Serco employ the train crews employed on the Indian Pacific, The Ghan and The Overland through a subsidiary, Great Southern Railway. On-train workers have been pushing for a collective agreement since June.
Roger Jowett, National Secretary of the Rail Tram and Bus Union says the clear preference of the overwhelming majority of the train crews is for a collective agreement.
'Serco has persistently threatened worker's jobs and pay if they refuse to sign the AWAs offered to them", he says.
Serco employees were forced to sign individual contracts when the Australian National Railways were sold off in 1997. These workers experienced pay cuts, increased hours of work, and lost their right to independent representation by their union. The Personnel Director's word was final in the event of any dispute. These AWAs expire at the end of November this year.
After an initial meeting between the RTBU and Serco in July this year, Serco sent a letter saying that they would no longer meet with the union.
Serco then offered a new AWA four months early, with a covering letter telling employees who did not want to sign: "Let us Know so that your position can be offered to some-one else".
The RTBU immediately informed members that the company's position was illegal. Serco then issued a new letter acknowledging that they were wrong to suggest workers would lose their jobs, but instead they stated that if a worker did not sign the new AWA, they would have to work on lower rates of pay and conditions as set out in the safety net Award.
The union asked the Federal Court for an injunction to stop Serco offering the new AWA and making threats.
The day before the hearing in the Federal Court, Serco agreed to withdraw the AWAs, and to put out a covering letter with a new AWA offer. But it would not agree to collective bargaining.
Since then, the workers have refused to sign the new AWAs and called on their union to try to resume collective bargaining talks with Serco.
Roger Jowett says an overwhelming majority of employees have signed petitions that clearly state their desire for a union-negotiated collective agreement.
"The workers have withstood the campaign of misinformation and intimidation waged by the company, and have remained firm in their conviction that they have a right to exercise their choice to represented by their union in negotiations for a better deal,' he says.
The RTBU is asking other unionists to join in this campaign by writing, faxing or emailing to Mr Stephen Bradford, CEO Great Southern Railway, Level 18, 535 Bourke St, Melbourne 3000. Fax: (03) 9243 5665. Email: [email protected], to express support for the on-train workers in their effort to have a union-negotiated collective agreement.
CEPU Secretary Jim Metcher at Council |
The union says an incident that occurred on Sunday evening in the Sydney West Letters Facility, the largest mail processing center in the Southern Hemisphere, demonstrates Australia Post's complete disregard for the welfare of their employees.
Following the detection of a suspect mail item by an employee, the on duty manager carried the item through the workplace, passing hundreds of staff. When they got to the so-called 'isolated area', the manager instructed an employee to open the suspect item before Police had arrived. Australia Post violated it's own procedures and didn't bother to inform its employees or the police of the threat of a bomb.
CEPU Postal and Communication Branch Secretary Jim Metcher says Australia Post was extremely lucky that on this occasion, the suspect mail item, which was beeping at the time it was discovered, was only a faulty smoke alarm being sent back to the manufacturer.
'Australia Post is claiming that all it's staff have been trained adequately in these procedures, in spite of evidence collected by the CEPU that demonstrates that 190 people out of 200 on a shift at the mail center had not received training,' he says.
"It is clear from what happened on Sunday night that Australia Post management do not take these threats seriously as they continue to place the health and safety of postal workers and the public at a very real risk. The last thing we want is a repeat of the 1998 Canberra Mail Centre Bomb explosion."
In the 1998 mail bomb explosion at the Canberra Mail Centre two postal workers were seriously injured when a letter bomb exploded during the normal sorting of mail.
In an another petty act the time the Union spent investigating this issue has been deemed to be industrial action and employees have had their wages docked for the period of 30 minutes, which they spent talking to the CEPU about the health and safety issue.
The campaign encourages the Commonwealth Bank's 400,000 shareholders to speak out over the bank's excessive executive salaries and poor treatment of customers and staff.
The Finance Sector Union campaign is being backed by the Australian Consumers Association, Bankwatch, the Financial Services Consumer Policy Centre and the ACTU.
It kicked off last week with nation wide newspaper advertisements calling on Commonwealth Bank shareholders to show their concern with the bank's behaviour by attending the company's Annual General Meeting in October or issuing their proxy shareholder voting rights to the FSU.
FSU National Secretary Tony Beck says, "There are thousands of Commonwealth Bank shareholders out there who are appalled at the way their bank is treating its customers and staff. This campaign is about giving those concerns a voice."
The campaign involves a series of advertisements, lobbying of Federal and State politicians, campaigning with bank customers to gain support for minimum service standards, and protest activity inside and outside the company's AGM. Thousands of leaflets will also be distributed across the country calling on shareholders to support FSU's campaign for better bank service.
Louise Petschler, of the Australian Consumers Association says, "Consumers are getting a poor deal from the Commonwealth despite its record $1.7 billion profit. With increased fees, branch closures and chronic understaffing it is time for consumer concerns to be taken seriously. The ACA supports FSU's call for shareholders to tell the Commonwealth it has gone far enough. Profitability should not mean bad service."
Tony Beck says the Commonwealth has the worst record of all the major banks on deteriorating customer satisfaction, excessive executive salaries, staff relations and branch closures.
Consumer surveys reveal a sharp decline in customer satisfaction with the Commonwealth since 1997 making it the Australian bank with the lowest portion of customers who choose it because of good service. The Commonwealth has closed 438 branches in the past 5 years and has targeted a further 250 for closure.
At 20%, staff turnover is amongst the highest in the industry and already low staff morale has been shattered by the bank's recent decision to issue individual contracts to all its 22,000 Australian staff.
Despite its poor record on staff and customer issues, shareholders at this year's AGM will be asked to approve another $1 million of free shares and 250,000 share options for CEO David Murray. This comes on top of a 272% increase in Mr Murray's salary since 1994 pushing his pay above $2 million last year.
"These are issues not just for customers and staff of the Commonwealth Bank but also shareholders who care about the way their investment is being managed,' said Mr Beck.
ACTU President Sharan Burrow said she hoped shareholders would support the campaign. "Executive salaries rose by 22% in Australia last year. Ordinary Australian's, many of whom are shareholders in the Commonwealth Bank, want to see some balance restored to corporate behaviour. This campaign is a great opportunity for ordinary shareholders to have their say."
Commonwealth Bank shareholders interested in supporting the campaign are being encouraged to call a toll free advice line on 1300 366 378.
Carr said staging a successful Olympics wasn't going to happen without the union movement delivering projects on time and budget.
'The games were cooperative, enthusiastic and successful. It banished forever the old shibboleths about Australia's slack workforce, inflexible unions, low productivity and she'll be right mentality,' he said.
'We upgraded our skills and showed the rest of the world what we could do. We did things the right and proper way.'
He pointed out that only one person lost their life compared to the dozens that were killed building the Barcelona and Atlanta facilities with non-union labour.
The Premier made special mention of the police role in the Games
'1.5 million people converged on the CBD last Saturday night. There were only two arrests because the police dealt with it so responsibly.'
Another highlight was to spend two hours last Friday at Central and Redfern with public transport workers who delivered a fantastic transport performance he said.
'The bottom line was no athlete missed an event, spectators got to events on time and home safely. It was a great advertisement for Australia.'
The child care webcams are also raising concerns over the misuse of children's pictures by paedophiles who may hack into the web site.
Child care workers are outraged about the surveillance, which they see as an invasion to their privacy, and have called on their union, the LHMU, to actively campaign against the introduction of the webcams.
" Our members are warning parents that this so-called innovation is actually an invasion of their child's rights," Sue Deveraux from the LHMU's WA branch said.
" Anyone who knows anything about the 'net knows there are few real guarantees of security.
" There is no guarantee that only parents will have access to the images from a centre with a camera installed."
Union members raised the alarm after a West Australian businessman started offering to install Kindercam to child care centres, and giving parents access to the site for $1 a day.
" No other workers in Australia are under constant video surveillance by their clients," Ms Deveraux, the child care organiser for the WA branch said.
" Our members are blowing the whistle on any centre which wants to install web cameras - and invade the workers' right to privacy."
The 'net is a very real threat to workers privacy.
It has become the 21st century campaign issue with organising drives by unions in Australia and overseas among workers concerned that their bosses are misusing the technology.
There is a growing international trend to use 'net based surveillance technology.
Probably the most common application of this technology in the USA is childcare observation - and coming a close second is workplace surveillance.
Companies with names like CareCam, Kidvision, CareView and Kindercam are busy offering their services, around the globe, to child care centres.
Now, in Australia, Kindercam has arrived to offer this internet-based child monitoring program as an innovative marketing tool to sell more security to worried working parents.
The introduction of webcams for child care centres, potentially, opens a legal minefield. In most states it is against the law to take pictures of children at a child care centre, without the prior written approval of parents.
In NSW the State Government is considering both online rights legislation and new workplace surveillance laws after unions, including the LHMU, expressed concern about employer misuse of the 'net.
The webcam issue, raised by the LHMU, has caught on in the media. Newspapers and radio, in a number of states, have reported the controversy, and this union's concerns.
The Child Care Centres Association of Victoria's chief executive, Frank Cusmano, is quoted by Melbourne's Herald Sun, as concurring with the union campaign highlighting the real security and staff privacy concerns.
In Perth the executive officer of the Child Care Association of WA, Graeme Winters, told The West Australian, after Sue Deveraux from the LHMU raised the alarm, that it was understandable that the workers had some concerns.
He said he did not really see the need for the service because parents were welcome to visit centres and spend time with their children.
" I would not have thought there was demonstrated demand for that sort of surveillance," Mr Win
by Mark Hearn
"It's a fantastic result. "MEU Delegate Sandra Hemming says. "It's far better than I expected."
Sandra, an Outreach Adviser (home library services) with Bankstown City Council library, says the decision is recognition that "we have a multicultural society, and we have people in the workplace supporting the needs of our community."
Fadia Hourani, an Information Officer with Bankstown City Council library, says her Arabic skills are in constant demand. "There's not a day when I don't use it." Fadia uses Arabic to assist new arrivals in Australia to acquire English language skills, to access library services and to translate English texts into Arabic - including catalogues, signs and surveys.
Fadia is also regularly called upon to assist with general inquiries made to Bankstown City Council. "It could be anything", Fadia says, from garbage collection to rates enquiries.
Roughly 40% of Bankstown's 160,000 population come from an Arabic language background. Other ethnic communities represented in the area include Vietnamese and Chinese. The Library also has staff with these language skills, and its collections include books, videos, music and magazines in the major language groups represented in the Bankstown community.
Sandra Hemming has been an MEU delegate for two years. "It's a challenge. You're always learning something, not only about the award, but about people and how they interact - both members and management." Sandra's commitment to her workmates including providing vital evidence in support of the MEU's successful application for the Community Language Allowance.
"The fact that they don't need accreditation to access the allowance is a major victory", Sandra says. "It would be insulting to expect that these workers, arriving in Australia with these significant language skills, should be expected to need a certificate. They bring a legitimate skill to the workplace."
