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Abbott made an unannounced visit to the Grenadier picket line at Matraville last week where 41 workers are demanding they be repaid in full the $650,000 in unpaid entitlements they are owed.
On the way in to meet with Giles Woodgate from Woogate and Co, Abbott urged the workers to abandon their picket and return to work - where they have been offered four days' pay if they work for seven days.
They were later told that Abbott was "an old drinking buddy" of the Administrator. Woodgate this week told workers they would need "to take a haircut' and accept much less than the one hundred cents in the dollar they are owed.
Unions want the Administrator to take a similar haircut on his own fee. He's told union officials that after the sale of the remaining stock and assets, only $80,000 will go to the workers with the balance absorbed by other creditors and his own fees - subject to the workers going back to work.
The TCFUA says it seems there's currently only two ways of ensuring workers entitlements are protected: a national comprehensive scheme as proposed by the ALP or having Stan Howard sit on the board of every Australian company.
Pay Allegations Referred To Police
Meanwhile, claims that an employer failed to make child support and private to superannuation deductions before his company went into liquidation have been referred to the NSW Police.
The allegations were referred by NSW Premier Bob Carr to Attorney General Bob Debus earlier this week after he visited the picket last week..
Carr was told that workers had discovered they had not only lost their legal entitlements, they had been robbed of private superannuation payements and, in one case, child support payments that had been garnisheed from his wages.
NSW Labor Council assistant secretary John Robertson says he had been informed that the allegations had now been referred to police to investigate whether there had been breaches of criminal law.
The Attorney General had also written to Federal Financial Services Minister Joe Hockey asking him to refer allegations of insolvent trading to the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC).
Robertson says it's important that these allegations were fully investigated. "If true, the directors and management of this company should face the full force of the law," he said.
Cricket on the Picket - The Ultimate Test
The Grenadier workers are maintaining their spirits on the picket line and digging in for a long fight.
They have begun conducting regular cricket games, with Maritime Union of Australia members from nearby Port Botany providing spirited Opposition.
The picket cricket went international this week when the eight Indian temple workers, also on strike from their $45 per month job, turned up to challenge.
While the Indians claimed they couldn't play, at least one had more than a passing resemblance to the bowling action of the great Kapil Dev.
The teams were mixed up and after one hour's play the match was declared a "negotiated draw", with TCFUA state secretary Barry Tubner stranded at the non-striker's end..
The match ended with a barbeque as the Grenadier workers and the Indian temple workers bridging the language barrier to share their stories.
Ruddock passed the buck in a letter to Labor Council in response to concerns at the rates the Regent Hotel was paying foreign workers employed as part of a 'training program'.
In the letter, Ruddock denies his department is responsible for ensuring working visas comply with Australian labour law, shunting it off to Abbott's Department of Employment, Workplace relations and Small Business,
"DEWRSB has responsibility for Federal industrial relations laws," Ruddock says.
"Myb de[partment undertakes routine targeted monitoring of employers to ensure that employers honour their sponsorship obligations.
"Allegations of this type are received from time to time and my department works cooperatively with union and other agencies to investigate such complaints."
Labor Council secretary Michael Costa says that given evidence in a rise of exploitation of guest workers, Ruddock needs to do more to ensure the integrity of the working visa system.
"It's not good enough to pass the buck to another government department," Costa says. "The Minister for Immigration is responsible for working visas and the buck stops with him."
"If Tony Abbott's Department is failing, that's Phillip Ruddock's problem."
Questions on Notice
Meanwhile, Ruddock faces a raft of questions relating to the spread of working visas in the hospitality industry placed on notice by Tasmanian Senator Kerry O'Brien. They include the following:
The Transport Workers Union says that over the last five years almost 40 per cent of work in the Australian tourist coach industry have been lost to companies brining guides into Australia on working holiday, business and student visas.
TWU state secretary Tony Sheldon says a significant number of these companies are engaging workers in breach of their visas.
"More often than not these drivers are also paid well below award wages or on sub-standard Australian Workplace Agreements," Sheldon says.
"They are regularly working with total disregard to Australian traffic laws, basic road safety and driver up to 18 hours continuously," he says.
Sheldon says that despite repeated representations to the Federal Department of Immigration, there has been a general reluctance to investigate the abuse of visas in the topurist industry,
He's called on the Federal Government to immediately investigate the operation of its visa programs in the tourist industry and establish an enforceable code of practise for all inbound tourist coach companies.
Temple Workers Standing Firm
Meanwhile, the eight Indian temple workers who walked off the site of a Helensburg temple last month are standing firm in their fight for back pay.
The workers were being employed just $45 per month, with $100 per week sent home to their families in southern India. They received one day off each fortnight and were forced to live on the building site.
The workers have not returned to the site since joining the CFMEU are walking out and are now living in a rented house in Auburn.
The workers were on hand this week to support the Grenadier Coatings workers by challenging them to a friendly game of picket cricket.
Carr is due to give his State of the State address at Penrith on Sydney, two years since he was returned to office in a landslide.
Before that election the Premier vowed his government would introduce legislation to protect the rights of outworkers, but no action to implement the stated policy has been forthcoming.
FairWear coordinator Debbie Carstens says there are 100,000 outworkers in NSW who are working 14-14 hour days for as little as $2 or $3 per hours and no access ton workers compensation or superannuation.
Key initiatives that FairWear want to see implemented include :
* retailers to be compelled to know where their clothing is produced and under what conditions
* DIR and TCFUA to have access to commercial records in the contracting chain to ensure retailers and manufacturers are fulfilling their obligations.
* System established through which outworkers can recover moneys owed to them, with recourse to retailers and manufactures, not just their employers.
"There is nothing we are asking for today that the Premier did not promise two years ago," Carstens says.
Supporters of the FairWear Alliance of church, union and community groups will be attending the Penrith address in anticipation.
Opposition leader Kim Beazley and his shadow responsible for the public sector, John Faulkner, unveiled the Labor blueprint this week.
"The Howard Government has brought to the Public Service a harmful mixture of bloody-mindedness, ideological prejudice and policy laziness, " Beazley says.
"Because of this, the Australian Public Service is crying out for basic repair in many areas and overall reinvigoration in others."
Among the key policy initiatives are:
- The establishment of a Public Service Institute dedicated to the provision of high quality education and training in all areas of public administration. This will be an important component of the Knowledge Nation. The institute will enable all public servants, wherever they may be located, to upgrade their skills, qualifications and career prospects.
- Tough new outsourcing rules which will be enforced through a public interest test for any outsourcing proposal by a department. Rules will include stringent requirements for full public accountability, genuine cost savings and protection of privacy. In-house bids will be facilitated.
- An independent review to recommend principles that should underpin Government decisions to locate functions inside or outside the Public Service, and ways to achieve a better balance between central co-ordination and devolution of administrative responsibilities.
- The abolition of performance pay for secretaries and the phasing out of performance bonuses for public servants as industrial agreements expire and new collective agreements are negotiated and implemented.
- An end to Australian Workplace Agreements in the Public Service, with transitional arrangements being developed, in consultation with agencies and unions, to facilitate the bringing of employees who are on AWAs under the new collective enterprise agreements on a no-detriment basis.
- Strengthened procedures for regulating the appointment and tenure of secretaries, which will reinforce the professional, apolitical nature of the Public Service.
The Community and Public Sector union has the Canberra policy launch as a "significant" step in the right direction.
National secretary Wendy Caird says the most important element in the public service blueprint unveiled by Senator John Faulkner was a "clear break with present policies which are anti-public service and marginalise the public sector"
She says pledges on out-sourcing, employment issues and de-politicising the appointments of departmental secretaries were especially encouraging.
Read John Faulkner's policy speech in the Soapbox
by HT Lee
Crane driver Pat Portlock lost his leg at the M5 East accident in early January; 20 year old Brent Leadbetter lost his leg at the Royal Prince Alfred (RPA) Hospital site on Wednesday 21 March; and a worker in his late 50s was crushed to death at the Narrabeen Sports Centre yesterday.
All these accidents occurred after the Olympics when there is a downturn in the building industry which is becoming a 'dog eat dog' industry--subbies are being forced to cut prices to get jobs--safety as always suffers.
Instead of taking a lead in safety on sites, the NSW Labor Government has failed in its obligations. The memorandum of understanding the Labor Government had with the unions before the Olympics seems to have been extinguished together with the Olympic flame. Safety on sites--especially government sites--no longer seems to be important. Getting the job done as cheaply as possible now prevails.
The M5 East project
In early January a mobile crane collapsed at the Baulderstone M5 East project. The crane driver Pat Portlock was trapped for 10 hours before he was rescued--the damaged was done and his right leg had to be amputated.
The safety and unsafe work practice was a major issue. Baulderstone was issued with over 300 BTG rectification notices by he construction union the CFMEU and the Building Trades Group (BTG) of Unions. WorkCover issued three prohibition and eleven improvement notices.
RPA Hospital
Brent Leadbetter, a 20 year old 3rd year apprentice bricklayer at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (RPA) fell through the penetration of the air-conditioned duct from the 6th floor to the 3rd floor. He suffered head injury, internal injury and a compound leg fracture. His leg had to be amputated below his knee.
The area he was working was poorly lid. The penetration mash was not properly secured and was not in one piece. The mash had a 5mm layer of cement which gave the impression it was solid concrete. The were no signage pointing out the area is just a penetration mesh. On some floors the penetration areas were not fenced off.
It was a Theiss job. However, Theiss was not the principal contactor--it was the project manager.
In this arrangement there are subbies--all subbies on sites are contractors and therefore are responsible for everything on site--if they are working in an area they have to provide everything, including the lightings.
However, all method of work statements had to be submitted to Theiss. But the site safety committee were not shown the work statements for input and discussion.
Making all subbies contractors is no different from making all workers signing individual contracts--it is the same principal--why is a Labor Government condoning such practices?
Narrabeen Sports Centre
The accident at the Narrabeen occurred when the rigger was unloading large steel structure--the lifting system failed and the structure collapsed and crushed the worker to death.
It appears the plant and equipment on site has not been properly checked and the crew involved was not given induction.
Carr must act
Its time for Premier Carr to act. He must not allow safety to be compromised. He must take the lead by making sure all State Government projects comply with the safety standards.
He must also make sure WorkCover is out there in the field making sure all sites are safe for the workers. Its no point sending millions of dollars on advertising if the bosses keep risking the lives of workers.
by Andrew Casey
by Andrew Casey
by Catherine Bolger
At a hearing on 19 March, Deputy President Grayson of the NSW Industrial Relations Commission directed that Hatch P/L forthwith retract and/or suspend the operation of altered redundancy policy and that Hatch P/L consistent with industrial relations best practice restore the status quo for employees or ex-employees of BHP Engineering P/L.
Further Deputy President Grayson ordered that Hatch, APESMA and AMWU as quickly as is practicable enter into active negotiations in an attempt to find means of resolving differences which give rise to this industrial dispute and report back to the Commission on 29 March 2001.
APESMA Senior Industrial Officer, Catherine Bolger, said today "APESMA welcomes the decision of the NSW Industrial Relations Commission to direct Hatch to retract the unilateral changes it had made to ex-BHP employees redundancy entitlements. The changes Hatch attempted to impose on employees would have resulted in a loss of a minimum of 14.5 weeks pay to over 30 weeks pay if an ex BHP employee was made redundant."
"For an employee facing a tight labour market and increasing levels of unemployment a loss of 30 weeks pay has a significant affect on their family's ability to cope with redundancy" she added.
Ms Bolger said "Hatch has a moral and legal obligation to honour the commitments it made to staff during the sale process to continue the BHP redundancy policy."
Hatch senior management advised employees that the slashing of the Redundancy Policy had been endorsed by the President of BHP Steel, Mr Kirby Adams. The ACTU has called on
BHP to provide urgent clarification of BHP's position regarding the proposed change to Hatch employees redundancy entitlements.
"APESMA and the ACTU have called on BHP to ensure that commitments given to employees and their unions during the outsourcing or sale of BHP operations will be honoured." Ms Bolger added.
Offering those charged the union's full support TWU State Secretary Tony Sheldon has identified immediate action by the Federal Government to cut the pressures forcing long distance truck drivers over the edge as the only hope of keeping fatigued and drug affected drivers off the road.
"The actions of the Police and RTA on the weekend in just punishing drivers without investigating the reasons why they are on the road being forced to break the law to make a living is no solution when the real drug pushes in the industry are getting off scot free," Transport Workers Union NSW State Secretary Tony Sheldon said today.
