The law firm, Freehill, Hollingdale and Page are touting special seminars for call center employers around the country in March aimed at resisting a national Code of Conduct for the industry.
The top end of town lawyers this week issued a media release this warning that the trade union organizing drive into call centers "will pose a serious challenge for employers."
Freehills says the Call Centre Code of Conduct, developed by the ACTU and some employers poses a particular threat.
"Employers need to be aware that if enough of them sign up to this code, the unions will push for it to become the benchmark for award and other legally binding industrial instruments," Freehills say.
"It will also mean that so-called 'rogues' (employers who don't sign up) will be under greater pressure from union campaigns to come on board.
"Call centers must have strategies in place to ensure staff alignment, as those who do not accept union demands may be publicly attacked to shift their loyalty towards the union." There is, unfortunately, no definition for the meaning of 'staff alignment'
We Must be Something Right
Australian Services Union services branch state secretary Luke Foley says the push is proof that unions are making inroads in the call center industry.
"This is a growth area where we are seeing a real need for collective action," Foley says.
"While it's a hard slog, we are starting to see the results of the past few years work with a steady stream of call centre workers choosing to join their union
The ASU is one of a group of trade unions who have been working with the ACTU to develop the Code of Conduct and organize campaigns around its implementation.
Stephen Jones, form another of the particpating union - the Community and Public Sector union - says it's employees who need the help, not bosses.
"We have visited centres where employees are crammed together under poor health and safety standards and at other companies workers have been told to buy their own equipment. In some places people are required to sit for an entire eight hour shift without even a lunch break," Jones says.
"I know of one worker with a disability who had been required to buy his own chair.
"Some people in the industry have been told that it is a condition of their employment that they don't join a union.
"Freehills shouldn't be trying to cover this up. Some employers are working cooperatively with the CPSU and do not see the union as a threat. Obviously there is no money for lawyers in industrial harmony."
The CPSU is seeking to make an award for workers in telecommunications companies including AAPT, Orange/Hutchinson, OneTel, and Primus.
by Andrew Casey
The delegation demanded that the Bank bring into line one of their rogue clients in Indonesia - the Shangri-La Jakarta hotel - who have refused to negotiate with workers' leaders and used police to violently break up a peaceful sit-in.
Led by ACTU President, Sharan Burrow, the delegation met with the Asia-Pacific regional manager of the World Bank, Klaus Rohland. Mr Rohland accepted background material on the nearly two-month old Jakarta hotel dispute which he promised to send to his head office in New York.
World-wide hotel workers' rallies A colourful union rally in front of the World Bank's office in Sydney's Martin Place is the first of several co-ordinated Shangri-La Jakarta Hotel solidarity rallies planned by hotel unions around the world - all in front of local offices of the World Bank.
Workers from most of the major five-star Sydney hotels were represented at the rally, along with construction workers from nearby sites and a sprinkling of other union supporters.
" Hotel workers - wherever they live - demand respect and are eager to show solidarity with their sisters and brothers at the Jakarta Shangri-La hotel who have been locked out of their workplaces for over a month," Jeff Lawrence, the National Secretary of the LHMU Hotel Union told the Sydney rally.
" There workers are being made destitute by a company prepared to go to the brink to break the union.
" These are workers earning less than $US 30 a month, who serve international guests who pay a minimum of $US 90 a night for the privilege of staying at the Shangri-La Jakarta hotel. "
New Shangri-La union bans
The Sydney rally greeted with a loud round of applause the news that Victorian construction workers have placed a ban on the building of a new Shangri-La hotel in Melbourne - as a statement of solidarity with the Jakarta Shangri-La hotel workers.
The five-star Asia-Pacific Shangri-La hotel and resort chain is said to be the favourite to win a tender to develop the prestigious 30 hectare Melbourne Docklands site which would include a Shangri-La hotel, the first in Australia.
The Shangri-La hotel and resort chain is owned by Mr Robert Kuok who regularly features in Forbes magazines list of top billionaires.
The construction unions will meet with the Docklands Authority on Monday to discuss the tender process - the results of which are expected to be known within the next fortnight.
Both the construction unions and the ACTU President, Sharan Burrow, have written to the Victorian State Premier, Steve Bracks, to make it clear they do not want an anti-union international conglomerate to be given access to this prime city site.
ACTU writes to Premier Bracks
In her letter to Premier Bracks asking him to resist pressure to hand the Docklands tender to Mr Robert Kuok, the boss of the Shangri-La group, the ACTU President explained the Shangri-La's Jakarta hotel , " is engaged in a blatant, brutal attack on the workers of that hotel."
" The ACTU is a strong supporter of investment which will enable more Australians to be employed. But we would hope that these jobs will be meaningful jobs both in terms of developing skills and providing all workers with a just and living wage.
" It would be our expectation that global companies seeking to invest in Australia will be companies that not only uphold the law but are contributing more widely to the well-being of Australian workers and their families. At the moment Mr Kuok's company in Jakarta is doing neither, " Ms Burrow told the State Premier in her letter.
The ACTU President, Sharan Burrow, said Australians did not want companies in this country who aren't prepared to treat people with respect, companies who are not prepared to pay people what they're entitled to under the law - like a fair minimum wage.
"We don't want a hotel chain in this country who are prepared to use police to jail workers - without charges - as a way to resolve an industrial dispute. "
World Bank funds
The Shangri-La Jakarta hotel was funded with an US$86 million joint World Bank-private sector loan to an Indonesian consortium in 1992.
A member of this same consortium also received World Bank loans in 1996 to expand oil-palm plantations, which helped to contributed to deforestation in the environmentally degraded province of Kalimantan.
The Jakarta Shangri-La hotel locked out its workers on 22nd of December 2000.
The workers had begun protesting against the victimisation and suspension of their elected union president, Halilintar Nurdin.
The suspension of the union president followed two months of stalled negotiations with hotel management (which included reversals on previous agreements) over a new agreement.
Jakarta Police
On Boxing Day, 2000, the hotel management invited the Jakarta police into the hotel.
The police violently dragged out over two hundred hotel workers involved in a sit-in. 30 key union activists were held for 24 hours - without charge - in a Jakarta police cell.
Shangri-La management has since refused to meet the unions' leaders to negotiate a collective agreement and an end to the dispute.
The global federation of hotel unions - the IUF - has also written to the Australian-born President of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, demanding he 'forcefully inform' the management of the Shangri-La Jakarta Hotel to respect workers' rights and to negotiate in good faith with the local hotel union.
If you want more information about this long-running dispute visit the following websites:
http://www.labourstart.org/indonesia/shangrila.shtml http://www.iuf.org/iuf/Urgent/index.htm#Shangri-La
by Amanda Tatersall
CFMEU construction division secretary Andrew Ferguson says the assault, which occurred in Sydney this week, shows Triad-related violence in the building industry has reached disturbing levels.
The victim of the assault was one of four Korean tilers, unfairly dismissed by their sub-contractor who came to the CFMEU for help and support.
The next day, the CFMEU called a stop work meeting at their job to investigate the conditions and wages of all the workers, at the same time facilitating negotiations with the contractors regarding their sacking.
At 10pm that night the workers were confronted at their home by their employer who threatened to have their visa's revoked, to take their lives if they ever contacted the CFMEU again. He then struck one of the worker's on the head with a stone, an attack that resulted in the worker being taken to hospital.
In representations made by the police to the union and the workers the next day, it was uncovered that their violent subcontractor was a known thug - previously involved in underworld activity.
Ferguson says the incident is a reminder of the world of exploitation that exists without the protection offered by both unions and the law.
"For migrant workers, and especially those who either are on a temporary visas or have no visa, their experience of Australia is often a mixture of oppression and abuse," he says.
"What is clear is that these workers need the protection and representation that is only possible through unions."
He says the union movement needs to develop links with migrant communities, such as the CFMEU's link with the Korean community to ensure that this form of exploitation can be stamped out.
by Rowan Cahill
On MOnday a mass meeting of the workers voted for a 24-hour strike and a campaign of rolling strikes and stoppages.
The regional press has used the words "blood on the streets" and "the gloves are off" to describe the tense industrial situation.
The dispute centres on the determination of BHP to outsource maintenance and protective services work at the plant, affecting some 800 jobs.
In late January more than 800 BHP workers walked off the job for 48 hours over the outsourcing issue.
For the last decade there has been a spirit of industrial cooperation at the plant. Steel unions and BHP management adopted a consultative approach to industrial relations. A variety of sophisticated strategies were used to incorporate workers into the BHP manufacturing vision (e.g. consultative committees, worker shareholding schemes, work teams, overseas fact-finding missions).
The strategy delivered improved business performance. BHP Steel is rated amongst the world's top five productive and profitable steel companies.
Improvements came through a variety of reorganised work practices, including multi-skilling, increased responsibilities, speed-ups, overtime increases, and the efforts of an almost halved work force.
Workers and their unions were prepared to accept the situation, so long as the integrity of the consultative process was apparent, and the long term security of Port Kembla jobs was not at risk.
Trouble is that Port Kembla has finally been caught up in the ruthless drive for profits and increased share prices evident elsewhere in the BHP empire.
In recent years BHP closed its Newcastle steelworks, ruthlessly axing 4000 jobs, arguably with little regard for the city that to a great extent depended on the plant. On the Southern coalfields of NSW, 800 jobs have been cut; in Queensland another 200 mining jobs are on the line.
The company appears to have a cavalier disregard for the loyalty and well being of workers and families whose lives have become entwined with the company over generations.
Significantly, in BHP's Pilbara iron ore operations, West Australia, the company has won the right to replace collective agreements with 1000 individual agreements, paving the way for contractors and deunionisation.
Driving the 'big Australian' is the global corporatism of chief executive Paul Anderson, an American troubleshooter pocketing $7.4 million per year in salary and stock options.
Whilst BHP steelworkers delivered a profit last financial year of $410 million, a 53 percent increase on the previous year, this is not good enough. The trouble is that in terms of capital investment, steel does not return the superior profit percentages that BHP investments in oil, natural gas, and mineral resources do.
The Port Kembla steel unions have drawn a line. The dogged drive by BHP to outsource maintenance jobs at the plant is seen as a violation of the good faith and cooperation invested by workers and their unions in a decade of the stakeholder approach to industrial relations.
It is feared the current determination to outsource is prelude to ongoing outsourcing at the plant, along with job losses, individual contracts, deunionisation.
The long term abdication of BHP's interest in Port Kembla steel cannot be ruled out as corporate strategy takes the company into lusher pastures of profit.
Reacting to Monday's expressions of militancy, BHP flat products president Lance Hockridge said the planned industrial action would not make "one scintilla of difference" to BHP policy, while intimating that the militant stance of the unions was old hat and out of place.
The Port Kembla unrest comes on the heels of an uneasy peace on the BHP Illawarra coalfields. After 22 days of industrial action, 300 miners ended a 24 hour stoppage last Wednesday week, pending further negotiations with the company.
Their bitter, three-month battle for new enterprise agreements also involves the issues of job security, increased use of casuals, and changes to long-held conditions.
Meanwhile, doing the rounds of the South Coast is a document listing 174 Illawarra companies variously dependent on the BHP steelworks.
Titled SOS (Save Our Steelworks), the document is the work of an anonymous author/publisher. It shows that BHP feeds $320 million per year in direct ages into the local economy, employs 5500 people directly, while another 13500 have local financial links.
It is understood BHP management is furious about the document. The quality of the information presented suggests it comes from in-house BHP records, either the work of a mole or a hacker.
Also BHP seems intent on hosing down informed public discussion about its long term Port Kembla plans, and the company's responsibilities to the region.
Workers are accusing Sartor of a breach of faith after approving a timetable for a new round of competitive tendering, despite per-Games promises that such action would not be necessary.
Council workers rallied at Sydney Town Hall this week to condemn the plans, which would include the St Peters Waste management Facility, Recreation and Community Services, Property Cleaning, Goulburn Street Parking Station and Roads and Footways Maintenance.
The Municipal Employees Union's Paul Reid told Labor Council that an earlier round of competitive tendering had seen the loss of 200 jobs. At the time, workers were guaranteed there would be no further
That was until the Olympics were over anyway. "Council workers worked around the clock to make the city presentable - and their efforts were appreciated by the whole community," Reid says.
"But less than two weeks after the Closing Ceremony, Council went back on its word and said many of those jobs were now up for grabs."
NSW Labor Council assistant secretary John Robertson, who addressed Thursday's rally, says unions had resisted the competitive tendering by state government department.
"We will be just as active in ensuring that local government jobs remain under the control, of the councils, who should be accountable for the services they provide," Robertson says.
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The FairWear Alliance of union, community and church groups says its becoming increasingly frustrated that the Premier's words and not being translated into action.