Information Officer Bruce Lee uses his Korean language skills to assist Bankstown's growing Korean population. "Many Koreans can understand written texts, but they sometimes need assistance with making the link to verbal communication. It's much more friendly having someone local who can assist them. It's just a little more understanding."
Felix Anthony, the general-secretary of the Fiji TUC, slammed plans to introduce new Internal Security legislation which he labelled oppressive, and challenged ordinary Fijian's human rights.
Mr Anthony made these comments in the lead up to a national day of protest scheduled for next Tuesday - Fiji's National Day.
On Monday, in Melbourne, the Australian Council of Trade Unions President, Sharan Burrow, will release a report on a recent international union delegation visit to Fiji.
The report outlines the continuing deterioration of human rights in Fiji.
Ms Burrow will use the release of the report to highlight next week's planned day of protest, both in Fiji and around the world, as well as outline a continuing strategy of support for Fiji workers and their unions.
The national day of protest will be known as Fiji's Blue Day .
You can get extensive details from the following web-page: http://www.fijisblue.com/help.html.
On this day Fiji citizens and their supporters are asked to:
� Wear something blue;
� Do something blue;
� Request a blue song on your favourite radio station and say "this song is dedicated to the restoration of democracy in Fiji".
� Tie a blue ribbon on your gate, tree, car aerial, hair, dog, cat, anything!
The international union movement is actively backing this campaign, with the International Transport Workers Federation asking affiliates to:
� Fax letters of protest to the President of Fiji, Ratu Josefa Iloilo, on fax number +679-310645. (Please do not fax the Prime Minister, who is not recognised by the Fiji TUC.)
� Send letters of solidarity to the FTUC, General Secretary Felix Anthony, on fax number +679-300306 or email [email protected]
� Organise pickets outside the Fijian Embassy. In Fiji protesting workers will wear blue, and so the FTUC is suggesting that pickets in other countries might like also to wear blue clothes or ribbons as a gesture of solidarity;
� put a 'Fiji's Blue' banner on your web-site, which you can find at the website noted above.
Mr Anthony has told the media that the Qarase Administration did not have any legitimate right to enact laws which challenged the people's human rights.
The Fiji TUC will oppose any legislation which violates freedom of association, movement and speech, Mr Anthony said.
" The Interim Administration will trigger a major reaction from the Fiji TUC if it goes ahead with plans to introduce the Security Decree. These laws are obviously designed to muzzle the voice of the people in our country," Mr Anthony said.
" They don't want any criticism. They want a completely free hand."
The comments were in reaction to plans revealed this week by the Interim Administration to introduce an Internal Security Decree.
The decree, according to the Interim Administration, will be designed to counter or avert activities intended to sabotage the economy.
Mr Anthony said it would do the unelected Administration some good if it learnt from the events of 1988.
The interim government then had promulgated a similar decree which Felix Anthony said had been a complete failure.
This he said was because of the backlash it generated nationally and internationally.
"It should stop at imposing its dictatorship on the people of Fiji."
He said the Internal Security Decree introduced in 1988 curbed the basic rights of individuals and groups.
"These empowered the Home Affairs Minister among numerous provisions to restrict movement of individuals, prohibited publications, allowed confiscation of goods and properties and detention without trial for two years. Also, included powers to arrest and detain individuals without a warrant.
" The Minister was also empowered to restrict movement, travel, speech, holding of official position in associations or political parties."
by Andrew Casey
The win, by members of the LHMU Home Care Union, comes after an intensive community and media campaign forced management to dig deeper to reward their loyal community workers.
" Home Care management originally offered a 1.5 per cent increase to their 4000 workers," Annie Owens, the NSW Secretary of the LHMU Home Care Union said today.
" This was immediately rejected by union delegates who decided to run an upfront campaign involving all our people.
" We got particularly good support for a vocal and active campaign in NSW country towns - which turned into a favourable community mood backing their local Home Care workers," Annie Owens said.
"Hundreds of carers rallied outside Home Care offices across NSW on 28 August - the most significant action in the industry for many years."
Home Care staff work broken shifts and can start as early as 6am, finishing as late as 7.30pm. They work alone in the houses of elderly and disabled people, taking care of the personal and housekeeping needs of their clients.
Home Care is the largest provider of quality services for the elderly and disabled in their homes.
Carol Howard - who takes care of fifteen elderly and disabled people in the Manly area - said the pay increase showed an effective union campaign can change management attitudes.
" The union's rally, the campaign and the community awareness we created about our issues were important. It got management to sit up and listen to our complaints, and treat us with respect," Carol Howard said.
" The pay result is a lot better than what Home Care was originally going to try to give us."
A vote on Home Care's offer has resulted in 84 per cent of LHMU members voting to accept the pay offer, backdated to September 1, 2000.
Home Care workers expect to win further improvements when their next agreement is negotiated in 2001.
This would include a minimum sustainable rate, a maximum 14 day payment system and client responsibility for how their goods are transported.
This follows a tragic collision of trucks on the Newell Highway just outside the western NSW town of Narrabri earlier this week which left three people dead.
The Transport Worker's Union has called on the Government to urgently act to ease the pressures, including high fuel prices that are forcing transport workers and their families over the edge.
"While our condolences go out to the families of those killed, these tragic deaths make it clear that the Federal Government must act urgently to stop the carnage crippling the lives of drivers and their families in the Australian road transport industry," TWU State Secretary Tony Sheldon said.
"While at this stage we don't know who or what was the cause of this accident, the facts remain that the pressures and the demands being placed on drivers in the industry are forcing more and more people over the edge."
"Rising diesel fuel costs of over $1 a litre, increased competition and the continued demands of clients for drivers to meet impossible deadlines are all adding to the pressures facing drivers in the industry."
"As a result drivers are being forced to work and drive longer, harder and faster just in an effort to make ends meet, keep their trucks on the road and maintain their standard of living."
"Unless something is done to ease these pressures, the likelihood of more of these tragic accidents are set to increase," Mr Sheldon said.
For further information or to find out how you can get involved in the fight for better rates and better safety in the transport industry contact the TWU call center on (02) 912 0700.
by Dermot Browne
CPSU Communications Union says that while IBM GSA is prepared negotiate agreement with CPSU to cover ex-Telstra staff whose work was outsourced to IBMGSA in 1997, it would not allow 'new' staff, who have joined the company since 1997, to be covered by this agreement. On most sites these employees work side by side.
At the stop-work meetings, members voted unanimously in favour of collective negotiations and put management on notice that they are prepared to take further action in support of the claim.
Stephen Jones, from CPSU Communications Union, said, "Our claim is fair and reasonable. Surely it make sense to have people doing the same job, on the same site, covered by the same agreement."
Staff are deeply concerned by management's hard line on this issue. As a member at the Sydney meeting put it."I have just come off a high after working on the Olympic project for IBM GSA. This attitude from management is real slap in the face."
Delegates will be meeting by telephone hook-up on Monday to discuss further industrial action.
by Rowan Cahill
The dispute involves about 60 workers at the Moss Vale plant. It has see-sawed between strikes and lockouts since March, following the failure to reach consensus over a new enterprise agreement.
At a recent mass meeting workers voted to adopt a settlement proposal, except for three outstanding issues. The matter is currently before the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC).
Central to any settlement is the dropping of proposed legal action by Joy against key unionists.
While talks, discussions, and hearings between the three unions involved (the AMWU, AWU, CEPU), the ACTU, the AIRC, and Joy have variously taken place during the last fortnight in attempts to resolve the dispute, the presence of scabs at the Moss Vale factory is raising more than a few eyebrows.
The scabs, or contractors in management parlance, first crossed the six-month old picket line early in the morning of September 7.
Since then the eleven or so people involved, mostly driving interstate cars, have been factory regulars, coming and going at all hours.
Factory security and surveillance have intensified. Trees and shrubs have either been removed or savagely pruned, allegedly to facilitate photographic documentation of picket line activity. Perimeter flood-lighting has been strategically installed.
The picket line is the subject of Supreme Court injunctions.
In the beseiged factory, the contractors don't seem to be doing much in the way of industrial work.
Some have reportedly acted towards the picketing workers in an "in your face" intimidating manner.
It is probably coincidental, but soon after the arrival of the contractors in the semi-rural community an anonymous and isolated case of property damage occurred targeting a member of Joy's non-striking supervisory staff. A vain attempt was made in the AIRC to use this act of "intimidation" against the striking workers.
There seems to be division within the ranks of the contractors and unconfirmed reports allege the scab team is led by a strike breaking veteran with experience in the Mudginberri, Burnie Pulp and Paper Mill, and Patrick disputes.
The scabs have been sighted at an upmarket local eatery cum lodge type motel, and there are reports of very large weekly retainers.
A panel of experts will discuss these issues and strategies, including:
The public and researchers will lose access to these unique records of Australian society.
Historian Dr John Merritt, speaking for the Friends of the Noel Butlin Archives Centre, has urged the ANU to reconsider its plan. He said that "the proposed relocation and job cuts will put the University in breach of its legal and moral obligations to the owners of the records and to researchers."
Dr Merritt explained that "the Archives was established by Professor Noel Butlin in 1953 and now holds 13,000 shelf metres of records documenting the working lives of Australians, including records of many great Australian companies, such as Elders, Dalgety, AML&F, Goldsbrough Mort, CSR, Adelaide Steamship Co, Burns Philp and Tooths, plus the archives of the ACTU, most of the national trade unions, and employer bodies such as the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the National Farmers' Federation. The Archives hold vital materials for academic research, and also provides crucial resources for genealogists, land claims and local historians. The National AIDS Archives is also part of the NBAC."
Last week the ANU informed the National Tertiary Education Union of its intentions to further slash resources to the Archives. ANU Branch Secretary Barry Howarth commented that "an attempt by the ANU in 1997 to close the Archives and disperse the holdings failed due to public protest. Transitional funding arrangements which already cut the Archives to bare bones expire at the end of this year. In proposing the new plan for mothballing the Archives, Mr Colin Steele, the ANU Librarian, has ignored public calls to properly fund the Archives, or at least maintain it at its current minimal level."
There has been wide-ranging outrage at the ANU's continued down-grading of the Archives. The recent ALP Federal Conference, recognising the NBAC "as a world class archive of unique union and business records", unanimously called on the ANU "to maintain funding for the NBAC at a level that will enable it to continue its work of collecting and preserving the union and business records". The Australian Society of Archivists unanimously demanded at its national conference last month "that the ANU develop a stable long term funding arrangement for the Archives as appropriate for a national institution holding a large proportion of the archives documenting Australia's rural and industrial heritage". At the same conference Mr George Nichols, Director-General of the National Archives of Australia, attacked the "on-going side stepping of responsibility by the ANU for the Noel Butlin Archives Centre", describing the NBAC as "one of the jewels in the crown" of collecting archives.