"Without comparative penalties and blitzes on the companies and clients of the industry who set the demands and control and deadlines drivers are forced to meet nothing is going to change."
"It is ultimately these people who control the economics of the long distance industry that must be held responsible if we are ever going to reduce the number of drivers forced over the edge to make a living and the number of people killed in truck accidents on our roads."
"Accordingly, the TWU is calling on the Federal Government to immediately introduce an enforceable code of practice for the industry, including sustainable freight rates and provision for the clients of the industry to be held responsible for the drivers and freight their demands are putting on our roads," Mr Sheldon said.
"This weeks revelations of the joint Police and RTA operation Zulu on the NSW and Queensland borders charging over 150 long distance truck drivers with a variety of driving, fatigue and drug related offences should strike terror into the heart of every Australian road user."
"In this industry it is not uncommon for drivers to work in excess of 100hrs a week, drive for over 24 hours without a break and have to resort to drug use just to stay awake and if the authorities seriously want to make a difference then the Federal Government has to act," Mr Sheldon said.
Bill Mansfield, ACTU Assistant Secretary, said that the growth in demand for VET for apprentices and trainees throughout Australia meant that at least $150 million of growth funding was needed from the Federal Government to the States in 2001. Any lesser amount is likely to lead to a further reduction in training opportunities and school leavers being unable to obtain training places, said Mr Mansfield.
"The amount of growth funding in future years will need to take account of a range of factors including on-going demand levels and overall state and federal funding arrangements"
Earlier innovation policy announcements by the Federal Government did not acknowledge the importance of vocational education and training, Mr Mansfield said.
"The ACTU supports the continuation of the Australian National Training Authority. The current failure to reach agreement on growth funding will lead to problems for the national training reform agenda and will cause a serious fall in support for training across Australia.
"Growth in the national skills base must be a joint responsibility of the Federal and State/Territory governments. To meet its share, the Federal government has to commit at least $150 million to growth in the next year."
The collapse of HIH again highlights the importance of securing Federal legislation to protect all employee entitlements when a company goes into liquidation.
"While we hope, and will campaign to ensure that employee entitlements are protected in the HIH disaster, the collapse of the company and the anxiety of our members about their entitlements highlights the abject failure of the Federal Government to provide proper protection for Australian workers caught in this situation. They have been dragging their feet for too long on this issue", FSU National Secretary, Tony Beck said
While Management is informing the union that employee entitlements are secure, members are under the impression that entitlements to annual leave and long service leave will be lost. Members are also concerned about the company's ability to pay retrenchment payments to employees who end up without a job.
FSU has held initial discussions with HIH and QBE and have planned more in depth talks as soon as things become clearer. In the interim, the FSU will be urging NRMA and QBE to employ as many HIH employees as possible and insisting that those employees maintain all their years of service with HIH and all their entitlements.
Federation President Sue Simpson says the government has squandered an opportunity to show its commitment to public education.
"Whilst the Federation welcomes the production of a plan, teachers, parents and the community will need to be convinced that this is more than just a firesale of public assets, a real estate agent's solution to the crisis in confidence in public education in the inner city," Simpson says.
"The funding of the proposal relies on the closure of five public high schools and three public primary schools to pay for infrastructure improvements. This is robbing Peter to pay Paul. This shows the extent to which governments have allowed public education infrastructure to deteriorate.
"This proposal builds on the policy failures of the past. Over the last ten years and at a time of expanding enrolments in private schools Coalition and Labor governments have been engaged in piecemeal restructuring of our public schools not based on comprehensive and sound research.
Simpson says the Federation will conduct its own independent review if the Government continues to avoid coming to grips with past policy failures.
And she says substantial funding increases for public education in the May 29 State Budget must be provided to compensate for years of government neglect of its own public education system.
The Society may have fallen from its position of dominance in the IR debate, but it will still pull a congo-line of Tory support when it holds its 22nd Conference at Fairfield this weekend.
Costello, who made his name busting the meatworkers union at Mudginburra, will be on hand to present the inaugural Charles Copeman Medal to Barry and Moera Hammond "for distinguished service to the cause of freedom in the labour market."
Their achievement? Preventing their shearers becoming employees so they could join the AWU. Congratulations, Barry and Moera!
After the handshakes and photos, Workers Friend tony Abbott will regale the Swociety with his address titled "an address on workplace relations and values". As they say on SBS, can't wait for that one.
"The PM made no attempt to hide his delight when the NFF set up at Webb Dock, Melbourne three years back," said MUA National Secretary Paddy Crumlin.
"At the time McGauchie claimed it was a legitimate business enterprise, but before long it came to light it was all about training people to take over the waterfront after the failed Dubai debacle and the mass sackings. We believe the NFF enterprise was part of the conspiracy to do away with the MUA, just another sorry chapter in the Australian industrial mercenary saga. This appointment looks very much like the government rewarding them for their contribution."
The MUA National Secretary said of most concern for the wider Australian community was the implication of political appointments at a time when the Australian economy was on the brink.
"The P&C Group was never a viable business," said Mr Crumlin. "It folded within months of being set up. Yet one of its three directors is now being appointed to a crucial economic portfolio because he is a political mate. No wonder the joint is in a mess. The Australian people deserve better."
The 47-year-old sheep farmer faced the charges for his attack on a McDonald's restaurant under construction in Millau, southern France, in August 1999.
The action was in retaliation for trade sanctions against French farmers importing Rocquefort cheese into America. These sanction were to penalize France for blocking the import of American beef fed on genetically modified grains.
Lawyers for Bove and other defendants in the case had argued that the action was a symbolic, nonviolent protest against multinational corporations.
BBC reports Bove saing he'll appeal against the sentences to France's highest court, the Cour de Cassation, which reviews convictions on procedural grounds.
by Mary Yaager
It was a moving occasion as relatives of victims of workers who had recently died laid wreaths on the front steps.
One very emotional widow broke down as she laid a wreath beneath the photograph of her husband who had recently died.
The rally was to protest against James Hardie, a company responsible for exposing hundreds of workers to asbestos, and which now appears to be trying to get out of paying compensation.
In a highly charged speech, John Robertson, Assistant Secretary of Labor Council, detailed the shortcomings of James Hardie's proposal to limit the funds available for compensation of victims to asbestos related diseases.
John Robertson called upon James Hardie to meet with Unions and the Victim's Support Group to discuss the issue.
The company is yet to respond.
Shame James Hardie! Shame!
To achieve a just and fair society in our region we need strong and effective unions and this will be the focus of the conference which is being jointly sponsored by the ACTU, the Labor Council of NSW and the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions.
The conference will be held at the University of Sydney on Monday and Tuesday March 26 & 27 and features a list of local and international speakers who will address issues around the direction of unions in the region, campaigning, developing workplace leadership and organising strategies and techniques.
SPEAKERS: include ACTU president Sharan Burrow, ACTUI Secretary Greg Combet, NZCTU secretary Paul Goulter, NSW Labor Council president Sam Moaitt and Eugene Kostyra from the Canadian Union of Public Employees.
Rural Forum for Newcastle
The Transport Workers Union is hosting the second in a series of regional forums in Newcastle on Friday March 30.
Under the banner "Regional Australia Deserves a pay Rise' the forum is aimed to provide community and general interest groups an opportunity to discuss the necessity of improved wages in regional Australia.
It will be held on Friday March 30 from 11.00am to 1.00pm at Newcastle Workers Club, corner Union and King Streets.
Fair Wear
Thanks to everyone who have been sending postcards and letters to retailers - and let us know if you need more. The fruits of our labour are beginning to emerge as earlier this month Coles Myer (Grace Bros, Target, K Mart) agreed to send letters of encouragement to its manufacturers, supporting the No Sweat Shop Label - the first of the major retailers to do so.
For this reason, we are asking people to focus their attention on the remaining 3 major retailers:
Mr Peter Wilkinson, David Jones Pty Ltd, GPO Box 503 , Sydney NSW 2001
The Chief General Manager, Big W Discount Stores, City View Road, Pennant Hills, NSW 2120
Ms Amanda Brook, General Manager, Sussan, 20-40 Rosslyn St, West Melbourne, VIC 3003
March has also heralded the national launch of the No Sweat Shop Label in Melbourne, which went very well. We are planning t-shirts sporting the label, and will let you know when they're available.
The Fair School Wear Campaign will be conducting a training day in Sydney for primary and secondary school teachers and secondary school students - 'Speaking out for Justice'. It will be held on Tuesday, 22nd May 2001. There will be guest speakers and workshops including: public speaking; lobbying techniques; drama and street theatre; dealing with the media; and publishing. It looks like being a great day, so spread
the word, and contact Julia at the Fair Wear office - hit 'reply' or ph
(02) 9380 9091 for more details.
Launch of Overland
South Coast Writers' Centre
Top Floor, 93 Crown Street, (Town Hall Building) Wollongong
Sunday April 1 at 2 pm
The issue features a piece by Rowan Cahill on the Joy Dispute at Moss Vale. A number of the participants will be there to celebrate the victory achieved by the Moss Vale workers. Speakers will include Peter Wilson (president South Coast Labour Council) Nathan Hollier (associate editor, overland) and others.
Student Action
The NSW Branch of the National Union of Students needs your help!!
It only takes 10 minutes and one e-mail.
The Education References Committee of the Senate is inquiring into the health and quality of Australia's public universities.
EVERYONE IS ENTITLED TO MAKE A SUBMISSION.
A simple email with your thoughts or experiences of universities is more than enough. You might write about the problems those with work or family responsibilities face in accessing education, full fees and rising HECS, falling standards, attacks on staff, the difficulty of accessing welfare, problems with the campus libraries, or general
concerns about corporate interference or the more than one billion in Liberal funding cuts. Anything you like.
THE DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS IS MARCH 31.
We are attempting to organsie at least 250 submissions- which would be about half of the total submissions.
This is one case where you really can make a difference - so why not get it over with and do up a short email submission now?
ADDRESS THE SUBMISSION TO: mailto:[email protected]
YOU MUST INCLUDE YOUR FULL NAME, ADDRESS AND PHONE CONTACT.
So that NUS can keep its own catalogue of problems on campus, feel free to send a copy of the email to: mailto:[email protected]
Eveleigh Community Weekend
Saturday 21- Sunday 22 April 11am - 4pm
Australian Technology Park
Garden Street, Eveleigh
As part of the National Trust's Heritage Festival, the Australian Technology Park (ATP) in conjunction with the Powerhouse Museum, will be opening up the former Eveleigh Railway Yards to the public and celebrating the diverse community involved in the development of Eveleigh, and its present incarnation as the ATP.
The Eveleigh Community Weekend will feature the launch of the video "Steam Power", which looks at the development of the Eveleigh Railyards and the people who worked there. "Steam Power" will be launched by Mr Kevin Moss MP, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Transport and will be screened throughout the weekend. This video was produced by Dr Lucy Taksa, from the University of NSW, and Summer Hill Media.
The Powerhouse Museum will be exhibiting a number of important pieces of technology, from horsepower to steam power. The highlight of the display will be the Governor General's carriage, built at Eveleigh in 1901 and used to transport the Governor General and the Duke of Cornwall (later King George V) around NSW for the Federation celebrations.
The weekend will also provide the opportunity for past employees to catch up with former work mates and to revisit their place of work. The Eveleigh Employee Register, launched at the 1999 Eveleigh Reunion, will also be available for all former employees and their relatives to search and add details to.
The Eveleigh Community Weekend promises to be fun for all the family with exhibitions, tours of the site, folk music performances and lots more entertainment, as well as the chance to see how the old industrial buildings have been transformed into the state of the art ATP.
Admission is free and parking is available on site or alternatively people can catch the train to Redfern Station, which has direct access to the ATP.
The Eveleigh Community Weekend is sponsored by the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority and the Powerhouse Museum.
The ATP site is managed by the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority (SHFA). SHFA is responsible for property management and development and the heritage conservation of the ATP as well as other prominent NSW landmark precincts such as The Rocks, Circular Quay and Darling Harbour.
For further information please contact Claire Paddison or Laila Ellmoos at SHFA on 02 9240 8500. Fax No: (02)9240 8819 or E-mail: [email protected]
I was very interested in your article about AXA and the Wentworth Hotel in Sydney.
