*****
Gee, do you think Howard and his cronies might pull out the race card in an attempt to swindle another election?
First we had the hot air about values and citizenship tests, brought up a few months ago by the Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs Andrew Robb.
Now, with all the subtlety of a suicide bomber, Robb has announced he wants to take the word multicultural out of the dictionary.
One gets the feeling this is the last throw of the dice for a Government whose credibility with Joe Six Pack is seriously on the wane.
They've been caught out on their bald-faced lies about interest rates from the last election and their work laws are the biggest attack on working people since the Bubonic Plague.
So, the scoundrels are down to their last refuge.
Expect to see flags waved around in the next 12 months like it's the Nuremberg rallies.
And Robb, the brains behind the 1993 Hewson campaign and the republican referendum, has appointed himself the Joseph Goebbels of the Howard Government.
He says the move away from multiculturalism - no doubt a vote grabber - is because the term has negative connotations.
These negative connotations are largely a result of people like Robb and Howard, who have abandoned anything positive the policy might offer.
It's no accident that any problems we might have with multiculturalism have happened after 10 years of Coalition rule.
Recent tensions prove that the problem has been with the Coalition's approach to multiculturalism - or lack thereof - than multiculturalism itself.
Note that there was nothing like the Cronulla riots on Whitlam, Frasier, Hawke or Keating's watch.
Team Howard has dropped the ball and now Robb is calling for a penalty. They are seeking to capitalise on their own failure.
At least they hope it will take the crowd's eye off what is happening in back play.
Long serving NUW delegates, Jeff Gearin and Tony Seymour, were marked for the chop when the abrasives multinational tried to impose non-negotiated AWAs on staff at Lidcombe and Wetherill Park.
The pair, with 18 and 31 years service respectively, were made redundant as Saint-Govains used WorkChoices to deny workers the right to a collective agreement.
The NUW argued the pair had been victimised because of their union activism and the federal court, this week, ruled their dismissals had been unlawful.
Justice Buchanan said the company's retrenchment process had been "convenient mechanism" to achieve the selection of Seymour and Gearin.
"It's a great boost for everyone," said Mark Ptolemy from the NUW.
"Saint-Gobains used WorkChoices to refuse to negotiate, now there is a real sense that if workers back one another they can still win in this environment."
Gearin and Seymour had been involved in negotiations with the manufacturer when it marked their cards in September.
The company is trying to have the existing collective agreement terminated.
Thirty workers are protesting outside its Lidcombe plant while another dozen are on picket duty at Wetherill Park.
NUW members are also picketing Futuris Brakes at Wetherill Park.
The company, which manufactures locomotive brakes and holds the State Rail contract, refuses to enter negotiations on a new collective agreement and is also trying to impose non-negotiated AWAs.
Ptolemy said Futuris had had some success as workers got fed-up with the ongoing stand-off.
"The AWAs are slightly inferior on conditions and offer a bit of a sweetener on hourly rates," Ptolemy said, "they're about breaking down the ability of workers to defend their conditions into the future.
"It's unfortunate that some people haven't been able to see that, in the long-run, everyone loses under this system."
�We had to go to a presentation where they said being part of the offshoring was a good opportunity for us and something to put on our cv, because we know how to deal with it. It was really humiliating,� said Dagmar Salat, who works on the airline's main website, Qantas.com.
"Then they were telling us how good it was for the company," she said.
"I don't believe it is good for the company, but I don't care about that when I'm losing my job."
The two Indian companies, who between them will take on $191 million worth of work over seven years, announced their deals on the Bombay Stock Exchange yesterday.
Qantas is shifting its application development and maintenance work to Tata Consultancy Services and Satyam, cutting 300 jobs. Two hundred jobs will go to India while 100 will be located at the Indian firms' Australian operations.
The jobs remaining in Australia are likely to go to Indian employees of the offshoring companies brought in under the Federal Government's 457 skilled migrant visa scheme, said IT industry observer Tony Healy.
