In an interview with Workers Online, Carr says he believes there's merit in the idea of regulating independent contractors and labour hire firms, provided "that doesn't see a flight of jobs out of this jurisdiction."
"It is a global trend ... it's happening everywhere," Carr says of job insecurity in the interview.
"We want to facilitate union activity and the protection of standards in industry without seeing the industry fly to other states where those things don't exist.
"That's where there's a relevance in having Labor governments along the East Coast.
"I'd be amenable to discussing this with my three Labor colleagues - and we're likely to have Labor Governments in South Australia and Western Australia."
"That really would provide the opportunity for national action ...this is something we would put on our agenda."
The NSW Labor Council is pushing the Carr Government to address growing job insecurity by looking Former ACTU president Jennie George has been proposed by both unions and employer groups to chair such an inquiry.
by Noel Hester
The ASU and the CPSU, which cover Stellar, says the company is known for its anti-union policies, its reliance on individual contracts and rock bottom wages and conditions.
The NSW Government has contracted Stellar to run the State Transit Authority's 131500 timetable hotline number at their new Hornsby call centre. This site employs over 200 permanent and casual employees.
After staff finish their initial training they are told to sign AWAs as a condition of employment. Employees have approached the ASU and provided written evidence that their continued employment depended on them signing AWAs. They receive a base wage of $26,000 - well below the conditions enjoyed by State Transit employees.
Stellar fifty per cent owned by Telstra
Stellar Call Centres is a joint venture between Telstra and US call centre specialists Excell Global Services. Excell is based in Phoenix Arizona. Telstra owns 50% of Stellar.
The creation of Stellar gave Telstra access to a workforce to outsource future call centre work and control of a company that contracts staff to work longer hours at cheaper wages.
The centre has been experiencing extremely high turnover and employees report that they cannot meet the service levels expected by State Transit as they receive inadequate training and Stellar has difficulty maintaining staffing levels. With the extra demands of the Olympics this should be of great concern to the Government and the public.
There are more risks for the NSW Government in their link with Stellar. Stellar has been taken to court regarding Telstra's strategy of outsourcing work as a means of slashing wages and union busting.
Transmission of business
The future of Stellar will be decided in the next few weeks in a landmark judgement to be handed down by the Australian Federal Court. This test case defined the legal definition of 'transmission of business'. If the current appeal by Stellar against this decision is rejected there will be wide ranging ramifications for many businesses in Australia - including State Transit.
Stellar will be forced to recognise that their contract with State Transit is also a transmission of business and they will have to abide by the existing conditions of employment.
The ASU has called on the Labor Council to meet with the relevant ministers to ensure the NSW Government is not a party to the Reith agenda of individual contracts and for them to reconsider contracting work to such a company.
In the past week Hillard has accused Telstra of 'corporate incest' in using offshoot Stellar to drive down wages and conditions.
Most of the attention has focused on Telstra's plans to hive off the bulk of its Directory Assistance work to Stellar. The national carrier's 1223 Directory Assistance work will be centralised to a mega-call centre due to open in Perth next month, employing more than 350 permanent staff.
Hillard says that the opening of the Perth site will be a watershed of Telstra work being diverted to a company that uses cheaper labour and below award conditions.
"Under the new regime of massive job-shedding, Telstra obviously intends to sack rural employees and break the back of the Telstra unions by creating a low wage alternative call centre workforce," he says.
"All fair-minded Australians, particularly Telstra shareholders, will be appalled to learn that Telstra has designed a secret boardroom agenda to avoid its obligation to provide award pay and conditions, by outsourcing its call centre work to Stellar, which it controls."
Hillard has held talks this week with key Telstra unions in a bid to raise national awareness of the issue.
See next week's Workers Online for an interview with the Telstra Troubleshooter, Andrew Hillard
by HT Lee
The union marched on the Prime Minister's Sydney offices today claiming illegal immigrants were working on a building site next doot to the government offices.
The Federal Department of Immigration is investigating this scam -- illegal workers being flown into Australia on commercial flights. The Federal Police is also looking into the whole matter.
Two subcontractors at the Piano Building site in Phillip Street right next door to Prime Minister John Howard's Sydney Ministrial office were invoved in the scam. The workers were being paid less than 50 per cent of union rates. Payroll tax and workers compensation premiums were also not paid.
The Howard Government claimed in Parliament yesterday the CFMEU was exaggerating the extent of the problem of illegal labour in the Sydney construction industry.
But CFMEU state secretary Andrew Ferguson says the numbers speak louder than words-there are over 30 illegals found so far.
Ferguson says the Government needs to act now to stop the systematic exploitation of vulnerable people and the undercutting of Australians wages and conditions.
'The Government snipes from Canberra while the problem the union has identified continues. We can find illegals right next door to where the Prime Minister works in Sydney, why can't the Government find them?'
Deaths Led to Scam Being Uncovered
The CFMEU uncovered the rackets when investigating the tiling sector following the death of Korean worker Lee Soo Chul. It was discovered Lee was an illegal migrant and had worked for shonky body hire companies which paid no superannuation nor insurance benefits (CTAS) to their illegal workers and therefore there was no death benefit entitlement for the workers.
The body hire companies involved in the scams include Fixton Marble & Granite, and Tae Sung. They were paying their workers less than 50% of union rates. Payroll tax and workers compensation premiums were also not paid.
Ferguson said: 'The CFMEU and its members cannot condone illegal immigrants. However, the main enemy is the builders and the bosses who use and exploit illegals to undermine union rates of pay and conditions.'
The body hire companies were supplying labour to Royal Tiles, Deemah Marble & Granite, JJStonetech and Saba Bros which in turn were working as subcontractors on the following sites: Baulderstone (Chippendale); Multiplex (Wharf 9 & 10); Lend Lease (Macquarie Towers); Lend Lease (Jackson Landing); Toga (Central); Hanson Yunken (Sussex Street); Walter Construction (Jamieson Street); and Southern Cross (Pyrmont).
Bans in Place
The CFMEU has since imposed work bans on those sites until all related matters have been resolved.
The subcontractors involved have agreed to pay $110,000 to the widow of the worker. The money will be presented by the CFMEU to Mr Lee's 12 year old son and his wife who has a heart condition. They have also agreed to pay other workers back pay amounting to $400,000. The money paid has been deducted by the subcontractors from monies they owed the body hire companies.
'Bosses ripping off the system will be hit hard with all workers' back pay recovered. The end result will be many of these shonky operators will be put out of business,' Ferguson said.
According to Ferguson the CFMEU will also be fining employers breaking the law with the money given to charity to fight poverty in third world countries.
'Unfortunately people from poorer countries are desperate to enter this country to find work and get a better standard of living.
'These fines will help a little and teach unscrupulous bosses a lesson.
It's been revealed that the Department was fined $300,000 for breaches of the Occupational Health and Safety Act over a 1996 accident at Ballina High School.
While the fine was imposed late last year, details were not publicly released in line with a NSW Government policy not to publicise prosecutions against government agencies.
The prosecution has come to light in the latest issue of the NSW Teachers federation journal 'Education'. The Federation is currently facing a $10,000 fine over banes imposed of government literacy tests.
The prosecution flowed from an incident after a TAFE general assistant was run over be a tractor while providing instruction to a work experience student. he suffered serious chest and foot injuries in the accident.
Justice Monica Schmidt found that the department had no policy or handbook for handling work experience students and had failed to keep equipment in a safe condition.
"The tractor concerned was in an unsatisfactory state of repair, with an unguarded rotating shaft exposed at two points," she said in her judgement.
Teachers Weigh Up Legal Options
Meanwhile, the Federation is considering a legal appeal to the decision that it had breached orders by banning the literacy tests.
NSW General Secretary John Hennessy says the union have a right to appeal the decision before the penalty is determined.
"Given the nature of industrial relations in NSW the concept of a union being fined at the instigation of a Labor government has ramifications for the whole trade union movement," Hennessy says. "Every union should be considering that over the next few weeks."
For the latest on the dispute visit the Teachers
Trade unions are outraged that the Parliamentary Select Committee into the NSW Victims Compensation Scheme - chaired by Labor MP Tony Stewart - failed to consult with them before coming up with plans to cut access to the scheme
If the recommendations to remove 'Non-Permanent Psychological Injuries' from the scheme are adopted, workers involved in violent crimes would be left without protection.
The Finance Sector Union (FSU) covering bank staff, Transport Workers Union (TWU) covering armoured car drivers and Shop Distributive and Allied Employees (SDA) covering retail staff have all raised concerns about the changes.
FSU assistant state secretary Kirsty Campbell told Labor Council that members who had guns held to their faces in hold-ups often were traumatised for some time afterwards.
TWU state secretary Tony Sheldon wants to invite Stewart and other members of the inquiry to participate in a Labor Council forum on the issue.
The issue will be debated further at next week's Labor Council meeting.
In talks this week, ceremony producers have agreed that 147 paid performers participate and agreed to enter into further discussions about an acceptable mix of professional performers and amateur participants.
As reported in Workers Online last week, the MEAA had warned that the ceremonies would resemble a school Eisteddfod if organisers had stuck with plans to use volunteer performers only.
"Appropriately, the opening ceremony will allow the participation of over 11,700
members of community groups, dance groups, marching bands and high school performing groups," MEAA state secretary Michel Hryce says.
"What the union wants is recognition of the professionalism that the small component of performers will bring to the event and appropriate payment. "
Hryce says so far, SOCOG is willing to pay 1.19% of the total participants in the opening ceremony. The union says professional involvement should be closer to 5% to ensure the necessary level of performers with specialist skills and expertise necessary to stage the event.
Negotiations continue with the next meeting scheduled for 10.00am Thursday 23 March 2000.
Unions to Table Olympics Claim at SLAC
Meanwhile, unions will use Monday's meeting of the State Labour Advisory Council to push for an Olympics allowance for public sector workers whose duties are altered for the Games.
Workers including rail workers, emergency services and health workers whose rostered will be changed to meet with the massive demand want some form of recognition from the government.
Labor Council secretary Michael Costa says its an issue the government can't duck if it wants to ensure the Games run smoothly.
Other issues on the SLAC agenda include the victims compensation and the outsourcing of work from government agencies to non-union call centres.
by Zoe Reynolds
The Maritime Union has applauded Senate changes to the Navigation Amendment (Employment of Seafarers') Bill 1998 - a bill which would otherwise have posed a serious threat to the Australian coastal environment and the lives of seafarers.
In an impassioned speech Senator Kim Carr (ALP, Victoria) said the original bill should have been titled ' the employment of cheap, sweated, unqualified foreign seafarers' bill. He compared the government push for deregulation in the shipping industry to the now widely condemned deregulation of nursing homes and the petrol industry.
"This bill is really about replacing Australian workers on Australian ships," he said. "It is about the reduction in the qualification of persons, it is about the reduction of wages and conditions for workers on ships."
Senator Jacinta Collins (ALP, Victoria) said the bill "ignored the very real dangers faced by seafarers" and the "threat to our coastline, environment and tourist industry."
Senator Collins also cited widespread reports of maltreatment of foreign seafarers, including bashing of crew members by ships officers, sexual molestation and rape, denial of food and provisions, underpayment or nonpayment of wages, appalling on board living conditions and deprivation of access to medical care- all extensively documented by successive Ships of Shame parliamentary inquiries and reports.
Both Democrat and Labour senators rejected and/or amended more than 20 of the 80 items in the bill, including removal of
* seafarers' entitlements to paid sick leave ashore,
* protection against seafarers being forced to work for years at sea
without a break
* restrictions on foreign crew handling cargo or ballast in port and
polluting our harbours
* independent policing of seafarers' accreditation
* restrictions prohibiting demanding or receiving fees for jobs
On rejecting the attempt to abolish sections of the act preventing poorly trained workers, buying forged qualifications and jobs at sea, Senator Brian Greig (Democrats, WA) said; "The move to allow persons to demand or receive fees for providing seafarers with employment results in the payment of bribes by seafarers to secure employment on ships."