I worked for National Mutual for 8 and a half years. Then they decided to sell one of their subsidiaries to Suncorp in September/October 1994.
I think National Mutual and Suncorp wanted me to work for the subsidiary. I told both companies that my employment contract is with National Mutual.
I was asked by the HR manager at National Mutual to go to their offices on the day after the sale. I asked 'what will happen?'. The HR manager for National Mutual said I will get 4 or 5 weeks pay. They did not even bother to make an offer to me to transfer to the subsidiary. I decided not to take up their 'offer'.
I tried to get an employment contract with Suncorp. Suncorp did not give me a contract for the next 18 months. I found this situation extremely unpleasant and the behaviour of both companies irresponsible.
I recommend that people do not do business with either of these companies.
Ken Clarke
Dear Ed
HT Lee and others in Leichhardt have every right to be concerned about asbestos removal being carried out safely in their street. Several years ago my brother died an extremely painful death from asbestosis (?) He was in a Hospice in Perth at the end and was nursed with great care and tenderness until he died but he was only 58 and should have lived much longer had he not been exposed to asbestos back beginning in about 1959. It is a horribly painful death and I will never forget how he looked when he died and how angry I felt and still feel towards those who knew it was dangerous and deliberately exposed workers to the danger of asbestos. It should be banned completely and James Hardie should pay up proper compensation. My brother tried to get compensation but was unable to and his circumstances were such that his daughter was not able to be paid compensation either. It is a shocking way to die and many people will have lost out on their entitlement to compensation due!
to technicalities. Whoever is responsible should be accountable and pay up. In relation to your story one can only wonder why a supposedly "progressive" council like Leichhardt is doing employing non-union labour and endangering their rate payers. Shame Leichhardt Council Shame.
Yours sincerely
MAUREEN KING
****************************
Dear Workers Online,
I write to agree with your article entitled Leichhardt Council Endangers the public. As a Labor Councillor on Leichhardt Council I am seriously concerned that contractors engaged by the Council are endangering both there own workers and the local residents by not using proper safety control when handling asbestos. I believe that the problem stems from Council contracting out these services in the first place. The Labor Caucus has been raising the issue of the problems related to the contracting out of services for years.
Leichhardt Council, along with many other public sector employers have been reducing the amount of in house staff over several years (mainly by attrition), this has led to work being allocated to contractors instead of being performed by Council Staff. This removes the Council's ability to ensure that Occupational Health and Safety standards (as well as other award conditions such as fair pay, etc) are being adhered to.
This asbestos disaster has highlighted that contracting out just does not work. To address the issue the Labor Caucus will be moving a motion at the next ordinary Council meeting to create an agreement between the relevant unions and the Council on the engagement of fair contracts, ie, an agreement outlying that Council will only engage contractors that abide by the Award and OH&S legislation.
We will also be looking at the Council's ability to appoint inhouse staff to perform more of the general works and services of the Council. Hopefully the independent and Liberal Councillors will see this disaster for what it is and support our motion.
Yours Sincerly
Councillor Alice Murphy
by Zoe Reynolds
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What are the main challenges for the union this year?
Obviously, there are two industrial issues - the Patrick EBA and shipping. Moving into a new EBA that has the full support and involvement of the membership is important.
Everybody is generally aware of the difficulties facing the union during the negotiation of the EBA following the Patrick Dispute. There was tremendous pressure on us from the liquidators, political pressure and legal pressure. And there were some disadvantages in the agreement.
This year, the union is very keen to ensure that there is strong participation of the Patrick workforce. I think the main issue is permanency - ensuring that stevedoring workers have the protection that workers deserve - things like annual leave, long service leave and other entitlements. Workers need stability of employment, protection for them and their families. Generally they should know they will be working next year and the year after. Job security is fundamental to the dignity of workers.
Patrick should see it as good for business. If you have workers that go to work with fear in their belly not knowing what their status may be from day to day or from ship to ship, that's no good in developing a business outcome and productivity. It is fundamental to the stevedoring industry that these matters are resolved in the upcoming EBA.
In shipping, the fundamental issue is the Federal Government's determination to destroy the Australian shipping industry. They've got an inherent hatred for organised labour and they are prepared to destroy an industry to get at the workers.
We have to make sure that the Australian domestic industry continues to be serviced by Australian flagged and crewed ships and not by ships registered in tax havens employing subsidised guest labourers in violation of the Migration Act and other Australian legislation.
That's a tremendous challenge for us. The government policy is to weaken the commercial resolve of Australian shipowners in the industry - to drive them out.
The first thing they did was remove ALP legislation in support of Australian shipping. Six years later they have done nothing to replace it.
Australian shipping policy has become the laughing stock in the world of shipping regulators. Seven or eight years ago, after the ships of shame inquiry, Australia was seen as a world leader. Howard and Reith - that gang has decimated our shipping reputation.
It is an enormous challenge for the union to maintain the support that the industry needs to ride out this political cycle.
How are you going to convince someone like Corrigan that you are going to get better productivity by giving people more permanent jobs when he's been boasting for the past two years that it's because he sacked the workers and changed work practices that he's got the crane rate up from 15 to 25.
I'm not sure he boasts about sacking people.
He does claim that the dispute led to high productivity and changed work practices.
That places him in a very ambiguous position because he's been saying very loudly that productivity in his workplace is best practice, that these things have been delivered and the workers have delivered them.
If the workers have delivered higher productivity, the workers also have entitlement to some of the wealth that they have created. And if Corrigan wants to make productivity sustainable, then he has to give workers conditions of employment, including stability of employment, so that they are able to make a long term contribution to the business.
Chris Corrigan has talked up his share price and said very widely how well his business is doing. From the MUA's point of view, workers have got a right to share in that wealth. We're prepared to maintain productivity as long as the workplace is safe. This has always been the case. Productivity in the modern world should be welcomed because it should translate into job security and decent conditions of work.
Corrigan has got some responsibility in meeting us in the next round agreements by insuring that the conditions of employment for stevedoring workers are improved. Our fundamental position is permanency for the workforce.
Job security?
Job security. True permanency and the stabilising of the home lives and working lives of workers and their families. Otherwise we will be in fundamental disagreement.
How about shipping. How are you going to change a government that is just not interested in maintaining Australian shipping - or is it a matter of changing government?
Well, that's obviously one of the fundamental political challenges for the union this year - a change in Federal Government. I believe this government has relinquished its moral and political right to govern. They have cynically divided and manipulated the Australian community. They are racist, sexist and anti-labour in the truest sense. Anti-worker. They have diminished, isolated and polarised Australians.
It is extremely important that people identify the vacuum of moral, political and intellectual leadership residing in Canberra so the Australian electorate does something about it.
Australian shipping is fundamental to the Australian economy and our national interest. The government position is contradictory. On one hand they are prepared to put tens of billions of dollars into defence to maintain John Howard's 'Fortress Australia', on the other hand they allow the wealth of this country - the imports and exports - and the fundamental business of this country to be controlled by foreign interests that their defence policy is supposed to be protecting us from. So there's tremendous hypocrisy.
In the US shipping is a bipartisan policy. Republicans and Democrats identify the US can't be an economic powerhouse without having fundamental safeguards in protecting their shipping services.
Given that there are now two state elections in progress and the federal election later this year, how are we going to get involved in helping change the government?
The wonderful conference of MUA and miners delegates in Newcastle in December committed to furthering the interest of members of both unions by joint activity, particularly in the upcoming federal elections. It's got to be a priority for miners and maritime workers to throw these bastards out of office.
We are able to draw together our resources. Miners have pledged $450,000 for that election campaign already. Having levies and making sure that Labor has got sufficient funds to get their message across is very important.
Have we allocated money to this campaign?
That is something that National Council is going to have to consider very carefully in April. Our resources are being diminished by the Howard Government. Our legal bill last year was $600,000. Another three or four years of industrial debacle or legal debacle would mean tremendous amounts of the workers' resources wasted in the Federal and the High courts defending members in the only real way the Workplace Relations Act give us, which is legally.
How are you to go about overcoming problems like falling membership, casualisation, infiltration of non-union labour in ports and other sectors of the industry, rising costs, the union deficit?
For all those problems, the union is in very good shape. I would say that in the trade union movement in this country, the MUA continues to be one of the better organised and viable unions. We've got tremendous loyalty and sense of identity inside the union, a great history and tradition, a very hard working and loyal team leading the union and good relationships with the rank & file.
I think that those other issues are generally facing all trade unions in the modern world. That's because capitalism is more powerful and resourced and strategic in its thinking than ever before. And they often target unions as a business virus, seeing us as an impediment to their continuing drive for growth at any cost.
We're dealing with some pretty big economic outfits here. Some of these big multinationals have got the economic horsepower of Australia. Their campaigns tend to be constructed in the boardrooms of London and New York and are basically about eliminating any opposition. This is what I call economic fascism. It is increasingly unacceptable to the world community.
Transnationals are not democratic. They are very ruthless in their corporate determination. They've got absolutely no values other than the so-called shareholder values. There is a tendency to do nothing about the environment or human rights unless they are forced to.
Unions are not about individuals, they are about families, working men and women with limited resources. Their fundamental resource is their capacity to come together in their own collective interest.
So we have unions@work. We are going back to the rank and file, making sure that the delegate system is functional and important in the workplace and in the union structure, making sure that the branch structure is a fundamental unit, that there is proper training and involvement and debate and organisation at that level.
We are taking our union back into the workplace, back into the home and back into the community with the focus away from the Sussex Street offices.
Think of the Viet Cong tactics against the US during the Vietnam War. They did not have the same resources and capacity as the US, but they had a great belief in themselves, a great moral fortitude that what they were doing was right. People were fighting for what they believed in. The international community understood the nature of this struggle, finally. This was important in bringing the war to a close.
The difference between unions and some of these big transnational employers is that we believe in what we're doing. So even a small union like the MUA has a tremendous moral advantage.
I'm optimistic about the future. The world has changed for good. There will be a response from the billions of human beings who are increasingly being put under the hammer of the so-called new world order. The MUA should continue to be at the forefront of this community response.
Where do you get your inspiration from?
I am a socialist. Things like (super funds) SERF and the SRF demonstrate that collectivism works. Workers combine their wealth, organise management structures so that their wealth is properly administered and so are able to improve their lives wonderfully.
There is no difference between the management of cooperative efforts like the Maritime Workers' Credit Union, the SRF and SERF and broadening our perspective into a much larger economic model. It is the ability of workers to actively and cooperatively be involved in a process of creating wealth in our own interest. That is fundamental to my belief. How capitalism deals with these challenges will shape this century
Who has been your greatest source of inspiration?
People who have put other people ahead of their own interests. It happens at every level. In literature writers like Charles Dickens, Manning Clarke, Germaine Greer and Grahame Green who developed a compassionate understanding of the human condition.
Marx had a clear vision of positive human development at a critical time in history. Suffragettes like Pankhurst and Baynes. Revolutionary leaders like Nelson Mandela and Ho Chi Minh. Black leaders Martine Luther King, Pat Dodson and Kevin Cook from Tranby.
People as diverse as peace activist Helen Caldicott, artist Micheal Lunig and singer Bob Geldoff. Hard working and consistent politicians like Tom Uren and Carmen Lawrence.
My family, especially Gail, who has perservered with the ugly side of political life and still believes in its greater purpose.
Of course, maritime leaders Jim Healy and Elliot V Elliot who led maritime workers out of poverty, have been a great source of inspiration, as have Pat Geraghty and John Coombs.
And it's not necessarily just people on the labour movement who inspire me. A bloke like Governer General WIlliam Dean bring much solace to people due to his compassion.
There's people dotted all over the place that help you keep your chin up and keep going. The Patrick workers and all those people on the picket. The green protester up in Cairns and the MUA member down in Adelaide who covered themselves in oil to draw public attention to ships of shame.
It's all a matter of conscience and ticker. That's what I find inspirational.
Can you think of anything back as a boy that you can still remember vividly that headed you in this direction?
I come from a strong Irish Catholic tradition - a republican tradition. In our family Catholicism was all about people accepting some sort of moral responsibility. A number of people in my family have gone into following the church as priests and nuns due to philosophical commitment.
Moving in that environment and having been in contact with people who believe in a liberation philosophy affected me. But these days I don't consider myself to be religiously inclined in a structured way. I'd rather direct my energies towards building a practical and effective community of interest.
Can you think of something that was formative in making you who you are now?