"The offshoring process deliberately rorts nations' temporary skilled worker systems," said Healy.
Offshoring Qantas.com support is likely to lead to delays and glitches on the website for users within Qantas as well as members of the public looking for information and trying to book tickets, said Salat.
"Being on site we've got a close relationship with the users of the site within Qantas, we understand the business and the culture," she said.
"When other sections of the business have been outsourced there's definitely been a drop in the level of care in carrying out the work."
The rip-off was exposed in Newcastle, last weekend, when ITF inspectors busted the Maltese flagged coal carrier, Caravos Horizon, for fraudulent book keeping.
One set of accounts, for authorities, purported to pay a Filipino seaman $US1059 a month, under the terms of an international agreement.
But ITF digging unearthed a second set of figures that revealed the man was actually receiving $US342 a month.
"It is fraud, pure and simple," ITF Australian co-ordinator, Dean Summers, said. "It is a systematic method of defrauding seafarers of their rightful income.
"It raises a other concerns about the way these people operate.
"If they lie about wages, what else are they lying about?"
Summers said the true records, taken from the ship, revealed some seafarers had been on board for 22 months without a day off.
The Caravos Horizon arrived in Newcastle with a predominantly Filipino crew of 23.
"If you have a crew that has been on a vessel for 22 months straight, and you're paying less than half the minimum rates, there has to be room for evildoers to encourage these guys to smuggle or do things they wouldn't normally do," Summers said.
"The same sort of ships carry ammonium nitrate around our coast on federal government permits.
"The flag of convenience system can be a security risk and regulations need to be tightened up."
Loose Monkey for High Jump
Meanwhile, authorities passed a death sentence on a loose monkey aboard another Australia-bound vessel.
Lloyd's List reported the creature had gone AWOL on the high sea, somewhere between China and Australia.
It quoted an Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service spokesman as saying the monkey must die.
Believed to be a Macaque, a species known to carry rabies and encephalitis, the stowaway had gone to ground, evading two full crew searches.
The AQIS officer said if his organisation couldn't be convinced of the ape's demise, the un-named vessel would be restricted to an off-shore buoy, while AQIS carried out a search and destroy mission.
Summers said no monkeys were members of maritime unions, anywhere in the world.
"Even so," he said, "if it had been on the Caravos Trader, I'm sure the captain would have been able to produce a signed copy of its wage documents."
Thirteen South Koreans vacated digs at the Lake Bolac caravan park after WorkCover inspectors shut the grain silo job in a paddock, 100km west of Ballarat.
Inspectors found unsafe wiring, dangerous work being done without required licenses, faulty lifting gear, and that the Koreans hadn't been gone through mandatory induction programs.
Stunned CFMEU officials have put in a formal request for paperwork confirming the Koreans' visa status.
"According to WorkCover they were breaching just about safety regulation in the book," CFMEU secretary, Martin Kingham, said.
"Someone must have dobbed them in to WorkCover, otherwise no one would have known about it until the thing fell down.
"This is what happens when governments encourage people to undercut wages and safety standards."
Workers Online understands the Korean company building the grain silo halved the most competitive Australian quote for the job.
The scramble for a cheap rate started after a mini tornado ripped through the district, last year, taking the old grain solo with it.
The farmers co-op that operates the facility had under-insured to such an extent that it couldn't meet any Australian price for delivering a replacement.
Instead, apparently, it went on the internet and found a Korean company that could slice 50 percent off the price by using workers on 457 visas.
The Lake Bolac closure further embarrasses a federal government that uses 457 visas, in conjunction with WorkChoices, to drive down wages and conditions.
Only last week, another 457 operator, Hunan Industrial Equipment, had to back pay Chinese construction workers in western Sydney more than $650,000 in underpayments.
It was pinged after work on an ABC Tissues press was halted when WorkCover hit the site with a staggering 40 separate health and safety notices.
