pay rise.
Management is currently offering 4% a year for three years, up from the 3.5% per year it was offering before a nationwide 24-hour strike in September, said the MEAA's Mark Ryan.
"The offer is still below inflation and exacerbates the long-term relative decline of ABC wages," said Ryan.
Meanwhile, another bias witch-hunt sweeps the national broadcaster.
Managing Director Mark Scott has buckled to the Government-stacked board, introducing new 'anti-bias' editorial guidelines.
This comes as ABC staff struggle to produce high quality local content, in the face of underfunding and pay rates well behind the private sector.
Conservative critics have long regarded the ABC as a hotbed of left-wing bias, despite numerous internal and external investigations that have given the national broadcaster a clean bill of health.
The new editorial regime will be led by the 'Director of Editorial Policies', who will enforce 'impartiality of opinion' across all network content, such as television and local radio.
According to CPSU National Secretary Stephen Jones, staff are being dragged into the Howard Government's "increasingly hysterical" culture wars.
"ABC employees pride themselves on their professionalism, enthusiasm and integrity, with surveys showing more than 80% of Australians value the job they do," Jones told Workers Online.
"This latest round of Government-inspired bullying further threatens the independence of the ABC."
A favourite target of the stone throwers of the right, The Glasshouse team responded the only way they know how.
"To all those Liberal voters that want more ALP jokes, you know what you have to do," said host Wil Anderson.
"Vote 1: Kim Beazley. I've got a whole can of fat jokes, I'm just waiting to open the lid," Anderson said.
In a segment mocking tomorrow's newspaper headlines, 'The Herald Tribune' had the final say.
"ABC response to claims of bias: Liberal and Labour both equally f****ed."
Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Ban Ki-Moon took up his post last week, but the Korean Government Employees' Union has raised doubts about his human rights credentials.
"The Korean Government's attitude and policies that it has shown since Korea joined the UN and its agencies, especially the ILO, cause deep concern," the KGEU says.
Korea has never fulfilled its obligations as a member country of the UN and the ILO, a UN specialised agency, and has implemented the recommendations from neither the ILO nor UN human rights related bodies.
Instead, the Government legislated a special act that severely limits government employees' basic labour rights and trade union activities, even without any consultation with government employees unions concerned.
"The Korean Government should pay attention to voices from the international community, which has repeatedly raised concerns and protests about labour repression in Korea," THE UNION SYS.
"It should realise that the continuing disregard for international human rights standards makes a laughingstock out of the Korean Government when it boasts of its promise for "contribution to the international community in resolving conflicts, assisting developing countries, and strengthening human rights and democracy around the world."
1800 Telstra staff who are currently members of the Commonwealth Superannuation Scheme (CSS) face an uncertain future once the Government sells its remaining shares in the company, despite years of loyal service.
Once the fire sale is complete, Telstra employees who are members of the CSS will cease to be 'eligible employees' for the purposes of the Superannuation Act 1976 and will no longer be able to contribute to the CSS.
Employer super contributions will be slashed in some cases by nearly ten percent, reducing pensions or the loss of tens of thousands of dollars for those electing to receive a lump sum payment upon retirement.
Finance Minister Nick Minchin had previously stated that "superannuation conditions (for employees) would continue once the company was sold by the Government."
However the Government refused to support Opposition legislation that would have guaranteed existing super conditions for employees through transitionary arrangements.
For their part, Telstra is refusing to compensate any lost contributions or set up an alternate scheme that would mirror CSS conditions.
In a situation that illustrates the poisonous relationship between the Government and Telstra management, both are blaming each other for the super stuff-up.
An ACTU legal team is now examining the options available to the workers and is seeking talks with the company and major shareholder.
CPSU National Secretary Stephen Jones has called for Telstra and the Government to work with unions to sort the mess out.
"Both Telstra and the Government are trying to wash their hands of these loyal employees. This is no reward for years of service," he said.