In the lead-up to the 1999 state election, Premier Carr made a high-rpofile promise to act on sweatshops, with legislation, government guidelines and a high-profile consumer campaign.
But FairWaer's Debbie Carstens says the fact that there are still retailers refusing to sign the voluntary Outworker Code of Conduct highlights the need for legislation.
"They've released an issues paper that outlined the strategy, but they have not actually started doing anything: no legislation, no direct programs for outworkers, no specific consumer commitment," Carstens says.
"The outworkers who have been involved in consultations with the government are now asking me: what's happened? It's the same the question I want to ask the Premier."
Supporters of FairWear rallied this week outside Sussan, one of the retailers who are refusing to sign the code, which sees retailers pledging to take responsibility for the employment practices down the production chain.
The Sussan corporation has denied that they need to participate in the No Sweat Shop accreditation and labeling process, claiming their existing clothing contracts require manufacturers to use legal labour sources.
In fact, many outworkers have reported sewing clothes sporting the Sussan label for well below award rates of pay, some for as little as $2 per hour.
by Andrew Casey
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After the initial shock, and pain, LHMU Hotel Union members have picked themselves up off the floor and decided to fight the decision.
Next Wednesday - at 11am - the workers and their supporters will rally outside the hotel.
Earlier this week the hotel housekeeping section was shutdown when the workforce went out on strike for 24 hours to show their disgust.
Union members were especially angry, and unimpressed, with the brutality of statements made to the media by the finance company AXA ( formerly National Mutual) - who currently own the hotel.
They said they were retrenching the workers because it was a condition of sale. Mr Simon Morgan, from AXA, said this week the company had not wanted to sack the workers but had no choice under the terms of the sale.
One of Australia's richest men - Mr David Burger - who, according to the Business Review Weekly, is worth $180 million, has bought the Wentworth Hotel.
AXA management has publicly stated that Mr Burger has insisted on the sackings as part of the purchase.
Trophy hotel
David Burger owns the Sydney investment and development company City Freeholds and is said to have hankered for a 'trophy' hotel ever since he was beaten in a bidding war for the Ritz-Carlton hotel at Double Bay.
Last year the Australian Financial Review reported that Mr Burger's purchase of the Wentworth Hotel satisfied " a long-held ambition to enter the Sydney hotel game "
LHMU Hotel Union members went on strike for 24 hours earlier this week after holding a noisy protest rally in front of the Wentworth Hotel in Sydney.
More than 40 union members from the housekeeping staff , stores, and room service went on strike leaving management to clean rooms at a time when the hotel had 95 per cent occupancy
The strike also disrupted a national conference that the Australian Hotels Association was holding at the Wentworth Hotel.
" It seems just so the recent sale of the hotel by AXA can be completed our members had to lose their jobs," Mark Boyd, the LHMU Hotel Union's NSW Assistant Secretary said.
Commission hearings
The dispute over the sackings has gone to the AIRC. More hearings scheduled for this Monday.
AXA announced in June 2000 that they wanted to sell the Wentworth Hotel - which is managed by the Rydges group - to reduce direct property holdings from their statutory funds, in a bid to make the funds more liquid.
" With the aura of the Olympics surrounding all Sydney hotels, and the hard work of our members during the Sydney Olympics, AXA was able to maximise their profits from the sale," Mark Boyd said.
" Now Hotel workers are being repaid for their hard work with this announcement of job losses.
" Twenty LHMU members were called in and told to pack their bags. They were told they were being sacked because the new owners have made it a condition of purchase.
" One of the workers losing his job - just so AXA can make money from the sale - has worked at the Wentworth Hotel for 34 years; another has worked for the Wentworth Hotel for twenty-six years.
" Some of our members were literally frog-marched off the property - given only a few minutes to pack their personal things and told to go."
The management's about faced followed a noisy rally by more than 60 members of Students Against Sweatshops outside its Moore Park outlet, which forced the closure of the store.
They have now agreed to work with CFMEU to address workers concerns about wages and conditions and work towards an Enterprise Agreement to cover the factory workers.
Rebecca Fawcett, from the ACTU summer organizing campaign, who has been working with the CFMEU says the workers largely from Non-English Speaking Backgrounds had initially been too intimidated to stand up to their employer.
"When we first went in the conditions were appalling, The women had to use a portaloo, there was no drinking water and there were leaking pipes near electrical equipment," Fawcett told Labor Council.
"There were no union members and worker seemed to scared to do anything about it," she says. But since the workers got organized, the turnaround has been remarkable.
"We went bench to bench just talking to the workers, asking them about their concerns -which were numerous. They did seem a bit frightened to express these in front of other workers- and we did find out later that the boss had spies at meetings we had organised."
"Some of the guys working for Fantastic claimed to have been casual for up to 18 months, when by law they are only supposed to be casual for 12 weeks."
"Clearly there were major breaches aand it was hard work getting that out of the workers ... its a slow process organising ... there are no shortcuts but you can't beat the satisfaction"
"The workforce have now flexed their muscle and the gains have been significant: they now have a unionized workforce which is prepared to stand up for their rights."
by Paddy Gorman
That takeover propels Rio Tinto over BHP as Australia's biggest coal producer.
Rio Tinto, BHP, Anglo American (which paid $1.6 Billion for Shell's Australian coal interests), Billiton and Glencore International now totally dominate Australia's coal industry.
Anglo American, Billiton and Glencore are all fully foreign listed companies.
While Rio Tinto is dual listed in Australia, its main headquarters is in London.
As for BHP, the so-called 'Big Australian', it has embarked on a course to 'Americanise' its practices and operations.
Ironically, this foreign takeover of our coal industry comes as Australia celebrates its centenary of nationhood!
Rio SackingsContinue as Profits Soar
Meanwhile, as Rio Tinto prepares to declare a $2.55 billion profit for the year 2000, more coal mineworkers at its operations in the Hunter Valley are to be sacked.
Rio has announced that 67 more jobs will go when the Lemington mine is merged with the Hunter Valley No.1 and Howick operations.
With its recent $1.1 billion takeover of the five Peabody coal mines, Rio Tinto has become the top coal producer in Australia.
Indeed, last year alone Rio Tinto spent $7 billion in acquiring Australian mining assets. In addition to its $1.1 billion spent on Peabody, Rio has paid $3.5 billion for iron ore and copper producer North; $1.6 billion in buying out the rest of Comalco; and $712 million for its Argyle Diamond partner Ashton Mining.
Rio's continuing grab of Australian mining assets increases the unprecedented foreign domination of our natural resources.
Management of the Orange plant last week met with representatives of the NSW Labor Council, Australian Workers Union and Australian Manufacturing Workers Union to address concerns about the future of 1100 jobs in the state's central-west.
While management was unable to give any specific commitments until the sale was finalised, they did say they believed Electrolux intended to maintain its Orange operations.
And they agreed to meet with the workers and their representatives in Orange immediately after the sale to Electrolux is completed. The sale is expected to be completed imminently.
Those undertakings have been backed by a letter to the Labor Council, Email management has flagged that 'imporvements in production processes" will be necessary.
AWU state president Mick Madden says that until the company guarantees it will invest in the plant to bring the facility up to world class competitiveness, no job would be safe.
"Our fear is that Electrolux is going to use our members' job as bargaining chips with the State Government to get the taxpayer to subsidise for this upgrade," he says.
NSW Labor Council secretary Michael Costa says unions need to work with the community to support the Orange workers and keep pressure on the new owners to maintain the integrity of great Australian labels like Westinghouse and Kelvinator.
"This is a company that has received support from the taxpayers for many years and the new owners need to realize the value of the goodwill towards the labels they have purchased," Costa says.
"If Electrolux wants to derive the benefit of being a corporate player in Australia, it needs to show its commitment to the people of Orange."
by HT Lee
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Pat, a crane driver for over 30 years is a popular bloke and 'will do anything to help his fellow workers,' his workmates said.
At a stopwork meeting the following day the workers were angry and vocal.
'This shouldn't have happened to Pat,' they said, 'the whole safety issue needs looking into.'
The workers did not want their names mentioned: 'People are too scared to say anything because they might be out of a job.'
CFMEU Safety Coordinator Brian Miller was at the accident scene and straight away noticed several safety breaches.
Under the M5 East 'Project Consent Award 1999' agreed between Baulderstone and the NSW Labour Council safety was one of the main agreement--Clause 26 stated:
'No employees will be required to work in or on an unsafe area or process of the Project...'
'All we are asking is for the company to abide with the agreement and stick to the OHS Act,' Miller said.
However, the unions have some concerns about a series of allegations raised by the workers which included:
� workers being told to work in unsafe situations
� crane drivers been asked to drive their crane in unsafe situations
� crane drivers been asked to work in the rain and in one instance during a lighting storm
� crane drivers been told to drive over electrical cables in water in the tunnel
� extensive usage of 'logbook' (unqualified) dogmen and on several occasions logbook crane drivers had also been used
When raw sewerage was found the following Monday leaking all over the ground beneath the toilet and the amenities area and into the Cooks River, the workers had to be sent home for the day until the area had been cleaned up. The response of Baulderstone was to accuse the unions of raising 'vexatious' safety concerns.
This is in circumstances when WorkCover has issued three prohibition notices and eleven improvement notices. The improvement notices included:
� abiding to the Excavation Code of Conduct
� putting in place a proper traffic management plan for the entire site
� putting in place proper access for workers
� making sure all plant and machinery comply with the manufacturers specifications
The safety committee which included representatives from management in its safety inspections of the site had also issued over 300 'BTG rectification notices.' The RTA is now carrying out a full audit of the entire 14km site.
On the same day Pat was trapped in his crane, a worker in a crane related accident was killed in South Australia--he was only 28 years old.
The accident at the M5 project is not the first one involving a mobile crane. Fifteen months earlier another mobile crane tipped over into the Cooks River but thankfully no one was hurt.
One would have thought employers would have learned from that accident and had put into place safety measures involving mobile cranes.
The day-long conference is designed to give impetus to the growing organizing push into new areas of the workforce like services and IT.
It will hear a keynote address from David Rowe and Stephane Le Queux from the University of Newcastle - authors of report into the attitudes of young people towards unions.
It will also hear reports from young workers about life on the shopfloor, as well as a discussion entitled The Big Picture - Mapping the New Demographic'. Speakers on the panl will be: Kristy Delaney from the Youth Action and Policy Association (YAPA), Western Sydney, JJJ Morning Show Producer Steve Cannane; John Buchanan, Australian Centre for Industrial Relations Research and Training (ACIRRT) and, Privacy Commissioner Chris Puplick.
These sessions will be designed to get unions thinking about the new environment they face, and get a handle on the issues and attitudes that resonate with young workers.
In the afternoon, Industrial relations Minister John Della Bosca will report on the Carr Government's agenda, before the conference breaks into workshops to be moderated by TUTA trainers.
Numbers for the day are limited, to register email John Robertson on mailto:[email protected]
Carr to Address Labor Council AGM
Premier Bob Carr will address the Labor Council Annual General Meeting next Thursday at 6pm.
The Council will also consider the historic sale of 2KY and proposed changes to the property rule.
Regarded by many as the East Timor of Africa, supporters of a Western Saharan state are seeking global support to mark the day.
Polisaaro's Australian representative Kamal Fadel, told Labor Council, that with a raise in repression and human rights abuses, the resumption of hostilities between Morocco and Polisaro seems inevitable.
"Despite ten years work and half a billion dollars, the United Nations has so far failed to organise a referendum," Fadel says.
Supporters are invited to protest outside the Moroccan consulate in North Sydney at 1pm on February 27.
by Pat Ranald
Unions, churches and other community organisations will be presenting their submissions at the Inquiry.
The rally is in support of fair international trade rules to ensure access to trade for all and to prevent domination by the most powerful corporations and governments. Current WTO rules do not meet these objectives.
A public rally and media interviews to publicise the points in our submissions will be held outside Parliament House, Macquarie St at 1pm . Come with your organisation's banner.
Speakers will include John Maitland, National Secretary of the CFMEU, The Rev Ann Wansbrough,, Uniting Church Minister, Dr Patricia Ranald , Fair Trade Network and Ryan Heath, NSW President of the National Union of Students.
Rod Cavalier's comments about the Australian cricket team are typical of many sport followers. They can't accept that improvements in training methods, sports medicine and nutrition have resulted in far fitter sportsmen who last a lot longer than their predecessors. They can't accept that technology allows sides to identify weaknesses in others and target them accordingly.
The 1920-21 & 1948 sides played the Poms immediately after 2 world wars when they'd lost a pile of players on the battlefield & the remainder hadn't had a decent feed in years. Such well prepared opposition compared with the malnourished types who tour these days.