Senator Kerry O'Brien" (ALP,Tasmania) described the government shipping policy as "laughable" because it had "done nothing to promote the shipping industry in this country". He also challenged the government to make public a recent report advocating industry funding and the retention of our national fleet on both economic and defence grounds.
Government spokesman Senator Ian MacDonald (Liberal Party, Queensland and minister for regional services, territories and local government) however accused both the Democrat and Labor senators of "gutting" the bill completely and being "subservient to the unions."
MUA National Secretary John Coombs said the outcome was a yet another massive defeat for Workplace Relations Minister Peter Reith, the chief architect of the bill, a victory for human rights, a victory for the labour movement and a victory for all those genuinely concerned in protecting Australia's fragile marine environment.
Deputy National Secretary Paddy Crumlin said: " The government shipping policy is a disgrace. The Australian economy has been built on back of the Australian shipping industry. One in eight merchant seafarers died in the second world war. And the industry is just as important now as ever before. The dismantling of this bill applies tremendous pressure on the federal government to deliver a sustainable shipping policy for Australia."
The bill, as amended, was passed by the Senate on March 9, and will now return to the lower house.
Wired magazine's online news service reports that under the Nader plan critics, malcontents, and disgruntled employees would be able to register domain names like microsoft.sucks and mcdonalds.sucks.
Nader has sought permission for a service that would provide 10 new top-level domains, including .union, .sucks, .ecology, and .complaints.
The idea, according to Jamie Love of the Consumer Project on Technology, is to create non-corporate discussion and organizing areas "to enable citizens to improve civil society."
Currently a wealth of company-criticism sites exist, from AOL Watch and McSpotlight to scores of Bill-Gates-is-the-Antichrist Web pages. There's even, appropriately, an ICANN Watch site.
But companies frequently purchase obviously critical domain names; for instance, Bell Atlantic owns bellatlanticsucks.com.
To prevent that sort of practice from spilling over into the new top-level domains, Love says organisations should be barred from owning the .sucks version of their name.
So far, ICANN has not set up any formal procedures to decide what new top level domains to approve.
That's the task of its so-called Domain Name Supporting Organisation, which will be presenting its views at an ICANN meeting in Cairo next week.
I have just come across Workers Online and am most impressed both with the content and the potential for rank and file participation and discussion.
One tiny point however. I really don't think those with a long memory of NSW Labor history would approve of referring to Kim Beazley as "the big fella". There was and will ever be only one big fella and that was Jack Lang.
Lang (who I met on quite a few occasions) had the wonderful advantage of outliving all his enemies and indeed most of his contemporaries. He could thus rewrite the history of his career to suit himself.
It's all a matter of opinion of course, I am one who reckons that for the most part Premier Lang was right.
But in his embittered middle age Lang was a rat and a wrecker. He did terrible harm to the NSW party (when it was worth preserving) and did his best to destroy several Labor leaders including Chifley.
I could not imagine Beazley becoming embittered or destructive like Lang,he seems to have more resilience. so maybe we should think up another title for him. I suggest Prime Minister.
Ivan Pagett
I have voted Labor all my life but not at the next election:
1.I have written to several ALP politicians on the ALP site(Email Kim,Simon etc etc now!!) and have NEVER had a reply.....so stuff them thats it!!If they don't want to communicate they shouldn't have an email address.They never read them anyway.Their staffs do it all.
2.The only thing that would get me to change my mind would be if KIM categorically DUMPED the GST like most of the people want him to.It is NOT impossible to dump and it will NEVER be too expensive.
I believe Kim wants the GST as much as the Libs do.
3.Kim is HOPELESS on his feet.His simple answer to BULLFROG on channel 9 re rolling back the GST should have been....the amount of GST collected has been seriously underestimated...we will use this to roll it back.By the way this IS true...but KIm was too dumb to think of it!!
4.Simon is good on his feet but he is too cynical and never smiles...sad because he COULD be a good leader
5.Considering I am in Larry Anthony's VERY marginal electorate you would think they would answer their emails.Thats it.....Labor is turning away their most loyal supporters.I have even worked on booths and been a paid up member but no more mate.
Travman
Hey here's something fun!!!
Petrol Prices in the city went up by ten cents and the national press told us all about it. The same thing happens in the country (week of Feb.26th) and it does not even receive half the outrage in the media.
The internet threatens the big importers in Australia by allowing demand to supersede the limited brain pool involved in current 'marketing decisions' that restrict trade and consumer choices in Australia especially outside city Australia.
The following stand on petrol profiteering is another opportunity provided by the internet for those outside city Australia to gain some parity in being heard, and in a way that benefits city folk equally in unison with all Australians concerned with the price of petrol.
Low income groups, especially in the outer suburbs and rural areas, must buy a car since the collaboration between government and oil companies in this profiteering does not provide adequate alternative transport and thus compounds the inequities in our country.
April 6th to 8th is an opportunity to address this profiteering by providing those at the petrol pump front-line an incentive to complain to their overlords in a way that they will take notice.
INTERNATIONAL 3 DAY PETROL BOYCOTT - April 6th-8th.
Last year on April 30, across the USA the American people staged what they called a "Gas Out" across Canada and the USA to bring down the high price of petrol ..........and it worked!!!!
It's time we Australian's took a leaf out of the old American protest book and did something similar, only this time let's make it for THREE DAYS instead of just one.
Can you imagine how this sort of action would hurt the Federal Government which rips us off blind with its World Parity Pricing Policy?
Can you imagine how this sort of action would hurt the Oil companies
who also rip us off blind with their variety of fuel prices all across the nation aimed at wringing the last cent out of our pockets wherever they can do so?
Let's see how many Australians we can get to band together for a three day period in April, NOT TO BUY ANY PETROL, during those three days. It will take a little planning but with a small amount of self sacrifice (i.e. ride your bike to work!) and some solidarity with the Canadian and American people as well, we have an opportunity to send a real world message where it's going to hurt the most.
If you're happy about seeing your hard earned dollars stolen by a Middle East Oil Cartel and seeing your own Government rub its hands together while we're ripped off by them as well.......then do nothing !!
If you're fed up with the constant rip off by Cartels and your Government tell them directly. Tell them you've had enough and JOIN AUSTRALIA'S GAS OUT.
Do not buy any petrol from APRIL 6, 2000, to APRIL 8, 2000. Buy what you need before the dates listed above, or after, but practice some restraint and put off some things you were going to do and don't buy any petrol during the GAS OUT. If you want help, just ask!! And mark these dates in your diary-organiser NOW !
>
> Stephen Hartley
> NetAbility
> Brisbane, Australia
As one of the M.U.A. wharfies who was locked out by Patricks Stevedores, My mates and I had the great fortune of meeting Jennie George on numerous occasions.
It would not be any exageration to state that she is both loved and respected by all the people who were involved on our Australia wide picket lines.
On behalf of all my mates from Patricks Stevedores at Port Botany I would like to pass on my own thankyou to this great Australian and to wish her every success in whatever venture she may undertake in the future, thanks Jenny, Mate!
Roger Covel
by Peter Lewis
What does it mean to be Labor in the 21st Century?
It's about commitment to equality, a commitment to the interests of working people and their families and a willingness to revise society and its arrangements.
What's changed?
The failure of central command economies, the failure of economic planning, the limits on the size of the public sector. They're the three big changes in the past couple of decades. They're decisive changes too.
The biggest change is that there is a limit to the size of the public sector. In the 50s and 60s Social Democrats looked to expanding the welfare sector, increasing taxation, increasing government involvement in the economy. Well, when the public sector reaches 55 per cent of the economy as it does in France and Germany, it's hard to see it reaching 60 per cent or 65 per cent. You can't go on increasing taxation, you can't go on increasing government borrowing. That's the limit we run into.
But if you accept that the solutions Labor promoted in the 20th Century are no longer the solutions, where are the differences between Labor and the Liberals, except for these motherhood statements about caring for the interests of working people, where are the fault lines?
The differences are on approaches to industrial relations, on approaches tax policy - where the tax reductions are being targeted - and on approaches to social security.
Can you understand the frustration from the trade union movement about the first term of your government?
No. No. I mean the union movement supported our industrial relations package, there was no criticism of the package whatsoever. They were part of it. We delivered in that period the biggest pay increase to the public sector workforce of any jurisdiction in Australia. In that first term, I was the only government leader out on the picket lines supporting the MUA. We involved the timber industry workforce in the future of the state's forests in a way they had never been involved before. We had them campaign for the re-election of my team. We delivered huge increases to public sector outlays in health, education and welfare. In fact the increase in spending for child protection and disability services came in at 90 per cent during our first term. So I rest on my record.
In 1995 unions still had a stake in national policy through the Accord. Now Labor appears to take a more independent path. Have you felt the relationship changing?
It ebbs and flows, at any one time we might be closer to a union position -- it depends on the position. We really judge these things according to the evidence available.. I don't think you can generalise anything.
Is the relationship merely issues-based though, or are there still underlying values in common?
Well whatever we do we've got to keep NSW competitive. I'm not going to be a John Cain, but I'm not going to be a Jeff Kennett either.
There's been talk in Trades Hall, and to some extent action as well, about the need to move from a strict factional basis to having Left officials in the organisation. Is there a similar dynamic in State Parliament?
Absolutely. The Cold War is over. My arguments with the Left when I was in my twenties were mainly motivated by Cold War issues. I didn't like the Soviet model; I found it deeply offensive and I wanted them to liberate their political prisoners and allow political competition. I didn't like people who went around the trades halls in Australia arguing a more or less Soviet liner. Well, the Soviet world has been dissolved and I think we're all united in trying to find some solutions to the difficult and intractable problems we face.
A left-right divide, for example, is not really relevant to our grappling for more effective solutions on drugs. Both Left and Right want to pull investment into the State. And I'm doing and saying things on environmental protection that only the Left would have been exposing when I entered the State Parliamentary party. One of my achievements in the Labor community in NSW has been to lead, over 15 years, the right towards a green position. So I welcome the breaking down of the barriers, I really don't find them useful.
Yet the structures still exist at a branch level.
Yeah.
Do you think sufficient progress in branch reform is being made, or is there more that should be done?
There's progress in the parliamentary party, progress in the union movement; I agree that there are too many advantages for people at the branch level to maintain the rival football club structure. That's what it's like. People have their loyalties.
Although a lot seem to change sides
But it all seems to be one way traffic.
In terms of the political philosophy of the government, are you a subscriber to Latham's Third Way?
The difficulty with that term is that I've always seen the Labor party and other social democratic parties as representing the Third Way. Since 1917 we've represented that third Way between Marxian Leninism and the Capitalist road on the other. I've got a Fabian Society pamphlet at home from the late sixties that says Sweden represents a third way. So the concept has long been around. I think we need a better definition and I think where Mark Latham is making a very interesting contribution is in welfare reform. So I have difficulties with the terminology rather than the content.
Can I raise a few issues on the union agenda; first casualisation and job security. It's an issue that is resonating across the community. But how much can government really do to increase the security of workers in a global economy?
You're right, everywhere in the world there is growth in that non-traditional sector - it presents us with a huge challenge. One generalisation I would mention is that there has to be a national approach. The fact that we have Labor Governments on the East Coast of Australia provides us with an opportunity to formulate a uniform statutory response to it.
But what can a state government do at the entry point of global capital. For instance. does it concern you that a lot of jobs you are creating in this state are basically precarious, non-union jobs.
It does. It is a global trend. It's happening everywhere. We want to facilitate union activity and the protection of standards in industry without seeing the industry fly to other states where those things don't exist. That's where there's a relevance in having Labor governments along the East Coast. I'd be amenable to discussing this with my three Labor colleagues - we're likely to have Labor Governments in South Australia and Western Australia, certainly there's a strong chance. That really would provide the opportunity for national action. This is something we would put on our agenda.
Do you see merit in the idea of regulating independent contractors and labour hire firms, which is an element of the package of reforms the union movement has proposed?
Yes. But I just need to approach it in a way that doesn't see a flight of jobs out of this jurisdiction.
Another issue: what do unions do about the problem that you have a lot of people who free-load off there services when you have common rule awards; people are getting pay rises negotiated by unions, without paying their union fees.