I think it is mainly coming from a big working class family where there were very few resources. My father and mother were both strong trade unionists. She was a teacher and he was a seafarer. We always understood that the ability to put shoes on your feet or to get an education is about people working collectively.
I come from Peakhurst in Sydney. It is a working class suburb. People had community models that would keep you out of the nick or out of the pub 24 hours a day.
Could you give an example of how that works?
I would call it the Australian fair go, which is tending to disappear in Howard's Australia. For example, the street that we lived in was a housing commission area. And I remember whenever there was personal tragedy that struck within a family, like the boy who died over the road, his family's struggle to meet the funeral expenses as well as the emotional loss at that time drew the whole street together.
These days they send you to counselling or therapy. But in those days you'd come together in the backyard and knock the top off the flag ale and eat the cakes. Kids would be playing cricket on the road because there were very few cars and that was a way to draw together all sorts of different religious and political backgrounds.
If there was a serious domestic dispute, the community would go out and support the battered wife in very real ways, sometimes by confronting the drunken husband or by giving refuge to the children.
So those are the things that resonate very deeply in me. If workers are going to be able to meet their needs, then they need to pull together in this traditional sense.
Going to sea and joining the Seamen's Union was also a big influence on me. Up until then I'd been a casual worker. I did some fishing, making surfboards, seasonal work.
To come into the Seamen's Union and see the level of protection and get an aggregate wage as a young man with a young family and secure my first home almost immediately on gaining permanency affected me tremendously.
It demonstrates clearly some of the dramatic reversals ahead for stevedoring and seafaring workers. Employers are seeking to casualise jobs and to take away the things that changed my life as a young parent going away to sea.
My exposure to the old Marxist leadership of the Seamen's Union and the ability to travel overseas and get experience in international political work was tremendously invigorating. It opened my eyes to class struggle - the great polarisation of wealth and poverty endemic to the modern world.
What brought that home to you?
Working alongside unionists from Chille who were subsequently murdered. Meeting people who lived in fear of their lives for no other reason than that they were seeking better working conditions or their right to bargain collectively.
Being exposed to people committed to international workers' rights and human rights changes your life. So I am very keen on having the rank & file of the MUA continue to be involved in a very real and meaningful way internationally. Otherwise you can't combat the worst excesses of global capitalism.
Would you say that probably your greatest personal challenge is coming across to the membership, not just as a seafarer but as a leader of both wharfies and seafarers? Some wharfies out there might think - oh, he's just a seafarer it's going to be a seafarer's union, now. How are you going to overcome these perceptions?
I always hope that being elected unopposed in the 1999 election demonstrated that the membership had some understanding of me and had drawn some conclusions. I'd like to think that.
Like all officials, I was actively involved in the Patrick Dispute and managed the Fremantle picket line. As everybody subjected to the trauma of the Patrick picket line, I developed an understanding of issues facing stevedoring workers. I formed great friendships. The Patrick dispute was not about S&W it was about workers' rights.
I intend to be involved in the negotiation of the Patrick agreement and stevedoring policy. As national secretary, it's my responsibility. I am happy to assume that responsibility and in doing so I'm going to have to deliver together with Mick O'Leary, Mick Doleman and Jim Tannock.
One person doesn't make a union. The team includes the delegates and the branches, national council, our special meetings and other forums.
The reality of things is that S&W is now gone in the union. Workers in an amalgamated union have a responsibility to put the most effective person in office. And it is the responsibility of the union to make sure that that person is properly trained in every aspect of the union's operations.
In some areas, you find officers still tend to stay in their traditional areas of industrial involvement. But in South Australia, Port Kembla, Tasmania and Newcastle where there is a single full time officer, we see a tremendous amount of integration and a respect from every element of the workers.
I intend to continue to build momentum and go forward with that agenda with the National Council.
Does that include amalgamation?
Future amalgamation? Time, circumstance and place would determine what workers want in the union. If we are unable to have a militant union, fully capable of going and protecting our life in the workplace legally, industrially and economically, if we are unable to go and support and defend workers in this country and internationally, well then we need to build and strengthen our union by bringing in more resources.
That decision will be made by the membership.
I know that there are organisations out there - the miners and others, willing to work alongside us. And we are strongly supportive of working alongside them to make sure that amalgamation is only a word. Sharing resources and working collectively in the community of interest is more fundamental to me than some notion of another marriage. If we are able to get those collective efforts with the miners, other maritime unions and other like minded people within the community, the future will look after itself.
As one of the youngest blokes to head the union what are you bringing to the union in the 21st century.
I believe that the union must go back to a strong rank and file organised and collective effort. Our resources should be focused on giving the delegates training and all the other resources needed so that they can be effective defenders and advocates of workers' rights.
I'm a strong believer that the future of trade unionism in this country is about workers identifying that the union is real, available and supportive in their daily lives and in their work. I don't think that is different to the way the union has operated previously.
What about the internet? How do you think the union movement can use this new technology?
The ability of workers to use the internet is very important. All of this new technology is not just a tool to make money. One of the great things about the internet is it has created a more democratic and communicative world. People can get information and find out things without having the Murdochs and the Packers of this world filtering information.
The internet is a wonderful opportunity for the union to actively communicate and be involved with the members and the members with each other. All of these issues of communication and education are tied around a very strong IT policy - a strong, creative and active internet policy.
The website, a regular news service, the ability for workers to talk to each other and their officials and communicate via an international network from sea or remote areas, places workers in a strong position. Virtual organising is very important.
The Patrick Dispute showed us that you can't take unions out of the community. You can attempt to remove their right to industrial action, but there are always alternatives out there. And the community pickets - the willingness of people to take civil action, demonstrates that if unions are going to continue to be effective, they need to be community based.
Unionism is a force in the community and a form of collective interest. We need to continue to go with the green movement, in particular. It has an obvious synergy with our Ships of Shame campaign. The environment is our common home to be nurtured and protected.
In other areas we need to strongly identify in our campaigns that unionism is community. This not only greatly energises the union movement, it energises the community. It gives people an alternative analysis of the world they live in. It helps unionism and it helps community politics.
Could this philosophy of living amongst the people be extended to the environment?
We live in a world of diminishing resources. Somewhere along the line our world will collapse in upon itself unless fundamental issues, like unregulated economic growth, are dealt with.
The signs are there - pollution, global warming. The world is finite and globalism is now being met by a global people's initiative. This places unionism in a very strong leadership position, with very grave responsibilities. It's got to be accepted that unionism goes far beyond the needs of the workplace. It goes down to the needs of people who are seeking answers in a rapidly changing and crisis-ridden world.
We realise that the answers are out there in a much larger collective and I'd like to think that that's going be an important priority of my stewardship in the union.
AWU Glassworkers� NSW Sub-Branch Secretary John Gorrie, ACI Delegate Maureen Whitty and AWU National Women�s Committee co-ordinator Katherine Wild |
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I don't hit 'em hard - I just plug away at it. Some of the guys charge in, pounding the desk, but I find it's more effective to wear them down." As the AWU's senior delegate at ACI Glass Packaging, Maureen Whitty has had plenty of experience in bringing management around to her point of view.
And according to John Gorrie, the AWU Glassworkers' NSW Sub-Branch Secretary, Maureen has been remarkably successful. "Maureen's brought the credibility and profile of the union up in leaps and bounds. Getting people their right pay classifications, taking up members' issues with management. She's fixed a lot of outstanding problems."
Maureen is a Lead Hand Verifier with 16 years experience with the company. She checks the long rows of bottles for defects as they parade past her on the conveyor belt like obedient soldiers. Many familiar shapes trundle past her eye - for tomato sauce, beer and Coke, the distinctive shapes of wine and spirit bottles, jars for salad dressings and mayonnaise. 3 million bottles a day march down the rows for clients that include Carlton United Breweries, Lion Nathan and Masterfoods.
Challenging role
Maureen says she "thoroughly enjoys" her role as delegate. "It was a challenge" to take it on, but she soon grew to love "making management toe the line." Currently she is assisting John Gorrie negotiate manning levels for the Packaging Centre where new technology has, as so often, increased productivity demands.
Across Australia, the Glassworkers' Branch has around 2,500 members, with 800 in New South Wales. John Gorrie says the members, coming from a union long established by the time of its 1993 amalgamation with the AWU, are devoted to their identity as glassworkers. The Australian Glassworkers Union was formed in 1909, and the members continue, as John Gorrie says, "to support officials who've come up from the shop floor, and who know the industry."
25% of the 230 AWU members at ACI Glass Packaging's Penrith (NSW) plant are women. Of the 12 AWU delegates on site, 3 are women. Maureen has had 6 years experience as a delegate; she says a few of the men have not always welcomed representation from a woman delegate, but "I don't let it bother me". The fact that Maureen has spent the last two years as senior delegate is a clear recognition of support from the ACI membership. There are two women who sit on the NSW sub-branch executive, Julie Murray from ACI Penrith and Sheila Wardle at Crown Scientific. "The Glassworkers branch has had a tradition of women activists for some time", John Gorrie says.
Indirect discrimination?
AWU National Women's Committee co-ordinator Katherine Wild says that while there is no deliberate discrimination against women workers at ACI, the 12 hour shifts worked by production staff amounts to a form of "indirect discrimination".
"Some women have family responsibilities which can make it difficult to work 12 hour shifts. If they work in the non-production side of the plant - as verifiers and other aspects of quality control, they usually work 8 hour day shifts and consequently earn less."
The production area of the plant presents as a traditionally industrial and male workplace - hard, dirty work, in an extremely hot environment. For 12 hours a shift, 24 hours a day, the blokes in bandannas keep a weather eye on "the ware" - the fiercely glowing bottles that pour like fire balls down the production line, before being trapped in a mould and blown into the required shape. From time to time a suspect bottle - where the glass has flowed unevenly - is seized for inspection with a serious pair of tongs. The bottle is still so soft with heat that it squeezes like a tube of toothpaste.
Family responsibilities
The division of male and female work zones is also reflected in the ratios of male and female delegates. "Family responsibilities also usually mean that young women often can't involved as union delegates. You notice that as their children get older, these women become quite passionate about being involved as delegates."
Katherine Wild stresses that these gender equity issues are not unique to ACI. "Twelve hour shifts are common in enterprise agreements. They reflect the way society is structured, maintaining the role of the male breadwinner."
To address these issues in AWU workplaces, the AWU has established a National Women's Committee. Katherine says "the aim of the committee is to provide a forum for AWU women, encouraging ideas and programs that can be implemented for their benefit."
The Committee could certainly learn from Maureen Whitty's experience, and her determination to keep plugging away, "little by little", to deliver benefits for her work mates. "Most problems", Maureen says, "are solved through conciliation."
Mark Morey |
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Labor Council is concerned that the current Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA) assessment of potential employers for Business (Short Stay) (456) visa and Business (Long Stay) (457) visa and the monitoring of the employment conditions under which these visa holders are working are not adequately addressed by the DIMA. Labor Council does not accept that the monitoring of the conditions under which these people, such as the stonemasons worked and lived were the responsibility of State authorities.
Workers who enter Australia are granted access because the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs assessed that their sponsors were prepared to accept the obligations and responsibilities for these workers. It is the Australian Federal Government who grants their work visas and thus is guaranteeing that their assessment of the potential employers of such people are willing and able to meet their obligations. It is the role of the Federal Government and the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs to monitor and review these employers and in doing so should make available to trade unions the locations of all such workers. There also needs to be a stronger test for employers than is currently being undertaken by DIMA.
A range of cases being dealt with by affiliated unions - Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (Construction and General Division), Australian Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union (NSW Branch), Transport Workers Union of Australia (New South Wales Branch) - indicates that the current process is not ensuring workers brought to Australia on Business visas are being adequately protected from exploitation.
Business (Long Stay) (457) visas are for long-term temporary business and skilled entry (for up to four years) to work in Australian companies or to set up a new business or branch of an overseas company; and Business (Short Stay) (456) visas are for genuine business visitors seeking a short-term entry to Australia for business purposes (up to three months at a time).
Over the past couple of months Labor Council has received a number of complaints from affiliates in relation to employers exploiting workers brought to Australia on Business Visas. The latest case involves eight stonemasons brought to Australia to work on a Hindu Temple at Helensburg. The workers held Business (Long Stay) (457) visas and were only receiving $45 pay a week, plus $100 was being sent home to their families. They were also living in temporary illegal accommodation on the site. These work practices had been in existence for over three years with no apparent monitoring by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA) in relation to the work and industrial conditions under which these people lived and worked.