What people who laud players & teams of earlier times as better than the present are really saying is that life was much better for them years ago when they were younger & felt healthier.
But don't worry folks - you're not alone. It's not just cricket fans who think things used to be better. It's the same in all walks of life. I love hearing how rugby sides from 50 years ago weighing in at an average 15kg lighter than their contemporary counterparts would have thrashed the current lineups. And of course, there's our leaders in the labour movement - they're not a patch on Curtin & Chifley are they?
I suppose it's all just part of living in a nation of knockers & whingers.
David Martin
What a great opportunity to encourage workers and unionists to support the call for a global strike against corporpate tyranny on May 1.
ACTU leader Sharan Burrow attended the WEF meeting in Davos, along with 8 other trade union representatives from around the globe, in an effort to `convince' the corporate profiteers that they need to pay more attention to workers rights. Burrow and her colleagues are presenting talks to the WEF meeting in Davos with titles like Partnering for the Future and Addressing the Backlash against Globalisation.
During S11-13 in Melbourne, Burrow was also proselytising to the global elite while the majority of us were outside demanding to close down the WEF, WTO and IMF, cancel the 3W debt and to defend union, environmental and human rights against corporate tyranny. Of course we also bore the brunt of the physical violence from the state.
The APEC monitoring group in New Zealand circulated a cyber protest demanding that the trade union officials inside the WEF reject the offer to "eat, drink and parley with the international exploiting class". They called upon these union officials to reject attempts at cooperating with the WEF and join the more radical elements demanding change. The outside protesters opposing the WEF,that included New Zealand Trade Union Federation President Maxine Gay, were subjected to police and military attack.
The APEC group pointed out that thousands of people have vowed to continue the anti-globalisation momentum from Seattle to Melbourne, Seoul, Prague and Nice in protests designed to isolate the WEF and its ideology. They charged the union officials attending the WEF with breaking solidarity and playing into the hands of the exploiters.
Token discussion with the corporate chiefs and their bureaucratic lackeys are not the most pressing task for unions and their elected officials, especially when their fine words don't even bother to actually challenge or oppose globalisation. More than this, the international union grouping held informal dialogue with international organisations and expressed their willingness to work with governments and employers to bridge the divides. This flies in the face of the most basic of union training that warns against holding meetings with bosses behind closed doors and without clear outcomes, let alone the clear message from the movement that these bodies should be rejected.
The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) media release on Davos demonstrates why their attendance is futile. It admits that a social compact around worker and union rights was agreed to in Copenhagen 6 years ago but complains that none of the protocols have been adhered to. Burrows and her colleagues seem to believe that reminding the companies of the moral imperative is all that is needed. The main threat made by Burrows in her speech to the WEF was that unions would play the consumer card by attacking the corporate image of companies that continue to be socially irresponsible.
Burrows soft language denies the reality for the vast majority of the working class that neo-liberalism and IMF style austerity means life or death. 140 unionists were killed last year and some 12,000 sacked for daring to take up the struggle for the right to organise. Workers are locked in dormitories or unsafe factories and paid unsustainable wages. Women workers are subjected to harassment and sometimes rape just to keep their jobs. An enormous range of governments ban or hinder the formation of unions at the behest of the corporate chiefs. As many as 300 million children under the age of 14 work in intolerable conditions.
In pointing the way forward the ICFTU call for fairer access to world trade, fairer income distribution, an end to the irresponsibility of some multi-nationals. How is this going to happen? They ask for inclusive decision-making, more dialogue between global unions and global corporations and bigger input from trade unions.
WEF spokespeople claim that they want to be seen to be listening. The operative words in their statement are "seen to be". The WEF and corporate leaders have no intention of responding to the muted words of the trade union officials who attend their forum. The WEF are extremely particular about even who they are "seen" to listen to. It is no coincidence that they ensured a clamp down on protesters or potential disrupters from even getting close. The growing mass mobilisations are the real threat. It is the fear of instability and a radical understanding among wider layers of workers that has caused the WEF and related bodies to even pander to talk of human rights and concern for the most exploited.
In her paper titled "Unions in Transition" Burrows went on to suggest that the majority of Australian employers "are respectful of union and democratic rights". What about the long list of companies that have syphoned off worker entitlements before going bust? And the employers that have established shelf companies to avoid workers rights? How does she explain the extensive use of contractors and outsourcing to avoid the cost of permanent workers and union rights? What about the companies that employ casuals and migrant labor for similar reasons? What about all the exploitative call centres with intense monitoring? Is she aware of the increasing use of lock outs to force workers into line?
Burrows and the ACTU are so far removed from working reality that it is only through our own decisive action that change will occur.The lesson to draw for activists is to more vigorously build the next actions planned for May 1as a way of encouraging involvement and to take this message back to our own workplaces and unions so we generate activism around other issues that link into the movement.
Melanie Sjoberg (Coordinator Unionists Against Corporate Tyrrany)
Finally some real life and sensible comments about organising. Congradulations to Sarah Kaine and the workers at Liverpool Council.
I was tempted to write a reply to Botsman's academic ivory tower comments about what the union moment should be doing (perhaps worse was the sympathetic treatment it got from others who have never organised a workplace in their lives), but after reading the replies by Lawrence and Curruthers I realised there wasn't much to add.
Besides, after a while the ill-informed stuff seems a side-show and a distraction to those who actually want to get on with the job and care more about the workers in cafes in Newtown than their bosses.
Sally McManus
With the windfall tax from the recently introduced G.S.T! Why is it not possible to channel some of these funds, and emulate a recent initiative by New Labour in the United Kingdom.
The Blair Socialist government recently announced a 300 million-pound funding for community volunteering in its efforts to create a society based on mutuality. Our recent experience with the Olympics and Para-Olympics revealed a reservoir of willing participants in this altruistic behavior. Included in the U.K. venture was a "National Experience Corps" for the over fifties. This is in recognition of the losses suffered by society through the discarding of the knowledge of this generation, and of its messengers. This funding could also be used, to provide mentoring and perhaps modernize the crumbling infrastructure of our community organizations.
Local government, already under threat for its reluctance to deal with entrenched incompetence, inefficiency, mismanagement, mal-administration and largess handed out freely to its unrepresentative party hacks, would surely grasp at an opportunity such as this. Even if the initial intent was to increase the already overflowing "Salad Bowl", of political patronage.
Hospitals, unable to provide a service beyond that of a third world country, and under threat from closure through budgetary constraints would definitely be grateful recipients of these volunteers, through them accepting some of the more menial tasks from the already overworked nursing staff.
Public Schools could save hundreds of thousands through volunteers assisting with ancillary activities like cleaning and ground maintenance, the savings could be redirected to other activities to enhance achievement of the "Knowledge Nation".
There is absolutely no end to the positive possibilities emanating from the adoption of a scheme such as this, and it could possibly work as an adjunct to "work for the dole". Particularly those over fifties who feel they have been abandoned by society and still wish to fully participate in the community
Tom Collins
Congratulations on scoring so well in the LabourStart poll of best labour website for 2000. And deservedly so. This is an easy fast and efficient site to keep up wih all of the latest news and your archives are spot on.
Susanna Duffy
Ed's Reply: Thanks for all those who voted for us and helped us perform so well. Final results on Labourstart (http://www.labourtart.org.au)
by Peter Lewis
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What was the head of the Australian union movement doing talking to the richest businessman in the world the other week?
The Labor Delegation went to Davos with a clear agenda. One was to present our views about globalisation, and to pose the challenge that companies who were considering signing up to Kofi Anan's global compact had to be serious about the issues of human and trade union rights, or they would be monitored, and indeed exposed by the labour movement in partnership with NGOs around the world.
The other perspective we painted for business and heads of government was that the protest movement is not in fact a backlash. It is a new internationalism, where people - both workers and civil society are saying we no longer will accept being marginalised by a global dominance of the corporate dollar. We actually want to see societies where people's rights are protected.
Beyond that we were shocked by the level of security and the oppressive nature of the Swiss military in regard to democratic protests. There was a combined set of protests from the NGO groups, including quite a large number of NGO groups led by Amnesty International and the labour movement. We indicated to the managing director that there had to be a turnaround in treatment of people, and respect for democratic protest or Davos would find itself out of business.
But while we were there, we took the opportunity to set up a number of alternate briefings which were very constructive, with the exception of the meeting with Mike Moore from the WTO.
We had a meeting with Kofi Anan about the global compact and the unions' willingness to endorse the global compact but our concerns that it be genuine and that the commitment from companies and communities be big commitments to human and union rights, as well as of course to environmental standards.
On the global compact - does that actually include the core labour standards?
Yes it does. The global compact has nine principles. On the human rights side it requires that businesses support and respect the protection of international human rights, and make sure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses. In regard to labour standards it requires businesses to uphold the freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargain. This is a right, I might add, that the courts of Australia aren't prepared to uphold in terms of our current legislation. It also requires the elimination of all forms of forced and compulsory labour; the effective abolition of child labour; and the elimination of discrimination in respect to the employment and occupation.
And then there are three areas in regard to the environment where businesses support a precautionary approach to environmental challenges; undertake initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility; and encourage the development and diffusion of environmentally friendly technology.
So, it is a comprehensive set of principles. The challenge for us is to ensure that companies that sign up to that agreement - and indeed there are communities who are interested in signing up - are respectful of those principles and move to implement a global standard. We discussed that at length with Kofi Anan. We discussed both our support for the global compact and indeed, our role - which would be part of the monitoring role and/or partnership with companies where they were genuine in terms of those principles.
With Mary Robinson we talked extensively about workplace discrimination in regard to racism, and in the prelude to the lead up - or in the lead up I suppose to the UN Conference in Durban in September of this year. And the role of labour again was welcomed by Mary Robinson. She is very keen to see a focus on two issues: Indigenous, and particularly indigenous employment from our perspective, and the whole issue of racism and workplace discrimination.
We also met with Fischer from the IMF and Woolfensen from the World Bank. We have been running a campaign now for a number of years to have formal labour consultation structures - a little like the TUAC structures that are a permanent advisory group to the OECD. The response from both Fischer and Wolfensen was positive - very positive from the World Bank I have to say. They have agreed to consultation processes and now the deal is to work them out so that when the ICFTU meets with the World Bank in May they can be agreed to in terms of implementation. With the IMF there will be discussions around proposals at the scheduled May meetings with the ICFTU.
And finally, the other significant one for us was in terms of our campaign around fair trade - was the meeting with Mike Moore from the WTO. And it was appalling I have to say. There was no real sense of leadership from the WTO, or indeed a number of countries around the question of labour standards and trade agreements. There is a slightly alternate picture to that from some of the European nations, from the South African Trade Minister, and some others - and of course, it is still being played out in the US. But you would have to say that our campaign for fair trade and a new set of global rules has to remain fundamental in terms of a determined approach from labour. That is made even more significant now because of the move by the Howard Government to bilateral arrangements with Singapore and talk of bilateral trade agreements with the US, and perhaps Chile.
Now, we have made it quite clear to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade that core labour standards, as well as of course human rights and environmental standards, but from our core business, core labour standards must absolutely be part of any suggested trade agreement and if not, we will be campaigning against it.
What about the business leaders at Davos - what was their response to the things that you and your colleagues had to say?
I think that business is now divided. The big theme of Davos this year was "Divide". There was the poverty divide if you like - the widening gap between the haves and the have nots. The technology divide. And I would add a third one - and that is the divide between business. There are some businesses who are keen to hear what the unions have to say, and I suspect there are others who tolerate our presence but don't really have any commitment to any sort of social responsibility beyond their quest for profits.
At the same time, there has been some criticism of the unions for actually being in Davos in the first place and actually going and supping with the devil. How do you justify going in there in the first place?
That's a difficult issue isn't it. Our business as unions is to negotiate pay and conditions for our members. To actually make their lives better in the context of safe working environments where they get a fair share of the company's profits through wages and conditions agreements.
As the multinational companies are increasingly global and increasingly their head offices are offshore and our members are again subject to their industrial relations policies, then the unions are going global. They are negotiating global frameworks. And on the one hand, if that is a place that we can engage with those businesses in the interests of our members, then that is a reasonable thing to do. On the other hand, there is no question that we need to continue the protest against a corporate world where the aspirations of corporate capital are quite different to the aspirations of labour.
So, we have employed an approach to the - if you like a dual strategy - of being part of the protest and being part of discussions that we would hope - in many cases arguments that we would hope - but nevertheless progress the future for working families.