It's very hard. I don't think any government would allow non-union workers to be hit with a fee; this has got to be settled in the realm of persuasion and argument on the shop floor. ... I think we are seeing entrepreneurial unionism, we're seeing unions offering services to members.
By the way, I want to put this on the record. One of the advantages that NSW has got is that I think we have a smarter union movement and that's going to see more jobs come into the state. It means we can promote a post-2000 jobs plan in this State with the unions' support. The bulk of projects in that plan, if not all of them, are generating traditional, that's going to be covered by trade unions. We've got 1,000 jobs created at the Tumut pulp and paper mill; a lot of jobs in the major post-Olympic construction projects. This is the traditional unionised sector. And I'd urge my friends in the trade union movement to look at our post-2000 plan, I think it's to the credit of the government that we have come out well before the Olympics talking about what's happening to the state's economy after the Olympics.
One other issue - the social audit: you were cold on this idea last year. Has anything happened in the last 12 months to reinforce your view that we don't need an overview of where the money and services are going?
Look the overview, I'd entertain to be carried out by the Council on the Cost of Government. We've hugely increased spending on the social budget, we've increased expenditure on health, education and DOCS by anything between 30 and 90 per cent, depending on the category. That's a huge and unprecedented increase in social spending. the only social audit that I'd contemplate is one that tests that increased expenditure as to whether it delivers value for money.
What's the concern with having, out there for all to see, the distribution of government money?
Nothing, but there's nothing hidden about that. The argue for a social audit was a different one: it was about identifying needs. I have a different view - we should be asking whether taxpayers have got value for money.
There is a view that the Cabinet Office has too much influence on the government - that bureaucrats are having a bigger say than real Labor people. Do you own all your policies?
I own them all. I see any recommendation from my Ministers. If a proposal from a Minister doesn't get up, it's because I haven't been persuaded it is in the interest of the State. The Cabinet Office is under instruction from me to run this test across any policy proposal: do the benefits outweigh the costs?
But this was one of your original election promises in 1995, wasn't it? You were going to disband the Cabinet Office yet it remains
Yes, because it does my bidding. And my bidding is to test every proposal from my ministers. If a proposal doesn't succeed it's not a bureaucrat has blocked it, it's because a Minister hasn't persuaded me. There's not a single example of a proposal that's been blocked by the Cabinet Office against my wishes. In the end the primary role of a Premier or Prime Minister is to be traffic cop for the movement of policy, for the movement of policy items up and down the agenda.
Finally, your thesis was on workers newspapers and one of your early proposals as an ALP member was to set up a paper.
It was the first motion I moved at a Labor Party branch meeting ..I was 15 ...
If you were editing a workers newspaper today, what would you be writing about the Carr Government? What would be your headline for an interview with the Premier?
Carr Government Once Again Achieves the Impossible: Reconciles Economic Growth With Social Justice. We might call the paper 'Truth'.
by Andrew Hillard
This week Telstra confirmed that a mega-call centre at Joondalup, in Perth will be contracted for outsourcing, at diminished wages and conditions from the applicable industry awards.
While Telstra have been coy in not confirming that this work is contracted to its own hybrid company, Stellar, the fact is that Stellar advertised the positions 6 months ago and have imported 5 specialists from their operations in the UK to set up the centre.
In 1998 Telecommunications giant Telstra sought to reduce or eliminate its labor-intensive and wages-expensive call centres as part of the corporate workforce slash and burn policy of the then CEO, Frank Blount.
Telstra created an outsource hybrid company...Stellar Call Centres Pty Ltd, which was an ambitious joint-venture with U.S. call centre specialists, Excell Global Services, based in Phoenix Arizona. Telstra owns 50% of Stellar Call Centres Pty Ltd.
The creation of Stellar gave Telstra access to a workforce to outsource future call centre work, and control of a company which would contract staff to work longer hours at cheaper wages.
The existence of Stellar also allows Telstra to continue to downsize by offering further redundancies to its existing call centre workers.
Outsourcing to Stellar was intended to break the stranglehold of the powerful unions - specifically the CEPU (Communications, Plumbers and Electricians Union) and the CPSU (Community Public Sector Union), who for decades had forced Telstra to provide high wages and conditions to its own workers.
**************
The first Stellar call centre began business operations in December 1998 at Robina on the Gold Coast, employing over 150 staff to provide Telstra 132200 residential sales and service information.
Staff at the new Stellar Robina centre was offered $ 28,000 base pay for a 40-hour working week; five days sick leave and 4 weeks annual leave without leave loadings...wages and conditions which fell substantially short of the existing Telstra benchmark awards for identical work.
The Gold Coast region has a high unemployment with a predominantly tourist-based business economy, providing seasonal, casual work.
So even with sub-standard wages and conditions on offer there were long queues of applicants seeking permanent employment at Stellar.
The new Stellar/Telstra experiment on the Gold Coast was predictably brief.
It was only a matter of weeks before the Telstra unions, notably the CEPU, confronted Stellar, demanding right of entry to the Robina site, a request that was repeatedly denied to the unions by Stellar.
Seasoned veteran of many skirmishes, Mr Ian McLean, Queensland Branch Secretary of the Communications, Electricians and Plumbers Union (CEPU), led the charge by accusing Stellar management of treating its staff like "battery-hens" who worked in "sweat-shop conditions".
McLean and his CEPU together with Stephen Jones from the Community Public Sector Union (CPSU) vowed to mount a campaign to ensure that Stellar employees would receive parity with Telstra awards and conditions.
*****************
The Stellar war with the Telstra unions has resulted in a series of protracted hearings before the Federal Court of Australia and the Industrial Relations Commission.
The court judgments, still pending, may eventually cost Stellar/Telstra over one million dollars in fines and back-pay claims by staff at the Stellar Robina site and at other Stellar call centres in Sydney, Adelaide and Perth...and this does not take into account the escalating costs of legal representation in court appearances.
When first hired, Stellar employees were required to sign a personal work agreement that enshrined the original pay and conditions offered during the interview process.
But those contracts had no validity in Industrial Law.
Stellar management then gambled by having the Robina staff vote on a Certified agreement.
Stellar backed away from having that agreement ratified before the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission when the unions showed up at the hearing in force to oppose the Certification of the Stellar agreement.
The CEPU and ASPU argued that the work that Telstra had outsourced to Stellar was a "transmission of business" from the principal, Telstra.
The unions submitted that the work description was identical to that performed within Telstra and therefore the Telstra awards for pay and conditions should apply equally to Stellar workers.
The case was then taken to the Federal Court of Australia, where the union successfully argued that Telstra awards bound Stellar and that identical business had been transmitted under contract from Telstra to Stellar.
This was a landmark test case in which Justice Wilcox, on 3 September 1999, defined the legal definition of "transmission of business" and if the current Stellar appeal against this decision is rejected, there will be wide-ranging ramifications for many businesses in Australia.
Justice Wilcox ordered that Stellar immediately apply the Telstra awards to their Telstra Robina site and to retrospect payments to staff that had not received correct remuneration and entitlements under a Telstra award.
Stellar then applied unsuccessfully to the Federal Court of Australia to have the judgment set aside until an appeal could be mounted.
The appeal to the Wilcox decision was heard in early February 2000 and if upheld by the full bench of the Federal Court, will be devastating to the future of the Stellar/Telstra deals.
Stellar are currently challenging the legal validity of the Telstra awards in a separate court action in anticipation of losing the Wilcox appeal and may seek to stall the application of Telstra awards through protracted litigation.
******************
However, Stellar are now risking the wrath of the Federal Court - and a contempt ruling - by failing to comply with specific court orders to apply the Telstra awards for their Robina staff as required by Justice Wilcox in September 1999.
The Wilcox decision has set an unexpected precedent by defining the term in industrial law called "transmission of business".
The "transmission of business" ruling has the potential to affect every business in Australia where the principal business has contracted an outsource company providing identical services.
This means that contractors will have a legislated obligation to maintain the same level of pay and conditions as those that apply under the relevant awards for workers in the principal business.
For Stellar and other outsource contractors in the Call Centre industry, the "transmission of business" ruling threatens the death knell for those who have sought to exploit the union-free environment.
Soaring wage bills in compliance with relevant industry awards may result in many call centre operations and contracts becoming financially unviable.
***********************8
The call centre industry rode to prominence in the 1990's on the back of an epidemic of closures of banks, medical benefit groups, insurance companies, airlines and other public-contact businesses in regional and rural areas and the drastic reduction of staffing levels in their city operations.
Big business sought cost-salvation by using call centres as a high volume, low cost service provider for their customers.
The call centre industry responded by bidding for lucrative low-margin but high-call volume outsource contracts, filling the void left by thousands of retrenchments and redundancies of service staff from the banks and other businesses.
Call centres flourished, recruiting staff by the thousands, most of whom were new to the industry and grateful to have a new career, despite having to accept offers of minimum wages and below award conditions for employees.
When customers talk to their bank, airline or insurance company and make enquiries about transport timetables, they are likely to be talking to an operator who works, not for the business they rang, but for at outsource company representing that business.
In the case of Stellar, who service several Telstra contracts as well as a contract to provide information to callers to 131500 on behalf of the NSW Transit authorities, the future under the Wilcox "transmission of business" judgment appears bleak.
And Telstra will have to determine whether the cost of further legally challenging their unions via the Stellar experiment is defensible to the Federal Government and Telstra shareholders.
***************************
However if the Wilcox decision is set aside, Stellar will continue its bid to lockout the Telstra unions and break the influence of the Telstra awards.
A contentious issue in the near future is the opening a 24 hour, 7 day a week mega-call centre at Juniup, north of Perth, which is mooted to employ 400 permanent staff servicing Telstra OAS (Operator Assisted Services) the 1223 directory information business.
If this centre proceeds, unions fear that it will pave the way for Telstra to close a number of regional and rural sites it operates for OAS, a move that is certain to embarrass the Federal Government in rural areas.
Unions believe that several other Telstra call centre core-businesses are likely to be moved over to Stellar workplaces, further eroding the strength of the Telstra unions and security of Telstra employees.
At its new Perth Telstra site, Stellar are offering a base wage of just $25,000 for a 40-hour week with no holiday leave loadings, evening or weekend loadings.
This remuneration is at least one-third less than Telstra awards and the Perth venture is bound to unleash another wave of widespread union activity against Stellar and Telstra.
Staff is currently being hired for Stellar Perth and several managers from Excell Global Services U.S. & U.K. operations have already arrived in Perth to launch the controversial new Telstra venture.
If the Wilcox decision is upheld, Stellar is likely to take an appeal to the High Court in a bid to stall for time to allow it to continue to expand its Telstra operations.
Also in the union's sights will be the Stellar operation at Hornsby, where over 200 permanent and casual employees service the State Transit authorities 131500 timetable hotline number.
Unions have already applied several times to enter the Hornsby site, and with employees paid a base wage of $26,000, well below Sydney standards for equivalent work, Stellar is likely to be targeted with unprecedented union attention.
If the Wilcox decision is upheld, transmission of business may well affect the Hornsby site and have member-starved unions suing for entry and access to the employees.
Obviously Telstra, with 3 million shareholders as fiscal watchdogs, cannot pour limitless funds into defending the ill-fated Stellar experiment.
If Telstra push forward with its controversial bid to break the power of the telecommunications unions by diverting work to its own satellite company, Stellar Call Centres Pty Ltd, it risks wide-spread condemnation from unions and from the public who own shares in Telstra.
For a Telstra desperate to restore public support for the final share sell-off, continuing to support the Stellar experiment against the directives of the courts and the activities of the unions would be yet another wrong call.
The full bench of the Federal Court of Australia is expected to hand down the landmark Wilcox "transmission of business" appeal decision before the end of March 2000.
Andrew Hillard is a former human resources manager with Telstra. See next week's Workers Online for an interview with Telstra's Troubleshooter.
by Noel Hester
Imagine the boss watching you work on a palm pilot as he strolls off to the nineteenth hole at his country club.