Before an employer is approved as a sponsor they must be able to demonstrate that the business:
1. is a lawfully and actively operating business
2. is the direct employer of the temporary business entrant
3. is able to meet sponsorship undertakings
4. will benefit Australia through the employment of a temporary resident
5. will advance skills through technology training
6. agrees to abide by the sponsorship undertakings"
The Labor Council of NSW is particularly concerned with points 1,3 and 6.
Lawfully And Actively Operating Business
There is a need for greater emphasis on assessing whether the principles of a business wishing to sponsor overseas workers have ever been involved in conduct where they have failed to provide workers with their legal entitlements or have breached any relevant State or Federal industrial responsibilities.
It is essential that DIMA is able to ensure that no employer or director of any company intending to sponsor workers has participated in exploiting local or overseas workers. Many of the overseas workers are vulnerable as they are without social or professional networks that would enable them to seek assistance or representation should they stop receiving their entitlements or in more serious cases, face intimidation by their sponsor.
Ability To Meet Sponsorship Undertakings
Labour Council does not believe that DIMA is in a position to effectively undertake the monitoring of businesses and their ability to meet sponsorship undertakings for Business visa holders. There is a need for sponsors to provide a bond of entitlements for each worker they sponsor to work in Australia. This will ensure that there is a serious commitment from businesses to the need for skilled labour from overseas and secondly, will provide a safety net for workers who may be exploited.
Under Temporary Business Entry, employers agree to meet a number of sponsorship obligations including:
� meet financial obligations to the Commonwealth;
� comply with Australian industrial relations laws and levels of remuneration and conditions of employment;
� accept financial responsibility for all medical and hospital costs
� be responsible for repatriation costs for sponsored persons and their dependants
� co-operate fully in any change in circumstances that may affect the capacity of the business to honour its sponsorship obligations
As part of the monitoring process, sponsors could forward wage and superannuation receipts to the Tax Office. The Tax Office could then notify DIMA of any discrepancies in sponsor payments. Such discrepancies could then be investigated by DIMA. Without such safe guards such visa holders are far more susceptible to exploitation especially if they are employed in industries where their ability to advocate is severely reduced.
Labor Council is concerned about the level of power individual sponsors have to revoke worker's visas. Such power places workers in very tenuous position should they wish to complain about the treatment they are receiving from their sponsor or sponsoring organisation.
In order to address the limited amount of information workers entering Australia under Business visas receive in relation to their employment rights, such visa holders should receive a "Working In Australia" information package translated into their own language.
The information package should contain, at a minimum, the following information:
� a copy of the industrial Award under which they will be employed;
� information on superannuation and how it operates in Australia; and
� contact numbers for appropriate advocacy and service bodies including:
� contact details of the local Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs Office [including a contact name or appropriate section]
� contact details for the relevant union covering their area of work; and
� contact details of an appropriate peak NESB organisation or appropriate community association.
Labour Agreements
Currently Labour Agreements are formal arrangements negotiated between the Commonwealth Government (represented by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs and the Department of Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business), employers (eg industries, employer organisations and specific employers) with unions being included as "optionally other interested parties".
Labor Council believes it is important for unions to be involved in the formulation of Labour Agreements to ensure that overseas recruitment is not contrary to the improvement of employment and training opportunities for Australians. Unions are ideally placed to support and assist in the development of appropriate employment, education, training and career path progression of Australian workers prior to entering into an agreement.
In addition, unions are ideally placed to identify existing and emerging workplace vacancies and skill shortages. The involvement of unions would significantly increase the ability of Labour Agreements to more effectively identify skill shortages, which in turn will benefit apprentices, trainees and workers, individual businesses and the Australian economy. A commitment to the development of formal training targeting skills shortages will increase the diversity of the skills base within Australia while developing additional career paths.
Mark Morey is the Labor Council's Productive Diversity. This is an edited version of the Labor Council's submission to Department of Immigration's Review of Residents Visas
by Andrew Casey
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The incident occurred last Saturday ( March 17), the day the hotel re-opened with the use of scab labour. Kuok is the name of the Malaysian-born owner of the Shangri-La hotel and resort chain which has been at war with its workforce since before Christmas.
One pregnant Hotel worker, Rita Sunanti, who works at one of the Shangri-la hotel's restaurants was assaulted by police and has miscarried in hospital as a result of the beating.
A number of hotel stewards and housekeeping staff had to have stitches following wild police beatings around their head and neck area.
Many other union members were bruised and battered in a melee started by a combined force of riot police, tourist police, an elite mobile police force on motor bikes, and undercover police operatives.
Lawyers, from the Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights Association and the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute, said in a statement after the rally that police failed to remain neutral in the labor dispute between the hotel management and workers.
Lawyers demanded that police officers who took part in dispersing rally be dismissed for their "brutal actions in response to a peaceful rally".
Victims go to hospital
At least 15 protesters were injured when police officers moved in to disperse the demonstrators, who were protesting the hotel's reopening after a three-month closure.
The injuries were such that all the victims of the police assault had to go to the nearby Sint Carolus Hospital to have their wounds attended to by nurses and doctors.
The Shangri-La Jakarta hotel has been closed since Dec 22 last year, when about 1000 workers were locked out of their jobs by a management unwilling to negotiate with the independent hotel union.
Last Saturday the hotel union members carried a number of mock coffins with Robert Kuok's name emblazoned on the side and the name of one of his Indonesian partners, Osbert Lyman.
" We did it to symbolise the death of humanity, the death of ordinary human feelings shown by these managers and owners to their workforce," a member of the Shangri-La independent hotel union SPMS explained.
450 in protest march
There were about 450 hotel union members involved in the protest march outside the Shangri-La hotel.
Earlier in the day about 50 members of the elite mobile police corps had surrounded the hotel to protect it from demonstrators. Throughout the day they were backed up by more than 200 other police units, as well as the hotel owners security guards.
Before the melee caused by the police attack on several hundred union members the hotel workers had marched peacefully to the central city site where the Shangri-La hotel is based, shouting slogans such as "We are ready to work right now".
About 150 meters from the front yard of the hotel the police blocked the march and the workers stopped to sing union songs, shout slogans and hear speeches condemning the activities of the hotel management.
The commander of the police promised to try to get the management to talk with a delegation but after an hour nothing seemed to happen.
Police tried to block off the demonstrators with their heavy presence, but when the workers decided to take an alternative route the police got visibly angry and demanded the workers immediately disperse arguing they were blocking a major road.
The coffins
The coffin with Robert Kuok's and Osbert Lyman's names on them were brought to the front of the marchers who started to move forward .
Three lines of riot police were brought in to confront the workers - backed up by the elite mobile police, the tourist police and the undercover operatives.
At that point the riot police started the pushing and shoving and kicking with shield and sticks.
After about half an hour of this melee the workers had been pushed back, and the police commander announced that the management had agreed to meet a union delegation.
But when the five person union delegation arrived at the entrance of the hotel they were informed - as they have been told several times before - there would be no negotiations with the union.
The company was relying on what they said were the Indonesian legal processes to bring an end to the dispute.
Send protest e-mails now
Send a protest message today to the Indonesian Government's Minister of Manpower Al Hilal Hamdi .
E-mail him at: mailto:[email protected]
Send a protest message today to the Chief Executive and Managing Director of Shangri-La Hotels and Resosrts Mr. Giovanni Angelini.E-mail him at: mailto:[email protected]
by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
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It helps companies immeasurably that the law in the United States and in many other countries confers upon them the same rights as human beings.
In the United States, this personhood treatment, established most importantly in a throwaway line in an 1886 Supreme Court decision, protects the corporate right to advertise (including the tobacco companies' right to market their deadly wares), corporations' ability to contribute monetarily to political campaigns, and interferes with regulators' facility inspection rights (via corporate rights against unreasonable search and seizure).
But even more important than the legal protections gained by faux personhood status are the political, social and cultural benefits.
Companies aggressively portray themselves as part of the community (every community), a friendly neighbor. If they succeed in that effort at self-characterization, they know what follows: a dramatically diminished likelihood of external constraints on their operations. If a corporation is part of the community, then it is entitled to the same freedoms available to others, and the same presumption of non-interference that society
appropriately affords real people.
Especially because corporations work so aggressively and intentionally to obscure the point, it is crucial to draw attention to the corporation as an institution with unique powers, motivations and attributes, and to point to the basic differences between human beings and the socially constituted and authorized institutions called corporations.
Here are 10 differences between corporations and real people:
1. Corporations have perpetual life.
2. Corporations can be in two or more places at the same time.
3. Corporations cannot be jailed.
4. Corporations have no conscience or sense of shame.
5. Corporations have no sense of altruism, nor willingness to adjust their behavior to protect future generations.
6. Corporations pursue a single-minded goal, profit, and are typically legally prohibited from seeking other ends.
7. There are no limits, natural or otherwise, to corporations' potential size.
8. Because of their political power, they are able to define or at very least substantially affect, the civil and criminal regulations that define the boundaries of permissible behavior. Virtually no individual criminal has such abilities.
9. Corporations can combine with each other, into bigger and more powerful entities.
10. Corporations can divide themselves, shedding subsidiaries or affiliates that are controversial, have brought them negative publicity or pose liability threats.
These unique attributes give corporations extraordinary power, and makes the challenge of checking their power all the more difficult. The institutions are much more powerful than individuals, which makes all the more frightening their single-minded profit maximizing efforts.
Corporations have no conscience, or has been famously said, no soul. As a result, they exercise little self-restraint. Exacerbating the problem, because they have no conscience, many of the sanctions we impose on individuals - not just imprisonment, but the more important social norms of shame and community disapproval - have limited relevance to or impact on corporations.
The fact that corporations are not like us, their very unique characteristics, makes crucially important the development of an array of controls on corporations. These include: precise limits on corporate behaviors (such as actively enforced environmental, consumer, worker safety regulations); limits on corporate size and power (through vigorous antitrust and pro-competition policy, including limits on the scope of intellectual property protections); restrictions and prohibitions on corporate political activity (including through comprehensive campaign finance reform); carefully tailored civil and criminal sanctions responsive to the particular traits of corporations including denying wrongdoing companies the ability to bid for government contracts; equity fines - fines paid in stock, not dollars; creative probation, with a court-appointed ombudsman given authority to order specific changes in corporate activities; and restrictions on corporations' ability to close or move facilities.
There is also the permanent challenge of building countervailing centers of people power to balance concentrated corporate power: unions above all, plus consumer, environmental, indigenous rights and other civic groups, organized in conventional and novel formations.
And there is the imperative of directly confronting the corporate claim to personhood and community neighbor status - both in the law and in the broader culture.
This is the beginning of a sketch of an ambitious agenda, but there is no alternative, if democracy is to be rescued from the corporate hijackers who masquerade as everyday citizens.
Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999)
by Neale Towart
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Steel making will be an even smaller part of its future, if a part at all. Its origins were in mining with the move to steel being propelled by G.D.Delprat and then most forcefully by Essington Lewis. The wonderful play Essington Lewis - I Am Work by John O'Donoghue with music by Allan McFadden (last performed in Sydney at Belvoir St (about the time of the announcement of the closure of the Newcastle works) by the Hunter Valley Theatre Company, who had first performed it in 1987 (based around Geoffrey Blainey's The Steel Master) captured Lewis' driving role in making BHP into more than a mining company, and his importance in manufacturing industry expansion in Australia up to and after World War II.
The play and Blainey's biography show that Lewis was a visionary in many ways, but certainly not in the way BHP treated its employees.
Eric Aarons provided a different kind of searchlight on the ways of BHP in 1960-61, the occasion of BHP's 75 anniversary.
Tax Free Capital Gains
Aarons carefully examines BHP's declared profits and earnings and looks behind those to see how much the company is making in reality, using clever accountants to reduce profit figures, keeping dividends to shareholders low (there was no imputation then so dividends were properly taxed). Capital gains were not taxed, and this was the main method used to conceal profits. Aarons finds that the total amount of cash subscribed by BHP shareholders in its 75 year history was �60m. The total value of shares in 1961 was �315m so a tax-free capital gain of �255m results. The value of shares in 1940 was �25m, showing a huge increase up to 1961. Company tax paid in that time was �75m in total.
From this amount Aarons calculates that profit before tax was �210m and true net profit was �135m, more than double the disclosed �70m. These don't look like big numbers in terms of the billions involved in the current merger, but BHP's dominance and total control of steel making and marketing in Australia (protected by governments) made it a huge part of the Australian economy.