I think it is a complex issue. We made it clear - the NGOs and labour made it clear to the Managing Director and the Swiss authorities, that if there wasn't a rethink about the rights of democratic protests, we would consider the question of our participation. But I can't pretend that, in terms of at least the impact that the labour leaders had, that the world hearing from John Sweeney about the rights of people to construct a new internationalism about people like me around the question of unions acting globally and reinforcing our role in the interests of workers - and the other labour leaders - is not worthwhile, provided that that the context for peaceful protest is reasonable.
On the broad issue of globalisation, have you perceived any shift in the debate over the last twelve months?
I perceive that there is a growing concern amongst those businesses that I said were on one side of the debate. I think I used the Davos - the legitimacy of a Price Waterhouse Coopers millennium poll - and for your reference my speech is on the Net I think, but we can get it to you - but it showed that 92 per cent of Australians, but overall globally, more than 60 per cent of people said that companies had responsibilities to go beyond their core business of making profits, to be conscious of social and environmental issues.
Now, in that context there are smart operations who are saying, well, the global compact; labour standards; environmental standards; social protections; these things are clearly good for business. On the other hand, there are those die-hard companies who believe that they should have untrammelled rights to exploit people in the environments where they can.
So, I think there is a shift in terms of the debate. Certainly there were a number of debates at Davos on the agenda, about all of those questions, but I have to say that I think we have got a way to go. That the protest movements are as legitimate as we enter this decade as they were in the last, and that civil society and unions have a determined partnership to forge in the interests of a better world.
A lot of what the unions talk about is the institutional response to the issues of globalisation. What do you feel ordinary workers can actually do if they are concerned about the inequalities amongst who is winning and losing on the global stage?
Individuals can now have a direct impact. I mean, you have got increasing shareholder, consumer, customer, community alliances - that are saying to companies: We will use your products or we will accept your business if in fact it is about a sustainable future - if it's about social protection - if it respects labour and union rights.
The other area of course, is that - well, the strength I suppose of community action, is that if these companies are global, then they feel it right around the world, so the link between local action and global networks are now much more concrete, much more able to be delivered quickly, and I think much more effective - and we've got to up the ante on that basis.
Consumers now have unlimited power in my view. If we can use our commitment to collective action from the community level to the national and global levels, and build those networks of response around the world, then we can actually bring down those corporations that refuse to recognise the rights of people and their environments.
It can be a difficult issue though, can't it? I mean, we've got this new supermarket chain that has opened in Sydney called Aldi, which is having a non-union workforce, on individual contracts. The problem is, the prices are much lower than anywhere else. If you are a working person on a low wage, aren't they just going to go where the cheapest goods are? Are we asking them to pay more for some greater good?
I think what we are trying to say is that this company has to respect the rights of its workers and if our campaign is for the right to collectively bargain, then that is an issue that we need to test with the community in regard to our commitment. I mean, we would endorse low prices for working families. We know how they are struggling. But if their families who work in those supermarkets are not being treated with fundamental respect in terms of their rights to have a collective voice, then we will have to test our capacity to generate community concern - as we should.
That has always been the issue trade protection and tariffs. It is the question of whether the best way to look after our people is to have the lowest prices, or if there are other imperatives...
The lowest prices are only beneficial if we have got sustainable futures, and that means if people are treated with dignity. If their environments are protected, so that we actually know that there is going to be a dignity and respect for people in their communities for people into the future. Lower prices at any cost is not something anybody in Australia, I don't think, would endorse.
Finally, do you see this sort of push to actually think globally becoming much more a priority for the ACTU over the next year.
I think that for unions a global framework is critical. There are some unions of course, who still by and large might deal with local companies, but they are fewer and fewer in number, and whether it is the global impact on government thinking about public services, or whether it's the direct international policy around industrial relations and those other issues like the environment we care about, then our responsibility is to have both a local and a global voice. And so in that sense it is an imper
by Phil Morgans
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While it would be churlish to dismiss out of hand the employment opportunities e-business will provide in the future, the gathering pace of retrenchments and what they reveal about many e-businesses serve to remind us that 'new economy' workers are indeed of the same species as 'old economy' workers.
Job losses at US and Australian dotcoms are running into the thousands. Companies that have shed jobs in the last few weeks alone include LookSmart (170 jobs), AltaVista (200 worldwide), NBC Internet (150) and content management software developer, Vignette (350). CNN announced last week it would be cutting 400 jobs. CNN's announcement came less than a week after CNN parent company Time Warner completed its merger with AOL. CNN group head Jim Walton said, "the interactive and television network functions have to be more closely aligned and placed under a single management structure". This probably means interactive and television network content will become almost indistinguishable.
While downsized dotcommers of the world are yet to unite, they have created an outlet through which they are venting their anger and frustration at their sudden change of fortune. In the process they are also providing some interesting insights into the world of e-business.
FuckedCompany.com describes itself as "a game based on the classic deadpool, but instead of betting for (or against) people, you're betting on companies." FuckedCompany.com rates different levels of a tech company's demise and awards points on the level of severity based on criteria including the number of jobs lost. Apart from giving disgruntled former dotcommers somewhere to air their grievances, FuckedCompany.com is a source of news and gossip about dotcom businesses.
Dotcomscoop.com's main focus is on breaking and aggregating news and stories about dotcoms, although it isn't easy to find much good news. As Dotcomscoop says, "If a lot of the news is negative, that's the unfortunate truth of the state of the business at this time."
Among the inevitable dross that appears on the sites' online forums (proving that the proportion of dotcommers requiring detention in a psychiatric institution is roughly the same as that of the general population), there are some gems such as this one posted on Dotcomscoop last week:
"I work for a dotcom. Our CEO has been caught forging purchase orders to the tune of $5 million dollars a pop in order to bring our revenue up to a level so our share price didn't fall.
"Since then, we have been de-listed by NASDAQ, our CFO is gone, we have had to lay off 25% of our staff (nice christmas pressie eh) and a spending and hiring freeze has been implemented. I won't be getting a raise or a bonus, despite exceeding my targets through many late nights and hard work (some of which jeopardised my relationship with my wife).
"I am pissed off. We all own stock and this lying crook has fucked us all. Myself personally, I have gone from retiring in 2 years a rich man to having to start all over again. I don't know that my marriage is going to survive that. Fucker! We might pull up out of this nosedive, but even if we do, it's going to be a long time before we are going be back in the game."
While this might suggest some latent desire among dotcom workers for a counter to the power of dotcom companies to fire them at will, employers are already making plans to thwart any attempts by unions to organise on the back of the hard times befalling their employees.
According to the e-business web site, businessgene.com, Australian e-businesses need to be on their guard against union incursions into their workforce. Citing increasingly insecure US dotcom workers loaded up with worthless stock options turning to unions for help, Australian companies are being advised to start developing their union-busting strategies now.
Late last year, a worldwide union organising campaign was launched among workers at online retailer Amazon.com. The campaign, backed by the Washington D.C. based Prewitt Organising Fund, involves Amazon workers throughout the US, France and Germany. The CWA affiliated Washington Alliance of Technology Workers has launched a similar campaign at the company's Seattle headquarters.
Amazon's response was predictably cool. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos believes that unions are unnecessary at the company because everyone has stock options. Amazon workers hold share options exercisable at US$67. Amazon's share price was about US$24 in the week leading up to the announcement of the union campaign. Amazon has also started holding manadatory meetings with employees to address union questions, and has instructed managers on how to respond to organising efforts.
Even before the union organising campaign was launched, Amazon announced that it would outsource some of its customer service operations to India, where labour costs are far less than those in the US. Amazon is believed to be planning to have up to 80% of its customer service work done in India. WashTech estimates the monthly wages of a customer service employee in India at a maximum of about US$175, while the same worker in Seattle would earn about US$1,900.
Just days after employees submitted a petition to hold an election for union representation, consumer electronics content provider Etown.com laid off nearly a quarter of its workforce, claiming the layoffs were paradoxically "part of a move to move away from the business-to-consumer market and toward profitability." The company also confirmed the workers would not receive a severance package.
As with all organising efforts, timing is crucial. The sharp increase in layoffs has made everyone aware that the labour shortage in web-related occupations is over. It's crunch-time for a whole generation of workers occupying places in the labour market that barely existed a decade ago, who are used to earning serious money and haven't experienced a recession in their adult lives.
"A better world is possible!" These words and the beat of Brazilian drums opened the World Social Forum of 10,000 people from 120 countries in Porto Alegre, Brazil from January 25-30. The Forum was organised by civil society organisations over the last eight months to develop alternative policies to those devised by the transnational corporations meeting at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland at the same time.
The Davos meeting took place behind barricades and civil protest was repressed by riot police, attracting widespread condemnation. In contrast, the World Social Forum was above all an expression of democracy and diversity. The opening ceremony was followed by a peaceful but exuberantly festive march through the city where the numbers swelled to 30,000, culminating in a free open-air concert.
Whereas Davos is sponsored by the corporations, the World Social Forum had a statement of support from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and
was funded by European non -government foundations and by the local and regional governments of Porto Alegre. It took place at the Catholic University was supported by prominent human rights campaigners including Jose Ramos Horta, Maude Barlow, Ariel Dorfman, Sabastio Salgado, Susan George, Vandana Shiva and Walden Bello. A televised debate between Porto Alegre and Davos showed that the corporate agenda now has to acknowledge that there are indeed alternatives.
The themes of the Forum were
� building economic policies that promote human development
� creating international strategies for grassroots organising
� building proposals to democratise international institutions like the WTO, World Bank and IMF
� creating sustainable development proposals to eradicate poverty and hunger and protect the environment
� organising against gender and racial discrimination
� the protection and preservation of indigenous land and culture.
500 elected representatives from around the world attended the Parliamentary forum which included delegations from most Latin American countries France, Switzerland, other European countries, Africa and the Asia Pacific. There were also specific meetings of women, youth and indigenous people.
Porto Alegre was chosen as the venue because it has a twelve- year record of elected local governments led by the Workers' Party (a left- wing labour party) which has developed alternative policies to economic rationalism, or neoliberalism, as it is known in Latin America . Olivio Dutra, the regional governor, opened the conference with a condemnation of economic rationalist policies of privatisation and deregulation which have been imposed on Brazil for many years by the International Monetary Fund and by conservative Federal Governments.
Brazil is the largest and richest country in Latin America, but these policies have ensured it still has the most unequal distribution of land, wealth and income. His regional and local governments have used their relatively limited resources to develop the positive role of the public sector in providing public services and policies to ensure citizenship rights. They have innovative forms of popular participation in government decisions, including participation by hundreds of local communities in the budgetary process.
The results of these policies were visible in the excellent public infrastructure of the city, and the enthusiastic participation of hundreds of young volunteers in the organisation of the conference.
As the convenor of the Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network (AFTINET), I attended the stream of seminars and workshops on the themes of trade and human rights. Analytical introductions to the themes by global experts were followed by a series of workshops which enabled activists from different countries to swap experiences and co-ordinate strategies.
The workshops on the World Trade Organisation noted that the new round of negotiations were still stalled. The USA, Europe and Japan were still refusing demands from developing countries and civil society for more democratic negotiating processes and reviews of existing agreements. However, negotiations on agriculture and trade in services are proceeding as part of previous agreements.
The Trade in Services negotiations are proceeding behind closed doors in a series of working parties and contain many hidden traps. Currently the Trade in Services Agreement does not include some public services. It also recognises the right of governments to regulate services to meet national policy objectives.
There are now proposals to change the rules on domestic regulation so that governments would have to prove that their laws and regulations are "least trade restrictive" regardless of social or other considerations. This could severely reduce the right of governments to regulate on issues like access, pricing and quality of essential services like water and electricity. There are also proposals which could require governments to make funds for public services like health and education available to private corporations.
The workshops discussed the development of a global campaign to call a moratorium to the trade in services negotiations. This would provide the opportunity for public debate and for us to demand public accountability from our governments. An international sign- on statement which outlines the issues and reaffirms the right of governments to provide public services and to regulate essential services in the public interest will form the basis of the campaign.
Activists from North and South America also analysed the draft text of the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) which is the plan to extend the North American Free Trade agreement between Canada the USA and Mexico into Latin America. The draft contains many aspects of the Multinational Agreement on Investment that was defeated by popular opposition in 1998. The draft removes the power of national governments to regulate transnational investment and opens public services to private investment. Activists then shared plans for community education and mobilisation to oppose the draft, and to demand public debate and accountability from their governments before any agreement is signed.
The organisers plan to make the World Social Forum an annual event. Because of the short lead time, it was not widely known in Australia and few of us were there. I was able to attend only because my fare was funded by the UNSW Humanities Faculty Prize for my doctoral thesis. Next year's Forum will have more lead time and deserves more participation from Australian community organisations. Papers from the Forum should be available shortly at www.worldsocialforum.org.