In the absence of action by any federal government agency, the AMWU forced an inquiry with claims of massive underpayments and workers comp rip-offs.
The Office of Workplace Services confirmed the AMWU allegations in a press release, last week.
The insurance giant confirms its involvement via a bold billboard on the site but tells dudded contractors it is not responsible for paying the freight.
Several contractors are in the cart for millions of dollars because developer, BSB7, has struck financial problems.
Two of them, HD Projects and Safe Access Scaffolding, are at the centre of a noisy picket that has been running outside Suncorp's NSW head office all week.
"These two companies are owed nearly $200,000 for work they have completed," CFMEU organiser, Rob Kera, says.
"That's big money for these operators and, at least one of them, will lay off employees before Christmas if it doesn't get paid.
"We've been through the chain of responsibility and all trails lead back to Suncorp. At the end of the day, they are paying the bills.
"Morally, at least, Suncorp owes these people a lot of money."
The argument reignites a key CFMEU criticism of a contracting system that sees asset rich finance companies and property developers hiring lowest-cost operators.
Time after time, these people go broke, leaving subbies and, sometimes, their employees unpaid while principal beneficiaries wash their hands of the debts.
The insurance company's Queensland head office delivered unpaid contractors a "get lost" message, last Friday.
Kera says the picket will be extended from offices on the corner of Bridge and Pitt Streets, Sydney, to the project at 23 Howard Ave, Dee Why, next week.
In what the AFL-CIO has dubbed the 'Victory for Working Families', an estimated 187,000 union volunteers mobilised voters in the final days of the campaign, delivering 74 per cent of all union votes to the Democrats.
In contrast, at the last federal election in Australian, the ALP received less than 50 per cent of votes from union members.
An increased minimum wage and a restoration of workers' union rights are now back on the political agenda after the successful campaign.
While the War in Iraq took centre stage, the minimum wage was one of the priority issues new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put at the top of her agenda as she became the first female majority leader in US history .
The key policy priorities identified by the AFL-CIO are:
* Raising the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour.
* Restoring workers' freedom to form unions: Pass the Employee Free Choice Act and reverse the National Labor Relations Board's recent ruling that allows employers to deny workers' union rights by classifying them as "supervisors."
* Overturning the ban prohibiting Medicare from negotiating with drug companies for more affordable prescription drugs.
* Stopping sending our best jobs overseas: Reward companies that create jobs at home instead of giving tax dollars to companies that export our jobs.
* and reversing the cuts in student loans made by the Republican Congress.
W"e're very proud and excited to see from the numbers this morning that union voters drove a wave that elected a pro-working families majority in the House and very likely in the Senate," said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.
"The leaders in control of Congress neglected the needs of working Americans while catering to corrupt special interests, and working people said 'no more'."
The AFL-CIO's program reached out to 13.4 million voters in 32 battleground states. It reached union members, members of union households, retirees and members of Working America, the AFL-CIO's community affiliate for workers who don't have a union
"We knew that our challenge at the AFL-CIO was to provide the organizing to transform the frustration and anger into political power," said Sweeney.
"We responded with the biggest, most energetic grassroots program in our history, and it worked."
Bisshop, a privateer who arrived on Sydney's IR scene as point-man for Morris McMahon in its bitter, drawn out battle with AMWU members, last year, is back.
He's moved just around the corner to Thompson Roller Doors at Turella where he has injected himself into another battle to impose Howard Government individual contracts.
At Morris McMahon he was called, Crisis Manager, a role that seemed to involve shepherding scabs and organising security.
Under bizarre new industrial laws, he's showed up in the guise of "mediator", company mediator that is, running a campaign described as "blatant discrimination" by union officials.
Thompson Roller doors sacked its AMWU delegate then tried to move the staff onto AWAs. The sweetener was more money than it was prepared to pay staff on the collective agreement.
Last week, AMWU state president Tim Ayres, called that strategy "blatant discrimination".