For More Information Contact:
Ewan Maidment, FNBAC Hon. Secretary (Ph 02 6249 2521; email: [email protected])
Dr John Merritt, FNBAC Representative on the NBAC Advisory Committee. (Ph 02 6236 9317; email: [email protected])
Ms Rosemary Webb, President, FNBAC. (Ph.02 6291 9656; email: [email protected])
Mr Barry Howarth, NTEU ANU Branch Secretary. (Ph.62492043/62494066; email [email protected])
With the escalation of our health care costs, to the extent of $47 billion in the year 1997/98 and in excess of two thirds of this funding being provided by the taxpayer, increasing at over 6% per year, the federal government must instigate a vigorous audit on the value obtained for the public dollar.
The United Kingdom, in its efforts to not only reign in rapidly escalating costs, but to also make their National Health System more patient centered, has focussed on the Caribbean island of Cuba. This island state has an amazing record with patient representation at every level, assisting and advising the manner in which their health service is operated.
When Fidel Castro came to power, the Cuban mortality rate was high and life expectancy was 48 for males and 54 for females. Today it rivals anywhere in Europe or the U.S., with life expectancy of 74 for males and 76 for females, and an Infant Mortality rate of only 7.1%. (Australia life expectancy 75 for males and 81 for females Infant mortality 12.4% in the Northern Territory , 5% Australia , indigenous infants average 4 times higher) The major differences being - the cost of health care. In Australia the average expenditure per person per annum was (97/98) $2,536, in Cuba, it is the equivalent of less than $25.
These cost savings are not at the expense of service provision, in fact, in Cuba, there are 21 Medical Schools, 37,000 nurses and 30,00 General Practitioners, which varies service of up to one GP, per 500-700 people.
The United Kingdom, desperately seeking inspiration in an attempt to revive its failing heath system, recently sent Department of Health officials with 100 GPs to Cuba on a fact-finding mission. We could perhaps could do well to emulate these efforts.
Tom Collins
Australian Figures: pop: 19,000,000
Registered nurses (150,800) and medical practitioners (31,600 general
medical practitioners and 14,100 specialist medical practitioners)
Cuban Figures: pop: 12,000,000
Registered Nurses 37,000 and 30,00 General Practitioners, which depending on
geographic situation of one GP, to 500-700 people.
The first day of January 2001 marks the centenary of federation but it also marks the centenary of the death of the American populist Ignatius Donnelly whose novel "Caesar's Column" was widely read in the Australian labour movement in the 1890s and beyond.
With a view to writing an article to mark the Donnelly centenary I am inquiring as to whether any reader of "Workers Online" has any information relating to Donnelly and his influence in Australia that would not be readily obtainable through my archival or library research. I am also interested in purchasing a copy of "Caesar's Column" if a second hand copy is available at a reasonable price.
In relation to all things Donnellian I may be contacted at GPO Box 2836, Canberra, Act 2601.
Stephen Holt
Len Cooper has announced his nomination for a position as director on the board of giant Australian telecommunications company Telstra. As well as nominating for a position as director, Mr. Cooper intends to raise a series of issues that the national union (CEPU) want addressed on behalf of their members that work for the carrier as a matter of urgency. These include proposing a substantial reduction in the remuneration for directors and executive managers in light of the companies disastrous market performance. Mr. Cooper commented recently 'the reduction should be adequate enough to reflect the austerity measures being driven throughout the company, expressed notably in the dramatic loss of Telstra jobs, and to reflect the poor assessment of company performance by the market as demonstrated in the downward direction of the [Telstra] share price.'
At the 1999 Telstra Annual General Meeting the board voted themselves a 50% increase in remuneration citing the companies overall good performance as justification for the increase. At that meeting Mr. Cooper commented on the ease directors had in awarding themselves a 50% pairs when the telco. had dragged on negotiations with the CEPU for over two years when negotiating a new enterprise agreement for Telstra workers. The cashed up carrier haggled over a 4% per year increase for it's workers and close to two thirds of the workforce did not get the second years 4% increase after voting down 'second tier' agreements that would have further eroded salaries and conditions. Mr. Cooper has proposed to the board that director fees and executive remuneration should be set in line with performance requirements, exactly the same as those imposed on Telstra workers. These requirements to be set and reviewed by a shareholder committee in consultation with the board.
The 1999 increase of fifty percent to the Telstra directors angered the majority of Telstra workers who have endured several years of an extremely aggressive industrial relations style introduced by former Rio Tinto/Comalco ER 'experts' Robert Cartwright and Justin O'Connell. Their crude approach to workers involves dragging out EBA negotiations, attempting to bypass the representative unions, and presenting the same agreements from year to year without change in the hope of wearing down the morale and the financial resources of the unions and the workers, many having no choice but to accept an individual contract (AWA) in order to secure a much needed pay rise, but trading away job security and hard won conditions. This strategy was first tried at CRA's bauxite mine at Weipa in Queensland and then extended to other CRA mining sites in the mid 1990's. In the meantime the board and executive management enjoy obscene salaries and perks that the average Australian worker could only dream about.
Mr. Cooper points out that the carrier is in an extremely precarious position at the moment. The share price has been on a downward slide since November 1999, with a short-lived recovery in the share price in May 2000. Telstra workers defeated all of the workforce agreements that followed the signing on the 1998/2000 EBA which was designed to divide the workforce and prevent a united industrial response in the upcoming negotiations for Telstra EBA 2000, which some Telstra workers have dubbed 'Payback 2000.' On top of this financial analysts are highly critical of the carriers attempts to expand into Asia through the PCCW deal and the carrier has clocked up a number of other failed acquisitions and mergers. Speculation is now rife that the employment of CEO Ziggy Switkowski, Chairman Mansfield and their minions, like that of thousands of Telstra workers, is looking decidedly shaky. The Federal Government alarmed by the 'management' at the carrier and their unique ability to generally underperform and make the majority shareholder look ridiculous, have nominated three potential new directors, bringing the total field of potential new directors to eight.
As well as being the Secretary of the Victorian Division of the largest union in Telstra. Len Cooper is a Director of EPIC (Victorian Electrical, Printing, Information and Communications State Training Advisory Board). He trained in Telstra, and worked as a Technician, Technical Officer and Technical Instructor and has been associated with Telstra and telecommunications for his entire working life. Mr. Cooper actively assists the Telstra Shareholders Organisation (SHOT). Mr. Cooper is also a director of a job placement agency (Organised Personnel Placement) and director of a training company (Infocall.Com) both specialising in the telecommunications and information industries.
Mr. Cooper is calling for both small and institutional shareholders to support his nomination for a position on the board to provide some desperately needed balance, and representation of interests other than those of big business, true 'shareholder democracy'.
Valerie-Ann Butler
John Howard would be mad to call an early election, although the euphoria of Australia holding the Olympics and winning medals must be tempting him.
Politically the Olympics are fool's gold. There's no guarantee the Australian electorate would link Howard to sporting wins, or what appears at this stage to be the success in holding the Games.
Anyway, the Coalition doesn't have a double dissolution trigger. That's only likely to happen in October when the Senate again rejects Peter Reith's industrial relations legislation. At the earliest we would be voting in December and by then the Games will be forgotten.
Once the Olympic brouhaha has died down, the same old economic problems will re-emerge to dominate the thinking of ordinary Australians. Winning at the Olympics doesn't change any of the realities of life under market capitalism.
The dollar will still be below value. Wages will remain inadequate. Petrol prices will stay at over $1 a litre. The threat of higher interest rates will not go away. The long-term unemployed will still be unemployed. Hospitals and schools will continue to be under-funded.
The problem for Howard is that the Australian voter is sophisticated enough to ignore sporting prowess and nationalistic fervour when it comes to selecting who will govern us for the next few years. If Howard does go early it can only be because he thinks so little of the Australian voter and their ability to analyse issues.
The opening ceremony should give Howard cause to pause. The symbolism of Cathy Freeman lighting the cauldron, and the empathy it provoked, show that Australians have not allowed the emotion of the Olympics to cloud their judgement on issues like Aboriginal reconciliation.
Symbols are important. They reflect an underlying truth. Thus the Queen as Australia's head of State is a product of the country's recent past. (Of course symbols outgrow their usefulness and the Queen is an historical anachronism for most Australians.)
Cathy Freeman, torch in hand, represented our hope for reconciliation. But lighting a fire doesn't address the real issues facing our first inhabitants - their dispossession and alienation. The Olympic flame is not a magic wand. It won't improve the physical or economic well-being of Aborigines.
So while Cathy Freeman took a step forward for her people, it will become a backward one if concrete actions - such as establishing a comprehensive land rights and compensation program - are not forthcoming. John Howard is not the man for that job. And most of us know that. So if the Prime Minister tries to ride on Ian Thorpe's back, the image of Cathy Freeman at the cauldron is a powerful one to remind us of the Prime Minister's inadequacies.
The Olympics has its own symbolism, the best being Juan Antonio Samaranch as its leader. Dear Juan Antonio - a former Minister in Franco's fascist Government. And the Olympic torch wending its way through enthusiastic crowds? What a great idea. Hitler's Government pioneered it.
Of course, fascist connections do not make the Olympics fascist. But the Nazis were all about eliminating working class ideas of community - trade unions and social democratic and socialist parties - and replacing them with nationalistic and racially based alternatives. Not that there would be nationalism or racism at the Sydney Games, would there?
Winning gold can only be understood in the context of Australian society and our place in the world. We are a rich nation. Only such nations (or those aspiring to be rich) have the wherewithal to stage the Olympics. When for example will the Games be held in Dili?
And the list of winners in the Olympics will by and large be a list of the rich nations of the world. The medal winners will be an elite within those rich nations. They will not, in general, be ordinary working people. They will be professionals, supported by the taxes of salary and wage earners.
Since capitalism is a system which puts a dollar value on everything, how economically productive are our elite sportspeople? Let an economist analyse them all - the swimming program, the cricket institute, the runners, the lot.
The results of our sporting largesse - quickly forgotten victories and a bit of shallow vicarious pride - are not worth the $200 million wepump into elite sport each year. Let's re-distribute this money into local sport so that more Australians exercise. Better to be participants than voyeurs.
Many of the individuals who do win medals are, or become, very rich. What would Michael Johnson, with 24 carat gold droplets on his runners, know or care about poorly paid Nike workers? This obscenity is what the S11 protesters railed against in Melbourne recently.
Sport has become a global business. Elite athletes compete all around the world against other elite athletes. They train under the best coaches where the conditions are best. Countries try to poach good athletes and great coaches.
The Russian swimmer Popov trains at the AIS in Canberra and most of our equestrians apparently live and train overseas. Elite athletes are members of an exclusive club, not members of a nation. What meaning can it have to describe someone like that as an Australian?
The new world economy is one in which national borders are becoming irrelevant. Yet this internationalism is not reflected in the Olympics. Individuals compete under national banners. And the economic globalists cheer on "their" athletes. They know that our circus protects their bread.