On top of the �255m tax-free capital gain, BHP made a bonus share issue at the end of 1960 - one share for two held - and wrote up the value of its fixed assets. BHP said the asset revaluation would considerably exceed the amount required for the paid share issue. If we say that the issue was half of the �315m mentioned as the value of shares in 1961, that is �157.5m.
Aarons calculates that the net capital gain has been �400m over 75 years but �350m has been revealed in the past 10 years, plus �30m in dividend payments. "That is, BHP shareholders have made about �380m total rake-off in 10 years without doing a tap of work, while tens of thousands of workers who toil in the heat and glare of the furnaces, on the ships and down the mines received only �300m in wages during the same period."
This can be shown by the value added by workers in the "smelting, converting, refining and rolling of iron and steel" industry. In 1957-8 new value added by labour was �70.4m, with wages paid �31.5m. After allowing for depreciation the monopolists share was �36.2m. Director's fees and salaries for the top brass are not included in the wages figure.
BHP Fails Australia
The Big Australian regularly failed Australia, Aarons shows. The company did not feel impelled to ensure that Australia was adequately supplied with steel, despite its huge profits. Many times Australia had run short during BHP's sole reign over the industry. The steel shortage was partly the cause of Menzies political difficulties in 1960-1 when a credit squeeze was imposed. The cost of importing the product was a huge drain on foreign currency reserves.
Corporate Connections
The extent of monopoly and interlocking interests in traced by Aarons. He lists the major shareholders and the directors of BHP, showing their other corporate connections. A chain of association that covers all forms of steel making and steel products, the cement industry, aircraft manufacture, chemicals, fertilizer, road building, grain milling and sale, insurance, wool broking and banking. (Essington Lewis was still there at the time, although Aarons notes that although he is very wealthy, his interests are in BHP and technical assistance to the Board).
As with John Howard's great play on the rise of a share-owning community, BHP made much of its 65,000 shareholders, disguising the fact that most shares were in the hands of multimillionaires.
Corporate Welfare
Corporate welfare has never been far from the success of BHP, and they certainly have never been too proud to let the state help them towards profits. For example, the Newcastle Iron and Steelworks Act of 1912-13 gave BHP a 50 year lease on 34 acres of waterfront land and the government undertook, without cost to BHP, to dredge and maintain a permanent channel from Newcastle Harbour to the company's wharves. The ALP was in government in NSW in 1912, and part of the ALP's platform at the time was "the establishment of a state iron and steel works". Aarons notes that the lease was up in 1962, and the ALP were in office in NSW and thus had the opportunity to act (the write up of asset value mentioned above was partly done as a provision to guard shareholder value against possible nationalization).
Many other examples of other state and Commonwealth welfare to BHP are provided. Aarons refers to it all as examples of state monopoly capitalism. Whatever monopolies want, monopolies get. Menzies boasted about his friends with BHP shares and the ways that he could help them. He appointed Essington Lewis as Director-General of Munitions in 1940. BHP did pretty well from war contracts.
"On Monday afternoon Mr Essington Lewis comes to me and produces two or three pages of paper involving some trifling expenditure of three, four, five or ten millions, and says, 'There it is, Mr Prime Minister,' and I sign the bottom corner, 'Approved'."
Working Class Leads Fight
The working classes had been the backbone of the vast increase in wealth of BHP shareholders, and the company was not backward its use of underhand tactics in provoking strikes, instigating lockouts, bribery, blacklists an its use of the courts to contain its 37,000 strong workforce, with many examples over its 75 year history (to 1960).
Early examples included miners at Broken Hill in 1889 having to strike to win union recognition, and again in 1890 to reduce hours from 48 to 46. The big strikes and reversals of 1892 saw this put back to 48, with a wage cut. A director at the time said he was devoting his life to "beating unions out of existence".
In 1909 a lockout of 6 months was imposed to reduce wages.
The move into steel making in 1915 saw an intensification of management efforts to get rid of unions and to exploit its workforce. A wage cut was won in 1916. In 1919, despite substantial profits, they got a 50% reduction in shift margins. In 1921 they closed the Newcastle plant, demanding a reduction in the basic wage and an increase in hours.
"During the 1930s, the Newcastle and Port Kembla plants were notorious for their inhuman treatment of the unemployed who were forced to gather each day outside the gate to be "chosen" like slaves at the market place."
The formation of the Communist Party in 1920 meant "a new a vigorous leadership" of the workers, and the communist leadership of the Ironworkers was crucial to the organization of BHP workers and the battle for better pay and conditions.
The takeover of the Ironworkers by the Groupers meant that "for quite a period BHP had practically an open go to exploit the workers and amass the huge profits revealed earlier."
A resurgence of activism began in the late 1950s, however, with a strike by tradespeople in 1961 and the sacking of 12 job delegates from the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU) being the catalyst for Aarons' researches and pamphlet. The showdown was brought on by BHP in an attempt to arrest the growing militancy of its workforce that had been gathering strength for a number of years. AEU members walked off, and ironworkers wanted to support them but were restrained by their union leadership.
The workers demanded support from the state ALP government, calling on it to implement ALP policy and nationalize BHP. The government, however, actually allowed uniformed police and federal and state security police to intimidate the workers and to prevent them holding a protest march. So great was the general outcry about the behaviour of BHP that the Arbitration Court reconvened and ordered a return to work and reinstatement of the workers. The workers defied the system, and won.
The People Versus Monopoly
"Monopoly's idea of patriotism is "what is good for BHP is good for Australia."
"Love of peace" is a phrase to conceal fat profits from war contracts and a relentless striving to dominate foreign markets and sources of raw materials, by war if need be.
Lenin on Monopoly
"Domination, and the violence that is associated with it, such are the relationships that are most typical of the 'latest phase of capitalist development'; this is what must inevitably result, and has resulted from the formation of all-powerful economic monopolies." (Lenin on Imperialism).
The Menzies government is talking about legislation to "control" monopolies. What will they do about BHP? It is nonsense to think of Menzies controlling BHP when it is BHP that controls him!
The end of BHP?, or, Back to the Future?
BHP has come full circle, with its profit now coming from mining ventures world-wide, and its steel division struggling against the economies of scale of the Korean steel makers in particular. The excellence of its workforce and innovation has ensured a niche for steel making in Australia, but the innovation and restructuring to maintain the profit flow has all been backed by governments (remember the Button Steel Plan?).
The play I Am Work changed the original line - "Oh we'd never leave Broken Hill [they did] and made it "Oh, we'd never leave Newcastle [they did]. Now the pundits are saying they won't leave Melbourne. Say it isn't so, Mr Anderson.
Eric Aarons; The Steel Octopus: the story of BHP, Sydney: Current Book Distributors, May 1961
Geoffrey Blainey; The Steel Master: a life of Essington Lewis. Melbourne: Sun Books, 1981; first published by Macmillan in 1971
by Pluto Writers' Forum
by The Chaser
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The Labor Party's swing was a mere 9.5%, not enough to enable the ALP's Leonie Short to win the seat comfortably.
Beazley has admitted that the Ryan result casts a lot of doubt on the ALP's capacity to win every single seat in the upcoming Federal poll. "At this rate we'll have an opposition after the next election," Beazley admitted.
The Opposition Leader also claimed that he had received the message from the voters loud and clear. "I thought it was okay to talk about a GST rollback and a 'knowledge nation' without giving too many details, but now I know I was wrong," he said. "I realise now that the electorate don't want me to talk about policies at all. In future, I won't be giving even really vague details of what we plan to do. I won't even pretend to have policies anymore," he promised.
Behind the scenes tacticians for the Labor party are concerned that the Labor party did not win more Liberal voters. "We've obviously have to make sure the ALP becomes even more like the Liberal Party. When we become a party that's indistinguishable from the Liberals - except that we don't have Peter Costello - then we'll be in an unbeatable position."
Meanwhile Prime Minister John Howard has said that the Ryan result is a 'resounding endorsement' of his leadership. "This really makes a fool of all those people who've been calling me 'Mister Thirty Percent'," he said, referring to his recent poor approval rating. Howard argued that the closeness of the Ryan poll showed that the real figure was probably closer to 35%.
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The Australian Public Service and the other agencies which make up the Commonwealth's administration are among the basic building blocks of our democracy.
The well-being of these institutions is critical to the well-being of the nation.
Their roles and responsibilities are different from those of organisations in the private sector; and these roles and responsibilities must be reflected in their ethos and values, structures and operating methods.
The effectiveness and efficiency of public institutions are not founded, nor should they be, on the desire for profits and the fear of losses.
They are founded instead on the strong will of those who work in these institutions to serve the people through the governments they choose in ways set down in the Constitution and the laws of the Parliament - ways characterised by openness, fairness, the rights and obligations of our citizens and distinctive and rigorous standards of public accountability.
While public sector organisations must be open-minded and alive to the experience of others and willing to learn from them, their essential style and character must reflect the nature of their special roles.
It makes as much sense to force private sector ways on public institutions as it does to impose those of the public sector on private firms. It is irrational, illogical and dangerous.
In its words and deeds the Howard Government has shown that it does not accept, or perhaps even understand, these simple truths.
The indications were there right from the start. They are to be found, for example, in the Government's crude 1996 discussion paper "Towards a Best Practice Public Service": "This Government starts from a fundamental proposition: namely that the industrial and staffing arrangements for the public service should be essentially the same as those for the private sector." And in the 1996 Report of the National Commission of Audit, which has been the blueprint for so much of the Howard Government's agenda: "agencies should be required to market test all activities......unless there is a good reason not to do so."
And the Howard Government's deeds since then have unfortunately spoken even louder than its words.
First, it has politicised the appointments of Secretaries of departments and statutory office holders to an unparalleled degree. Its arbitrary dismissal of six Secretaries immediately upon winning government in 1996 was a disgraceful act of unfairness and prejudice, as was its bungled sacking of the former Secretary of the Department of Defence, Mr Paul Barratt, who was among those appointed in 1996 over the bodies of Mr Howard's first six victims. More broadly, the way it has used a vast number of appointments to reward politically sympathetic mates and undermine the independence and integrity of statutory bodies has been appalling.
Second, the Howard Government set about arbitrarily slashing staff numbers in the Public Service. Having foreshadowed modest cuts of up to 2500 prior to the election, it axed over 30,000 in its first three years in office. One Government member of Parliament, Senator Ian Campbell, was so proud of this outcome he boasted that it had caused a recession in Canberra and that this was "a fantastic achievement". He was obviously ignorant of the fact that over 60 per cent of public servants are located in metropolitan, regional and country areas outside of the ACT. The cutbacks therefore occurred right across the country, in our suburbs and country towns.
Third, having shed staff with little rational justification, the Government has acted with startled alarm when, quite unsurprisingly, things have gone wrong within its administrative agencies. Worse, Mr Howard and his Ministers have sought to shift the blame to the Public Service when it is the Government itself that should bear responsibility for having stripped the Public Service of vital resources, expertise and institutional memory. Witness the vindictive dismantling of the Department of Administrative Services following the travel rorts affair, the sorry saga of Employment National, Mr Fahey accusing government departments of sabotaging the IT outsourcing initiative, and more recently the finger of blame for problems with GST implementation being pointed at Treasury and the Tax Office.
Fourth, the Howard Government has pursued a blatantly ideological approach to the outsourcing of Public Service functions. Without satisfactory analysis of the implications for public accountability or the overall operational effectiveness and efficiency of agencies, public functions have been given to private sector organisations. While the Government's policy rhetoric is full of talk about the need for Public Service agencies to compete in the wider market, in its own approach to outsourcing it has sought to restrict competition. Except in certain limited circumstances, those employed in the Public Service in functions marked for outsourcing are excluded from competing for the business.
Ironically, in the few cases where in-house services have been able to compete, many have managed to win against private sector bidders - in the Department of Defence, for example, and the then Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs. Thus the Howard Government has been prepared to risk taxpayers actually paying more for some government functions in the pursuit of an ideological interest in reducing the size of the Public Service. The policy and administrative failures and contradictions in the Government's outsourcing program have been amply demonstrated in, although not confined to, the IT area where they have been painfully documented by both the Auditor-General and in the review conducted by Mr Richard Humphry.
In summary, the Howard Government's approach to the Commonwealth public sector has been opportunistic, cynical and damaging.