"As for the Government, they have a clear responsibility to honour the commitments they have publicly made to these workers. Maybe Nick Michin might consider how he would feel if someone tried to cut his generous superannuation package," Jones said.
Until it announced the move yesterday at its AGM, Qantas had shrouded its offshoring plans in secrecy, but workers have reported that for some time they have been training the Indian workers who will take their jobs processing data for a range of online services like Frequent Flyer and Qantas.com.
"Three hundred and forty Australian families are not going to know whether their major breadwinner is going to have a job and this is an absolute outrage," said the Australian Services Union's assistant national secretary, Linda White.
"These Australian IT workers have built Qantas ... and are responsible for security and engineering and a range of maintenance issues that the Qantas board are clearly not aware of."
"The implications are enormous not only for employees but also for the flying public," said White.
Qantas chief executive Geoff Dixon defended the move, saying it was for the good of the company and airlines should be at the forefront of globalisation. Dixon came away from the meeting $3.7 million richer, after being awarded 900,000 new shares in the company.
Secretary, John Robertson, made the call as the federal government conceded it checked just 18 percent of employers using its scheme.
Despite enormous growth in the program, monitoring has falled in the last three years, according to the Immigration Department.
It's latest annual reports says just over 28 percent of Section 457 employers were checked in 2004 but that figure fell to 18 percent, last year.
Over the same period, the department records, people entering Australia on 457 visas leapt from 28,000 to 40,000.
Robertson says the carte blanche approach to dishing out visas has to stop and employers should be required to show they want guest labour to meet a skills shortage, rather than to undercut Australian standards.
"The problem isn't the visas, themselves," he told Unions NSW delegates. "It is their exploitation and the lack of any mechanism to prevent that."
Robertson is proposing a three-question hurdle that employers should have to jump before they can import guest workers.
He says, employers should be asked:
- have you made anyone redundant in the past 12 months and offered them their positions back on the same terms and conditions?
- are you offering immigrants market rates for the jobs they will be undertaking?
- what is your training and skills record with young Australians
The answers to those questions, supported by evidence, he says, will make it clear what camp prospective sponsors fall into.
Unions have unmasked a string of bodgey operators ripping off imported workers, especially from Asia and Africa.
They have alerted the Department, and federal government, to common rorts, including charging exorbitant rents, interest rates, and up-front fees of up to $27,000 to secure visas.
All of those practices all theoretically illegal but there are no sanctions on offenders under the current regime.
They have also produced written contracts that make joining a trade union a deportable offence.
DIMA estimates another 70,000 people will come to Australian uon 457 visas this year.
"The federal government is using these visas to drive down Australian wages," Robertson says. "WorkChoices is allowing them to do it.
"We have hundreds of employers crying out to import workers, well, the very first question they should have to answer is if they offered market rates to Australians.
"It's too easy to offer a ridiculous wage and then turn around and say they can't get anyone to do the job."
They were among 8300 individual contracts signed by Aussies under 19 years old, between last July and this May, according to the Office of the Employment Advocate.
The Advocate, charged with getting people onto AWAs, reported that another 13,269 individual contracts had been signed by people aged 18-21.
ACTU president Sharan Burrow said it was disturbing that thousands of young people were signing contracts that weren't even underpinned by a "no disadvantage test".
The OEA has already admitted that all AWAS, signed since the passage of WorkChoices, removed at least one award condition that John Howard promised would be "protected by law".
"These are terrible statistics that show a generation of Australians is growing up with fewer rights as a result of the Coalition Government's laws," Burrow said.
The OEA confirmed it had green-lighted 598 AWAs for children 15 years and younger, since last July.
Women Choose to Earn Less � Thanks Bettina! Low Pay that�s for me!
