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May 2003 | |
Interview: Staying Alive Bad Boss: The Ultimate Piss Off Industrial: Last Drinks National Focus: Around the States Politics: Radical Surgery Education: The Price of Missing Out Legal: If At First You Don't Succeed History: Massive Attack Culture: What's Right Review: If He Should Fall Poetry: If I Were a Rich Man Satire: IMF Ensures Iraq Institutes Market Based Looting
The Soapbox Solidarity The Locker Room Postcard Bosswatch
Solidarity Forever
Charities Brace for Medicare Backlash Court Throws Out Cole Prosecutions Child Actor Dodges Broken Voice Rio Tinto: $40 Million for Boss, Eviction for Workers Winning Poster Shouts at Freeloaders May Day Tragedy Claims Union Lives Westfield Cleaners to Down Mops Question Marks Over Nursing Home Burn Payout Highlights Compo Fears Costa Blows Whistle on Canberra Raid
Bob Gould Sprays Gerard Henderson War and Peace A Strange Light A Little History Does It Have To Be?
Labor Council of NSW |
Bad Boss The Ultimate Piss Off
********* Other employees claim they have lost their bonuses, worth up to $5000 a year, for using sick leave entitlements. The bonuses are significant to workers earning only $25,000 a year thanks to non-negotiable AWAs that have slashed base earnings from the $35,000 paid to Telstra employees before their jobs were outsourced. Stellar has used AWAs, outsouring and state government subsidies to become Australia's largest contract call centre operation, employing more than 2000 people around the country. The company is Workers Online's debut 2003 nominee for the Tony Award, carried off last year by Australia Post. The Tony, regarded as Australia's definitive Bad Boss Award, commemorates last year's infamous defence of workplace bastardry by Federal Workplace Relations Minister, Tony Abbott. The CPSU has launched inspections of Stellar call centres at Wollongong, Hornsby, Adelaide and Robina into suspected breaches of the Workplace Relations Act. Central to the investigations are claims that the company hasn't paid overtime and has misrepresented the legal situation regarding AWAs. On the expiry of Australian Workplace Agreements staff who were denied the right to award coverage on employment are theoretically supposed to be offered that choice. "We have information that his choice has not been provided," CPSU official Larissa Andelman says. "That these people have not even been told that they have a right to choose." Andelman says the reported use of bonuses to dissuade people from using their sick leave is a major concern to members. Stellar call centres are understood to have an unusually high number of employees absent on stress leave. Andelman says that annual staff turnover rates are as high as 40 percent in some of the company's call centres.
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