Patricia Ranald is the Principal Policy Officer at the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, Sydney . Recent publications include The Case for Fair Trade: A Citizen's Guide to the World Trade Organisation, AFTINET, Sydney, and Stopping the Juggernaut, Public Interest versus the MAI, Pluto Press, Sydney
by Workers Onnline correspondents
Leader of the free world? |
The Bush Ascension:
Leadership of the Free World transferred from the Third Way-ers to the Compassionate Conservatives. After losing his nomination for Labour Secretary, the right-wing columnist and benevolent protector of illegal immigrants, Linda Chavez, George Dubya went about his job of looking earnest at appropriate times. With an economy slowing after a golden decade of growth, it's an expression he's going to need to master over the coming months. Meanwhile the vanquished Bore will return to his original career as a children's story-teller. The biggest question is whether the change in President will make a whole lot of difference. If the US doesn't absolutely implode, it will be fair to say it doesn't matter who is in charge anymore: the beast will now be running itself.
Federation Celebrations Turned Flat
What should have been the celebration of the New Republic became an attempt to give us a collective history lesson on the importance of compromise and incremental change. Despite the best efforts of organisers, the New Years Day Federation Parade proved that mass parades which don't involve gay bikers do not really work. Special mention though to our safety watchdog Mary Yaager, who dragged her entire New Years Eve contingent to dress up in period garb and represent the workers in the march. While, the multicultural speeches were a nice touch, Howard's over-exuberance and signature 'double wank' (both arms pumping up and down in lieu of genuine emotion) were hard to stomach. All that was missing was a triumphal march by Kerry Jones and Ted Mack. Very depressing..
Mad Monk Takes Charge
New Workplace Relations Minister Tony Abbott has blundered into his new portfolio with all the aplomb of his accident-prone predecessor. Desperate to defuse the ongoing shame of unpaid worker entitlement he laid into workers - stating the blame laid with them for allowing their entitlements to accrue in the first place! Then he turned his attention statistics, releasing a report card purporting to show that the government's stop-gap scheme was delivering justice, when the stats actually proved that less than one per cent of all moneys owed was being repaid. If his first week's in the job are any indication, life with the Mad Monk will be anything but dull.
Comfortable and Relaxed?
If there were any doubt about the growing gap between the haves and have-nots, it was dispelled by research carried out be the Australian Bureau of Statistics for the ACTU. The stats, which will be used to back the ACTU's latest Living Wage case, paint a bleak picture of the lives of thousands of working Australians. How's this for comfortable and relaxed? In the last year 30,000 families went without meals due to a shortage of money, 30,000 could not afford to heat their homes, 22,000 had sought assistance from welfare/community organisations due to shortage of money ,41,000 households sold or pawned something due to a shortage of money, 220,000 feel their standard of living is worse than 2 years ago , 284,800 could not afford a holiday away from home for at least a week per year ,244,000 had experienced cash flow problems in the past year ,212,000 felt they could not raise $2,000 in an emergency ,166,000 could not pay utility bills due to a shortage of money ,119,000 could not afford a special meal once a week, 115,000 bought second-hand clothes because they couldn't afford new clothing, 48,000 could not afford to have friends or family over for a meal once a month. And the punchline? The Howard Government is opposing the claim!
Cleaners Resist Peppers' Assault
The Peppers Fairmont Resort in Leura is a great place to have a swish holiday - but it was not so great for the resort's casual cleaning staff who got a post-Xmas shock when the company announced they were out-source their jobs to a Texas franchise. In the end it was the company who was in shock. They didn't expect the casual workers - members of the LHMU - to put up a fight - including invading the foyer of the resort to end off a rally. Guest and management jaws dropped as they listened to rousing renditions of union chants reverberate through the chapel-like hotel entrance. The members' militancy turned into a clear cut victory when the company quickly backed down from their plans to out-source their jobs. " Casual workers in Australia have so little rights. They have to constantly worry about their security. It is only because we decided to work together, and work with our union, that we have had this historic win," Ken Zajicer, the LHMU delegate at Fairmont said after tasting victory. The Leura community backed the workers. The local media coverage was very positive and the local Federal ALP candidate - Adam Searle - was there at the rally showing where he stood.
Online Rights Campaign Hits Mosh Pit
As over 50,000 youngsters went crazy at the annual youth music festival Big Day Out on Australia Day, Unions NSW launched a campaign to protect email privacy at work. The Unions NSW stall which has become a regular feature at the Big Day Out collected several hundred letters calling on NSW IR Minister John Della Bosca to enact legislation to stop bosses spying on their workers through work email system. The letters also called on Della to give unions the right to organise over the office email system. The stall also distributed information on unions, OH&S and award conditions for young workers. Officials from the CFMEU, ETU, LHMU, PSA and Labor Council also received over 50 requests from young workers to have information on their union sent to them.
Big Australian Turns Big Bastard
Once an Australian icon, BHP has continued to morph into 'just another bastard employer' with its concerted campaign to deunionise its Pilbara workforce. Unions have been fighting the putsch in the courts, but have so far come up disappointed. In January, a single Federal Court judge rejected the union claim that the contracts discriminated against workers who chose to remain union members. The decision was made despite evidence that only workers who signed the contracts would be entitled to hefty pay rises. Currently the company has been injuncted from offering individual the contracts pending a February 19 appeal before a full bench of the federal Court.
War on the NZ Wharves
In an echo of our own bitter Waterfront Dispute, New Zealand workers mobilized in support of an assault on waterfront workers their. The NZTU has for the past month been battling a US multinational and a rogue stevedoring company on the New Zealand waterfront. US multinational Carter Holt Harvey has chartered five ships to transport logs out of New Zealand to Korea, using outside labour contracted by ISO subsidiary Mainland Stevedoring. Repaying the global solidarity it received in 1998, the Maritime Union of Australia has sent officials across the Tasman to support their comrades.
Core Labour Standards
The campaign to give teeth to international labour standards has gathered steam over summer, with the ILO moving into the sanctions phase of its action against the Burmese regime. The action, over the junta's use of slave labour, is the first time the ILO has invoked penal provisions in its history.Trade unions across the world have been requested to press their governments to impose a ban on investments in and trade with the junta. The Brussels-based International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) has identified 30 different products in relation to which it found "vast evidence of forced labour over the last 10 years". The products range from teak wood to coconut oil, rubber, cement, coffee, sugar cane and others. The ICFTU also said it had accumulated evidence of forced labour in 17 different areas of industry. In addition to oil and gas production and textiles, where forced labour is already well documented, the ICFTU said it was now also researching in other directions, such as the telecommunications, automobile and pharmaceuticals industries.
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Billy sat back in his swivel chair and stared out of the office window. Even though he was now MLA for West Sydney, he still kept his AWU office at Trades Hall. He contentedly puffed his cigar as he surveyed the scene. The coastal steamers were below him unloading timber, mail and coal. The teamsters were driving their horses hard up the hill from the bridge; the wool was on its shortest trip from the wool stores at Pyrmont to Circular Quay. Pyrmont Bridge itself was the usual crush of horse - buses; ice carts and produce drays.
But this wasn't any usual day. It was the 31st December 1900. Tomorrow was to be proclamation Day of Australian Federation in Sydney. Billy had achieved a coup. In his usual bustling charming style, he had convinced the Colonial Secretary that the Bush should lead the procession to Centennial Park. "The Bush" would be an amalgam of graziers, drovers, stockmen; wool teams and farm wagons. Billy had convinced Sir Walter Drummond that he could organise this part of the procession.
It would be a demonstration of reconciliation after the disastrous Shearers' Strike. Billy's links with the A.W.U. meant that the procession would be liberally sprinkled with A.W.U. representatives, with the A.W.U. banner mounted on the wagon at the rear of the contingent.
It had been delicate work but Billy had handled it skillfully. The Pastoralists' Association would be represented; Billy had given them pride of place with a buffer zone between the mounted Pastoralists and the A.W.U. juggernaut wagon. The N.S.W. Pastoralists had even offered to supply forty horses for the men to ride in the procession. The horses were on their way from Grenfell in two Railway trucks to reach Redfern this very night.
Altogether, Billy was a satisfied man. He had come a long way since Wales; a long way since Queensland. Only ten years earlier Billy had pedalled the outback as an A.W.U. collector. He knew all the sheds west of Toowoomba. Many a night he had slept with his bike beside the road. And now it was all paying off. He was a key Labor MLA in Macquarie St; he was chosen as the Labor representative on the Federation Organising Committee. He no longer travelled by bicycle. He would be there tomorrow in the Official Party. And when the procession with all its Empire representatives came through those cast iron gates, his people, his floats would lead right behind the Governor General's escort of Honour.
The people of Sydney would thrill to the crack of the stock whip and the grinding wheels of the wool wagons. The spectators would see the manly shearers with shears in hand grouped around the Union banner. There would be some mounted graziers there too to make up the number.
Charlie Bourke, the Union Secretary broke his reverie by entering the office. It faintly annoyed Billy that the Trades Hall people did not treat him with more deference. They kept walking in and out of his office as though he was still one of them.
"Billy, I've just had a telegraph message from Dubbo. The Union Reps will be tonight by the Western Mail. They're not happy with the Railway Hotel but suggest the Metropole as more central."
"More central my bum! Metropole! Brother Bourke. don't they realise that every squatter from Albury to Goondiwindi will be booked at the Metropole. Send them a wire back and tell them to remember who they are. We don't want any stoushes at the Metropole anyway. Try the Continental at Stanmore. They have bathrooms there."
"I'll do my best Billy but there're a prickly lot as you would know; I'll send a messenger to the G. P. O. now".
" Do it yourself Brother, don't let messengers see your confidential telegrams. "Well I'm off myself down the Macquarie St to see the Colonial Secretary. You'd better give me the notes from the protocol officer and I'll read them in the cab on the way down."
Billy hailed a hansom near the Haymarket and glanced over the notes ---
"--- the usual salutation is
` Your excellency'
"--- the usual, salutation is `your eminence, but as an officer of the Crown you should not kiss the cleric's ring even if it is proffered."
The lid above Billy flied open and a face appeared.
"Parliament House Sir?" .
"No, Colonial Secretary's office further down on the Corner of Bridge St."
"I've got it guv."
Billy waited in the anteroom for Walter Drummond, to grant him an interview. An emaciated, rake of a lackey with crowns on his lapels kept ushering supplicants and victims into the Secretary's panelled office. Strangely, no persons re-appeared after the interview. Billy noticed a red light above the office door with an electric buzzer to announce a vacancy.
The whole thing reminded Billy of a Butcher's freezer room at Flemington he had once visited. No carcasses came back out of that door either.
Eventually, Uriah Heep led him into the Colonial Secretary's Office and left him to his fate.
Sir Walter Drummond was the personification of all Billy distrusted and feared - English, Oxford, the Bar, Free Trader, probably a Mason.
"Mr Hughes, (that accent!) Mr Hughes, l have been reading your outline of arrangements tomorrow and I must congratulate you as the Convenor the of the Organising Committee A truly splendid effort, splendid. "
Billy beamed but stayed on guard, he knew this type were at their most dangerous when they were patronising or anything approaching pleasant.
"I vas particularly interested in your section with cavalcade of Rural Life; capital idea, capital!"
Billy beamed even more but still kept his powder dry.
"There is just one thing I would like to clarify. Will the bush workers be - be real workers or actors - or what?"
"Oh no Sir they will be bona fide shearers and drovers from Western N.S.W. I have personally chosen there myself."
"Oh good Mr. Hughes, good."
The Secretary's masked smile dropped for an instant.
"I'm glad you can' vouch for them as we would not wish to see anything unpleasant, vulgar or political."
An image of the A.W.U. float flashed through Bill's mind.
"Nothing like that at all Sir Walter. This will be a loyal demonstration of Empire loyalty."
"Capital, Mr Hughes, capital!"
The Colonial Secretary was smiling again as he rose to dismiss Billy.
"And one more thing Mr Hughes, will the participants be on foot or on horseback?"
"All on horse back Sir; that way we can speed up the pace if any gaps appear in the procession behind the Escort of Honour."
"Well done, oh yes well done! And I presume these, these workers of yours they can all ride Mr Hughes?"
Before Billy could mouth a reply he was bundled out another shute into a dark hallway.
On the way back in his cab Billy debated with himself about the Union float and banner. Old Wally Drummond was too sugary to be true. He must be careful.
As the cab passed the old Labor Hall in Sussex St, Billy decided against the Union float. There were times to be fearless and stand by principle but there were times when retreat was the best policy. Sir Walter Drummond could just be one of those occasions. Billy had his career to think about.