With state-of-the-art WAP technology, hand-held computers with Internet access and sophisticated workplace monitoring systems, this isn't science fiction.
The arrival of the Internet means we can now bank, buy or barter from the comfort of our home computer or workstation. But there is a darker side to the information revolution that gives unscrupulous employers the means to monitor every second of our working day - and even our private lives.
State Rail Snooping Draws False Conclusion
In October last year State Rail suspended 10 employees after monitoring them - over a period of three months - through the use of duty travel passes. The pass has a magnetic strip which is read at the ticket barrier and allows access to the rail network. But it also allowed State Rail to identify employees and track their movements.
Bob Barker, an ASU delegate in the payroll section of State Rail where these employees work, says management wrongly assumed these workers were skiving and going home early.
'At payroll we start early. The barriers are open from 9 at night till 6 in the morning so when we arrive we walk straight through. There's no record that you're at work,' he said.
'Surveillance was also carried out through the locks and doors. On the security doors you have to have a pin number to gain access. If two people arrive together they go in together. Some don't have to punch in their number. So if you go out and then come back later management can say that you arrived at work at say 10 o'clock.'
'The information they collect doesn't give a true picture of what happens.'
Of the 10 people involved, five were completely exonerated. They had legitimate reasons that State Rail didn't dispute. Three were given final warnings but only because they had filled out forms incorrectly. Two were dismissed but are appealing.
Bob Barker says this over-the-top Big Brother exercise caused months of fear and anxiety for a whole section of the organisation.
'No one was told about it. It only came to light after someone was sacked. No one was told they had a problem and needed to be counselled. Family lives were disrupted,' he said.
'Management have given a commitment they didn't do it to anyone else. But that raises the question of why these people were picked on in the first place.'
No Place to Hide in a Call Centre
It's in call centres - the fastest growing employment area of the economy - that we can see most clearly staff surveillance and its potential for abuse. In that sector there is widespread concern about how monitoring can be used to harass and intimidate staff.
Call centres use ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) software to channel incoming calls to an available operator (or agent.) This software is efficient and sophisticated and growing more so all the time. It can track and time calls, check on key strokes and log each and every conversation between staff and caller. Time spent away from the desk - at breaks, even visits to the toilet - can be tightly controlled.
The ACD software has real-time messages associated with each agent. These messages indicate when an agent signs in and out, initiates an incoming or out going call and enters after an agent is finished with a call (call wrap up). The software constantly tracks each agent's actual work and compares it to a schedule. The moment a discrepancy arises, the agent's name and the amount of time involved is noted and each notification and alarm is color-coded to show the nature of the problem. Supervisors can see an agent's status at any given moment and take action.
In the Shadow of 'the Tower'
Marios Elles, a call centre agent at Link Communications says this level of staff surveillance can turn work into a form of incarceration.
'Every aspect of your time is monitored. The information goes back to a central monitoring system - 'the tower'. From here the supervisor can see everything. So there is not just electronic surveillance but also visual,' he said.
'There is a 'reason code' which you must punch if you are doing anything else other than answering calls. For example reason 8 - taking a break. Reason 4 - going to the toilet. Reason 7 - talking to supervisor. If staff take too much time to finish a call it can lead to counselling or even disciplinary action.'
Marios says there is irony in a system designed to give more flexible service to the customer but that has the effect of imposing an assembly-line rigidity on employees.
'It's very difficult to communicate on the floor. You only get to talk to each other in breaks. And we are on the phones without a break for two hours. This creates an antisocial environment where morale tends to be low,' he said.
'It also means you can't offer great customer service. It's like being in front of a poker machine all day. You become desensitised to humans.'
When Cameras Protect
Workplace surveillance can play a protective role for some workers.
Alan Jones, a delegate at Sydney's Matthew Talbot hostel for the homeless says video cameras are a valued security tool for employees there.
'We sleep nearly 200 people - mainly the homeless. Seventy per cent have some psychological or substance abuse problem. The nights here can be nerve wracking. There are a few people we won't let in because they are violent and dangerous,' he said.
'We can monitor them in the lanes outside the hostel with the cameras and see who is causing disturbances. We feel exposed if the cameras break down. I hate the use of cameras elsewhere - in shops for example - but in a workplace like ours it enhances your wellbeing no end.'
Watching you Play
Bob Barker says if any electronic equipment is to be used to monitor more than access or for genuine security reasons than employees should be told.
'There are important privacy issues at stake. If you work for State Rail you are able to use your home and duty pass outside work hours. This means management can also track movements in your private life. With companies now warehousing and selling data you never know how this information could be used.'
Email is as Private as a Postcard
Communication between staff members by email is now a business norm. But don't kid yourself that only you have access to your email. Your email is not private and confidential. Third parties can easily gain access to it. This can occur when:
� emails are in transmission
� your managers override your personal password
� your IT Department intercepts transmissions
� deleted messages are retrieved
Remember sending offensive emails is no different to putting them on a notice board - you invite trouble. There are laws to protect workers from abusive video surveillance but, to date, nothing to protect privacy of the Internet and email in Australia. The NSW Labor Council is now trying to establish similar guidelines for electronic surveillance. The ASU is pushing in enterprise agreements the right for union activists to use email for union business.
CTU President Ross Wilson says: "We have every reason to believe that in a neutral environment employees will see the sense of bargaining collectively.
"Why are employers hostile to collective bargaining? Because it's effective. This legislation is also saying is that there is another party to the business of employment relationships and that is the employee."
Speaking at Parliament on 14 March, the day the government's Employment Relations Bill was tabled, Ross said that he hopes that the Act will open the way for a new kind of union.
"We would like to see an influx of new members and that would change the face of unions - younger workers, Pacific Island workers - the law has the potential to make great changes."
Andrew Little of the Engineer's Union emphasised the lack of choice workers suffered under the Employment Contracts Act. He said that in one workplace an engineers' union delegate, who increased the number of union members on his job from 3 to 90, was sacked and each of the new members was taken aside and asked if they thought it was their best interests to belong to the union.
Similarly, In the recent meat workers dispute Ross Wilson said that workers were offered incentives to leave the union.
CTU economist, Peter Conway, said that the old approach to employment relations was heralded as bringing with it labour productivity and efficiency. It has been a failure on both counts, he said. New Zealand now ranks 23rd out of 26 OECD countries and our high unemployment levels are hardly a sign of labour market efficiency.
"Are workers part of the economy? We say yes," he said.
"The quality of employment has deteriorated," Peter said. "And even though the hourly rate has gone up, incomes have fallen. The average rates don't capture the greater gap between those on higher incomes and lose on lower incomes."
"The ECA encouraged employers to focus on reducing unit labour costs and to take their eye off all of the other things that make people productive. We are not asserting that there is a strong relationship between this legislation and productivity - we are simply saying that we do not think the figures show that the intended aims of economic efficiency under the ECA were achieved. In fact we are saying that It failed miserably.
"We do believe the new law will encourage increased loyalty, trust and confidence in relationships between employers and employees so people will be more prepared to go the extra distance. This, combined with more emphasis on skills training and innovation, will probably have a positive effect on the economy."
"Workers who were, in effect, prevented from joining a union in the past will now have an opportunity to join," Ross Wilson said.
"The Workplace Relations Bill is a pure bargaining model based on international rights guarantees under the ILO. It gives a secure base to build industrial relations law if you have a government that respected those requirements."
"There is nothing compulsory about this law - the responsibility is on unions to organise workers into unions. All we ask is respect for collective bargaining and organising in law.
"The law also has the potential to encourage new unions to be established provided they can be democratic and independent of employer influence."
The CTU does not anticipate that multi-employer bargaining will occur quickly in any areas, Ross said.
"Many workers are committed to their own enterprise agreements. At the same time it has the potential for workers in workplaces where they are more vulnerable to get together."
He believes that there has been a suppression of strike action over the past few years.
"But the new legislation has very heavily emphasised good faith requirements and mediation, which will require a focused approach to endeavouring to reach agreement before strikes or lockouts take place."
Joanna Beresford of the NZEI pointed out that the education sector took unprecedented levels of strike action under the ECA and Ross pointed out that the same could be said for the Nurses Organisation.
"Really it's going to depend to a very large extent on the employers' approach to this legislation."
A reporter asked whether Max Bradford had a point about 'compulsory union membership by the back door' or whether Ross thought it was 'the line they are running.'
"I think it's the line they are running," Ross said. "It's disappointing really - all we are asking for is a real choice for workers. "
"We don't need compulsory unionism. We simply need a neutral environment with some protections for collective bargaining and organising. English law has never been sympathetic to protections for the collective so you do need statute law to provide that degree of protection.
"This bill is fundamentally important for workers," Ross said. "The ILO has a convention that says that union rights to organise and bargain collectively should be recognised. These rights were taken away by the Employment Contracts Act. In 1994 the ILO sent a mission to New Zealand and fond that the Employment Contracts Act breached that law in several fundamental respects. So we are coming back to the mainstream internationally into an environment where there is greater fairness in the law than covers workplace bargaining."
by Ian Greene and David P Shugarman
At various stages in the charges and counter-charges concerning his affair with Monica Lewinsky it was suggested, usually by those sympathetic to the president, that what would normally be morally dubious behaviour should be excused, given the importance of the man and the office and the great disruption to American politics that would be caused by his impeachment or forced resignation. What makes this particular case so difficult to analyse is the complex set of subplots surrounding it. To treat it as an instance of presidential dirty hands, however, would be to misconstrue both the meaning of that term and Clinton's bumbling attempts to cover up his sexual escapades in the White House.
In digging up evidence about Clinton's affair, the media, Republican partisans and special counsel Kenneth Starr invaded his privacy. Linda Tripp's tape recording, for public consumption, of her conversation with her friend Monica Lewinsky is morally wrong and in several states is illegal. To backers of Republican efforts to track Clinton's life, such dirty-handed acts were justifiable if they led to the exposure of what they believed to be the sins of a bad man. But from the point of view of US citizens, politicians should be allowed privacy in their personal lives, and prying into their personal affairs is not acceptable. And in a succession of opinion polls taken throughout 1998, the vast majority of Americans indicated that their disapproval of Clinton's dalliance with Ms Lewinsky, and his lying about it, were not to be confused with their opinion of his performance as President. Moreover, if Clinton had lied only in front of the media and his family, there would be no grounds for impeachment. But he lied under oath while testifying before a grand jury and in a deposition he gave in the law-suit against him by Paula Jones. So the question is whether the repeated lie was big enough or important enough to count in the constitutional category of "high crimes and misdemeanours" and thus to justify impeachment.
Another critical question is whether Clinton encouraged others to cover up both his affair and his lying about it, because orchestrating a cover-up might constitute the crime of obstructing justice. There is also the question of whether efforts made by the White House to help Lewinsky find a job could reasonably be seen either as providing a public office favour in return for the president's personal sexual gratification, or as an incentive to support his denial of the affair. Finally, the investigation of the Lewinsky/Clinton affair by independent counsel Kenneth Starr resulted from an initial investigation into allegations that Clinton had been involved in some shady dealing years earlier in the Whitewater investment debacle. The Starr Report indicated that no case could be made that any Clinton wrongdoing had occurred in the Whitewater scandal. Instead, it focused on his sexual improprieties and his attempts to deny them. Adding to the complications of dealing ethically with the matter of Clinton's public ethics was the fact that views on the seriousness of his lying were, with few exceptions, a matter of party affiliation, and Starr was closely associated with the right wing of the Republican Party.
So what are the appropriate principles that ought to be used in judging Bill Clinton's behaviour, and how do they bear on what could be alleged as his recourse to dirty hands?
We argue that the principle of mutual respect is the technical foundation of democratic government. As Ronald Dworkin states: "...individuals have a right to equal concern and respect in the design and administration of the political institutions that govern them...[T]hey possess [this right] not by virtue of birth or characteristic or merit or excellence but simply as human beings with the capacity to make plans and give justice. It is around the core value of mutual respect that other pillars of our democratic tradition have taken shape: representative legislatures, freedom of expression, the integrity in governing. The Clinton case highlights the issues of integrity in public life and respect for the right to privacy.