Politics. Globalisation. Business. Nationalism.
Isn't it time this Olympic anachronism ended?
John Passant
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First we had Rio Tinto, now the Commonwealth Bank - deunionisation is increasingly the objective of big business. What response can we expect from the ACTU?
We are seeing a really significant push from big business to try and de-unionise. It's an attitude that exists in America, which hasn't existed here, except on the margins. But what we have seen, particularly with the Commonwealth Bank, and also with Telstra, is that attitude coming into the mainstream.
What can we expect the ACTU to do about it?
Well, there are four things.
Firstly we obviously have to fight every case as they come up. And we have been doing that and with some success. We have had some notable victories in the courts in relation to it.
As an aside it is worth putting this in perspective. BHP, Telstra and the Commonwealth Bank are probably the three large companies which at the moment are having this push made within them. Five percent of the Australian union movement is within those companies, so it is a very significant number of people we are talking about.
The second message that comes out of it is that unions really have to be sensible. By which I don't mean that they need to suck up to the boss but it is that the time of indulgence has gone, and we need to be sensible and responsible to our membership.
Disciplined?
Disciplined, and we can't abuse our power. That is, not in the eyes of the employer, but in the eyes of our membership. Because when our members see us abuse our power - and I have seen this happen with disputes - we can lose them. And so, not only are we encouraging the employers to take us on in this way, we actually weaken ourselves at being able to defend an employer push on us.
The third thing is that the government which is in power is quite critical to this. Not in terms of the legislative framework, although that is obviously very important. But in terms of the culture of business which emanates within the jurisdiction of that government.
If you look at New Zealand at the moment, the Service and Food Workers Union has had 3000 nett new members this year to date and that is on top of a base of about 22,000. So that union stands to increase by something like 20 to 25% within this year. If you ask what the difference is it comes from having a Labor Government. In Victoria there is not a single piece of law which has changed since Steve Bracks came into power, but things have changed. It was put to me this way - that when business comes to a labor government, and briefs them on their major project or seeks assistance to set up something within the State, they don't win any brownie points by running the anti-union rhetoric. Indeed to the contrary, they do win brownie points by running the rhetoric of cooperation with unions and workers.
So there is a big cultural change that can come with a change in government. It really means the next Federal Election is as critical as any has been to the labour movement.
And the final thing, and this is more important than anything else, is the organising agenda. What we have found in all of the unions that have been at the forefront of this, is that those that are able to survive best are those which have, as the Americans would say, a strong, internally organised base. That is, where people see the union embodied in themselves - where they see the union as themselves and as being the concept of people being bound together within a particular workplace as opposed to being something which is external, a third party with an office in the State Capital and a national office in Melbourne or Sydney. It is those unions who really have a strong and active presence on the ground, which are able to resist this, and that stands to reason. How can a company individualise the relationship between employers and their workforce, in a workplace where people see being in a union as being fundamentally about being part of an indivisible collective.
Some people put forward the argument that under the last Labor Government union membership became de-politicised and that top-down sort of politics led to a weakening of the union movement. So how do you strike a balance between having that organising culture and making the most of a friendly government?
I am not necessarily a critic of the Accord. It worked in its time but its time is obviously not now.
If you go to New Zealand, the unions which are best making the most of a new business culture under a Labor Government are those that adopted the organising agenda. Those that are aggressively going out and saying: now is the time that unions are likely to grow, because now times are good for us, and so we need to use all the techniques that we have developed in the past few years to defend our base, to actually go out and expand it.
Wedge politics on race has been a feature of the Howard Government. Do you think there is also a form of wedge politics between unions and business that's been pushed by Canberra?
Absolutely. Peter Reith in particular, and I suppose John Howard as well, are absolute zealots in trying to import a culture from America where really you have a kind of perpetual industrial war. The kind of things that we are seeing within Telstra, Commonwealth Bank, BHP, which are now verging on the mainstream, but have been marginal - that kind of attitude is prevalent across America. I very much feel that the government - through the MUA dispute, with Peter Reith out there championing BHP and with their trying to introduce individual contracts - are absolutely trying to bring into place a form of wedge politics. It is a very aggressive agenda. It is the most aggressive agenda that we have seen by any conservative government in this country.
What sort of relationship would you like to see between the union movement and the business community? And are there factions within business who don't embrace the union busting agenda that we can work with constructively?
That is a good question. The Olympics have been a really important and much needed event for a range of Australians. I imagine indigenous Australians feel that way too. But I also think that it has been a really important event for the Australian labour movement. For this reason: the Olympics were a union event. I think they were characterised by cooperation. You had people who were paid well, where unions were recognised, and where the outcome was absolutely fantastic. And what it demonstrated to Australia, and I think the world, is that world's best employment practice involves having a strongly unionised workforce where the employer cooperates with the union and with its workforce. That is world's best practice.
Research performed by some of the militant employers actually indicated that world's best practice in terms of employment relations was to have a strong unionised workforce with good relations between the employers and the unions. I almost fainted when I saw that. To put it in context, the research also came to the conclusion that world's worst practice was a unionised workforce where there was a perpetual state of war between the union and the employers. I guess that is no surprise. And then what it found was that in about the 75 to 80 percentile of world's best practice, came a model of having a workforce with no union presence and where the relationship between the employer and the workforce is very much done on a one-to-one basis with each individual worker.
What their own research says to these companies is that the individual contract, non-union agenda is the mediocre option. So in turn there is great scope, as we have seen in the Olympics, to try and develop relationships with employers who are prepared to cooperate with us - and I don't mean subservient relationships but ones that are dignified and see good results for employees - and which do bring about world's best practice in terms of industrial relations. We do have to find allies in business who are prepared to be brave enough to go down that path.
It is not going to be easy is it to have that sort of industrial harmony when you have an organising culture in the unions and you've got a lot of grass roots input on how a union functions and they have been subjected to this sort of employer treatment which generates anger and resentment?
I completely agree. I think to try and turn it around in places like BHP and Telstra and ComBank now, would be very difficult for those organisations for exactly the reasons you have said.
They are doing long term damage by going down the path?
Yes.
We have got to try and develop a form of unionism which is well internally organised, as the Americans would say, within companies which are friendly and which haven't exhibited any unfriendly behaviour towards us, which, while giving good conditions to our members, do in fact improve companies' performances. I just think we have got to become much more partisan in the marketplace. We have got to be barracking for union companies and not barracking for non-union companies. And that is a bit of a shift for us. We have got to say to those companies who we have traditionally had a relationship with: this isn't backing off the desires and aspirations of our members to have good conditions within your company, but we really value the relationship we have got with you and we want to see you succeed . . . in fact, it is critical to our interests that you are profitable.
What do you see as the key industrial goals of the ACTU at the moment?
The first, second and third priority is union membership. We are facing a long period of decline in union density - and we have got to do something to turn that around. In a sense all else is pretty secondary to that.
And I guess that is why we analyse these disputes in that way, because they - the disputes that we have been talking about - herald the possibility of being a new factor in reducing union density that we haven't seen in Australia. And that is an employer initiated thing. Whereas union density has really reduced up until now because of structural changes in the economy and to a certain extent, changes in the industrial framework.
So that is the main thing, and a lot of commentators out there would regard that as an impossible task, but we don't. Union decline has been part of an international phenomena. But, internationally we are starting to see it turn around. In the last twelve months there has been an absolute increase in membership within the United States. Not an increase in union density, but an increase in membership. Within Britain, for the first time in about 25 years we have actually seen an increase in union density, which is a remarkable achievement. And I think we are going to start seeing, albeit off a very low base, an increase in union density in New Zealand.
We are hopeful that we can participate in that global change as well and start turning it around.
We need to prepare ourselves for a potential Labor government federally, and that means putting some imaginative and obviously serious thought into what an industrial relations framework might look like under a new Labor government. It would be the first time that there has been a review - or at least a Labor review - of enterprise bargaining since it was introduced in 1993 - if Labor wins. So that presents a really important opportunity to the union movement to try and influence the law in a positive direction.
The ACTU is also very keen to try and become more active within the Industrial Relations Commission in terms of trying to create new employment standards. That is a very traditional role that the ACTU has played and it is important to get on the front foot with some of those things and try and get back to some of our traditional roles of improving employment standards.
What sort of relationship would you envisage between the union movement and a prospective Labor government?
Obviously a close relationship, a cooperative relationship but an independent relationship. No one is talking about another Accord and obviously that kind of relationship is not going to be appropriate for a new Labor government. It is very important that the membership of trade unions don't see the labour movement, embodied in the ACTU, as synonymous with a Labor government. That was perhaps a criticism of how things worked in the 80s and early 90s, so it is very important that, whilst having a close and cooperative relationship with Labor, we don't forget our role as being an advocate of our members to government.
You haven't been at the ACTU long - about six months - give us your impressions of the organisation under the new leadership.
Well, it's fun. It's a lot of fun. The ACTU has gone through a period of change in the last few years. That is self-evident, and I guess one goes into a job like this with some trepidation as to what it is going to be like when you get in there. But I have to say that having been there I have just been delighted at how nice a place it is to work. How much fun it is. And there is just a lot of energy about the place.
ACTU Congress was really important for us because it was a new leadership and everyone was really thrilled at how that went.
So there is a lot of energy, a lot of vibrancy and it is a good place to work.
by Peter Lewis
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The profile of the ILO has increased in recent times as people seek practical solutions to the problems of globalisation. But what is actually going on within the organisation?
There is a general feeling around the world of widening inequality. Globalisation is producing a few big winners but lots of losers, both within countries and between countries. In that context a lot of people are looking for reforms within the international organizations to improve the governance of globalisation and give everyone a fair go. For the international trade union movement part of this is trying to raise the status of the ILO, to put it on a more equal footing with the WTO, IMF and World Bank. These other organisation that deal with trade, finance and economic development have incredible clout in the developing countries. But there's the missing social dimension - and that's where the ILO is seen as having a role to play, to even things up a bit when decisions are made on the big economic and social issues. I wouldn't say the ILO is opposed to globalisation - for that matter neither is the international trade union movement - what we want is to see the rules changed so it is fairer and the benefits are spread more widely.
How has that changed the way that you do business in the ILO?
A lot of the change has come through the new head of the ILO Juan Somavia, who is a former Chilean ambassador to the United Nations and has been head of the organisation for the last 18 months. He's a high profile individual who through his own contacts with the media and with world leaders has been able to get the organisation a foothold in some of the big policy debates. At the highest level, things have changed - you see much more reference to the ILO in both the financial press and general coverage of globalisation issues. We are giving a different perspective on globalisation from what they'd get from the IMF, WTO and World Bank. What Somavia does is to highlight the concerns about increasing inequality, insecurity and how the whole globalisation thing could fall apart if these issues are not addressed. Somavia is also trying to promote a more integrated approach to economic and social policy across the entire UN system. That hasn't come to fruition yet, but that's the objective.