The Labor Hall decided him. The night of his pre selection flashed through his memory. The lead up to the Party pre selection vote had been ruthless. Billy and his manager bravely took risks that could have got them expelled from the party. The promises and compromises Billy made were good training for later.
There had been physical clashes between Billy's faction and the catholic supporters of Jim Lynch. One night at Balmain, Billy's windows were smashed. Jim Lynch had a horse and cart bolt from under him as he addressed a lamp light meeting at Ultimo.
On candidate Selection night, Billy and Lynch had to wait outside on the footpath while the vote was taken inside. They pretended not to notice each other but talked quietly to their cronies.
The meeting inside was loud and long; at 10.30pm there was a huge cheer from the hall. Edgar Fuller, Billy's campaign manager slid down the dark steps to the footpath.
"Billy you've won. Better not appear inside though. Make yourself scarce 'till all this blows over."
Perhaps this vas a similar situation. Where discretion was called for. Back at Trades Hall, Billy called the A.W.U. organisers together and broke the bad news about the float. A few dark comments were made.
"Just remember Billy", warned Charlie Bourke "you need our endorsement for the next election."
"Brother Bourke, you're falling behind the times. I've already been endorsed for the new Federal Parliament. The Federal Labor Party has got bigger fish to fry than A. W. U. floats. We've got the federal Government in our sights; it's important we don't offend large blocks of N.S.W. people.
"Bugger them!" answered Sid Anstey of the T.W.U "You're just worried about getting offside with the squatters. You don't owe a thing to Wally Drummond and he can't hurt you in Melbourne so let's go ahead."
Billy remained adamant and covered himself with Drummond by leaving a written instruction issued to the Trades Hall in the Organising Committee's name.
Billy went on to other details of the day. Before retreating to his new Hunters Hill home, Billy met the Western Mail and smoothed over the uppity Union reps. He even paid for the cabs the Continental Hotel.
He had to check one final detail, which was the horse shipment from Grenfell. He walked up Regent St with Edgar Fuller to the stockyards just up from the Mausoleum Station. They were fine spirited horses alright
"They look a bit toey," commented Billy.
"So would you if you'd just arrived in the big smoke for the first time," laughed Edgar.
New Years day 1901 bloomed sunny and promising but that was as far as it got.
To begin with, Billy found he had been relegated to the back row of Members at Centennial Park. He not only didn't get a chance to say "Your excellency" to Lord Hopetoun, he couldn't even see him in the crush. Amongst the mayors, bishops and soldiers he did get a chance to kiss Cardinal Moran's ring but declined the honour.
When the procession from the Domain arrived, Billy stood on his chair and was able to check on his creation. He almost suffered apoplexy when he saw the variations that had been wrought.
The graziers were there alright on their mounts, looping prosperous if not actually magnificent Behind them came an untidy gaggle of frisky horses with anxious riders doing their best. Behind them was an informal group of shearers ambling along waving to the crowd. And behind them (this wobbled Billy's car) was the magnificent A.W.U. float pulled by six majestic Clyesdales. The proud A.W.U. banner was there and the crowd gave the display a hearty reception.
Billy had been betrayed and belittled at every turn. He got down off the chair and planned bloody Welsh revenge. That night h0 got the full story from Joe Burns at Prince Alfred Hospital. Joe was one of Billy's old contacts from Broken Hill.
`Tell me what happened Brother Burns. I want to know the full Horror."
"Well Billy I can laugh at it now but it put the wind up me, no mistake. We picked up the horses at Redfern and led them down to Marcus Clarkes, our assembly point. They were frisky alright; didn't take to the trams at all.
"Everything was honky dory until the Salvation Army band behind us started up. Brother Hughes it was bedlam. They took off in all directions. Some even charged into the crowd. Some bolted down Wattle and Harris St. and are still going. I was a bit rusty and got thrown early on to the tram lines. They carted me off to hospital.
"Billy, those horses were a good idea but for Pity's sake make sure they're broken in next time" As Burns talked, Billy's small form sank lower and lower into the white wooden chair. He was thinking of the newspaper reports, Trades Hall perfidy and Sir Walter Drummond.
Bill recovered enough to solemnly shake Joe Burns' hand as he left. "Brother Burns I want to thank you for your help. I should have known better to trust those graziers. Don't worry though Brother Burns, I've got a long memory. I'11 keep them in mind when I get to Melbourne, Brother Burns"
And he did.
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While the ILO has recently agreed to impose sanctions against Burma over the country's use of forced labour, and Burma activists around the world continue campaigns in support of the pro-democracy movement, on the ground at the Thai-Burma border those who have fled Burma's repressive military regime continue the struggle to address their basic health care needs.
Through training supported by Australian unions and Union Aid Abroad - APHEDA, 24 medic trainees are gaining medical skills to address the needs of displaced people living in the border regions of Burma who otherwise have little access to medical support services.
The training is conducted by the All Burma Students' Democratic Front (ABSDF), a student activist organisation formed in 1988 and a key member of the democracy movement for 13 years. These students have lived in border camps with makeshift buildings, lacking medical professionals and medical supplies, and experiencing a shortage of food and insufficiency of clothing to combat the cold seasons. Since 1988 the student leaders have been taking care of members and families in various camps through health, education and supplies departments.
ABSDF is currently operating one hospital and four clinics, run by a few senior medics and their assistants. Although they have some medical set up, there are insufficient skilled medics to extend the health care and education programs in areas where there are many ethnic people with little education and awareness of health care; or to deal with health problems as a result of poverty and the impact of the world's longest running civil war.
Training in the Wei Gyi student camp near Mae Sariang - Mae Hong Son province (Thailand) began in September 2000. The curriculum covers anatomy and physiology; nursing care; obstetrics and gynaecology; microbiology; public health; surgery; curative medicine and child care. These photographs show trainees in a practical session and trainees studying by candlelight in a classroom constructed as part of the project.
Australian trade unionists have been supporting humanitarian and training projects with migrant workers and refugees from Burma on the Thai-Burma border through Union Aid Abroad since 1996. This project is supported by the ANF - Victorian Branch and by many individual unionists. Contact Union Aid Abroad - APHEDA for further information and to find out how you can support this work.
by Cash for Comment - The Seduction of Journo Culture
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There are many good journalists in Australia, so why is there so much bad journalism." If you want an answer to that question, you have to come to Sydney. This is a journalist's town. One-third of Australia's journalists are here. It sucks them in because Sydney is the capital of quality journalism in Australia.
Other cities have their quality outlets - but Sydney has more. Move across the city from south to north. You'll start with the ABC headquarters in Ultimo (the home of Australia's quality public radio broadcaster) to the Nationwide News bunker in Surry Hills (the home of the quality national broadsheet, the Australian). Cut across town and you'll be at Fairfax, down beside Darling Harbour (the home of quality national business paper, the Australian Financial Review; and quality metropolitan daily, the Sydney Morning Herald) which is almost on an east-west line from Australian Consolidated Press (home of quality weekly news magazine, the Bulletin). Then we head over the Harbour Bridge towards St Leonards, on the city's north shore. The final stop on our journey across this journopolis is Gore Hill - home, at least for now, of ABC Television.
Certainly, this town has other examples of journalism's rich tapestry: the comparatively staid Daily Telegraph, a polite newspaper posing as a racy, crowd-pleasing tabloid; shock-jock talkback radio stations like 2GB and 2SM; the perennial ratings loser of commercial free-to-air television, Network Ten; and the populist current affairs of mass-market commercial stations, Nine and Seven. These papers and programs present themselves as populist, not as 'journals' of record.
There's also pay-TV stations, FM radio, the local papers, the majority of the nation's magazines, the alternative media and street press, and poor old SBS, which is somewhere between invisibility and despair. I'm not too concerned about them, because although many do a good job, no one expects them to be great.
Our story is concerned with the 'quality press'. It begins in a week which promises to be the most boring, news-free week of the year. Nothing is happening. The Prime Minister is out of town, cruising around the United States trying to impress important people. The debate leading up to November's referendum on the republic is so painstakingly dull and out of touch that it can barely raise sniggers amongst the populace.
The only promising part of the week for journalists is the Cointreau Ball, scheduled for the coming Friday. It will be full of partying celebrities and their hairdressers, goateed ad industry types - and, of course, journalists. The Ball is mostly for the benefit of journalists. It supplies several pages worth of gossip and photos of famous people looking silly. And more importantly, the drinks are free.
Luckily for the citizens of this journopolis, within a few hours this week would become far more interesting than they could possibly have hoped.
Monday afternoon - 12 July, 1999
The ABC's Gore Hill complex has the feel of a heavily fortified university campus. It's an ad-hoc collection of permanent structures and demountable buildings whose only unifying feature is their lack of architectural style.
Slip through the gates. You probably won't see any people - just a hedge, a neat lawn, and a driveway leading to the tallest building. Make your way left, past the hedges, and follow the concrete pathway. This one will lead you down to the ABC canteen. Outside, a cluster of grey-haired men in denim shirts are chatting to chirpy twenty-something women wearing tight T-shirts and expensive cardigans. All of them are drinking cappuccinos in their own mugs.
This is a bastion of quality journalism. As well as the various news bulletins, and Lateline and Stateline, there's an unusually high quota of quality here. This is where Four Corners, Australia's longest-running and most respected current affairs program, comes from. It's the main base for the 7.30 Report, the only nightly half-hour of TV current affairs that hasn't descended to placing hidden cameras in carwashes in order to catch some schmuck flogging ten bucks from under the seat. This is where Media Watch comes from - 15 minutes of issues-based journalism that consistently rates well simply by playing a self-appointed watchdog role to the rest of the industry.
Inside the canteen, a line of people snakes past the bistro to the coffee machine, everyone chatting and waving their mugs at each other. Amongst those in the queue is a tall woman with a shock of black hair. This is Deborah Richards, executive producer of Media Watch, who's obviously dashed in for a break between preparations for this evening's show. Standing nearby is David Hardaker, one of the reporters from the 7.30 Report.
On air, David Hardaker looks like a housebrick in a suit, but catch him in the canteen and you'll meet a genial, hail-fellow-well-met type of chap who's always up for a bit of in-house gossip (as journalists generally are). He and Richards get to chatting, and he drops that he's heard a rumour they've got a big story on Media Watch that evening.
Richards is aghast. "What have you heard?" she asks.
"That there is something big coming out tonight..." Hardaker continues. He wants to know what it is, though.
Richards refuses to tell him. She is worried that he's even heard of a 'big story', and certainly isn't going to let any details out.
Which pretty much confirms the rumour for Hardaker - as all journalists know, any idiot can slap an injunction on a show if they think it's going to damage them. If you've got a scoop about someone powerful you keep it close to your chest.
You'd expect a journalist to be hostile to a show like Media Watch whose bread and butter consists of exposing bad journalism. For more than a decade, this 15-minute review of journalism had been airing mistakes and misleading stories on television and radio and in newspapers. The show had always named journalists, and held them publicly accountable for their work. Like many other journos in Sydney, however, Hardaker would say that Media Watch is good because it helps keep the profession honest. At a time when both public and commercial newsrooms are under financial and political pressure, such a role is important if quality journalism is going to survive.
In any case, under Richards' command, since the beginning of the year, Media Watch had been less about skewering lazy journos, and more concerned with the 'big issues' facing journalists - with reporting on reporting.
As a semi-regular viewer of Media Watch, I found the program's new style both interesting and disappointing. Interesting because of the subject matter - I'd worked as a journo for a while and was familiar with some of the gossip about people and processes that fuelled their stories; I also had the luxury of distance - it had been a while since I had worked for any of the big newspapers, so I could laugh at the show's criticisms without feeling personally involved. Disappointing because they were producing journalism about journalism - with all the faults and prejudices of journalism. It seemed to take away the show's bite.
My feeling was that Media Watch, by concentrating on issues rather than journalists, had lost track of the fact that the culture of journalism, more than any other issue, affected the stuff I was reading and watching. In a journopolis like Sydney, with thousands of colleagues to gossip with, that's inevitable. If you accept that the culture of journalism determines the news you buy, it becomes clear that we shouldn't be asking whether quality journalism is going to survive. We should be asking whether it deserves to.
Monday night 9.15pm - 12 July 1999
"Now", said Richard Ackland, "An update on a story we brought you some weeks ago. It concerns that lion of integrity on commercial radio - John Laws."
Across Australia, hundreds of people got up to go to the toilet. I was among those left, watching the screen but thinking, Isn't this old news? Haven't Media Watch been having a go at Laws for years? Sure, he was a powerful figure: for Laws' listeners, he was an authority answerable only to himself and them, independent from any influence (either commercial or proprietary), the last bastion of truth in a world going mad. For the Media Watch audience, he was a red-neck talkback host who got big ratings. Big deal.