Labor believes that the long term health and well-being of these institutions is itself a vital aspect of public policy, for their condition directly affects the capacity of governments to develop good policy and administer it effectively. Therefore, a Beazley Labor Government, with a proper appreciation of the role and responsibilities of public sector institutions, will concentrate its energies on their repair and re-invigoration.
Today I would like to outline some of the important steps we will be taking to achieve that goal.
Secretaries and statutory office holders
Secretary and statutory office holder positions are the critical point of connection between a government and its Ministers and their Public Service and other public sector agencies.
It is vital for these relationships to be distinguished by mutual and public confidence, integrity and shared leadership.
At the moment they are attenuated and deeply politicised and they have been soured by, among other things, a system of performance pay that is capricious and inappropriate.
A Beazley Labor Government will work to rebuild these important relationships.
Let me make it clear that Secretaries need have nothing to fear from a Beazley Government for having worked loyally and well for the Howard Government. That is their job. That is what we expect. As we would expect them to work loyally and well for us. Kim Beazley has asked me to re-iterate and re-emphasise the commitment we gave prior to the last election that there will be no night of the long knives should he become Prime Minister.
In fact, a Beazley Labor Government will strengthen the procedures for regulating the appointment and tenure of Secretaries by instituting the following practices:
� As a general rule, Ministers will work with their incumbent secretaries for at least a three-month period from the date of taking office in order to give both parties the opportunity to develop a good working relationship.
� Where, after this period, a Minister and a Secretary are, for whatever reason, unable to establish an effective working relationship, the matter will be subject to a joint process of consultation with the Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Public Service Commissioner. The primary objective of this process would be to resolve difficulties between the Minister and the Secretary. If that is not possible, the Commissioner and the Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet would then prepare reports to the Prime Minister canvassing moves to another Secretary position or other suitable positions in the Commonwealth's administration. Similar reports on redeployment would be sought where Secretary positions are abolished or where contracts in particular positions are not renewed.
� The statutorily independent Public Service Commissioner will be asked to provide a report to the Prime Minister, in addition to that provided by the Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, on all appointments, transfers, dismissals and retirements. These two officers will be asked to periodically and systematically canvass with other Secretaries the claims of senior officers in the Public Service for appointment at the Secretary level. They will also be asked to pay particular attention to the claims of women in an effort to increase the number of women in the most senior public service positions.
� Performance pay for Secretaries will be abolished and the Remuneration Tribunal will be asked to recommend an appropriate adjustment on that account to base salaries, as has been done in other cases where such payments have been removed.
With statutory office holders, the relevant Minister will, as a first step, consider whether vacancies should be advertised on the basis that this would normally be done well in advance of vacancies falling due. Ministers will ask the Secretaries of their departments to prepare a report on each vacancy, with outside expert assistance if necessary. These reports will be made available to Cabinet, which will consider all intended statutory appointments before they are finalised.
Therefore, in the case of both Secretaries and statutory office holders there will be a more wide-ranging canvassing of possibilities and broader based advice to the Government that will focus on the inherent merit of individuals rather than on their perceived political alignment.
Review of Commonwealth Administration
The last thirty years have seen massive change in the structure and operational framework of the Public Service.
Whole departments and large segments of others have been removed from coverage by the Public Service Act and set up as separate organisations, for example, the Postmaster-General's Department, the defence factories and dockyards and functions within the transport portfolio, not to mention the more recent changes in employment services.
At the same time, departments in the Public Service have assumed far greater responsibility for the development of policies related to their operational responsibilities. Associated policy functions were departmentally consolidated by the Hawke Government in 1987.
There has been major devolution of personnel and financial management functions from central agencies.
Finally, changes to administrative law and the introduction of large-scale information technology systems have changed the way the Public Service operates and the attitudes and skills public servants must have.
Labor has initiated and supported most of these changes.
More broadly, over much the same time period, the public sector as a whole has undergone a quite radical transformation. Successive reforms have led to a contraction of the public sector and a convergence between the public and private sectors. Public services have become contestable in an open market and many functions have been outsourced or are now delivered in partnership with the private sector. This has led to a sharper focus on the rationale for the public sector and on what constitutes, or should constitute, its 'core' business.
It has also led to increasing public concern about the maintenance of the essential qualities of the public sector - qualities such as accountability, responsiveness, transparency, privacy of client information and accessibility. I see the emergence of organisations such as the National Institute for Governance at the University of Canberra as a manifestation of the importance of these governance issues.
It is time for government to take stock of these changes and address these concerns.
A Beazley Labor Government will therefore establish an independent review in our first term of government. While we would want to have the benefit of a broader range of advice, especially from government departments and agencies, before finalising the terms of reference, we will ask the review to include an examination of:
� Principles which should underpin decisions on the location of functions either in the Public Service or elsewhere in the Commonwealth's administration or in the private sector.
� Ways and means of achieving a better coordination of policy and administration on a whole of government basis while maintaining an appropriate devolved environment.
� The adequacy of existing central management arrangements.
We are very conscious of the massive change to which the Public Service has been subjected and its resultant financial and human costs. Therefore, this review will be directed to concentrate only on those areas where alterations for the distinct betterment of the Service can be assured and to avoid mere change for change's sake.
Outsourcing
Under a Beazley Government there will be no centrally mandated and administered outsourcing program.
Any proposals by departments to contract functions or services will be subject to a public interest test. This test will include the following considerations:
� The need to maintain full public accountability and to ensure that this is not diminished by notions of "commercial confidentiality". My colleague, Lindsay Tanner, the Shadow Minister for Finance, has recently announced at one of these seminars, a number of measures a Beazley Labor Government will adopt to improve public accountability.
� The need to meet the standards of customer service required by the Government.
� Genuine cost savings, not at the expense of service or access to service, nor through cuts to jobs or employment conditions.
� The need to maintain and develop skills and expertise within the Agency concerned to ensure the cost-effective delivery of services and, where services are put on contract, the maintenance of sound contractual arrangements, performance standards and monitoring systems.
� The need to protect the rights of clients to information affecting them and their privacy.
� The overall efficiency of outside markets and the extent to which markets can effectively and quickly overcome the failure of a single provider.
� Any risks of being "captured" by a single outside provider by reason of the knowledge it might gain in taking over a particular function or for any other reason.
� No negative effect on the environment or industry development; and
� Assessment of impacts on regional, rural and remote Australian communities.
Where a case for contracting is made which satisfies these tests, in-house bids will be facilitated as part of the tendering process.
Managing Personnel in the Public Service
Consistent with our views about the particular and special nature of public sector organisations and the vitally important role of public servants in our system of public administration, a Beazley Labor Government will establish a Public Service Institute. The Institute will be dedicated to the provision of high quality education and training in all areas of public administration.
The Australian Public Service Institute will be a "virtual" organisation working in partnership with existing vocational and higher education institutions. This will enable it to confer certificates, diplomas and degrees. It will draw on a variety of sources of learning and methods of delivery to ensure that training is available to all public servants wherever they may be located.
The Institute will operate on a fee-for-service basis and while it will cater primarily for Commonwealth public servants it will also be open to State and local government, as well as overseas and private sector clients should they wish to use it. There will be scope for departments and agencies to develop courses and training to meet their particular needs and objectives.
Work to establish the Institute will begin with a study involving the Public Service and Merit Protection Commission and other key government agencies to determine current and likely future training requirements and priorities. The study will draw on work already done by these agencies, Public Service Education and Training Australia and others. This study will then form the basis of a request for tender to establish and operate the Institute. I note with interest the recent announcement by the Victorian Government of its intention to establish a school of government and look forward to exploring ways in which these two initiatives can complement each other.
We realise a Beazley Labor Government will face significant challenges in public administration. We will be implementing an ambitious Knowledge Nation agenda and accelerating the transition to the new economy. Our success will be dependent on the skills and ability of our public servants and their capacity to respond to changing circumstances. We understand this will require an investment in ongoing, high quality training and development for all levels of the Public Service. We will make that investment and we know public servants will rise to these challenges.
This initiative is an indication of Labor's commitment to the Public Service. It will help to re-invigorate the Public Service and strengthen its career base.
As the identification of individual development needs is critical to better targetted training, a Beazley Government will expect all agencies to continue to make strenuous efforts to ensure performance management arrangements are more effective and comprehensive. Staff have a right to know what is expected of them, to be told how they have performed and to have any weaknesses properly and promptly attended to through training or other means. This can only be done through a fair and open process of performance management.
We do not believe individual performance bonuses need be part of effective performance management systems. We will be encouraging agencies to phase out use of performance bonuses as industrial agreements expire and new collective agreements are negotiated and implemented.
The Howard Government's industrial relations arrangements have resulted in excessive fragmentation of pay and conditions and associated processes across the Public Service. Barriers to mobility and administrative re-organisation have been created. Duplication of effort has occurred as agencies have been forced to develop employment arrangements on matters which should be service-wide conditions. The problems caused by the Howard Government's approach have been well documented in evidence presented to the Senate Inquiry into APS Employment Matters. Regrettably, the damage cannot be repaired overnight.
The starting point for a Beazley Labor Government will be that the Australian Public Service should be a model employer - one which provides a safe, healthy and positive work environment, has pay and conditions which enable it to attract and retain staff and are fairly related to the remuneration of others in the community undertaking comparable work; one that promotes diversity, is family friendly and facilitates the entry of young people to the APS workforce.
We will want broad standards to apply across the Public Service. These would be set out in an APS-wide framework agreement. But we accept that agencies need a level of flexibility in negotiating pay and conditions to meet their specific needs. Each agency will be encouraged to negotiate collective enterprise agreements with employees and their unions which set out its particular conditions of employment.
Our aim will be to maintain agencies' flexibility to determine conditions that best meet their individual needs while at the same time maintaining the best of a career-based Service. We will ask the Public Service and Merit Protection Commission and the Department of Workplace Relations to report to the Government regularly on how this balance of interests can best be ensured.
There will be no further use of Australian Workplace Agreements in the Public Service. We regard their secrecy and lack of accountability as being particularly inappropriate in the public sector. Transitional arrangements will be developed, in consultation with agencies and unions, to facilitate the bringing of employees who are on AWAs under the new collective enterprise agreements on a no-detriment basis.
It goes without saying that, under Labor, the anti-unionism which has characterised the last five years will be a thing of the past. We will ensure the legitimate role of trade unions and their rights to organise, to take action on behalf of their members and to bargain collectively are recognised within the Public Service.
One obvious area where there should be no need for differences between agencies is in the application of the Public Service Values and the Code of Conduct and in the handling of breaches of the Code. We will therefore ask the Public Service and Merit Protection Commission, in consultation with agencies and unions, to introduce a uniform disciplinary code to support the requirements of the Public Service Act. Secretaries and heads of agencies will have direct responsibility for ensuring that all public servants understand and apply the Values and Code of Conduct.
Agency management accountability
A devolved management environment requires effective means by which agencies can account for the way in which they have managed their responsibilities within whatever overall policy guidance is provided by the Government or the central agencies.
The Public Service Commissioner's annual "State of the Service" Report constitutes one such means. A Beazley Government will build on the success and usefulness of this report by asking the Commissioner, before the beginning of each financial year, to establish five or six key Service-wide management priorities for the year, in consultation with the Minister responsible for the Public Service and all agencies. The Commissioner would then report on the achievements against these priorities in the next annual "State of the Service" report.
This would not prevent agencies from working on some of their own particular priorities. Indeed this would be encouraged. However, it would help to develop a useful whole of government and service-wide approach to issues of common concern and a more robust way of accounting for performance.
Working with the community sector
I have spoken of the convergence between the public and private sectors and the need to better define the appropriate boundaries between the two. But we are also mindful of the need for government to relate to and work with the non-government or community sector. We acknowledge the legitimate expectations of community organisations to be supported by government, to have access to government and to have their views heard by government.
We are particularly aware in the contemporary political climate of what I have recently seen referred to as the "politics of the powerless" - the alienation of too many members of the community from the political process. We recognise that unless governments connect with local communities their understanding of what is happening on the ground will be lost and hence their ability to respond effectively to the needs of communities will be severely limited.
That is why my colleague, Wayne Swan, the Shadow Minister for Family and Community Services has announced on behalf of the Opposition, a commitment to develop a Community Compact. This Compact will involve three key commitments: to work in an equal partnership with community organisations to rebuild communities; to remove compulsory competitive tendering to allow organisations greater scope to get involved in addressing the needs of communities rather than the services governments think they need; and to sustain and nurture the charitable and not-for-profit sector into the future.