So what are the concrete steps that can be taken at an international level to address the inequalities?
One of the issues we are most interested in here at the ILO is increasing disparities between countries. The fact that poverty levels are soaring in Africa and in many other countries. In the ILO we have to work with these countries to help them get a stake in this global economy, particularly through improving their human capital, to help them compete. This also involves helping them build industrial relations and social protection systems that are efficient and fair. But this is only part of the solution and other reforms outside the ILO mandate are necessary. This is why the international trade unions are campaigning for international debt relief for developing countries; more resources for education, health and social expenditure in the poorest countries; and better access for developing country exports to the rich countries.
The ILO focus is also on establishing and promoting international labour standards. In recent years we have gone back to the basics, emphasising what we call our core labour standards, the basic rights - stopping child labour, stopping bonded labour, eliminating the most basic forms of discrimination, providing a framework for trade unions to organise workers and the promotion of collective bargaining. Two years ago we adopted a new Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work whereby every country that is a member of the ILO committed themselves to addressing these core issues, regardless of whether they have ratified individual conventions. They also agreed to establish a system to monitor the implementation of these commitments.
Having got this far, the ILO is using the Declaration as a trigger to provide technical assistance to countries in breach to improve their performance. We are using the carrot approach first up, running programs often funded by countries in the developed world. For example, the ILO is now running a major program to address child labour, to get the kids out of the factories and construction sites and back into education. This is a not a solution in itself to the ills of globalisation, but they are concrete steps to stop the exploitation of people that unfortunately is generated by intense competition between countries for foreign investment and a bigger slice of the export market.
The international trade union movement would like to take this one step further. They argue that the new ILO Declaration and increased technical assistance in these areas are important steps in the right direction, but a more rigorous and consistent approach is required across the entire UN system. Consequently unions are fighting to have the international financial institutions adopt policies and incentives to stop infringements of this new ILO Declaration.
The push from Australia is to have core labour standards incorporated into the WTO. How realistic is that?
It's actually not a new call, the international trade union movement has been arguing for binding labour standards for as long as this organisation has existed. When the ILO was first being created at the end of WWI there were a lot of people saying its great to produce an organisation that's going to influence national legislation and practise in the labour field through the adoption of Conventions, but it needs to have some real teeth. That debate was lost. So apart from the technical assistance I mentioned previously the ILO basically relies on moral suasion and international shame to embarrass countries that are engaging in the most outrageous labour practices. Examples in recent years have been Burma, the previous regime in Nigeria, and Colombia, where there's been more than 160 trade unionists murdered in the last couple of years. The ILO has investigated and focussed international attention on the situation in these countries and through criticism of government encouraged them to change their practices.
The key question in a globalised economy with so much emphasis on economic competition between countries is whether moral suasion remains a sufficient basis to bring about real reforms. How valuable is international shame in a globalised economy? The trade union movement would say the currency of international shame has been devalued because of the increasing economic pressures. In that situation they would say there needs to be something more. Well we have something more in the form of the Declaration and increased assistance to those countries in breach of the core Conventions, the question is how much further can we go? If we can get the IMF, World Bank and other financial institutions to use their leverage to promote the Declaration that would be another step in the right direction. After all the governments that voted for the Declaration in the ILO are the same governments that sit on the boards of the international financial institutions. Therefore if governments are on the level they should be pushing for a consistent policy approach across all international organizations.
Back to your original question about how realistic is a push for core labour standards in trade negotiations - it is definitely on the agenda, at least to open up a debate about the pros and cons of this approach within the WTO. This was the objective of the union movement at the WTO meeting last year in Seattle, although there remains strong opposition to this. The best you could say is that it remains a key objective of the international trade union movement and we will see that campaign continue. It will be hard for many governments to sell any new WTO trade round within their countries, without something concrete to show their trade union movements by way of progress on labour standards.
The other point is that while the objective may not be achieved in the short term, the trade union movement may pick up other concessions along the way. For instance, without the pressure from the unions for a link between global trade and labour standards, no one would have pushed the strengthening of the ILO through the Declaration.
But at the end of the day, we still seem a long way away from seeing social considerations become part of the governance of globalisation?
Absolutely, if governments were genuinely interested in making globalisation benefit all there is a lot more that could be done to strengthen the social side. The same applies to the issues outside the ILO. We need more governments to support the trade union campaign for international debt relief and a fair go for economic and social development in the poorest countries.
But I think the trade unions can do a better job of explaining what they are about on these international economic issues. They need to build a stronger coalition with other groups concerned about the social and environmental impact of globalisation, a coalition to advance the interest of workers in all countries. And in respect of the core labour standards the ILO and the union movement can do more to explain to the general public exactly what these standards are about and why their universal implementation is essential for both the economic and social development of all countries.
Finally, what constructive role can trade unions in a country like Australia play in this debate?
The Australian trade unions have always been very actively involved in the international trade union debate about how we should responded to the challenges posed by globalisation and I am sure that will continue and probably even expand in the future. Also representatives from Australian unions who come to meetings at the ILO have made a major contribution to the quality of debates within the Organization. On the domestic front I understand there have been some lively and interesting debates recently about labour standards, trade and economic development. I see that as a positive development because it should lead to a broader public interest and understanding of the issues involved with globalisation and better understanding among all Australians about what is desirable and practical in responding to globalisation.
From an international perspective, and if resources could be found, one of the most constructive things Australian unions could do is to more actively promote similar debates about globalisation and labour standards in the Asia Pacific region. Some work is being done in this field but unfortunately it is within our own region where some of the strongest opponents to labour standards are.
by Glenn Patmore
Workplace democracy and public debate
As Australian citizens we have long accepted that we have a right to participate in decisions by government at the national, State or local levels. We take it for granted that we have a right to vote or stand for parliament, to speak freely, to form political organisations and, if necessary, to protest and to contact our representatives.
While we understand that we have rights to participate in government decision- making, we have heard very few claims that we should have a similar right to participate in workplace decision-making. Very little public debate has taken place in our newspapers or other media regarding the extension of democratic principles to the workplace.
Benefits of employee participation
In contrast to this absence of public comment, voluminous industrial relations literature has argued that schemes of industrial democracy have significant benefits for employers and employees. Participation at work gives employees the opportunity to promote their interests and enhance their personal development. Schemes of employee representation have also been shown to promote both productivity and efficiency.
Employee Representation in the Australian Industrial Relations Context
Generally, Australian employees and employers do not currently enjoy the very considerable benefits of representative participation at work. This is largely because, until recently, employee representation has been seen as the domain of unions in Australia. But, with the decline in union membership, union representation of employees' interests has correspondingly declined. It is significant to note that trade union membership Australia-wide was 51.1 per cent in 1976 and 25.7 per cent in 1999. Consequently, nearly 75 per cent of employees are not represented by unions. To those of us who support unions, this is a very disturbing figure.
Furthermore, and similarly alarming, is the data that indicates that workplace decisions are increasingly being left to employers and managers. In fact, empirical studies of workplace relations indicate that the level of joint decision-making in Australia is poor. It is therefore evident that a serious gap in employee representation in workplace negotiations and corporate decision-making exists in Australia. This lacuna is most apparent as a significant problem when considered in contrast to other countries which have more highly developed forms of employee consultation and participation, an issue which I will address shortly.
In this paper, my central argument is that new forms of employee participation need to be developed to complement and operate independently of union collective bargaining and that this policy should be enthusiastically embraced and rigorously promoted by the Labor Party. In proposing a new form of representative consultation in the Australian workplace, I draw on European Industrial experience because it has a long history of diverse forms of employee participation mechanisms, from which we can learn important lessons.
Employee Representation in Europe: The European Works Council Model
A particularly significant development in Europe has been the introduction by the European Union of its European Works Councils Directives (1994 & 1997), requiring the establishment of a European Works Council (which I will refer to as the EWC) in larger, multinational, enterprises.
Briefly, a EWC is a compulsory and elected committee of employees which has the right to meet with central management to discuss the structure and economic and financial situation of the company. The EWC scheme is not a union-based scheme, nor does it preclude union members running for election to EWCs. EWCs provide an additional and new form of employee participation in workplace decision-making designed to complement, not replace, union schemes of collective bargaining already in existence.
Furthermore, the EWCDs are binding on member and associate member States. All 18 States, comprising a range of industrial cultures and legal systems, were required to implement its provisions by 15 December 1999.
Assessment of the European Works Council
Padraig Flynn, who is the European Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs, and who has responsibility for overseeing the implementation of the directives recently commented on the viability and efficacy of EWCs throughout Europe. He noted the adverse economic consequences of the absence of employee consultation and representation in European workplaces. Flynn stressed the importance of the workforce being engaged as an integral and formal part of the process of constant change and restructuring necessitated by globalization. Flynn has maintained that if the workforce is not consulted in a formal way, it will create:
'[A]t worst, a culture of conflict, at best a culture of cynicism. To nurture globally productive companies and workforces, we must aspire to quite the opposite effect. We need to create a culture of anticipation, to actively engage the workforce in the process of change.' (Flynn 1999)
The EWCDs seek to create a new and positive balance between flexibility and security. Again according to Flynn, the message is clear: 'Mechanisms for proper worker involvement can increase the flexibility of the business environment in which firms operate. And they can offer workers a sense of confidence that they will not emerge as the losers in the restructuring process and that they have a stake in the future of that business.' (Flynn 1999) Flynn has also stated that by April 1999 almost 600 corporations had established EWCs by means of company agreements. I believe that this development represents a very considerable transformation of workplace relations in Europe. Formal mechanisms of employee consultation and representation are thus seen as a focal point for the future development of labour relations law in Europe.
Towards a scheme of industrial democracy for Australia
The EWCDs and works councils legislation in EU countries (such as the Works Councils Act in Germany) provide realistic, workable and functional legislative models of representative consultation for Australia. Nevertheless, as with any overseas model, it will be necessary to adapt them to fit in with Australia's industrial system. This task will require careful consideration and widespread consultation. For present purposes, I will focus on the views of the union movement and the proposed policy of the Australian Labor Party.
Unions
The union movement is likely to provide a variety of responses to a proposal for works council legislation in Australia.
Some unions may apprehend only dangers and oppose such a scheme. Such Unionists may perceive a legislative scheme as dangerous if it poses a threat to their existence. Under such a scheme employers might try to exclude union-based collective bargaining by introducing new mechanisms of workplace participation that they are able to control. This might or might not be a valid concern, depending on the details of the actual proposal adopted. However, I do not believe that an EWC style scheme, which aims to complement union-based employee organisation, would pose such a threat.
Moreover, representative consultation may be seen by unions as a positive measure in an otherwise hostile industrial relations environment. For the union movement, the status quo is no longer an option. Union membership is continuing to decline and has already dropped to its 1912 level. New and innovative measures such as works councils hold out the prospect of increasing union membership and rejuvenating the union movement. For instance in Germany, works councils have strengthened the union movement because unions have actively participated in these structures, training employees to be works councils representatives.
