
Issue No 82		20 December 2000

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Letters to the Editor

John Scrooge's Christmas Gift

What an unexpected revelation that workers on Individual Contracts are paid up to $200 per week more in wages than those under Industrial awards.

What perhaps is more important are the abstruse figures, the figures that show that working conditions were traded off to earn the actual monetary income.

Many employees have traded off conditions such as overtime rates of pay for hours in excess of their normal working week during a period of recession, only to find that when the economy picked up they were working excessive hours at ordinary rates of pay, and thereby reducing the requirement to employ another Australian.. One only has to compare other statistics (hours actually worked by employees) to validate this error in judgement by some of their representatives, those representatives usually being incompetent Unions, these can be recognized by their dramatically falling membership. Union's lead by those whose vision is blocked by figuratively enlarged olfactory sensation devices.

Fortunately/unfortunately? This was a road to Damascus awakening for myself, and as I am now classed as one of the working poor. I can with clear conscience, stop whipping myself with wet nettles, as punishment for being a bad parent and a poor money manager, take my kids out of school and send them up the chimneys or down the mines, on one of these new work for the dole schemes.

This might enable us to pay off the Never Ending Payments of our Liberal Government Homefund Mortgage!

Perhaps we could indenture them, along with the Invalid, the Single mothers, the Long term unemployed and maybe even raise the dead, in a Work for The Dole Scheme, preferably one, that is governed by one of those Wonderful Individual Work Contracts, at $200 a week more than the award?

When are we, as a collective, going to awake from our slumber and acknowledge that this economic, social and spiritual, collective but consensual rape of the Common Man -

Is not in the interests of anyone but the New World religion "The Holy Corporate Entity", the emblem of which is easily recognized as?

Father Ted

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Issue 82 contents

Interview: Being Michael Costa
Labor Council�s secretary on the 2KY sell-off, the Olympics and his plans for the future.

Unions: Millennial Milestones
In a year of highs, some trade union stories stuck in the collective consciousness. Here's ten of the best.

International: Eric Lee's Year in Review
The editor of Labourstart looks back on the global issues that mobilized labour in the past 12 months.

Organising: Dispatches from the Field
Despite the 'Botsmanesque' critiques which have been levelled at Organising, it would be hard to deny that the year 2000 has seen more and more unions in NSW latch onto the approach - at least in principle anyway.

Economics: Who Gets Gold??
At the end of this Olympic year, Sydney Uni's Frank Stilwell charts the winners and losers in the new sport of redistribution of income.

Politics: Election 2000: The Winner is Gridlock
In the last in his series on the US Federal Election Campaign, Michael Gadiel, our roving reporter, gladly signs off.

Satire: Chaser Launches Book
In the great tradition of repackaging old material to cash in on Christmas, the team from The Chaser & Silly 2000 has produced its first book.

Review: Cultural Wasteland
The spotlight was on Australian culture in 2000. But was it a missed opportunity, asks Peter Zangari.

» Mad Monk's Secret Union Past

» New Life for Trades Hall

» Top Cop is Our Organiser of the Year

» All We Want for Christmas

» Summer for Social Justice

» Unions Return to Mosh Pit

» Unions Head West

» Big Bastard Censors Dissidents

» South Coast Labor President Steps Down

» As a Died in the Wool Westie Steps Up

» Dying Workers' Asbestos Plea

» Workers at Centre of Turn Of the Century

» Truth about S11 Starting to Come Out

» The Soapbox

» The Locker Room

» Trades Hall

» Tool Shed

» The Greatest Team Ever?

» ABC Online Did Strike

» Why Nader Vote was not Wasted

» John Scrooge's Christmas Gift

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