Integrity is honesty modified by concern and respect for our fellow human beings. As Stephen Carter puts it, "one cannot have integrity without being honest... but one can certainly be honest and yet have little integrity." For example, an elected official could promise to find a good job for his mistress. By keeping the promise, he is honest. But he has violated the respect he owes to others who were cut out for that job. Telling a lie is dishonest. But telling the whole truth at every possible instant in time does not necessarily mean acting with integrity. We all face situations where we must be the bearers of distressing news, but we can often choose the time and the circumstances for presenting the news so that we can maximise the respect we show for the recipient.
So integrity is actually a complex ideal, closely related to the principle of mutual respect. People show their respect for one another by being straight with each other and by tolerating differences in lifestyles and beliefs - as well as by adhering to other crucial corollaries of treating fellow citizens as equals, such as dealing with others fairly, keeping promises, maintaining public trust when given it, and respecting others' autonomy, including their right to privacy. The Clinton affair raises the political problem of how these principles can be applied in the most effective and ethical way.
From the President's testimony before a grand jury on 17 August, 1998 and his five-minute speech to the American nation on television the same evening, it is clear that he lied to the American public. He did have sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky, although he had categorically denied this at a meeting with reporters at the White House on 26 January, 1998. Yet in his explanation and apology for lying, Clinton offered no excuse or justification related to his public office. Rather, he said he was mainly concerned with protecting himself from the embarrassment of his own conduct, and second, he wanted to protect his family and their privacy from outsiders. Clinton was dishonest, but can his dishonesty be justified? It is difficult to fathom how his admission of sexual activity with a young woman would have contributed to integrity in American public life, or for that matter, how his honesty would have enhanced the life of Ms Lewinsky or strengthened either his relationship with his family or their public image. It is equally difficult to define his show of solemnity and feigned sincerity for millions of television viewers as he decided to move from keeping a private relationship confidential to deceiving the public.
Clinton claims that his adulterous behaviour is a matter between him and his wife and daughter. In his August 17 television address, he said, "It is private and I intend to reclaim my family life for my family. It's nobody' business but ours." Here, of course, we need to remember that it is difficult for a politician to make an objective judgment about the difference between the public good and one's personal interests in such cases. At first glance, Clinton's deny, deny, deny strategy may appear to be an instance of a politician forced to dirty his hands. And if he was lying because he sincerely believed that the public good is not served by confessing his private sexual habits and accepting the political consequences, there is some basis for treating this episode as a dirty-hands matter. A dirty-hands situation is one in which a public official knowingly does something wrong, conceals it, but justifies to himself and a few confidants - the wrong, as well as the concealment, as being for the public good. Clinton came close to making a dirty-hands claim - lying for the public good - when he asserted that the prying into his private life had distracted him and the citizenry from attending to all the challenges of preparing for the next century. But it is hard to see how either his indiscretions or his attempted cover-up of them could be construed as dirty-handed activities when what is meant by such a phrase is the adoption of unseemly or repugnant methods to serve a great public interest. Clinton's sex acts could hardly be regarded as serving a grand public purpose, and even the suggestion that he lied in order to refocus attention on national priorities is questionable. Being up-front about the affair when he was first questioned about it would have put an end to the speculation and the prying. More to the point, his own explanation and apology for lying had to do with saving himself and his family, not the nation, from embarrassment.
Therefore, Clinton's situation is not so much an example of dirty hands as it is a case of a politician attempting to protect his private life from public scrutiny. This raises the question of a politician's right to privacy, and his or her capacity to separate private activities from public responsibilities. Politicians can justly claim that their private lives are off limits to the public when the one does not intrude on the other, when public responsibilities and the leadership role are not affected by situations in one's private life. A politician can claim that it is not in the public interest to have his or her sexual activities made transparent - which is not the same as claiming that engaging in such activities and then trying to keep them secret are done to serve the public interest.
Clinton chose to lie about the allegations of his affair with Lewinsky rather than to remain silent. An interesting contrast is the behaviour of former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. When questioned by reporters about his sex life prior to his marriage, and about his marriage later on, Trudeau made it a point never to answer, no matter how embarrassing the allegations. There is no evidence that he ever lied about his private life, because he refused to comment on it. Perhaps the most glaring contrast because of paradoxical similarities is the treatment enjoyed by and accorded to John F Kennedy. Kennedy apparently had remarkably similar sexual proclivities to those of Clinton. Areas of the Kennedy White House were devoted to parties that the President had with a succession of women who were smuggled in and out. Yet Kennedy was never confronted about his sexual activities, nor did he ever face questioning about how his private life might intrude on his public duties.
From the perspective of ethical politics, there are several critical questions that bear on Clinton's conduct. First, did the President fail to keep his private life and public responsibilities separate, and did he abuse the powers of his office by using others to advance both his private and political interests? Specifically, did Clinton take advantage of a White House intern by encouraging her to think that she could expect public office favours in return for sexual favours? And since Clinton lied about his affair with Lewinsky when he appeared before a court dealing with the Paula Jones lawsuit, did he encourage others to lie under oath on his behalf? If the answers to any of these questions turn out to be yes, then the President has been involved in serious ethical misconduct. Based on scrutiny of the Staff Report, and evidence placed before the House, we are of the view that the answers to these questions are no and that the President did not violate his responsibilities of office. There was nothing comparable to Richard Nixon's lies to cover up the subversion of democratic political processes in the Watergate scandal. The verdict, reached by the US Senate on 12 February, 1999, accords with this conclusion.
Our view is that politics-and-sex issues must be judged from the perspective of mutual respect rather than from a position of prevailing social standards or taboos about sex. For example, Quebec's Premier Duplessis was known to have provided public office favours to the family members of one of his mistresses. The use of public office prerogatives to obtain personal sexual satisfaction is a clear violation of mutual respect. If we focus on Duplessis's extra marital sex alone - as distinct from his use of public office favours to obtain it - this is a personal rather than a political matter, although on a personal ethical basis it would be enlightening to know whether he treated his wife with fairness and respect. In Clinton's case, there is no evidence that he either forced himself on Ms Lewinsky or used his power as President to entice her to do something she otherwise would have refused to do. Their liaison was between two consenting adults.
The Starr investigation exposed the fact that Clinton was sexually promiscuous, that he was dishonest with his wife and daughter, and that he compounded that dishonesty by lying to the public and under oath. But his lying was about his sexual infidelities, not his activities as President. The failing is primarily a personal, familial one, a failing of a husband and father. He engaged in an all-too-common lie, understood by many as often used (and often excused) in keeping intimate details about one's private life and intimate relations out of the public eye. An important aspect of mutual respect in a democracy is the privacy we accord to each other to engage in intimate relations free from surveillance by the government, corporations or others. If we don't respect people's right to privacy and the importance of boundaries separating the public from the private, if we encourage the monitoring of our every move, and public truth-telling on erotic activities, then we open the door to Orwell's Big Brother of 1984 and widespread reliance on dirty hands as a means both of persecution and protection.
Finally, the Clinton impeachment scandal exposes a worrying characteristic of political practice in purportedly mature western democracies. Public lying, even when it is only about private matters, undermines the credibility of the individual perpetrator and of politicians in general. Those of us who teach political science courses have often heard our students say, "All politicians lie, and they lie often, so why should Clinton be singled out for blame?" Support for Clinton was frequently based on the judgement that he's the least bad of a very bad bunch. If the public's trust in their leaders drops too low, then clearly the system of government becomes vulnerable. For politics to be rehabilitated, politicians need the courage to tell the truth consistently, which may include the courage to avoid telling lies that would protect against personal embarrassment. While largely avoiding recourse to the tactics of moral Machiavellism, Clinton's response to his enemies, combined with their muck-slinging tactics, nonetheless contributed to the cynicism and lack of trust that is becoming a staple of our political experiences.
by Jim Andrighetti
**************
Firstly, I'd like to thank Beverley Symons for inviting me to address your Annual General Meeting.
I accepted Bev's invitation very much in the spirit of collegiality, and not just in recognition of her own bibliographical labours on the history of Communism in Australia. From when I began working as a reference librarian in the Mitchell Library in 1981 to my present position as a manuscripts librarian, I've enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with a number of labour historians. The information flow hasn't always been one way and conventional. A mutual exchange of sources has taken place not just in the reading room, but on the front steps, on the plinth of the Governor Bourke statue, and, in a few instances, over a quick beer on the way to Wynyard.
During my Mitchell apprenticeship I developed contacts and friendships with a number of researchers in various disciplines. Those among the students of the labour movement were chiefly Andrew Moore, John Shields, Greg Patmore, Bruce Scates, John Low and Peter Sheldon. John Low was a fellow librarian who worked in the Blue Mountains, and a most generous colleague. It wasn't until after a year or two of intermittent visits to the Mitchell, that Peter Sheldon casually referred to his Italian heritage, which I'd not known about and, hence, provided us with another common link. This was emblematic of the diverse baggage and multiple identities we all carry around through life. Perhaps just as surprising, and more incredible to me, was Andrew Moore and John Low's passionate barracking for the Bears, a team immutably fixed in my mind as the perennial cellar dwellers of rugby league.
I fondly recall all of these 'colleagues' generously lending their expertise to enlighten me during my curatorship of the Mitchell Library's first major labour history exhibition, All in a Day's Work, which opened in November 1983. I had also received enthusiastic advice from Peter Love in Melbourne in a missive brimful of ideas. Owing to it having been despatched in haste, he apologised for his handwriting and suggested that I should get Andrew to translate it should I encounter difficulty with it. At that time, one of the Mitchell's diligent habitues was the avuncular Cecil Hadgraft, a distinguished scholar of Australian literature from the University of Queensland. Between bites of his Toblerone bars on the Library's front steps, he'd recite snippets from Henry Lawson and refer me to examples of the Australian working-class literary tradition.
The exhibition had been scheduled to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Karl Marx's death. It provided a marvellous opportunity for the Mitchell and Dixson Libraries to showcase examples of the rich documentary and material heritage of the labour movement held in their respective collections. Featured among the exhibits were colonial broadsheets, minute books of 19th century craft unions, trade union membership badges, banners of the Boilermakers & Iron Ship Builders, the Blacksmiths' Society of Australasia and the IWW, and illuminated addresses. A section on the opening of Radio 2KY in 1925, drew favourable comments from Barrie Unsworth, then Secretary of the NSW Labor Council, who officially opened the exhibition.
While I'm handing out bouquets, perhaps the largest garland of laurels should go to the late Professor Henry Mayer, mentor extraordinaire to the discipline of political science in Australia and media studies guru of Sydney University's Government Department, who died in 1991. An awesome academic and bibliographer in the social sciences, he was also a palpable influence in my becoming a librarian. I'd undertaken a one semester media course under Henry in the late '70s. The Mayer lecturing experience was unforgettable, theatrical, inspiring and scornful of intellectual complacency. However, it was his indefatigable ability to digest prodigious quantities of information from a broad spectrum of literature and disseminate his findings in short, crisp reviews that released the bibliographical hormone within me. In a tribute to Mayer published four months after his death, a former colleague of his, Gil Appleton, wrote 'Donald Horne once said that he was certain that in Henry's basement there was a stone slab upon which he lay every day while every article, paper, monograph, and book of interest to him that had been published in the preceding 24 hours was beamed into his capacious brain'. (Media Information Australia, no. 61, August 1991, p. 18).
Mayer's bibliographical brain transposed to print can be seen in his idiosyncratic monograph, ARGAP: A Research Guide to Australian Politics and Cognate Subjects (1976), compiled with the research assistance of Margaret Bettison, a librarian, and Judy Keene. As Henry touted in the Introduction: 'It is full of mazes, by-ways and cross-charts leading in many directions'. Thanks to Mayer, I'd been bibliographically primed to sources in the Australian humanities and social sciences when I began in Mitchell. No less than 95% of the entries in ARGAP were already in the Mitchell, including such fugitive sources as typed, mimeographed or printed bibliographies and checklists, many of which had been generously donated by Henry. ARGAP reflected the interface of his interdisciplinary and pluralistic approaches with a library-type classification of the contents. The book had also alerted me in my undergraduate days to a work by Henry's colleagues, Peter Loveday and Helen G. Nelson's Bibliography of Selected Manuscripts relating to Australian Politics since 1890, held in the Mitchell Library, Sydney (1964), with its characteristic inventories of collections. Henry's regular features of serendipitous reviews, 'Australiana' in Politics: the Journal of the Australasian Political Studies Association, 1966- , and 'Media briefs' in Media Information Australia, the journal he founded in 1976, were the supplementary current awareness sources to ARGAP which I continued to scan up to the publication of its sequel, ARGAP 2, in 1984.