Works councils would have the effect of providing unions with a legally guaranteed basis for workplace organisation that is highly visible at the enterprise level.4 Having union members participate in works councils would aid the establishment and maintenance of an articulated union movement. Unions could still maintain a central coordinating role at the sectoral level, and works councils and collective bargaining could meet the needs of members in individual enterprises. Accordingly, the Evatt Foundation in its Union 2001 publication recently proposed a system of works councils for Australia.
Obviously, the support of unions for any such proposal will be of vital importance. Equally important will be the policy adopted by the ALP.
The Policy of Australian Labor Party
The Labor Party's industrial democracy policy is found in paragraph 97 of chapter 8 of the 2000 Party Platform. This States:
The following principles should be pursued:
This policy gives us a reason to be cheerful. Certainly, a proposal to consider the adoption of works councils would fall within the scope of the policy as outlined in points 1 to 3 of paragraph 97. Although, the mention of the word "industrial" in point 1 may be unduly narrow. Workplace democracy is asking for something more than employees having a say about industrial matters; it aspires to giving workers a say over the commercial ends - market investment and future development of the company.
Furthermore, this policy also provides reasons for pessimism. To put the point boldly and bluntly, there is no express commitment by the Labour Party to consider the introduction of schemes of industrial democracy, in the event of it winning government.
The 2000 platform contains no specific proposals or programs to review current arrangements or to establish a programme to introduce new forms of industrial democracy. Nor does it mention the need to enact legislation. In other words, the 2000 industrial democracy policy, couched in principles and other generalities, contains no standards against which to measure progress. No standards means no commitment.
By way of comparison, the industrial democracy policy (para 97) is in stark contrast to the fair industrial relations system policy (paras 70-81) that also appears in chapter 8. Unlike the industrial democracy policy, the fair industrial relations policy contains a detailed proposal to introduce new industrial relations legislation.
It follows that, had the industrial democracy policy mentioned specific programs, standards and positive commitments, it would have heralded a far brighter future for the establishment of democracy in Australian Workplaces.
In closing, it is necessary to comment more generally on the 2000 industrial policy. The platform can be described as a move back to the adversarial form of industrial relations. One commentator has favorably characterised this shift as the "Pendulum swings back with ALP IR Policy". For instance, the platform proposes the abolition of the Australian Workplace Agreements, which may not be a bad thing.
Nonetheless, and most importantly, I strongly believe that the party must look forward to new forms of employee participation. That co- operative forms of representation must play a role to develop more democratic, more productive and more secure workplaces in the 21st century.
Glenn Patmore is a Lecturer in law, University of Melbourne, a Member of the Centre for Employment and Labour Relations Law, Convenor, Australian Fabian Society Research Committee and Co-editor of, and contributor to, New Voices for Social Democracy, Labor Essays 1999-2000. He is a member of the Australian Labor Party.
This paper was delivered at the 'Unchain My Mind' Forum Organised by Pluto Press Australia and the Australian Fabian Society at Trades Hall, Melbourne , 27 July 2000
Two years in the planning could not have prepared us for some of the challenges that Unions 2000 had to deal with in the immediate lead up to and during the Sydney Olympic Games.
We set ourselves three aims two years ago. These were to provide:
The Games lead up
Having developed the Sydney Olympics Award over a year ago, I always predicted that it would be the unexpected problems outside the control of the award, which would cause us some difficulties either in the lead up to, or during the games.
With six weeks left to go before the Opening Ceremony the first of these challenges appeared in the form of a dispute during the construction of the Bondi Beach Stadium. A security company was neither paying its employees under the Olympics award or the site agreement for Bondi Beach. Suddenly it looked like the opponents to Bondi Beach Stadium may have had an unlikely ally in this Security Company that could cause a delay in the construction of the facility. Two late night meetings with the company, SOCOG and the Unions involved resolved the issue. The company agreed to pay both the Olympics Award and the site agreement.
Just as this dispute was resolved, the Transport Workers Union announced its intention to claim bonus pay for all transport drivers who worked in a SOCOG controlled venue during the games. Three Commission hearings and two conferences later we managed to vary the Olympics award in record time to ensure transport drivers received the $1.50 per hour bonus that other Olympic workers were receiving at other SOCOG venues.
Three weeks out from the Opening Ceremony and smack bang in the middle of an intensive Unions 2000 recruitment campaign, we discovered that Sodexho, the Stadium caterer, had shifted the employment status of its confectionery vendors to that of individual contractors. Unions 2000 immediately began a public campaign, which saw all these workers restored to the status of employees and receiving all their legitimate employee entitlements.
With two weeks to go before Opening Ceremony, other Labor Council officials had finalised Olympic bonus' associated with the public sector and the transport system, and the LHMU had finally wrapped up its bonus pay for the majority of the city hotels involved in servicing the Olympic family and tourists.
Just when our Unions 2000 Sydney Olympic Park office was opening - BANG - we had 500 New Zealanders (mainly Maoris)on the Labor Council doorstep seeking our assistance on a complete stuff-up if not scam, involving promised security jobs at the Olympic Games.
These New Zealanders had paid hundreds of dollars to a company known as Colnet in New Zealand to be trained as licensed security guards for the Olympic Games. They were told that if they undertook the training and paid for their flights to Australia, the jobs would be ready for them immediately. Of course they arrived with no jobs available, as the New South Wales Registry had processed none of their security licences.
The Labor Council, CFMEU and the LHMU went into full swing with SOCOG to try to avert what was becoming known in New Zealand as the Olympic Security job scam. With the assistance of SOCOG and the unions applying pressure on a number of security companies including Workforce International, we were able to fast-track the licensing of these New Zealanders without compromising security standards required for the games. 80% of the people found jobs, and we indirectly helped subsidise their accommodation to stop a number of potential evictions. Labor Council has since written to both the Minister of Police and Fair Trading to have all the companies involved in this potentially damaging incident investigated.
The Opening Cutbacks
We could predict many of the potential problems and issues that came up during the games, but what none of us predicted was that on Day 2 of the games and on each day to follow in the first week, almost all the major contract catering companies, would announce major reductions in labour. This was supposed to be the games where employers were afraid of losing labour too quickly or not being able to fill all the jobs on offer. This was far from reality. The first company to announce cutbacks were the Superdome, followed by Spotless, Eurest, Michael O'Brien catering and the Royal Agricultural society. Our phones didn't stop ringing with angry members confused and frustrated by the fact that they had been promised work at the Olympics and expected to be there for the full duration. Our phone lines were so jammed in the first two days we increased the number of lines to deal with the issues. The first of a number of disputes committee meetings were held with SOCOG to work through what could have been a very negative experience for the games workforce.
Unions 2000 and SOCOG negotiated with each of the companies and put in place strategies to limit the number of hours and jobs which were cut back. In a positive step we were able, with SOCOG, to set up a special hotline number where Olympic workers affected by the cut-backs could be offered jobs in the city with a number of retail and hospitality employers. More than 2000 workers were affected by the cut backs in the first week.
During the first week we were also inundated with the expected pay problems, i.e. no pay or wrong pay. This proved to be a particular problem with a number of security companies including Workforce International who were requiring security officers to be at work half an hour earlier and to attend police briefings without pay. On one particular site the situation had reached a crisis point where some security officers were legitimately prepared to refuse to carry out work unless they were assured of being paid. A number of meetings during the games took place between senior SOCOG officials, Police and Unions 2000 to clarify and resolve these matters. The issues relating to the security industry continued to take up time right through to Closing Ceremony day. In one instance two days before the closing ceremony the Union addressed a meeting of security guards in one venue to avert a stoppage. This was one of three stoppages averted during the course of the games.
Richo backs the workers
Approximately 4 days into the games while dealing with the catering cutbacks and the pay problems in the security industry, our first of two incidents of needle stick injuries came to the fore at the Athletes Village. We were not at all happy with the procedures followed when the first needle stick occurred but we had these fixed. Syringe bins were then provided in every residence in the Village. By the time the second needle stick injury occurred the response from the Mayor of the Village was swift with the suspension of all housekeeping services to 4 countries that were not using the syringe bins. Unions 2000 fully supported Mayor Richardson's approach.
The 100-meter dash
By the opening day of the Athletics we thought that our catering problems regarding cutbacks were over. The Stadium had been booked to the hilt and all the corporate suites were full. But we had one major problem - people weren't eating and drinking! All of a sudden without any consultation with Unions 2000 or SOCOG, Sodexho began its 100-metre dash for the cutbacks line. Some middle management had decided it was easier to simply send people home than to re-roster in a way which minimised the effect on employees. Our third crisis telephone hook-up took place with SOCOG at 11pm. Shortly after we were notified that employees at three bars at the Stadium wanted to walk off the job in protest. A meeting was held with Sodexho Senior Executives at 5am the next morning and an agreement was reached on limiting the cutbacks. A circular was released to the staff the next morning. Once again a major crisis and potential morale draining dispute was averted.
Problems just kept coming
By the second week we had dealt with well over 1000 enquiries/issues. These included complaints about roster changes, accommodation charges, and 4 unfair dismissals. Week 2 saw an escalation in pay problems, especially with the OLN partners (in particular) LLEM and in catering with Eurest. These coupled with the continuing pay problems with a number of security companies caused us to harden our position and threaten to implement the penalty provisions under the late payments provisions of the Award. We had advised SOCOG of our position. They fully supported our view that it was unacceptable that people weren't being paid on time.
Week 2 also saw retailer Concept Sport eclipse their Games sales predictions by the first week but forgotten to issue their staff with meal vouchers in a range of venues. Many hungry retail workers had their appetites rekindled in the knowledge that they would be compensated in cash after swift action by Unions 2000.
And while food was the flavour of week 2 catering employees at the stadium suffered the muesli blues when Sodexho didn't provide them with the standard choice of muesli bar, fruit, or cake as part of the meal provisions negotiated with Unions 2000 and SOCOG.
One meeting later and a number of phone calls, following a barrage of complaints, had the employees happily munching away on their full supplement of food.
With 3 days to go the pay issues just got worse with one woman in a state of tears with almost $3000 in unpaid wages still owing. Her state of mind required immediate action, so Unions 2000 officials and SOCOG organised a $400 cash advance for her, which was delivered to her home at 9.30pm. Other workers just got angry and called for a strike on the second last day of the Games at the Equestrian Centre. This serious dispute was averted with Eurest management SOCOG and Unions 2000 officials meeting with workers till midnight to sort out the pay problems.
Unions 2000 delivers
And so it was that Sydney delivered the best Olympic Games ever. Under any other regime these problems would have spelt chaos. Under our plan Unions 2000 had done its job for the Olympics and its paid workforce.
Chris Christodoulou is Assistant Secretary (Organising) of the Labor Council of NSW and the coordinator of Unions 2000.
by The Chaser
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Speaking from his home in the Hollywood, actor Mel Gibson said he was "like, really jerked off, man" not to have been selected as an Australian icon. "I've moved away from Australia years before Elle did", says Gibson, "So why did I miss out? I'm as Australian as apple pie".