The AMWU has begun unlawful dismissal proceedings over the sacking of its delegate.
Meanwhile, a company controlled by a Fortune 500 merchant bank has announced its intention to make redundant 52 workers, the exact number of trade unionists on its payroll.
Representatives of Trafalgar Building Supplies dropped the bombshell, this week, in the middle of strike action over its refusal to protect entitlements.
Trafalgar has about 80 people on its payroll, all-up.
The Immigration Department imposed two and three years on the restaurants in response to a year-long campaign by the LHMU Hospitality Union.
Three of the restaurants are also being prosecuted by the Office of Workplace Services over unpaid wages and breaches of workplace law.
Pangaea, Zefferellis, Holy Grail and Milk and Honey were all caught out underpaying Filipino kitchen workers brought to Australia under the Federal Government's scandal-prone 457 migrant visa scheme.
One of the restaurants had the idea of bringing Filipino chefs to Australia, then drummed up business at the other restaurants and brought the chefs out as a job lot, said LHMU ACT organiser David Bibo.
The Filipinos were paid a gross annual wage of $29,000 - well below award and industry standard rates - for working 60-hour weeks. Bibo said they were also abused and threatened with deportation.
The Federal Magistrates Court has ordered Holy Grail to pay $70,000 in unpaid wages, while decisions are still to be announced on wage recoveries from Pangaea and Zeffirellis.
Those three restaurants are also being further prosecuted and face possible penalties of hundreds of thousands of dollars over other breaches of the law.
None of this action would have occurred without the union's vocal and vigorous campaign, or the Filipinos' courage to stand up for their rights, said Bibo.
"Unfortunately, exploitation in the hospitality industry is still widespread, despite all the publicity this case has attracted," said Bibo.
Hospitality workers are commonly paid as little as $10 an hour, he said.
"Employers just seem to have trouble with the concept of paying people correctly."
Bendigo will be worst hit, losing 380 jobs by December next year. Two hundred jobs will be lost from a Gold Coast call centre and a further 60 will be cut from Brisbane.
AAPT's parent company Telecom New Zealand, is itself in the midst of a job-cutting frenzy with 1000 jobs being hacked out its New Zealand operation.
AAPT has operated in Bendigo for five years and has vigorously promoted its support of the Victorian regional town.
Just last year chief executive Jon Stretch committed to telco to staying in Bendigo until 2012; and Bendigo manager Rod Caldow recently stated AAPT was a "true local business".
Community and Public Sector Union official Louise Persse said the Bendigo workers were shocked as they'd recently been assured the centre would remain open.
"They are pretty distressed in these regional locations, it's difficult to get other work. It's a real kick in the guts for these people," she said.
They will challenge "excessive" cash perks, being pocketed by a range of suits, at next week's AGM.
The Australian Council of Superannuation Investors (ACSI) has advised member funds to vote down Telstra's remuneration report on Tuesday over concerns that large cash and share bonuses are not subject to shareholder approval, and are too easy to access.
ACSI, whose members control $160 billion, issued the voting advice on the grounds:
o Telstra didn't seek shareholder approval for 1.64 million shares to executives
o Telstra's most senior executives received short-term incentives despite lower profits and plummeting share prices
o short term incentives are paid in cash only, rather than half cash, half shares
o management controls the interpretation of long-term incentive hurdles.
"This level of control and oversight mean these hurdles are open to control and manipulation, in that they may be achieved without substantial benefits being derived to shareholders," ACSI director Phil Spathis told the Australian Financial Review.
But while shareholders will be given an opportunity to question Telstra's remuneration report, which includes details of executive pay packets, their vote on it will be non-binding.
And the company's largest shareholder, the federal government, has indicated it will support Telstra's remuneration report.
Super funds control about a quarter of the Australian sharemarket and manage more than $900 billion worth of assets.