Even if it wasn't news, it looked like a good yarn. You can identify a good yarn by the structure of the story, even before you know the details:
1. A powerful figure or powerful group tells you something is the truth
The first part of Media Watch that night recapped a story they had run with a month previously: they played two excerpts from the John Laws show on Sydney radio station 2UE (which is syndicated to a further two million listeners around the country). The excerpts had aired on 24 November and 30 November 1997, nearly two years earlier, and were of Laws being scathing about banks.
"So here's how it works", said the reassuring baritone voice of the radio star on the show that evening. "The bank makes two-point-two billion dollars profit, the bank closes branches, the bank loses two-and-a-half thousand staff - and then, they do it all again."
And ...
"When they go down to the bank, Uncle Scrooge down there behind the counter hits them with a fee. How can you do that, you people? I mean, how can you really do it?
Media Watch had noticed a different attitude to banks of late on the Laws program. Their earlier program had identified Laws' switch to being, in Ackland's words, "the bank's most prominent apologist". Once again they played an excerpt from the Laws program, this time from March 1999: "Banks make very big profits, but are they unreasonable about it? Maybe not, when you know... the whole story." 'The Whole Story' was the name of a segment on the Laws show, dealing with Australian history sponsored by the Australian Bankers' Association (ABA). More regular viewers of Media Watch got up to go to the bathroom.
Ackland was suggesting this sponsorship had helped Laws change his opinion of the banks. He'd done exactly the same thing on Media Watch back in May. No one really cared then. Laws had answered the allegation on his own show and on ABC Radio National's Media Report: he had been approached with a commercial deal and taken it. He hadn't changed his opinion on the banks, but merely gained a greater understanding of their role in society.
2. A journalist reveals evidence which suggests the powerful figure's story may not be accurate
Halfway through, Ackland said: "A confidential document has come our way and it conflicts markedly with Laws' version of events.
"[Tony] Aveling [chief executive with the Australian Bankers' Association] told the Bankers' Association council..."A voice-over read out the confidential document: "[Bob] Miller approached the Australian Bankers' Association at the request of John Laws, to see if any banks were interested in using the [advertising] agency and, in particular, Laws."
"This rather flies in the face of what Lawsie's been telling everyone for weeks," Ackland said. "That the banks came to him, to get him to tell the whole story. Laws has also maintained publicly that, while it's a commercial deal, his opinion hasn't been bought."
Within a minute, however, the voice-over continued reading from the bankers' document: "The objective is to reduce the negative comments about banks by John Laws from the present average of four a week to nil, concurrently to receive positive comments from Mr Laws, over and above the paid advertisements and by doing so, to shift Australians' perceptions of, and attitudes towards, banks."
3. A conclusion is reached, linking the evidence with some other interest of the powerful figure
After running through some of the other details of the document, including a list of some of John Laws' other sponsors, Ackland summed up its contents: "In the middle of a concerted campaign against the banks by the most widely listened-to broadcaster in the country, his agents approached the ABA for a deal and the drubbing stops. Such is the commercial power of the golden microphone. And just now much money did it take?... One proposal added up to one-point-two million and the other to one-and-a-half million dollars."
A strong finish to the program, but Ackland couldn't resist a final kick. "Now we know more of the whole story," he said, closing the show. "While Lawsie sleeps snugly tonight, we wonder whether his audience will rest so happily?"
A that time the program went to air, Chris Stewart, Director of Public Affairs with the Australian Bankers' Association, was being interviewed on Perth radio station 6PR. It was at the end of a reasonably busy day for Stewart - earlier he had been interviewed on the same station by Howard Sattler, in the afternoon he'd fielded criticism on ABC radio, and now he was talking to Graham Maybury. Stewart's talkback schedule was part of the Bankers' Association's communications strategy - the idea was to make himself available as a bank spokesperson for any talkback programs which covered banking issues. As a way of addressing the poor image banks had in society, Stewart's proactive strategy was thought to be working very well.
A call came in to the program from a listener who had just seen Media Watch, wanting to know some details of the deal between Laws and the bankers, and if the Bankers' Association had paid him to change his opinion about the banks.
"Media Watch has just revealed that Mr Laws was being paid," the listener said.
"This should come as no surprise", Stewart replied. "This is commercial radio."
He told the caller there was no secret surrounding the arrangement with John Laws, that Laws was actually being paid by a company called Australia Street Consulting, and it was with this company that the Association had a contract; that the whole idea was to promote issues to do with banking, and to ensure that facts and figures were being published where they weren't before.
"Media watch says you paid Mr Laws one-and-a-half million dollars, the caller continued.
"That's ludicrous", Stewart said. "It was a lot less than that."
And it's reasonable to assume that all the while, in the back of Chris Stewart's mind, a little voice was saying, Not this again.
by The Chaser
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ADELAIDE, Friday: The quest to strike a better balance between work life and home life is causing increased stress within Australian families according to a new report released by the Productivity Commission yesterday. The report confirms the long held suspicion that employees who reduce their workload to spend more time with their spouse and children just end up annoying their families even more.
The report is based on interviews with families of middle and senior managers who have opted for part-time work and other more flexible arrangements in order to allow more time for their personal lives. It suggests that while a better "work/life balance" can lead to happier workplaces as managers become less stressed, any improvements in workplace culture are off set by the amount of stress and frustration the managers cause in the home.
The statistical analysis in the report shows that 72% of middle-ranking and senior managers in Australia have at least one personality trait which is essential to their job but which makes them highly objectionable as people. Of these, an astounding 34% fell into the "complete prick" category, with a further 18% in the "prick most of the time" class. When this data is combined with average marriage and parenting rates, the figures suggest that more than one in five Australian adults whose combined household income is over $75,000pa are partnered to extremely unpleasant people.
"The conclusion we've reached about these people from a family perspective" says report author Helen Miles, "is that their families are much better off when the objectionable person is works very, very hard and stays back at the office as long as possible. This allows the person's partner and children to derive maximum benefit from their circumstances in terms of consumer spending etc while minimising unpleasant social contact in the home".
"Since part time arrangements, working from home and the like became more socially acceptable, greater numbers of highly-driven, ambitious employees - that is, the most annoying people at work - are opting to spend more time with their families. And families are suffering because of it".
An example cited in the report is Tracy, 38, whose husband Tony decided to work 3 days a week last year after a decade of working 80-hour weeks and constant business trips. "Quite frankly, I preferred the extra money and freedom I had when Tony was a workaholic", she is quoted as saying. "Tony established a reputation as a tough business man who wasn't afraid of making hard decisions, and that's why he got ahead. And he was well rewarded for his efforts, which meant we could afford lots of nice things. Because he was always at work, I got to enjoy those things by myself. It's true he'd always come home exhausted and in a bad mood, but me and kids would just go to bed. The kids loved it - he just gave them extra pocket money instead of quality time.".
"But it's terrible now. I don't know whether it's hormonal or whether it's because of SeaChange, but Tony decided he'd had enough of the 'rat race' and that he was going to spend more time with us. It's a nice thought I guess. The problem is that Tony's actually a complete asshole - that's why he's good at his job, but doing his job less hasn't made him less of an asshole. We just cop it more".
Tracy told reporters yesterday off the record that her husband's part time work arrangement had made her extra-marital affair "substantially more difficult to manage".
The phenomenon applies to female workers as well as males. While some commentators have suggested that the children of working women experience neglect, the report dismisses this theory. "We actually found that the children of 'corporate mothers' who have had to work longer hours to advance their careers actually have a much better time than other kids. In most cases, the kids are far happier with a nanny than they would be with their mothers".
One 13 year old quoted in the report agreed with the conclusion. "Nannying is not just baby shaking and affairs with your dad you know. Basically we've got the choice of being looked after by Mum, who's got all these stupid rules about how much TV you can watch and stuff, or some Scandinavian backpacker who's out here to have a good time. We're more than happy for Mum's career to come first."
The report concludes that the increasing problem of hard workers pursuing a "work/life balance" can only be addressed by a pervasive change in workplace culture. "The corporate world needs to stop deluding itself by thinking that workers shouldn't sacrifice their personal lives for their work. People who succeed in business should be kept in business where they're less likely to cause problems for innocent people they may care about. It's a large price to pay, but the evidence suggests it's better than the alternatives."
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I am honoured to join this distinguished panel in discussing a topic of such importance and moment, but the title of this Forum session "Addressing the backlash against globalisation" is a disservice to the discussion.
What we are witnessing is not a backlash but pangs of birth. And it is not against globalisation but for a new internationalism.
This movement for a new internationalism is building from the bottom up, not the top down. It features democratic protest, not corporate deals. Its forum is the public square, not the boardroom. And its promise is to remake the global economy so that it begins to work for working people all over the world.
We should be celebrating this new movement. Too much attention has been given to the few who are violent, and too little to the remarkable discipline of the many to non-violence.
How remarkable it is that millions of young people are communicating about sweatshops across the world wide web.
How exciting that many feel morally compelled to protest the inhumane conditions that workers face in countries on the other side of the globe.
How encouraging that children are calling their parents to account for the abuse of child labor.
How extraordinary that workers in industrialised countries will pressure companies in solidarity with workers in poorer and weaker countries. Or that workers, environmentalists, religious leaders and students are coming together to call for workers' rights and human rights and consumer and environmental protections in the global economy.
A new morning is dawning and we should rejoice in it.
This new internationalism has blossomed not because - as some here would suggest - the global economy has a public relations problem.
Billions of dollars in free and paid media exalt it. The global economy's blessings are trumpeted - its blemishes often ignored. From the editorial pages of leading newspapers to the banquets of local business clubs, the hallelujah chorus is deafening.
The current global system doesn't have a public relations gap, it has a promise gap.
Its performance does not match its promise. And no amount of public relations can change that. Much of the debate has focused on trade and investment policies. But trade is simply an instrument, and a minor one at that. Development and democracy are the ends.
The promise was that freeing up markets, de-regulating finance and joining the global market would provide growth, and growth would provide development. If we get governments out of the way, markets will work their magic - that's what we are told.
The reality of the last quarter century makes this prescription harder and harder to swallow. Growth has been slower, not faster. Instability is growing, not slowing.
Inequality - among and within countries - is rising not falling. And Russia has rather conclusively shown that if governments really get out of the way, the market's black magic is likely to produce gangsterism rather than capitalism.
Moreover the much-celebrated corporate global economy doesn't hold out much hope for most poor countries.
Foreign investment has increased sevenfold in 20 years. But 70% of it goes from one rich country to another. Eight developing countries got another 20% - with the bulk going to dictatorships, not democracies. The remainder is divided unequally among more than 100 poor countries. This isn't a public relations problem. This is a reality problem.
That is why we should be celebrating the movement for the new internationalism.
Seattle, I am proud to say, is often seen as the turning point at which a growing movement finally gained the attention of a rather impervious establishment.
There, workers, students, environmentalists and religious activists all came together to call the World Trade Organisation to account. Developing country leaders objected to being locked out of the backrooms. Union leaders representing workers in over 70 countries - rich and poor alike - marched shoulder to shoulder in the demand for workers' rights.
Since that time we've been able to transform the agenda of the global institutions - including this gathering.
Led by the faith-based Jubilee 2000, we've put debt forgiveness and poverty reduction on the agenda of the industrialised countries.
The IMF, which for years told us it wasn't a development agency, suddenly discovered that it was. The World Bank rediscovered poverty as a central focus. Its most recent report even suggests that free markets aren't necessarily the key to the kingdom after all.
Global corporations - even the most notorious like Nike - have scrambled to put together codes of conduct. They are driven not by a sudden attack of conscience, but by shareholder concern for their reputations and their markets.
The demand for workers rights, human rights and environmental and consumer protections will not disappear. Trade accords will face difficult sledding without including them. Companies will face embarrassment for violating them. And countries too will eventually be challenged for trampling them.
The International Labor Organization, for the first time, has called on the world community to curtail relations with Myanmar due to that brutal regime's policy of forced labor.
A global consensus has been reaffirmed on core workers' rights. Now it's time to post those basic rights on the walls of every place of employment in the world.
The moral force of this movement cannot be denied. It is profoundly threatening to the so-called Washington consensus - and profoundly promising for poor and working people across the globe.
We don't need to exaggerate the accomplishments. Global fairness is indeed on the docket for discussion, but now is the time for action. The debts of the impoverished nations need to be forgiven. Industrial nations must significantly increase development aid. The World Bank should focus on supporting health and education. The WTO needs a massive overhaul in how it operates. Companies need to change their practices as well as their rhetoric. The casino financial economy calls out for greater rules.
But this movement for a new internationalism has only begun to build. The harsh realities that drive it are likely to get worse - not better - as the US economy slows.