Art critic Robert Hughes reacted to the decision to exclude him from the Games with typical vitriole. "It's typical of the provincial attitude of those colonial hicks that they should fail to recognise my awesome achievements in an obscure and elitist field", Mr Hughes said in a statement. But Games organisers have rejected Hughes' criticism saying that they prepared a float for Hughes in the Parade of Icons. The float was withdrawn from the parade, however, because Hughes kept driving it on the wrong side of the Olympic Park track.
Many other former Australians have joined the chorus of disapproval. The New South Wales government is said to be particularly concerned by a complaint from Rupert Murdoch over his exclusion. The media magnate told reporters, "I'm an Australian to the core and I'm deeply committed to my country. If it wasn't so financially inconvenient, I'd still be an Australian citizen today". Murdoch became a resident of the USA for tax reasons some year ago. He now supports American teams at the Games, but says he only does so "for tax reasons". Speaking yesterday, Murdoch said he had built up his media empire for all Australians, adding "I think that all Australians benefit from my success in a strange, intangible and certainly non-pecuniary way". Mr Murdoch listed his contributions to Australia as including the Titanic ride at Fox Studios (Sydney) and the removal of several major cricket matches from free-to-air television.
But the most withering criticisms of the Closing Ceremony came from suprising sources. Speaking near Olympic Park in the maximum security sector of Silverwater Prison, convicted backpacker murderer Ivan Milat threatened to kill Michael Knight when he saw that he was not an Australian icon. "I turned the eyes of the world to Sydney long before the Olympics came here, so it's disappointing not to be remembered" said Milat, who killed a number of European backpackers in the 1990s. "I'm sure I would have been there if it wasn't for Childers".
But creative director of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies Ric Birch has rejected the criticisms. In the wake of the rapturous reviews creative director of his work, Birch has revealed what he was trying to achieve with Olympic pageants. "Australia has always had suffered from cultural cringe, the idea that we're not good enough and that you can't stay in Australia and be world class. So I wanted to confront that making a very bold, proud statement celebrating the Australia I knew before I moved to the US".
by Peter Zangari
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When I first heard the Elliott Smith sound there were hints of other artists thrown in there that I was unable to work out. Looking at the fine print of the CD sleeve I notice Elliott Smith writes all the songs and he also arranges all strings. But the album was recorded at abbey road and that's where the Beatles comparisons begin.
Whilst Elliott Smith is virtually unknown here in Australia, listeners should give his music a go. It is digestible and accessible to the ear without being categorized easy listening, so it should be filed under pop rock. The recent success of Travis's "Why does it always rain on me" shows that there's still an interest in folk/pop rock music and Smith is right up that alley.
The album opener "Son of Sam" is a true 60's pop track repackaged for today's listener. Other standout tracks include: "Junk Bond Trader", "Wouldn't Mama be Proud" and "Happiness The Gondola Man." Throughout the album catchy vocal melodies are the norm, as is the use of acoustic guitars and the good ol' piano.
"Everything reminds me of her" is a great ballad, which leads into its melancholic sequel "Everything means nothing to me". It's at this point of the album where Smith shows his strength as a songwriter. The lyrics verge on the personal but never too far as to get carried away as some pop artists tend to do.
Overall, Figure 8 is a great album that clocks in at 52 minutes. With over 16 tracks, each song averages just over 3 minutes of pure pop bliss. Its refreshing to hear music that is written, arranged and produced by the one person.
Other CD's worth checking out:
Ben Folds Five- The unauthorized biography of Reinhold Mesnner
The Beatles- The Beatles (white album)
Neil Finn- Try Whistling This
Richard Ashcroft- Alone with everybody
Travis- The man who
by Peter Lewis
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The surprising thing about Geneva is that it is so relaxed. Dominated by the huge glacial Lac Leman and ringed by mountain ranges, it feels more like a holiday camp than the centre of the world. With fewer than 200,000 citizens there's a sense of containment, that bigger cities lose in the traffic jams. In the warmer months people swim in the clean waters, or take the free bicycles provided by the International Red Cross for long rides around the Lake. Of course the winter is harsher, but the Swiss and diplomats foreigners, who make up 40 per cent of the city's population, have learnt to take the good with the bad.
Geneva owes its place in international affairs to its neutrality. In war and peace it has stood apart from conflict, avoiding the heartbreak of armed conflict and reaping the benefits of secure bank vaults. Refusing to be German, French or Italians, the Helvetica tribes that comprise the Swiss Republic have used their mountain havens to stay out of trouble. Right now, that history of neutrality is being tested by a global debate that goes to the very heart of the 21st century - what rules should apply to Globalisation? While the guns won't be firing between the World Trade Organisation, International Monetary Fund and the International Labour Organisation, the war of ideas is gathering heat.
It is ironic that these international bodies that have managed affairs between the nation state, are now being asked to impose rules on its assault. But that's what's happening. Faced with growing insecurity about globalisation, people are taking to the streets, calling for rules. And it is ILO, the sole remaining body established in 1919, when US President Woodrow Wilson convinced the world to form the League of Nations but couldn't get his own Congress to do the same, that is seen as the saviour for the little people. Its being asked to come up with rules to place fairness into global trade - and then its being given the even harder job of convincing the world to respect them.
The first part of the equation has largely been fulfilled. Two years ago, all ILO member nations signed up to a Declaration on Core Labour Standards that condemns slave labour, child labour, discrimination and the right to organise. Taking a softly softly approach, the ILO has begun assisting member countries comply, through education and on the ground training. But it wasn't carrots they' were calling for on the streets of Seattle.
The real question is how do you give an organisation like the ILO the teeth to match the fangs of the big corporations that now dominate the world economy. If it comes down to a clash between corporate law and international law, then it's going to be a mismatch. While Multi National Corporations represent the triumph of black-letter law - which actually gives directors a legal duty to maximise profits, international law has always been more of a gentlemen's club. International law must be agreed to, and then it is up to individual countries whether to enforce it, there are no mechanisms to force the issue. In this context, how do you force a government, let alone a company, to act morally?
Within the walls of the ILO, up in the hills overlooking Lake Geneva, there are attempts to thread the needle and make core labour standards bite. One idea is to integrate with the World Trade Organisation - not through the type of social tarrifs that would be anathema to trade liberalisation - but do denying nations in breach of labour standards access to the WTO's complaints mechnism. This is where one country can complain to the WTO about the anti-competitive practices of another, and win approval to impose retaliatory measures of their own. It may sound bureaucratic, but there. An ILO official describes it to me using a football analogy - 'what this would mean is if you foul repeatedly, we allow the other team to kick the shit out of you'.
Eyes are also closely watching the outcome of a groundbreaking action against the Burmese Government, targeted by the ICFTU for allowing bonded or slave labour. The complaint has passed through a formal inquiry process, every stage of which the Burmese regime has refused to cooperate. The ILO has now invoked an obscure article that gives it the power to call for the withdrawal of cooperation by all member states. The issue is at a sensitive stage, when the article was about to be invoked earlier this year, Burma made moves to comply and was given a six month extension. The issue will be revisited in November, when a full ILO Conference will decide whether to call for action.
Whatever the outcome, the relevance of the Burma complaint is that provisions to impose global labour standards may already exist. It is an admittedly extreme case - an international pariah State approving slave labour and won't give much tangible comfort to Australian workers seeing their jobs go offshore because of lower labour costs, but it is something. Apply the same provisions to assert the right for trade unions to organise in developing and you're starting to see a bit of daylight, because this will actually close the gap in labour costs, not by holding Australian wages down, but by pushing developing workers wages up. Like the best in international diplomacy, it's all about little steps.
There's one big misconception about the Swiss and that's that they are pacifist.- While they are neutral, they are fiercely militaristic. The Swiss Army Knife is no misnomer: national service is compulsory and all adult males are members of the Army Reserve, keeping a rifle at home. I'm told the main bridges over the Rhone are permanently mined in case of invasion - the hedgehog strategy: If attacked curl up into a ball and impose the maximum pain. It's early days, but the ILO might be using very Swiss tactics to promote its objectives of globalisation with a social face. The Seattle crowd may not get their social tarrifs, but a bit of hedgehog diplomacy could give their cause a tangible boost.
Away for the Games in Athens
Rings of Desire
As I lie on a hill overlooking the stadium of ancient Olympia as another busload of German tourists slipping on the togas and doing a victory lap I feel like I understand, at last, what the Games are all about.
I had turned my back on the Sydney circus in the hope of finding something more substantial by looking at my home city from beyond, rather than under the spotlight. But watching the tourists perform their own ritualistic war dance, walking over the ancient ruins as they receive their Level One indoctrination in the Olympic myth, I realise for the first time the depth of my own folly. Here I was thinking that the Games were a farce because they were so hyped, the reverence, the triumphalism, the placing of the physical above all other qualities.
But here, watching the myths of Olympia being subverted by modern tourism, I realise the opposite is true: the Games resonate for the very reason that they are so fake, so showy, so downright camp. Historians would tell you that the Olympics have always been about diverting attnetion from the grubby realities of existence. Things were getting way too intense, Ancient Greece was in an almost constant state of war. The Athenians versus the Sparts; the Sparts against the Argons, the Macedonians and the Catheginians at each others throats.
When Iphitos, the King of Elis, went to the Delphic Oracle, a sort of ancient Greek Agony Aunt to ask what could be done to end this cycle of war and plague, the enigmatic reply was to revive a religious festival at Olympia to honour the battle for leadership of the Gods which saw Zeus take gold from Kronos. The date was about 800 BC and for the next 1000 years, all war would cease for a month as the armies of the various city-states swapped weapons of destruction for a hastily despatched loincloth and a 100 metre dash. Not even Roman occupation dented the festivities, although the Emperor Sulla's decision to pillage the site to plug a budget shortfall in 85 BC stretched the friendship, as did Nero's decision to comptete in new events that he created such as artisitic contests for tragic actors and musicians, which he, not surprisingly, won.
So to the Ancients the Olympics were a chance to do battle without risking death, to triumph without spilling blood. According to the modern mythology, the point of the Ancient Games was not just to run fast, but to perform with honour, and in doing so, worship the vast array of Gods who presided over the ancient soul. Much of the site was given over to the worshipping of religious figures like Zeus, various kings and even a goddess called Nike. The strict rules including no bribery and the exclusion of all those who had committed a crime. Penalties were strict and included fines, disqualification or public flogging. The most severe penalty was reserved for married women who entered the Game site to watch the blokes perform in the buff. They were thrown to their death off a cliff. Through this mixture of the carrot and the stick the Olympics myth evolved around the image of youthful virility and the purity of competition.