Henry Mayer was the best friend a library could have. Courtesy of his beneficence, the gaps, and in some cases gaping holes, in the printed holdings of many libraries were plugged over four decades from the time of his arrival at Sydney University in the early 1950s. He donated thousands of publications alone to the Mitchell, the majority forming part of his first consignment of personal papers which he presented in 1984. As well as research files relating to Australian and international politics, the printed material reflects his eclectic acquisitiveness along the left-right political spectrum. He assembled a plenitude of ephemeral and periodical literature from or relating to, among others, the Communist Party of Australia, Extreme-Right Wing groups, the Australian Catholic Truth Society and the New States Movement. Some periodical runs that duplicated the State Library's holdings were offered to other libararies. I well recall a dog-eared set of Recorder of the ASSLH's Melbourne Branch, with Henry's inimitable scribblings on the front page. The contiguous relationship between Mayer and the Mitchell is evidenced in the research papers for his book Marx and Engels in Australia (1964). He had made use of the Mitchell's newspaper sources, reciprocating in turn by lodging materials garnered from his research that would augment the Mitchell collections, and had considered seeking the secondment of a library staff member to act as his research assistant on another project.
The Mitchell Library has been fortunate to have had since its establishment in 1910 the active support of key stakeholders such as Professor Henry Mayer. Similarly, your own society has displayed its commitment to the preservation of the documentary heritage of the labour movement reposited in the Library. In the mid-80s the society expressly solicited an article on the Library's labour records in order to raise a greater awareness of the scope and strengths of those holdings. The resulting article, which I wrote, appeared in Labour History, No. 56, May 1989. While I'll be referring briefly to some notable collections mentioned therein, I'll be focusing on collections acquired since that article was written.
The Mitchell Library is not a specialist labour labour archive like the Noel Butlin Centre in Canberra. In relation to trade union records, those of NSW unions and of NSW branches of Federal unions are appropriate for deposit in the Library. It is not appropriate to split collections between institutions, and over the last decade there has been greater application of this cardinal rule of archival practice. The Library holds the distinction of documenting all aspects of life relating to NSW. The breadth of the Mitchell's collections supports research in areas of traditional as well as 'new' labour historiography. The latter's broader scope, as you are aware, encompasses the social processes and social relations around work, including issues of community, ethnicity and gender.
The Mitchell manuscripts collection documents the the historical and the contemporary, from convict labour in the early colony to the working-class agitation for political representation in the late 19th century, through to the post-war migrant influx and the impact of the fall of Communism in Europe on Australian labour historiography. The collection comprises 9.6 kilometres of records located on-site and off-site at the Government Records Repository, Kingswood. Collections from Kingswood can usually be retrieved within 24 hours.
The Library's largest holdings of labour records are of those of institutional Labor. The records of the NSW Branch of the Australian Labor Party constitute the largest organisational and private archives in the Library. The total NSW Branch archives in the Mitchell exceed 450 linear shelf metres. The first major consignment comprising 538 cartons, the equivalent of 135 metres was deposited in the early 1970s, the finding aid to which was chiefly compiled by Ken Turner, another colleague of Henry Mayer. In 1989, the second and Bicentennial consignment arrived, measuring 180 metres. It was arranged and described in exemplary fashion by staff of the Archives Authority of NSW under a specially funded project. In over a decade since then, multiple smaller consignments have been received aggregating over 600 archives boxes, translating to over 100 metres. These more recent accessions represent around 25% of the Library's total NSW Branch holdings. Intellectual control over these burgeoning records exists by way of either box labelling and/or listings done by Head Office and the Library.
I must here acknowledge the voluntary work undertaken by one of the Party's officers, Sue Tracey, who over the past year has done considerable work in further sorting and amplifying the descriptions of the records of local branches, State and Federal Electorate Councils (SECs and FECs) and Local Government Committees among these consignments. Her work has assisted my service delivery to researchers by facilitating better access to these series of records. A major influencing factor in my suggesting to Sue the need to work on such a discrete group of records was a paper presented by Rod Cavalier at the 1991 Whitlam Labor Historians Conference. The richness of local branch records was illustrated in his fine exposition of the use made of branch minute books of the 1950s. He created an exacting profile of three branches, Guildford, Hunters Hill and Panania, while also providing 'a living portrait of a segment of community life' set against the convulsive Labor Split.
These recent consignments have yielded a small number of historical records either not located or listed at the time of gathering the Turner and Bicentennial consignments for transfer to the Library. So where were they ? A long held view of mine had been that even the most well-intentioned cupidity of long-time or retired branch officials who retained such records in their personal keeping would have constituted an aberration from Party Rules in this area. I think Sue re-educated me on this line of thought a while back. Nonetheless, my concern is that the longer such historical records remain in private hands and not in the public domain, the greater the likelihood of their loss or destruction. Also, their inaccessibility contributes to the absence of unique primary sources for community histories. The June 1992 consignment revealed inter-war records of the Concord Branch, being chiefly membership and minute books, yet as one example of a local history, Sheena Coupe's book Concord (1983) hardly mentions the ALP in the industrial history of that area, nor any reference to the existence of such records. The vigilant return of 'orphan' branch records to Head Office for swift transfer to the Library is imperative if the Party's commitment to preserving its documentary heritage is to be a faithful one.
It is interesting to note that the records of the NSW Division of the Liberal Party in Australia are minimal in quantity compared to the ALP deposits. Over the past decade the number of Liberal Party consignments has been negligible in relation to the accretion of paper records at Sussex Street. I have no knowledge of the records management adopted by the Liberal Party to explain its streamlined deposits. The ALP consignments, however, do show evidence of having been 'bulked up' by duplicate materials and other records of non-permanent value. Sue Tracey's working knowledge of the Party's administrative structure has proven invaluable to the cataloguing in progress at the Library. On top of my archival wish list is that she will continue to assist in the rationalisation of further consignments.
Another sizeable and important collection is the records of the peak union body in this state, the Labor Council of NSW, including a continuous run of records from its founding body, the Trades and Labour Council, established in 1871, to the present. The records of the Melbourne Trades Hall Committee, 1848-1915, including rough minute books, rule books of Victorian trade unions and records of the Eight Hours Movement, accompanied the papers of a former Trades Hall Secretary, W. E. Murphy, when they were acquired by the Library in 1922.
Jim Andrighetti is a manuscripts librarian in the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales. His professional interests include labour history and the documentary heritage of Italian Australians of NSW. He is a Parramatta Eels supporter nostalgic for the halcyon days of 'The Crow' and 'The Guru'.
The second part of this speech will appear next week.
by The Chaser
In a major endorsement of the Prime Minister's view of Aboriginal issues, opinion polls have shown that the majority of Australians support his strategy for Aboriginal reconciliation.
Most Australians stated that they occasionally made insincere statements of concern for the Aboriginal plight and issues such as reconciliation whilst actually doing everything in their capacity to screw it up. "This is a ringing endorsement of my approach," said a pleased Mr Howard.
The polls and focus groups conducted by Irving Saulwick and Associates found that most Australians were largely ignorant of the issues surrounding the plight of indigenous Australians. "This is another ringing endorsement of my approach," added the Prime Minister.
The Aboriginal community has been disappointed by the main suggestion that the white community "wanted to own the reconciliation process."
"Fair enough" said one Aboriginal leader, "They own everything else, why not Aboriginal reconciliation too." Some commentators have been upbeat about the finding that there is limited prejudice directed towards Aboriginals solely on the basis of race.
"Not all Australians hate Aboriginals simply because of their race," noted one of the reports authors. "Many rely on two or three other stereotypes such as alcoholism and crime to justify their prejudices."
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Howard has denied that his government has not learned the lessons of the past. "We have spent a great deal of time looking at past attempts to solve the Aboriginal problem," said Howard.
"But unfortunately they seem to have got used to the diseases introduced during European settlement, so I guess it's back to the drawing board."
by Nealed Towart
Wealth distribution and philanthropy are hot topics, with John Howard urging business to be more charitable and to display the spirit of corporate citizenship. Within hours of his speech, the National Australia Bank replied that it "did not trumpet its philanthropy". This after announcing a $2 billion profit.
Others who might like to exhibit the philanthropic spirit some residents of the Woollahra municipality. Looking at the richest postcode, we find that 7 of the top ten suburbs for wealth by postcode are in that area. No fewer than 11,585 people in these suburbs owned at least $6,332 million worth of shares in companies paying franked dividends. Over 40 people in the BRW Rich 200 called these suburbs home.
By contrasting one of these suburbs - Bellevue Hill- with another Sydney suburb - Mt Druitt- we can see these nonsense of the "share-owning democracy' for what it is. In Bellevue Hill, 5,625 residents submitted tax returns in 1995-6; of these 1,602 (28%) shared over $28 million in imputation credits, representing shares worth $1,143 million, average imputation $713,433.00. In Mt Druitt 24,577 people made tax returns - but only 831 got any credits (3%) with the average credit $666.00, representing $26,640.00 worth of shares. Bellevue Hill's average shareholding was 27 times that of Mt Druitt.
Many claim that the poor are getting richer too (this to justify the obscene wealth being accumulated at the top end of town). A comparison of median income (median: exact middle income figure for all tax payers, not the average) shows that in 1982-3 the figure was (in 1996 dollar terms) $531.00 per week. In 1996-7 this figure was $519.00 per week, a fall of 2%. 61% of all taxpayers declared incomes below 80% of the average weekly earnings figure of $737.00.
Tax on the very rich dropped significantly because of dividend imputation over this period. In 1987-8 the income tax rate on $2 million was 54%. In 1996-7 it was 21%, lower than the 22% paid by someone on $635.00 p.w.
Many other interesting contrasts in wealth and poverty are presented in Laurie Aarons' book, Casino Oz: Winners and Losers in Global Capitalism, available from Goanna Publishing, PO Box 121 Bundeena NSW 2230 for $12.95 including postage.
Wage earner protection funds have operated in Western Europe since the late 1960s as a means of protecting workers from company insolvency. The funds operate in countries that are not traditionally welfare oriented economies, and yet there have been no moves whatsoever to have Australia put in place such a scheme.
My bill will protect workers' entitlements. When I first introduced a similar bill to this in 1998, I had hoped that it would have been a catalyst for reform and would get this government motivated. To say that I am disappointed is certainly not exaggerating. I am extremely disappointed that no action from this government has been forthcoming over those years. The bill that I now reintroduce is about seeking justice for Australian workers. It is a bill about restoring equity to an important element of Australian industrial relations law. I said those same words when I introduced a similar bill in 1999. Again, it fell on deaf ears.
In the present bill before the House, three amendment have been made. These changes have been made to cover the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business continually saying, `We can't work on that bill. It doesn't even cover redundancies.' Well, I am saying to you, Minister, and to the government how easy and simple it is to move amendments to the structured bill that has been in place in this parliament since 1998. To enlighten the minister that you can have it rectified, in presenting this workers' entitlements bill of 2000 I have made those amendments to fully cover redundancy. It was not spelled out enough before and now it does. It also has a clause to cover small business. Employers having under 20 people in their employ will be exempt under the bill. It has also been amended to overcome an instance like we had with the recent Oakdale miners. I say to the minister and to Prime Minister: if you had wanted to get your act together you could have done this in 1998. You could have had a bill in here to protect the workers and we would not have seen the debacle that has occurred over the years since. I believe that this bill has overcome some of the remarks of the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business about not caring for the ordinary worker and not covering them for redundancy, and not really being suitable for the government to act on. I present the bill and say again: you can act on it.