I won't elaborate on this concept here, but I did want to mention it given the vital role played by the community sector in public administration.
Conclusion
Let me conclude.
The Labor Party has been the Party of innovation and improvement in the Public Service and Commonwealth administration over the last 30 years.
In that time it has, for example:
� Established the only all encompassing review of the Commonwealth's administration (the Coombs Royal Commission) in the mid 1970s.
� Initiated and supported the major administrative law reforms which have transformed public administration and decision-making in Australia.
� Introduced major improvements in Public Service personnel management and financial management and budgeting in the mid 1980s.
� Fostered the introduction of information technology and the development of skills to use it effectively in the interests of better administration and client service.
� Implemented in 1987 the most significant improvements to the structure of departments in the history of the Public Service.
� Corporatised and made more efficient major defence and transport functions in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
� Introduced, for the first time, devolved agency powers to fix pay and conditions, again in the early 1990s, but within a framework which maintained core pay and conditions.
� Instituted a review of the Public Service Act that culminated in a new Act in 1999 that contained key improvements forced on a reluctant Government by a determined Labor Opposition.
So, when the Labor Party talks about its interest in re-invigorating Commonwealth public administration, its track record in and out of Government demands that it be taken seriously.
We understand and value the role of a public sector that has fallen on hard times under the Howard Government.
A Beazley Labor Government will not only stop the rot.
It will not regard itself as a whingeing and complaining "customer" buying services from its own administration.
It will lead and work with the policy and administrative agencies of government.
The Commonwealth's administration has had an enviable reputation throughout the world - that will be restored and enhanced.
A former colleague of mine enjoyed citing an ambiguous quotation from Adlai Stevenson to the effect that the Civil Service serves government right.
The Howard Government has brought to the Public Service a harmful mixture of bloody-mindedness, ideological prejudice and policy laziness and, in a perverse sense, it has satisfied Adlai Stevenson's rule of thumb.
A Beazley Labor Government will repair that damage and ensure that we have a Public Service that will well and truly serve all Australians right.
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- Two teams of grossly uneven ability should be selected - under the Howard Government "a level playing field" is history.
- 26 overs per innings (one for each week the boss has been pocketing your super)
- stumps are positioned across picket line, which should be rolled before play prevent any cracks developing.
- spectators are encouraged to chant for their team, but those wearing balaclavas must restrain their dogs from the chewing ball.
- once play starts, the MCC rules of cricket applies except for the following.
- One-handed catches only (under the Reith laws any worker undertaking industrial action has one hand tied behind their back)
- if a member of management drops the ball, the workers will be penalized (hey, that's life under the Corporations Law)
- all appeals for LBW (lost benefits and wages) to be turned down by management.
- one foot over the picket line constitutes a no-ball. Two constitutes scabbing and will lead to instant ejection from the match.
- all other appeals to be formally debated and carried by a vote of the entire workforce through a secreat ballot.
- if there no quick resolution to the dispute it will be referred to an independent umpire (unless you have the money to take it to the Federal Court)
- no batters will be allowed to wear pads, gloves or box - there are no longer any protections for workers in Howard's Australia.
- BUT all management required to wear protectors on their foreheads (they are, after all, dickheads)
- betting on results is to be encouraged, although gamblers should be aware that the Administrator and the banks are the only one's who'll ever get a pay-out.
- All meal breaks to consist of barbequed sausages and warm soft drink
- When the boss gives in, the game's over - you've all won!
The Man with the Answers |
European Works Councils for Australia? by Ron McCallum
McCallum discusses the origins of the Works Councils in Europe as the First World War drew to a close. Part of their role was to calm down possible revolutionary currents in the workers movements in Germany. After World War II and continue to play a prominent role in German enterprises. They do not play a part in collective bargaining, leaving that as a union province, but enhance consultation and discussion of work issues, such as rostering.
The Australian Parliament has the constitutional authority to mandate consultative councils for employers with over 100 employees.
(Age, 9th March 2001)
Woman Hurt After Visiting Her Grandmother was On Her Way Home
A five-member bench of the High Court has found that an employee who was severely injured in a car accident after stopping to have a meal with her grandmother was on her way home from work.
The woman, an accounts clerk, was employed by Lake Macquarie City Council on the NSW central coast. She lived 39kms from her job and travelled there by car. Once a fortnight she visited her grandmother after work, which added about 19 kms to her trip.
In June 1993 after having dinner with her grandmother she ran off the Pacific Highway and collided with a parked truck. She suffered severe injuries, including brain damage, and was unable to remember anything about the accident.
When the case came before the High Court, Chief Justice Gleeson, and Justices Gummow and Callinan said that the woman's "real destination was her own residence. She always intended to spend the night at her own residence".
The judges continued that there was no obligation upon an employee to take the shortest and most direct route from work to home "so long as the journey can be said to be a journey between the worker's place of abode and place of employment". It followed that the primary judge made no error of law in deciding that the woman was undertaking a "periodic journey between her place of employment and place of abode within the meaning of s10(3)(a) of the Act".
Justices Kirby and Hayne supported the majority finding, but delivered separate decisions.
http://www.austlii.edu/au/cases/cth/high_ct/2001/12.html">Vetter v Lake Macquarie City Council [2001] HCA 12 (8 March 2001)
http://www.workplaceexpress.com.au
Using the Corporations Power to Regulate Industrial Relations by Bill Ford
Legislation based on s51(xx) of the Constitution could radically alter settings for employment arrangements in Australia. It could diminish the role of the states, but this would be political choice, not constitutional imperative.
To implement the move, the Commonwealth would have to use other constitutional powers such as external affairs and the conciliation and arbitration to supplement the move.
Ford says that the question really is whether such a system would be better than the current one.
A union view clearly sees the current government as not trying to implement a better system, but aiming for a system to limit the rights of workers and unions.
(Employment Law Bulletin; vol. 6, no. 9)
The Party is Over...or is it? by John Wilson
The liability of employers for injuries to workers at social functions has become an important consideration for all employers. There is no clear answer on the absolute levels of responsibility and this article discusses a few examples.
(Employment Law Bulletin; vol. 6, no. 9)
Tasmanian Public Servants Win Paid Maternity Leave
The new state agreement provides 12 weeks paid maternity leave, removes paid smoking breaks, allows salary sacrifice for superannuation, improves family-friendly leave and work conditions, provides help for those wanting to quit smoking and a pay rise of 9% over 2.5 years.
Family friendly provisions include breastfeeding clauses, extended work breaks in exchange for cuts in pay. For example employees could access the "four over five" scheme whereby they get a 20% pay cut for four years to have the fifth year off.
(CCH Managing Leave and Holidays Update; newsletter 69, 19 February 2001)
Sick Days and Dismissal
Telstra terminated an employee after the person took too many sick days without a certificate, (especially on Mondays and Fridays), even though he had received a final warning over the behaviour. Telstra argued that the use of the word "may" in the award in relation to granting sick leave without a medical certificate meant there was scope for discretion on their part. However a previous ruling of the Commission had held that the award provided a right to sick leave without a certificate subject to specified conditions. Based on that decision they determined that the employee should be reinstated. However, taking into account the employee's conduct and that of Telstra's representatives, it was held that it was not appropriate to maintain continuity or receive lost remuneration.
CPSU & Spicer v Telstra Corporation Ltd (2000) 48 AILR 4-355
(CCH Recruitment and termination Update; newsletter 27, 22 February 2001)
Casuals' Super Guarantee based on Actual Hours Worked
The Administrative Appeals tribunal (AAT) has upheld superannuation guarantee assessments issued to a temporary employment agency based on the actual number of hours worked by the employees.
The Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act 1992 (section 23(5) refers to the contribution made as a percentage of the employee's "ordinary time earnings" which do not include overtime.
The agency in this case employed temporary employees to meet short term staffing needs of its clients. Each employee was engaged on a specified number of hours or number of shifts to be worked in a period. Additional shifts were voluntary and no loading paid on the standard rate for additional hours. Some employees worked additional shifts on an ongoing basis.
The super guarantee assessments were issued on the basis of the minimum number of hours, but it was held that the actual hours worked which constituted "ordinary time".
AAT ref: [2001] AATA 124 - VT 1999/438-439 (BH Pascoe, Senior Member), 20 February 2001, Melbourne
(CCH Australian Super News; issue 2, 28 February 2001)
Protecting Both Jobs and the Environment
The push for more stringent environmental standards is often painted as an attack on jobs. Automation, productivity drives and short term management decisions are more significant in reducing job numbers. A new report on green jobs from Michael Renner from the Worldwatch Institute has a different view. He observes that US coal production has increased by 32% since 1980, but employment in the mining of it fell by 66%. The impact of environmental controls on employment is miniscule by comparison.
Reg Green, Health, Safety and Environmental Officer with the International Chemical, Energy and Mineworkers Federation (ICEM) notes that sustainability is a three-legged stool, reflecting economic, social and environmental concerns.
So, union strategy to support long-term policy to create sustainable jobs; and a short term strategy to ensure the workforce experiences a 'Just Transition" to the new jobs. Canadian and US unionists have been working on these new approaches.
Also European unions have had a lot of experience in this area. For example, the German state of North Rhine Westphalia lost 770,000 jobs through the closer of heavy industry. An ambitious investment in environmental and service industries led to the creation of over 800,000 jobs in the years 1984-1994. A green energy plan devised by the Danish general union SID calculated that many thousands of environmental jobs could be created, and would quickly repay the investment whilst cutting carbon emissions substantially. Union involvement was crucial to these strategies.
(Trade Union World; no. 3, March 2001)
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The Mayne story is proof that loose cannons don't just come from the lunar Left. Raised by the Melbourne Establishment, Mayne strode through a series of Silver Spoon jobs to the esteemed position of adviser to the loosest cannon of them all, former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett..
But having scaled the heights, Mayne realized the view was less than pure and often downright grubby, His public repudiation of Kennett, subsequent bid to stand against him as an independent and then web assault of Jeffed-com during the campaign ensured his ties with the Tories were permanently severed.
Mayne then moved to Sydney, got the gig as Business Editor at the Daily Telegraph where he embarked on an inspired crusade that netted him a deserved Walkely. He brought up small quantities of shares in major companies, then used his right as a shareholder to scrutinize CEOs and directors from the floor at AGMs.
Crikey has been a breath of fresh air for those of us watching the corporate takeover of Australia with bemused detachment. He has the knowledge, networks and courage to make the top end of town squirm and has built a fledging media empire around the project. In charting the complex web of corporate directorships Mayne is fulfilling a significant public service and can teach the trade union movement a lot.
But Mayne wants more. This week he added to his ever-expanding scrapbook of media clippings with the announcement he's establishing his own political party. The broad philosophy is free enterprise, free speech and consumer and shareholder rights. If anything, it sounds to me like the Australia Party that another celebrated self-promoter, Singo, set up in 1970s. Innocent enough, I hear you say?.
But Mayne goes further: "We will be the only political party in Australia that contests elections in trade unions, public companies, mutuals and sporting clubs, as well as local, state and federal governments," he trumpets.
Trade unions? This lapsed Tory wants to not only take over corporate Australia, he wants to have a go at the trade union movement as well. This is the behavoiour of a Tool on two levels.
First it betrays his lack of understanding about the movement. Mayne approaches the trade union movement as though it is moribund, still locked into the Accord structures. He has no appreciation at the efforts to reactivate trade unionism at the grass roots to which most , if not all, trade unions are now diverting more and more attention. Indeed, it is only through this type of cultural regeneration that the changes Mayne would like to see happen would be possible.
Secondly, top level challenges will be counter-productive. Even presuming Mayne got a stable of credible candidates around him, the impact of their tilt at power would be negative. The external challenge would inevitably force the current leadership to close ranks and fight back, forcing them to divert attention and resources from rebuilding delegate structures to engage in the sort of power struggles which push the interests of rank and file members to the periphery. Reform of trade unions will not come through terrorist tactics - all that will occur is the barricades will be closed and the movement will continue to shrink.
Mayne's na�ve call for rank and filers to join him in a grassroots crusade is misguided and counterproductive if his real goal is to make the trade union movement more open and accountable. This takes engagement, understanding, identification with the trade union movement. In throwing bombs from the sidelines, Mayne not only does himself a disservice, he undermines the good work he is doing as a shareholder activist.
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