It would seem that after all these years Bettina Arndt still has no understanding of gender pay inequality in the Australian workforce. Her headline `Women Choose to earn less� confounds most women. I am yet to come across a woman who gleefully cries `Low Pay - that�s for me� or feels that being paid her true value for her work should in some way be reduced because she has family responsibilities. Arndt displays a lack of understanding of the problem of pay equity and the constrained `choices� that women face. Firstly, she explains the gender wage gap as being the result of men working more hours than women. If Arndt were to examine hourly rates of pay for women and men in almost all industries and occupations she would find a persistent gap between men and women�s earnings paid at an hourly rate.
Arndt claims that women choose to work part-time to fit with their family responsibilities. Yes this is true but this in no way should suggest that their value for the work performed should be less than a male because she works shorter hours. I would think that Arndt would encourage more flexible forms of employment that is fairly paid and would enable and encourage women to balance work and family commitments.
Arndt also seems to ignore one of the real problems associated with pay inequality that being that the work women do is undervalued and not paid appropriately for the skill, qualifications and worth, (child care workers are an example).. The Federal Government has ignored and failed to address the issue of pay equity. While all of the States Governments have held Inquires and introduced policies in an to attempt to redress pay equity the Federal Government has not acted. Further, through its Work Choices legislation it has removed any effective way of addressing the issue and many of the achievements made in workplace flexibility. . Federal Government policies will exacerbate wage inequality and will diminish a woman�s ability to balance her work and family arrangements.
Suzanne Hammond
National Pay Equity Coalition
Workers Online have been to a few of these events, from the cyber wars of Wollongong in 2000, Melbourne Casino 2003 where debate was around cashing in the chips in the ALP, all the way back to 1994 when we all booed Brereton.
Typically, these are events are broad affairs, where everyone pushes their barrow, political points are scored and everyone makes up after the final Congress dinner.
But it is a sign of the seriousness - and success - of the current Rights at Work campaign that this week's Congress is a far more sober and focussed affair.
The Congress is being held at the rough half-way mark in the Rights at Work campaign - a little over 12 months since the laws and about 12 months out from a federal election that will decide once and for all the direction of workers rights in this country.
In this context it is a chance to take a deep breath, suck the oranges and contemplate where the campaign is placed.
If the polls are any guide, we are ahead on the scoreboard. The Rights at Work campaign has shifted a significant number of votes into the Labor column, with men in particular opposed, and naming industrial relations as an area of key concern.
Our team is also playing with its heads up. Despite its thumping in 2003, the ALP is competitive and the shine has gone off John Howard, but maintaining political momentum around an issue for two years is unprecedented and remains a challenge for unions.
On the field of Parliament, they have largely stuck to the game plan, after all WorkChoices has been described as like have Wayne Carey at centre half forward, every time you are in trouble you know he'll take a mark and kick it straight.
Their opponent's game plan is faltering - the government keeps switching message form 'take the pain for the greater good' to 'it's a scare campaign ' there is no pain. And whether the PM, the Rev Kev or bench player Sloppy Joe has the pill, it still ends up in out of bounds.
And importantly, the crowd is behind us - like never before rank and file workers are joining grassroots campaigns, building momentum even before the candidates have been chosen.
So we are well-placed at half time, not impregnable but in position to build on our lead.
The ACTU Congress brings a new tactic into play, a positive agenda to rebuild workers rights, based around enforceable bargaining rights and workplace democracy.
With this armoury, expect the campaign to run harder on collective bargaining - the initial wave of unfair dismissals has passed, now groups of workers are feeling the pain, forced to give up penalty rates and job security and sing the AWA.
There is another issue that has been itching for a run - the undercutting of Australian job security from both guest workers and off shore workers, just another way in which the Howard Government is putting the interests of big business ahead of those of ordinary workers.
And then there is the pending decision from the umpire - the High Court ruling on whether a hostile takeover of state industrial laws was really the intention of our Founding Fathers.
All this, before the election campaign proper kicks off and we are presented with a whole swag more of metaphors to slaughter. All this is ahead of us, in one of the classic match ups of all time.
Peter Lewis
Editor
Search All Issues | Latest Issue | Previous Issues | Print Latest Issue |
© 1999-2002 Workers Online |
|