|
||
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
||
|
|
Year End 2006 | |
|
||
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Interview: The Terminator Industrial: Vive La Resistance Unions: Breaking News History: Seven Deadly Sins Economics: Back to the Future Politics: Organising and Organisations International: Web Retrospective Review: Shock Therapy
The Future Obituary Parliament
The End
 Hit For SixKind WordsSorely MissedAll the Best
|
|
|
Unions Breaking News
Virtual Takeover - We saw a pup when the Steve Vizard-owned Virtual Communities hatched a plan market and sell home computers to union members in 1999. Through editorials and news stories we led the charge to question the deal, particularly the AOL-style portal that locked users into VC content. Time vindicated our stance with unions walking away, the ACTU website folding and the key backer answering insider trading claims on unrelated business dealings. http://workers.labor.net.au/27/news3_vizard.html The People Versus Piers Our original marketing ploy was to create a war with Piers Akerman and force him to publicise our existence., This worked for the first two years of production until it became too much to reads the bile. In that time we ran a number of theories - that Piers was an enter-ist, that Piers was a post-modernist, that Piers provided Sueharto with his daily dose of fibre. But the one that hit p[ay-dirt was our Larry Flynnt inspired cash incentive to bring criminal charges against the toad. This led to a string of right-wing columnists accusing me and this publications of being enemies of free speech, the 15 minutes of fame that did more to our circulation than any union yarn. http://workers.labor.net.au/11/d_pierswatch_piers11.html Talking to the Enemy - One of our driving ideas was to open up debate in the union movement and e put that into practise by interviewing Howard IR ministers, Reith and Abbott. Both were happy to participate and match wits - Reith calling for the ACTU president to be popularly elected; Abbott confessing to having led strike action during his time at the Bulletin. Along the way we learned they had only a sketchy understanding of the real debates within the movement and were more driven by tired Cold War dogma. It is a sign of the changing times that Kevin Andrews has rejected all such invitations. Read the interviews at: http://workers.labor.net.au/38/a_interview_peter.html http://workers.labor.net.au/85/a_interview_monk.html Unions Dudes - When OneTel went belly up in 2001 a whole new generation of workers went looking for protection, albeit after the event. The CPSSU fought hard to win back redundancy entitlements for the OneTel dudes, but the battle focussed attention on a new generation of foot-loose IT workers who were more vulnerable than they thought. In response we launched the IT Workers Alliance site in October 2001, basically a series of discussion boards which, for a time worked as an organising tool as unions gained a toe-hold in the sector. Before They Were Sexy Long before James Hardies' shame in shifting risk off-shore became a matter of national shame, Workers Online was warning of the sham. As early as October 2003, Paul Bastian was warning the scheme would leave victims without access to compensation; although it would take more than 12 months for the mass media to catch on to the biggest corporate scandal in Australian history. Watching the Bosses - In 2002 we embarked on an ill-fated journey to chart the faceless backers of our major corporations. The BossWatch website deployed a complex database that would allow one to cross-reference information from annual reports. Only problem was that what it discovered was that the big owners were private holdings and pension funds, that owed hunks of everyone and everything. In other words us - we had control all along. http://www.bosswatch.labor.net.au Covering Cole - As the Cole Royal Commission into the building and construction industry spent large swathes of taxpayer money attempting to lift the lid on corruption in the industry, Workers Online journalist Jim Marr got an uneasy feeling. Dig as they might, there was nothing there. Through a series of features for WOL, Jim constructed a legal world that seemed to fit more closely with Lewis Carrol. Those features became the basis of a book 'First, the verdict" commissioned by the CFMEU and launched by Alan Jones in one of the best pro-worker speeches we ever published. http://workers.labor.net.au/features/200303/a_guestreporter_jones.html
The Battle of Macquarie Street - The most dramatic showdown Workers Online covered was the 2001 picket of Macquarie Street, when Labor MPs were blocked entry to Parliament ahead of a vote to strip workers compensation rights. While Carr and Egan ferreted their way into the house through a secret tunnel, the rest of the government was escorted after police on horseback reneged on an agreed peaceful protocol to bust the picket. It was the end point of an intense cyber campaign, culminating in the famous 'Della's List' -View the archived campaign page at www.labor.net.au/compo1 Joy To the Workers - Over the years Workers Online became a place of record for the border movement - labour historians in particular contributed. One, Rowan Cahill, produced a book from a series of missives sent during the long-running joy Manufacturing dispute through 2000, a sort of living history on the run. It wasn't our work, but we're proud of providing the momentum. Spreading the WorkChoices' Word As EMC has moved into producing union journals, we have syndicated the Workers Online news into hard copy. As the Rights at Work campaign has gathered steam., these stories, have been shared across the movement The circle from hard copy to virtual is now complete. And the One Big Miss - With the big ideas came failures too - and we are not ashamed of them. Anyone who wants to see documented over-reaching should reflect on 'E-Change' - the poorly executed e-book I compiled with Michael Gadiel during 2001. Pure gibber. Our Lasting Legacy? Go to Google; type in anything vaguely related to industrial relations and chances are you'll hit on workers Online,.
|
| Search All Issues | Latest Issue | Previous Issues | Print Latest Issue |
|
© 1999-2002 Workers Online 
|
|