It was a myth ripe for the 20th Century, where the nation states of the world again locked themselves into battle. Despite two horrendous world wars, athletes from around the globe would compete for trinkets rather than their live. Ignore the fact that many athletes represent the colonial powers that ravaged their homelands for economic reasons, or that the spoils of victory became so high that many attempted to cheat by pumping themselves full of horse steroids. Ignore also the abject corruption of the official Olympics body who roam the world like some statelss monarchy; and ignore the way huge global corporations have appropriated the myth in order to turn a buck. If you cut through all the ugliness, the Games have fulfilled the very primal urge for one nation the boot the boot into another. At the dawn of a new, more globally connected millenia the question remains whether this is a myth that will continue to resonate.
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As for the modern Greeks, despite the fact that Athens, has won the honour of hosting the 2004 Olympics and are being talked of as the perpetual home of the Games, there is an indifference to the proceedings in Sydney that might come as a shock to the 'sports-mad' Sydney public - as the US correspondents on CNN repeatedly refer to. In the fishing villages that dot the Peloppensian coast, locals converge on the bars in the evenings to watch TV sport, but it is the progress of the Greek team in the European Cup soccer that has them rapt, rather than the work of the Thorpedo. There was some excitement when a local bookend won weightlifting gold, but for the most part, life goes on as if it was just a sports event. Mention the 2004 Games, Athenians only roll their eyes: everyone knows the Bid is in disarray and as you look out over the city clothed in a brown veil of smog from the Acropolis, its hard to imagine a city less suitable for the job of accommodating 20,000 visitors for a two-week 'international event'.
The streets of Athens may be lined by marble, but it is almost totally obscured by the grime of smog and sweat. The Minister responsible for the Games is so concerned he cancelled his trip to Sydney in a bid to distance himself from the Bid Committee. He's warned that the timetable is so tight that the Games are now "at the mercy of the unpredictable", such as the discovery of antiquity relics during construction. Similar discoveries have halted work on the Athens metro for more than two years. But the thing that strikes me is that if the 2004 Games are an absolute disaster, it won't be the national shame that Australia feared, just something else that didn't turn out right. You get the feeling the Greeks will just shrug their shoulders and carry on regardeless. Which is one way in which Sydney seems to have set itself apart from other host nations.
Commentators in the international papers seem fixated (a) on the prevalence of venomous wildlife and (b) on the people's desperate need to be reassured things are going all right. As one commentator observed, Australians may say 'no worries' a lot, but that they are a long way away from being comfortable and relaxed. From a distance this has ensured the Games have gone off smoothly, that Sydney has not - even despite the efforts of the Daily Telegraph - disgraced itself. But it also betrays a sad truth - that we can't summon the same passion for things more complex than cheering for someone who can stick their heads underwater and paddle fast. Or getting tears in our eyes when Cathy Freeman wins Gold, but being unable to open our hearts to reconciliation. When the Sydney Games were first mooted, some of us rued the money that was going into stadia rather than, say, the development of high-tech industry. Eight years on, we have stadia, but no high-tech industry, an economy judged to be 'old' and a dollar that seems to be in free fall.
The sad postscript to the Games is that what has created the buzz is the sense that Sydney, for a few short weeks, has been at the centre of the world. It seems that Sydeny has been revelling in this, deluding itself that it has won something of substance. But the real Olympioc ideal has always been that there is no need for a centre of the earth - that the war's that go into asserting that space are just too costly. Somewhere along the way, this has got mixed up in a sick triumphalism of which Sydney could well be remembred as the high point. Because being at the centre is the thing the 2000 host city has yearned for more than anything else.
by Chris Owen
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Competitors required a brazen attitude that allowed for extreme positiveness, a reckless abandonment of the facts, ability to tiptoe around social issues, and above all the inability to critically reflect upon their own performances.
The brash young, and strikingly amateurish, Andrew Daddo got Australia away to a flier early on the morning before the opening ceremony with a comment that set a high benchmark for the competition..."No-one would mind being stuck in that traffic knowing Greg Norman was carrying the Olympic flame across the Harbour bridge up ahead of them." A comment that surely would have raised the eyebrows of the world record holding US commentary team let alone the five kilometres of commuters who had left for work that morning without the faintest idea of what lay ahead.
It wouldn't be long before the US launched their attack on Olympic commentary gold led by CNN Today show host Matt Lauer... "It is hard to believe anything could survive in the harsh Australian outback. However Aborigines have lived out here for thousands of years by simply adapting to the environment". SIMPLY? I'm surprised my spell check doesn't recognise the name of this truly arrogant world leader in uneducated commentary.
The US again raised the bar though a runner for the vocally impaired Chelsea Clinton who, unable to speak for herself through a mouthful of teeth, left it up to her spokesperson to cheerfully blurt the most patronising of comments ... "Bill and Hillary are very sorry they were unable to attend the games, they would have loved to come down under but they have a competition of their own going on back home...its called the US presidential election". Thanks for that...hey I've got two words to describe Australian culture--how quaint.
Australia fought back well with Raylene Boyle utilising a skill which many thought was lost from the art of Olympic commentary--audacity. After dropping the baton in their heat, the Australian womans 4X100 meters relay team endured an absolute drubbing on live television by Boyle who went on to despairingly explain how it should have been done. Were those the same "lack of fundamental abilities" and "shining examples of how not to baton change" employed by Raelene when she dropped the baton in the 1972 Olympic Games. Top points for degree of difficulty, an awesome display of one forgetting ones own past when one is berating another.
Talking of one's abilities, one shall never forget the performance by the equestrian commentator Lucinda Green in keeping Australian commentary in the medal hunt. "One must not do that... one must do this whilst riding in an Olympic equestrian event". The call cries of the honorary Australian who, in a relentless display of pompous arrogance, was able to encapsulate everything privileged and snotty nosed about a sport that only .0000000001 percent of the world population could afford to become involved in. An inspiring performance by Green who overcame the difficulties of changing grammatical style half way through her campaign, changes spurred on by her coach Kerry Stokes who advised Green that, "one will not be understood in Australia if one speaks like that."
CNN stalwart Peter Sambervic was to put the US back in the lead in the final days of competition with his comment to a co-host... "Have you noticed how big this country is?" A touch of genius from a man old enough to know better, Sambervic's comment leaving many followers of the competition to ask whether the US could be beaten with only a short time to go and so few clich�s and stupidities left to unearth.
However, it was to be the strikingly amateur Andrew Daddo, who had earlier set the host nation off to a flying start, who would bring it up the rear and cross the line at the final moment to win gold for Australian commentators. Daddo was tantalising at the athletes awards ceremony last Monday night as he combined thoughtlessness, faux pas, and ill-information with repetition, buzz words and a complete lack of knowledge as to what is going on in this country, to say on closing... "Amazing, an incredible accomplishment by all, a great period in Australia's incredibly short history."
Enough said.
by Peter Zangari
Key recommendations include legislation for the payment of site rates andthe provision of a minimum amount of work for labour hire employees.
The Taskforce is chaired by former ACTU President Jenny George and comprises equal numbers of union and employer representatives.
The Labour Hire Taskforce, set up by the NSW Government, will meet next week to consider further submissions from unions, employers and the general public.
Labour hire is being used in more and more NSW workplaces than ever. There has been a shift away from traditional forms of employment, towards labour hire. Labor Council notes in its submission to the Taskforce that despite this shift, employees still want the benefits of permanent employment. For some time now, Labor Council affiliates have confronted problems associated with the use of labour hire and brought them to the Council's attention.
The submission, which can be found at http://www.lcnsw.labor.net.au/papers/laborhire.html is the culmination of a two-month investigation into the issues that are confronting unions at the moment. A Working Group of union industrial officers, researchers and organisers was formed to identify areas that need to be addressed. The participating unions were:
Labor Council sees a key problem is the control of opportunistic labour hire companies who gain a commercial advantage by undermining basic standards. While many labour hire companies observe and pay the correct award conditions many others do not pay site rates. One recommendation is to legislate for the payment of site rates; ie that there be a requirement that labour hire workers be paid as if they were employees of the host company when working on the host company's site.
The paper outlines three outcomes that need to be addressed as a matter of urgent priority: safety, training and fair wages and conditions. All have emerged as problems primarily as a result of labour being treated as an expendable commodity. Laboure hire workers are at a greater risk of injury than other employees, receive either very little or no training and receive wages and conditions that are lower than other employees.
Labor Council has devised recommendations to help the Task force develop policy in this area as well as specific proposals for immediate action. Specific recommendations centre on a) safety issues, b) Training and Skills formation, (c) Pay and Conditions, (d) Job Security and (e) Procedures and Mechanisms.
It will be interesting to see what comes out of the Taskforce as it prepares to brief the Carr Government on this important employment issue. With the recent amendments to the Industrial Relations Act now in place, there is a great opportunity for legislative reform in the area of labour hire.
John Howard's wedge politics hit a brick wall at the Olympics. And for that we can thank a young, likeable, Aboriginal woman from Central Queensland who just happens to run fast.
Like the pathetic Woody Allen character in Zelig who pops up everywhere next to famous people in history John Howard managed to squeeze himself into nearly every frame of Aussie glory during the Games. Well, until the closing ceremony...
By the end of the Olympics Howard's self styled image as a pollie in tune with the battlers was looking a bit thin. While the whole country rejoiced in Cathy Freeman's glorious run - for reasons everyone will admit are more than to do with athletics - Howard couldn't get past the caricature he has become when confronted with anything that involves indigenous Australians.
When asked by journalists about the significance of Cathy's performance in the context of reconciliation Howard trotted out his old chestnuts mothballed from the apartheid era about politics and sport not mixing. A graceless, mean-spirited and out-of-touch response.
Nearly every Olympic Games of the last 30 years bar Barcelona and Sydney has been marred by terrorism or boycotts. Sydney wasn't devoid of politics but for once it was of a positive, progressive, celebratory kind. Politics and sport mixed and it was wonderful.
From the beautiful, captivating indigenous sequence in the opening ceremony to Cathy Freeman's inspirational run in the 400 metres to the forthright and proud statements of support for reconciliation by Savage Garden, Midnight Oil and Yothu Yindi at the closing ceremony, Aboriginal politics was on the agenda.
Cathy Freeman's run was only the tenth fastest of all time. As an Olympic athletic achievement it didn't stand out as something special. But as the correspondent of Britain's Guardian noted it was in the same league as Jesse Owens feats at the 1936 Olympics in significance.
There were other ingredients to the Olympic success story that wouldn't exist if Howard had completely had his way over the years. As one leading American corporate leader observed the difference between Sydney and Atlanta (or the toilet in Roy and HG-speak) was that the Sydney games were delivered by a strong public sector and quality public infrastructure that was lacking in Atlanta.
And as Bob Carr has conceded these were the unionised games. They would never have happened without disruption and conflict if the Workplace Relations Act had been the IR framework.
Something really big has just happened in Sydney. And despite his try hard attempts to the contrary Howard is too small a person to be relevant at such a historically significant occasion. Except as a tool - then he reaches Olympian proportions.
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