The ATO has given the building products giant a favourable ruling on its new asbestos compensation fund, opening the way for billions of dollars to flow to Aussies poisoned by its products.
James Hardie, yesterday, described the ruling as an "important milestone" in delivering on a promise it made to asbestos sufferers, unions and the NSW Government nearly two years ago.
Chair Meredith Helicar told shareholders, in September, the tax status of the fund was the "only substantive issue" standing between asbestos sufferers and Hardie's money.
But campaigners aren't knocking the tops off cold ones yets. They have seen Hardie duck and weave for years in a bid to limit its exposure to the families of dying people.
Asbestos Diseases Foundation president Barry Robson said he wouldn't be celebrating until sufferers saw the colour of Hardie's cash.
"That's when we'll declare an end to the campaign and open a couple of bottles of beer," the former MUA official told the AFR.
Dogged community campaigning, led by NSW unions, saw James Hardie publicly exposed for perpetrating one of the greatest acts of corporate bastardry in Australian history.
The furore centre on a 2001 restructure that saw the building products giant relocate to the Netherlands.
It promised the NSW Supreme Court it would leave assets of $1.9 billion behind for the use of creditors, including asbestos disease sufferers.
In 2002, directors cancelled that arrangement without informing the court, NSW Government, sufferers or unions.
Former CEO Peter Macdonald argued the Netherlands-based operation had no legal or moral obligation to dying Australians.
But the strategy came to grief when the NSW Government put the company's actions under the spotlight of a public inquiry.
After the embarrassment of the Jackson Inquiry, James Hardie negotiated a settlement with parties headed by ACTU chief Greg Combet.
For the past two years it has put off funding its new compensation fund because of the issue of its tax status.
As the Democrats handed the Bush Republicans a walloping in the mid-term polls, our Labor Government in NSW was copping a series of self-inflicted hits, leading some to start writing obituaries five months out from the election.
These types of scandals by their very nature have a political impact. They create a media storm that pushes other agenda issues to the margins and, for the time the tempest blows give the impression it will never stop.
But, the storms do pass and the public judges the leader on his or her capacity to deal with the crisis. After all, that is why we elect leaders, to deal with crises.
In recent years, Australian state politics has been dominated by leaders who made their names dealing with crises - Queensland's Peter Beattie is the master, the worse things get, the more he is the man for the job.
It is a different model of politics, rather than denying a problem, a strong leader takes the negatives, confront them head on as the best person to deal with the problem. Those who saw WA Premier Alan Carpenter's performance this week, will see a bit of the Beatties in his staring down of Brian Burke.
Handled astutely, the focus eventually shifts back to where the public wants it to be - the provision of good government, in particular the maintenance of basic services and the preservation of individual rights.
In NSW this is the ground where the opposition leader is most vulnerable, the double whammy of 29,000 public sector job cuts and endorsement of the Howard Government's WorkChoices agenda has far greater import than the tip pot forensics of a scandal.
And Debnam's extreme agenda is being delivered by a political party drifting further and further to the right, under the influence of a secretive fundamentalist faction that has all the hallmarks of a sect.
The disenfranchisement of all moderate elements of the NSW Liberal Party has its own political dynamic, draining long-term party supporters of enthusiasm to do the hard yards that turn elections.
In contrast, the Labor base is energised like never before, with Rights at Work committees across the state pioneering a new form of activism deeply rooted in the community.
It is interesting to see the parallels with the American elections, where a focussed union base outgunned Rove's Religious Right delivered the Democrats 74 per cent union support - compared to the bear 50 per cent union support the ALP managed to snare at the last federal election.
In the USA and in NSW, the right of centre parties have moved sharply to the Far Right, abandoning their centre - and offering it up to sober, sensible parties of the centre-left.
This dynamic, coupled with an extremist free market agenda and the damage it will do to public services - and not the indiscretions of a few elected officials - will define the March 2007 election.
And that's why it's a little premature to be slashing the wrists yet.
Peter Lewis
Editor
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