I first spoke on this need to protect workers' entitlements in 1996. When nothing happened, I commenced work and researched to have drafted a bill that could have and should have provided a basis on which to put into place in this House legislation to protect and guarantee workers' wages and entitlements in the event of their employer's insolvency. I had a certain amount of optimism in 1998. I thought that by then the government of the day would have at least listened and acted and something would have eventually been done. I was naive. I continue to be so, but at the same time I continue to be optimistic because at least I know that we in Labor, in the opposition, support what I am talking about. I am very grateful that the shadow minister, the member for Brisbane, is here during this debate and that he will second the bill that I have before me. When I introduced this bill in 1998 I believe that everyone believed that by January 2000--as he told us on more than one occasion--the minister would finally have in place a protection scheme for workers. Well, we do not have that in place.
The Prime Minister and the government can no longer just give sympathy to workers who have been made redundant. We saw the 160 workers at the Woodlawn zinc and copper mine in Goulburn and their $6 million entitlement. The Prime Minister and the minister came out and said, `Oh, how sympathetic we are, and we are going to do something about it.' We saw the CSA mine in Cobar where 270 miners lost their entitlements and only through their continued fight were able to gain something back. We then saw 250 meatworkers in Grafton lose $3 million. Again, we had the minister getting out there and saying, `We are going to do something about it.' We saw 150 nurses in Yeppoon, Rockhampton lose $1.4 million. Again, we were going to see `action'. We saw Oakdale and the demonstrations that happened there. It was only because of a particular fund structure that was in place that those miners were able to see even one penny of what was owed to them. Many of us remember last year when the Braybrook textile workers came up here by bus. Those women were out in the front of this house crying, asking for assistance and help. They had worked all of their working life with that one company--to receive nothing. They still have received nothing.
Then we saw National Textiles get a payout of something like $6 million. The decision of this government with regard to National Textiles just proves how poll driven they are. My bill could have been in place over two years ago. The workers I have mentioned here today could have been covered; their entitlements could have been protected. This government have failed to act, and they have failed to act for fear of upsetting big business. I repeat, for those who refuse to listen: the money required from employers not only to insure their workers but also to cover the scheme's administration costs would be, as best I can work out, no more than 0.1 per cent of the total wage bill. That is a very small amount to pay to protect workers' entitlements. But what does this government want to do regarding National Textiles? What the minister seems to be proposing is not that the employer will take action because he or she has done wrong; the government will ask taxpayers to foot the bill and to put in place a cap of up to $20,000. Of course, when that does not occur, they will start to blame the New South Wales government.
I remind the minister that I can bring in press item after press item quoting what he has said. Even as recently as 31 January this year, the Sydney Morning Herald reported this:
Mr Reith said yesterday that he was proposing a formula by which workers would be sure of gaining unpaid wages for up to four weeks, 12 weeks' long service leave, and four weeks redundancy, up to a cap of $20,000.
"We think that would be a fair balance ..."
I do not think the workers of Australia, when they are owed in the vicinity of $60,000 or $70,000, would think a $20,000 cap is a fair balance. I say to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and to the minister and to all government members: if you are owed for work you have done, should you not be entitled to receive your full entitlement and not have, as the minister thinks, a cap in place? How unfair that is to the workers of Australia who have been deprived, not through anything they have done but because of the insolvency of the particular employer, of their rights. In that same article in the Sydney Morning Herald on that day it said:
Workers at National Textiles have been told they will receive their long service and annual leave along with unpaid wages straight away.
That was 31 January, of course. I do not know what he meant by `straight away'.
However, they will have to wait six months for sick leave and up to two years to receive a portion of their redundancy payments.
They have been told not to expect more than half the redundancy money they are owed.
Had this bill been in place in 1998, 1999 and even in the year 2000, we would not have had to have statements like that. These workers would have been covered for their full entitlements--which is what they should have now.
When the minister for workplace relations had a doorstop on 8 February 2000, he said: "I only say to them-- (meaning the Labor states) that objecting about the details-- (of any particular bill the minister might want to introduce) -- only undermines the commencement of such a scheme if you want to argue about the details, you should put politics aside, just for once and support the Government in looking to the establishment of a National scheme "...
I say to the minister that, if he had wanted to put politics aside, he could have had a national scheme in 1998--a scheme that I have always said was in the bill that I put forward. And it was paid for by this parliament. Time and time again I said that it may not have been perfect, but it provided the groundwork by which we could have had workers' entitlements protected as from the commencement day of the act. Again I quote the minister's doorstop of 8 February this year:
... put politics aside ...
If you want to argue about details, just for once, come in and make sure that this bill, or a bill similar to this, is put in place--not next year, not next month, but now. We would not have been having the problems we have been experiencing in the past had this bill been effected.
In 1996 in my community we saw one company fail and 680 workers lose $17 million in entitlements. Minister Reith in an MPI on 22 June 1999 stated:
In 1997-98, 3,000 companies were in liquidation, receivership or under deed of company arrangements ...
I can tell the minister that the strengthening of the Corporations Law, as we have seen in a bill before this House, will not protect one worker or one worker's entitlement. One only has to read the government's bill before this House to see that it is the greatest misnomer to call that bill relating to Corporations Law `employee protection'. There is not one clause in it that gives one iota of protection to employees. I take offence that the minister feels that just putting that into operation will fix the problem. In that bill, a penalty for improper conduct by a director will not bring back any employee entitlements. It is no good after the event saying to the employer or to the director, `Your conduct was improper.' Where then are the reserves put aside to cover the employee? Down the path, when he has lost everything, the employee does not want to hear what he already knew, that perhaps it was the employer's mismanagement or the fault of a director and that that is why he lost out on what he was entitled to. It does not bring one cent back to them.
What is needed in this country and what is needed in this parliament is real reform. We need to see the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business and the Treasurer drive this type of debate. It needs to be led at a national level. By reintroducing my bill, I am hoping to highlight the problems that continue to fester across this country. I know other options are available, and we, the Labor opposition, will support them, provided they have the same results. Bring on whatever you wish. Amend this bill if you wish. Year after year I have said that. But, for goodness sake, let us get legislation in this country that will, in the future, support the workers so they know they will have their entitlements protected. Workers need to be reassured. They have seen example after example through the publicity that has been given to some of the cases I have mentioned in the debate here today--and there are many more. Those cases have been given prominence because they have been able to bring to light a campaign that the media has taken the run of. In one or two cases they have actually been able to get the government to react in a particular way. That will no longer be accepted. Today, workers are saying--as in the Braybrook example--`We too are in a high unemployment region; we too are in the same area doing the same type of work. Why aren't we protected like the workers at National Textiles were protected?' That is a question the Braybrook workers will continue to ask this government--and so they should.
Workers in my electorate who have lost all their entitlements will continue to ask why is there a cut-off point in certain regulations when we have not seen any legislation from this minister as yet. There will be a cap of $20,000. But why is the cut-off point 1 January 2000? Why aren't they covered? Why aren't the employees who lost their entitlements last year covered? How did this magical date occur? It cannot just be from one statement of the minister for workplace relations because, as I have indicated in the short time I have had here today, he has made many statements. He is very heavy on words but very short on action. We certainly have not seen anything come forward to this House that will give the results that my bill will.
Before I table the explanatory memorandum, I want to repeat something that I have written in there. Government members say, `What have you done?' Prior to 1993, workers were treated as a group of creditors, along with all other creditors to whom an insolvent company was owed money. Workers' interests in keeping open the enterprise by which they were employed are fundamentally different from external creditors. Accordingly, workers' interests were allocated preference over other external creditors, including the tax commissioner, following changes contained in the Insolvency Tax Priorities Legislation Amendment Bill 1993.
That has been proven not to be enough. That is why, even when preference in order of priority is accorded to workers following the company's insolvency, it often proves to be either ineffective or meaningless. If a bankrupt enterprise no longer has any assets then workers, whatever their position in an order of priority, will not benefit. That is in the explanatory memorandum. I do not think it could be written more clearly for the members on the government benches to understand when they ask, `What has Labor done?' Labor has made certain amendments. We now know, and in other cases that have been brought to light, that has not been enough, but at least it has been ongoing. This government in the last four years has done absolutely nothing, even though, time and time again, the need for legislation has been brought to the attention of the House. Time and time again because this is the third time, the third year in a row, that I have introduced this private member's bill, asking the government to act.
What have we seen? We have certainly seen little activity from the government benches. We have seen statements by the minister saying, `We're going to fix it up. Of course, it's those terrible states; I wish they would get their act together.' Yet, in the same breath, he comes in and makes a debate and says that at least 69 per cent of the nation's workers are covered by federal awards. To me that is certainly big enough for the minister to act on and say, `Let me lead. Let the Australian parliament lead the states and get the states' cooperation.' We have also heard the New South Wales Attorney-General state that we did not have to wait when this Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business sent this particular report off to a ministerial council. The then Attorney-General in New South Wales said, `You don't have to wait. You can put in the insurance scheme straightaway.' The insurance scheme he was referring to is a copy of the bill that I sent him in 1998.
So, if we have the cooperation of the states, what is this minister waiting for? Does he want more workers to come out and demonstrate? Or, does he want more workers in Australia to be protected in the future? We need to have action, and we need it now. I ask leave of the House to present the explanatory memorandum to this bill.
A dark day for the weather too, as Sydney was thrashed by the lowly (and now extinct) Fitzroy in the cold, the wind and the wet.
That was 1994, when the Swans languished in a trough that extended through the first half of that decade.
Not long before, the team had played 18 months without a win. Some among the three or four thousand loyal spectators wept when the drought was broken with a 40 point win against the Melbourne Demons.
(Only one Swans fan was disappointed. He had bet thousands on the side to win by up to 39.5 points.)
Seems like a long time ago. The club finished an improved 11th in 1995 and played a grand final the following year. Since then Swans membership has soared to well over 20,000, including a strong Melbourne-based contingent.
The club is now a sporting and marketing success story, with regular finals appearances and a strong foothold in the lucrative Sydney market.
The great Plugger drawcard is gone but, judging from the Round One win versus St Kilda, the Swans will be more than competitive in the next few seasons.
Surely, for the many dedicated Swans fans in the labour movement, it's a case of "don't worry, be happy". Or is it?
Let's look at the typical Swans fan - there isn't one. As Max Cullen, currently treading the boards in David Williamson�s latest, might say: Fans aint fans, especially Swans fans.
Category one is the rusted-on fan. Like a died-in-the-wool ALP voter, this fan is likely to have grown up in an AFL state and doesn�t know any other way. He or - with 45% of Swans members being women - she, will grumble about on- and off-field issues but, in the end, will cop it sweet. Sometimes it seems that grumbling is one of the great pleasures of rusted-on footy fans.
The AFL and the Swans management are not worried about category one members. But they are worried about category two fans. That's why the club, through the UTS Marketing School, has just sent a survey to 25% of members, but more about that later.
Category two is the football equivalent of the soft or swinging voter in a marginal seat, with one important difference. People have to vote for someone, but they don't have to follow a sport or team.
The explosion of interest in, support for and membership of the Sydney Swans is almost entirely due to category two fans jumping on the bandwagon. Sure, the Murdoch split in rugby league helped, but without Lockett and Sydney's stunning 1996 season, the great leap forward would have been merely a large stride ahead.
The category two fan is often labelled a theatre goer (as distinct from a 'real' footy person), but there is nothing wrong with enjoying the wonderful spectacle of a flowing, creative AFL game. There�s nothing wrong with lapping up the carnival atmosphere of a packed red-and-white SCG on a sunny afternoon or floodlit evening.
The difference between category one and category two footy fans is time - time and tradition. Despite the deep (and overwhelmingly positive) changes to AFL in recent years, these things still matter. I believe that, among the complex motivations of the footy fan, many of us are yearning for solidity, community and tribal identification. We do not want to be sold just another product, or to ourselves be sold, once again, as a product to advertisers or anyone else.