The best and the brightest of the next generation are enlisting in droves. Workers across the world are calling for a better deal. It is time for us to get on with the task.
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Anyone who watched the recent World Club Challenge between Brisbane and St Helens, when Sailor contrived to completely miss the tackle which led to Chris Joynt's score-equalling try, might have thought the bloke was already playing union. That, however, is hardly the issue.
Columnists and spokespersons from both sides of the increasingly blurred rugby border are putting their own spins on Sailor's voyage.
The simple fact is that union, for the first time in the best part of 100 years, is comprehensively out-gunning its competitor everywhere, with the exception, so far, of Papua New Guinea.
The reasons, however, are not those generally put forward by advocates of the 15-man strain. More than reflecting that game's inherent superiority, or some form of justice after decades of pillage, they have to do with propitious timeing and more than a little splashing about within league's teepee.
When Brisbane stockbroker/entrepreneur Paul "Porky" Morgan crossed over to the other side recently he was hailed by no less an authority on the matter than John Ribot as the architect of Super League.
While there might be some suspicion that Ribot grasped the occassion to engage in a spot of Pontius Pilateing if, in fact, his assessment was accurate then it should, in future, be said that league was "porkied".
What happened to Rugby League was a classic example of the fatal flaw in new-right philosophy - the view which holds that markets are sacrosanct, independent, self-regulating arbiters of the next step in economic Darwinism.
In fact, as multi-billionaire currency speculator George Souris points out, markets are prone to every prejudice, whim and cultural attachment of their players.
When Ribot, Morgan and co kicked off Super League they did so on the conviction that, having the superior product, league would retain and gain market share.
Their ideology precluded them from taking into account the glaringly, obvious human factor that everywhere the two games were played, with the possible exceptions of Queensland and NSW, union was the game of choice for the wealthy and well-connected.
This was a serious miscalculation.
Peter Fitzsimmons gloats over Sailor's passage in the SMH, arguing, understandably, that big-money league has been allowed its wicked way, snatching and sullying pure amateurs for far too long.
League, however, in its pre-Ribot incarnation was not a professional outfit in the modern, market-rules, understanding of the term. Its payments started from the premise of allowing ordinary people to compete in the face of a union establishment that effectively blocked those without independent means from progressing through its ranks.
Certainly, that changed through the 80's and 90's, but even when Ribot began to wreak his havoc most first graders still worked for their livings. League, in fact, was a peculiarly Australian form of professionalism, built on the back of poker machines in non-profit clubs. Restrictions, agreed between clubs, prevented market forces ratcheting player earnings unrecognisably above those of their fan base, whilst still allowing them to derive significant material benefits from their talents.
Union, on the other hand, far from a bastion of amateur purity, was riddled with under-counter payments and deceit.
That it chose to rectify this state of affairs at precisely the same time as league was "porkying" itself was, from its point of view, a most wonderful coincidence.
Through little more than accidents of history, Australian union went into the head-to-head commercial battle needing to sustain just three Super 12 teams, playing infrequently, in the build-up to an extended international programme, tailor-made for trans-national broadcasting.
Its opponent, on the other hand, is trying to sustain a 14-franchise competition, playing every single weekend from early February until late September on the way to an international series that nobody, least of all international television, gives a flying footy about. It is no wonder that News Ltd wants to prune the NRL premiership back to clubs still.
Worse still, Morgan, Ribot and their fellow-travellers deliberately and with malice of for-thought tore apart the bonds that tied clubs, players and fans together in a common culture.
Once, it was quite conceivable that men in Sailor's position, would have pursued their code because they were leaguies. No longer, each is now a businessmen, looking after number one - Ribot and his allies convinced them of that.
It is generally accepted that league, at the moment, produces the superior athlete and more scientifically analyses its game. That's why its technical coaches are being grabbed by union across the world, even in New Zealand where Warriors failure Mark Graham has been snapped up by Auckland's Super 12 franchise.
But so what?
More players of Sailor's status will make the journey to union because product superiority, even when tacitly admitted, does not neccessarily equate to market share.
For the long-term interests of their game Ribot and his cronies might have been better listening to JK Galbraith than Bobby Fulton but it's a bit late now - that particular ship has sailed.
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Flexibility and Stretching Rights: the No Disadvantage Test in Enterprise Bargaining by Omar Merlo
Issues affecting the efficacy of the No Disadvantage Test (NDT) as a protective mechanism for employees are discussed. These include:
� The shrinkage of the safety net
� The role of the Employment Advocate
� The erosion of community standards
� The use of awards as a benchmark for the test
� The relative ease of approval of agreements
� The public interest test for AWAs
� The role of unions
The author concludes that the NDT does not achieve its intended purpose and that its original objectives have been altered. The NDT fails to deliver employee protection, allowing employers to achieve flexibility at the expense of equitable and fair conditions of employment.
(Australian Journal of Labour Law; vol. 13, no. 3, December 2000)
'Monday I've Got Friday on My Mind': Working Time in the Hospitality Industry by Alison Barnes and Diane Fieldes
Some suggest that the drive to flexible working hours is mutually beneficial to employers and employees. This study analyses the impacts on the award simplification decision in the hospitality industry award in 1998.
The study demonstrates that award simplification and enterprise bargaining in the sector have not produced a successful compromise between the needs of employers and employees. Flexibility has been a benefit to employers alone. The direction of working time reorganisation is determined by the relative bargaining strengths of the parties. The hospitality industry has long been a low wage sector, and the nature of the sector has meant that union strength has been limited. This is reflected in the worsened position of employees in the terms of flexible hours.
(Journal of Industrial Relations; vol. 42, no. 4, December 2000)
Kennett's Industrial Relations Legacy: the Impact of Deregulation on Earnings in Victoria by Ian Watson
What is the connection between labour market deregulation and earnings inequality? Watson uses Victoria as an empirical study using recent workplace survey data. A low wage sector emerged in Victoria during the 1990s, concentrated around Schedule 1A (of the Commonwealth Workplace Relations Act 1996 that effectively replaced Victoria's own industrial legislation). Workers who failed to gain coverage under federal jurisdiction had wages and conditions determined by minimalist legislation provisions and workplace "bargaining".
Earnings dispersal is shown to be much greater for this group of employees. Schedule 1A coverage was characterised by a large clump of low-wage workers with inferior employment benefits.
Comparisons between NSW and Victoria reflect badly on Victoria, as do national comparisons.
http://econ.usyd.edu.au/acirrt/downloads/wp62.pdf
(ACIRRT Working Paper no. 62; January 2001)
Casual Rights Case
A summary of the outcome of the casual rights case run by the AMWU is on their website at http://www.amwu.asn.au/what/current/showcampaign.php3?aid=709
The AIRC ruled that casuals should automatically be granted permanency after 6 months regular and systematic employment. This need not be continuous over the six months but merely systematic (ie called on regularly on a similar basis over the time). Also the casual loading was increased from 20 to 25%, minimum engagement was set at 4 hours.
Casualisation: What Is The Debate We Should Be Having? by Sharan Burrow
Handing down its decision in the AMWU's recent casual rights case, the Industrial Relations Commission observed that excessive and inappropriate use of casuals in Australia had reached a point where casual jobs as the exception may soon subvert permanent jobs as the norm.
The decision delivered casual workers in the metal industry increased penalty rates, improved minimum start times and access to the option of permanent employment after 6 months service. A move that even Australian Industry Group chief executive Bob Herbert described as 'reasonable in the circumstances.
Unions want to ensure that casual employment is not abused. Casual employment should not continue to be indiscriminately used by employers to deny long-term employees access to the most basic employment certainty and decent employment rights.
During his time as Workplace Relations Minister Peter Reith actively undermined the rights of casual workers. He rejected a Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission recommendation that the Government legislate to give maternity leave rights to casual workers and opposed efforts by unions to improve the rights of casual workers in the Industrial Relations Commission, including the recent AMWU metal award case.
As unions step up their campaign for casual workers this year, the challenge for Tony Abbott will be to break with his predecessors appalling record and support decent job certainty and rights for Australia's casual workers.
http://www.workplaceinfo.com.au/questions/casuals_burrow.htm
The Protection of Employee Entitlements in the Event of Employer Insolvency: Australian Initiatives in the Light of International Models by Robbie Campo
Tony Abbott's solution is for employees to use their holidays up before employers go broke. A very thoughtful solution don't you think? Campo examines recent initiatives in Australia towards dealing with the problem, including Reith's discussion paper on the issue. Measures existing in the European Community and Canada are also considered, and ILO recommendations for protections. The article demonstrates that Australian responses based on the Corporations Law are inadequate. The Canadian model allowing workers to take direct proceedings against directors is seen as a good example. Tightening the Corporations Law to provide effective remedies against unethical directors may provide an avenue for recovery. The Canadian and European models show that the current lack of protection for workers need not continue.
(Australian Journal of Labour Law; vol. 13, no. 3, December 2000)
National Competitiveness and the Subordination of Labour: an Australian policy study by Dick Bryan
Bryan looks at the notions of competition and national competitiveness in a globalised economy. He points out the logical slides in the rhetoric about national competition when the competition is really taking place between firms, not nation states. The notion of competitiveness has been the organising cry of national policies since the mid 1980s, and this focus has swamped all other considerations. The connection between international competitiveness and wages policy in Australia was made explicit by Keating as Treasurer in the mid 1980s, with a commitment to maintaining real wages being abandoned even in the rhetoric by 1987. The shift to deregulation in the finance sector was accompanied by the introduction of enterprise bargaining, which supposedly linked any wage increase to productivity increases. By 1996, even this link was gone with reserve bank governor Mcfarlane emphasising the need for wage restraint, despite any productivity boosts.
This is the crux of the problem. The view that we can be international competitive in high tech, clever industries rather than tech low wage industries is shattered by ther approach of international competition because everyone has been increasing productivity in high tech industries. So competitiveness is being pursued by means other than productivity improvements, ie by reducing wages. Wages are not keeping pace with the increase in working hours and the increases in productivity. The race to the top (high tech high wages) has the same outcomes as the race to the bottom, low tech low wages - lower wages, longer hours.
The notion of a more competitive nation is pursued at a policy level, even though it is companies and workers who do the actually competing. Thus the nationalism involved in promoting this agenda subordinates all other concerns (social justice) to the competition rhetoric. Bryan is pessimistic about labour's changes of finding a way out of this cul de sac.
(Labour & Industry; vol. 11, no. 2, December 2000)
Trade Apprenticeships in the Australian Construction Industry by Phil Toner
During the latter half of the 1990s there has been a significant reduction in construction industry apprentice intakes. Factors involved in this decline include:
� A reduction in the average firm size in the private construction industry and a large increase in their share of total construction employment
� A large increase in the employment share of specialist subcontractors
� The growth of outsourcing and labour hire employment
� Corporatisation and privatisation of government utilities
� Possible substitution of traineeships for traditional apprenticeships
(Labour & Industry; vol. 11, no. 2, December 2000)
The revelations, printed in last weekend's Australian Financial Review, are the depressing vindication of LaborNet's criticism of the ill-conceived VC venture to provide computer and Internet packages to working people.
According to the Fin, Clarke has shares in the company worth $32 million and options over shares worth another $49 million.
The value of the shares are based on VC's capital raising amongst a bunch of fellow comrades such as the Packers, the Pratts and the Smorgens - all of whom are also set to make healthy returns for their commitment to working people.
On top of this, the Fin reports that the advertising agency Clarke founded - Pure Creative has also received more than $2 million out of the VC venture for those dinky TV and radio ads that screened last year.
If these figures are correct, it means Clarke will soon be personally wealthier than the entire ACTU! Not bad for two year's work ...
For those who joined the story late, it unfolds like this: Clarke - a marketing wiz formerly with Telstra - teams up with Steve Vizard to convince Bill Kelty that it is his historical destiny to liberate the Information Poor.
Kelty pushed the deal through a ill-informed ACTU executive - shrugging off criticism from the NSW Labor Council that offering the union movement's membership network to a commercial venture for next to nothing was the modern day equivalent of handing over Manhattan Island for a handful of beads.
Now these predictions are proving true: with less than 35,000 members online, VC is heading to public float - at which point it will become a vehicle for the profits of the wealthy shareholders. Thus, the great hijack of the trade union movement will be complete.
On one level Clarke is just a smart young guy who's made a go of it in a tough business environment. Good luck to him. But what a lost opportunity for the movement ...
Disclosure: Workers Online and LaborNet are now involved in an alternate computer-internet packaging model called Getonboard. This venture retains significant ownership with the trade union movement. We will continue to promote this as being in the best interests of the broader movement. That being said, if anyone is prepared to write a defence of VC, we'll be happy to publish it.
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