Given time, the AFL and Swans brain trusts hope to move many category two supporters into rusted-on category one members. I hope they succeed in this project. But have they got the fundamentals right? While the club's marketing is brilliant, the experience of being a Sydney Swans member is not the same as that for members of traditional Victorian clubs.
Put simply, Swans members don�t have a say in the directions or policies of the club. We are not members in the true sense, but associate members. It's a bit like being a member of One Nation. You can pay your money and cheer, but that is all.
A good example is the club's plan to move many home games from the SCG to Stadium Australia at Homebush. The club has never been really upfront about this strategy, I suspect because they understand that most current members love and prefer the SCG, with all that hallowed ground�s beauty and tradition.
The club first 'informed' members of this fundamental change after the decision was made, and even then you had to work hard to dig out the news. Buried deep in a story in a Swans member newspaper in 1999 was this information: the club would play five of its 11 home games at Homebush from the 2001 season.
We now know that the AFL is contracted to play at least 11 games a season at Homebush. That means five less home games per year at the SCG is the minimum � if North Melbourne and other Victorian clubs do not elect to play their home games away in Sydney, then presumably the Swans will make up the balance.
While club members were not given the opportunity to influence this decision, the Swans have used regular member opinion polls to find out what we think or, from the questions I�ve seen, how much we are prepared to pay and what level of change we will accept while remaining members.
Like many organisations commissioning opinion polling, the Swans only release the results when these support a decision of the club. For instance, the results of an internet poll of members about the move to Homebush have not been released. But survey outcomes showing many of the club�s fans live west of Homebush were pushed out to the media.
The club would not have got away with this approach had it been Victorian-based. Members would have demanded a dialogue and a say. Through that process, members of major Victorian clubs have by-and-large accepted a change of home grounds, including recent moves to Colonial Stadium. But they were convinced of the benefits of change by their clubs, not simply measured up as consumers through opinion polling.
The exceptions are the Hawthorn and St Kilda clubs, former tenants of Waverley Park, which was closed down by the AFL this year in the face of strong public opposition.
The Australian Rules tradition of club membership with a say has been lost in Sydney - and so has the seemingly minor, but highly symbolic, tradition of giving the fans access to the playing field after the game.
Go to a game of AFL at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and you are likely to see something you can never see at the SCG. When the players and umpires have departed, a second siren sounds and hundreds of children invade the field. They race to be the first to reach the centre of the ground. They play kick-to-kick on the very patch of grass where, minutes before, their heroes stood. The youngest ones ride wide-eyed on their fathers� shoulders.
This tradition dates from the earliest days of Australian Rules in the latter years of the 19th century. Then, the game was played in public parks which were reclaimed by the people after the final whistle. For me, it epitomises much that is delightfully different about AFL. It is a tradition which, thanks to the inflexibility of the Sydney Cricket Ground Trust, has been denied here. I doubt we will see it revived at Homebush.
Don�t get me wrong. I expect and want Sydney to be a successful, growing and financially secure AFL club. My mind is not utterly closed to Stadium Australia. But, as football culture is riddled with cliches, let me conclude with two.
Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. And be nice to the fans you collected on the way up. You might need them.
Workers' Entitlements: the Government's Options
by Christopher Symes
You arrive for work, as you have at this workplace for over 20 years, and are met by a "suit" who tells you that your services (and everybody else's) are no longer required. What do you expect to receive from the liquidators?
What you will receive will almost certainly be less than your expectations because even though, as an employee, you have some priority, under corporations law you will only be paid if there is enough to pay secured creditors, such as banks, and the administrators fees.
Ways of ensuring fairness for employees are part of the federal government's discussion paper. This article reviews the options, and also points to the lack of data on the numbers of workers involved and the amounts, which should be addressed in any action on the issue.
(Alternative Law Journal; vol. 25, no. 1February, 2000)
National Textiles - More Dodging Than Weaving!
Tony Woolgar of the TCFUA talks to Jennifer Heardon about the National Textiles case and the protection of workers' entitlements.
(Australian Industrial Law; newsletter 2, February 2000)
Civil Conscription or Reciprocal Obligation: the ethics of 'work-for-the-dole'.
by Judith Bessant
Queries the official justifications for the work-for-the-dole scheme and asks what the rationales given say about the government's assessment of the causes of unemployment. The value of the scheme in terms of human rights criteria are also assessed, and the author argues that it contravenes the Australian constitution which prohibit civil conscription.
(Australian Journal of Social Issues; vol. 35, no.1 February 2000)
Human Resources Manuals - when do work rules become contractual entitlements?
by Charles Power
Employees sometimes sign letters of offer which make reference to company HR manuals as terms of employment. English precedent has tended to see these manuals as not being part of the contract of employment, even though they do contain certain work rules. The recent decision of the Federal Court in the Riverwood case may impact on that precedent.
In the Riverwood case, a redundancy agreement was attached to the HR manual that was referred to in the letter of offer. The employer sold the business some years after the employee commenced work and the employee was made redundant. The employee then made several claims against the former employer, including redundancy payments calculated in accordance with the formula in the agreement that was attached to the HR manual.
The Court found that the employee was entitled to those payments. Thus the Court was willing to find that the HR manual was the subject of an implied term of a contract of employment.
McCormick v Riverwood International Australia Pty Ltd, unreported, 26-11-99.
(Australian Industrial Law; newsletter 2, February 2000)
BHP Workplace Blues
by Kathryn Lumley
The Federal Court decision to grant an injunction restraining BHP from offering individual agreements will make employers wary of s298 of the Workplace relations Act. The broad interpretation of s298M, that an inducement may not require an intention but simply cause an employee to resign their union membership means that introducing AWAs could easily lead to a breach of freedom of association provisions.
Also employers need to negotiate with unions because refusal to do so whilst offering new contracts to individuals results in injury or prejudice to award employers.
(Australian Industrial Law; newsletter 2, February 2000)
Temps Demand a Better Deal
by Christopher D Cook
Amid Silicon Valley's torrid dot-com boom, stories abound of peach-fuzzed college graduates pulling down six-figure salaries and, in short order, securing their American dream. For them there is no shortage of opportunity--for new business ventures, luxury cars and seven-fi gure homes. Yet beneath this gilded veneer a class war is brewing. The Valley's legions of temps dream of getting full-time jobs and keeping homelessness at bay in a place where the median home price has soared to $365,000 and a standard two-bedroom apartment rents for $1,500 a month.
For veteran Silicon Valley temp workers like Julian Cornejo, the stark disparities drive home the point that temps--long underpaid, underemployed and "disposable"--must band together to improve conditions and restrict the ability of employers to exploit their labour.
(The Nation; 27 March 2000; http://www.thenation.com
Inappropriate Behaviour: Is it happening at your workplace?
Your organisation needs to have up to date policies clearly outlining the acceptable standards of workplace behaviour and explaining the consequences of unlawful discrimination and harassment - not just sexual harassment. Also needed are grievance procedures that all staff understand and are aware of. The Anti-Discrimination Board has a sample set of EEO and harassment prevention policies and grievance procedure guidelines.
(Equal Time; no. 43, February 2000)
An Injury to One...
by Rory O'Neill
Each year 250 million accidents occur at work, eight every second. One million work-related deaths occur. Working children suffer 12 million work accidents, 12,000 of which are fatal.
The ILO estimates 600,000 lives would be saved every year if available safety practices were used. (Other articles in this issue cover this topic)
(International Union Rights; vol. 6, no. 4, 1999)
The Equal Pay Case - Thirty Years On
A forum of differing views on the impact of the equal pay case and equal pay generally since the 1969 Arbitration Commission decision. Contributors include:
Jeff Borland looks at developments in the gender pay ratio and provides an overview of other contributions:
Bob Gregory reviews the effect on the gender pay ratio of labour market institutions through a comparison between Australia, the USA and the UK;
Barbara Pocock reviews the range of policy approaches that have been applied to narrow the gender pay gap in Australia. She suggests that more effective action in relation to the undervaluation of women's jobs would now be timely;
Mark Wooden discusses the likely ramifications for employment of attempting to impose pay equality across so-called comparable jobs;
Lou Will discusses the consequences for the labour market of comparable worth policies for setting wage rates across job types.
(Australian Economic Review; vol. 32, no. 3, September 1999)
Not that Penberthy should cop all the blame - he's not so much a personal Tool like our past inductees, rather he allowed himself to become a Tool for the Telegraph's latest round of union-bashing.
The assault included a series of front-pages that not only trivialised the issues behind the industrial action, but personalised the story and vilified the Teacher's leadership.
It's how the Terror works. The ideas are cooked up by a bunch of editors who would be better suited running a comic strip than a serious newspaper. Reporters like Penberthy are the told the angle the paper wants. Nothing personal, it's just their job.
One of Penberthy's problems has been that when the Telegraph goes hard, it needs a lot of space; lots of pictures and graphics to give the impression that there is solid evidence to back up their chosen editorial line.
In this case, the NSW Education Department appeared happy to oblige , providing screeds of statistics purporting to show how easy life was for NSW teachers compared to overseas colleagues. But as it has done so often throughout the dispute, the Department got things arse-up.
Take their comparison of NSW and New York teachers:
According to the documents provided to the Daily Telegraph, the New York salary is "$US48,710 average ($A79,280)." They compare this with "80% of NSW teachers (who) have nine years service, earn $50,175 as step nine teachers."
The problem is that the statistics do not compare like with like. The NYC classroom rate extends from $US31910 to $US70,000. A classroom teacher at the top of scale in NYC is paid $A114,754 compared with $A50,175 in NSW. (The NYC salary scale goes up to 22 years of service and rewards post-graduate study.)
The report also claimed working hours in New York City were "31 hours a week, primary and secondary." The Telegraph compared this to New South Wales "Secondary; 18 hours 40 minutes teaching a week; primary 21 hours, 40 minutes"
Thirty-one hours (actually 31 hours and 40 minutes) is the New York school week, not the face to face teaching load. Comparing like with like, the NSW school week is 32.5 hours.
So while they don't withstand any real scrutiny, at least the graphs look good.
Which is more can be said for the photos. In order to frame Tuesday's 'Three Amigos' front page, the Daily Telegraph assigned a photographer to follow Teachers Federation general secretary John Hennessy around for the day.
After some hours being tailed, Hennessy had had enough and decided to toy with the Tele. He got a cab driver to drop him off at the Liberal Party's headquarters in East Sydney - allowing the snapper to shoot off a roll of film while he waited in the Tories' foyer.
If anyone back in News Ltd HQ had realised the significance of the venue, they may well have had an even hotter story - albeit a set up. Alas, they were saved by their own ignorance.
And in the final analysis, it has been ignorance that has characterised the Telegraph's coverage of this dispute. As we've mentioned previously: by refusing to have an industrial relations reporter, when a big story breaks the Telegraph is left with nothing but cliches to run on.
While they were trotting out the standard line of the Teachers Fed leadership being out of touch with their membership; the Telegraph was missing the real story - that this was a grass-roots dispute driven by an increasingly hostile and exasperated membership.
As the Government and media have toughened their line against the union, the resolve of the membership has only increased - leaving a fracture in relations that has real repercussions for the entire education system.
And the point that anyone who understands the NSW union movement would tell you is that this is because, far from being a remote leadership, the Teachers Federation suffers from an excess of internal democracy.
Every month 400 members of the federation council meet to set policy; executive meetings are held every week. The Federation is more representative of its membership than any other organisation in the State. Every move by the leadership requires the support of the rank and file.
When relations between teachers and the government do break down, it is big news.
There is a story there about a profession that has been pushed over the edge. The Federation leadership have become the public face for that crisis and there is a genuine role in the media scrutinising their arguments.
But that's analysis - and there's no room for that at the Terror.
Check out the Toolshed.
© 1999-2000 Labor Council of NSW LaborNET is a resource for the labour movement provided by the Labor Council of NSW URL: http://workers.labor.net.au/46/print_index.htmlLast Modified: 15 Nov 2005 [ Privacy Statement | Disclaimer | Credits ] LaborNET is proudly created, designed and programmed by Social Change Online for the Labor Council of NSW |