I’m putting together a post on Labor’s IR backdown, but I’m snowed under at work right now so I’m not really in the mood to finish writing it just yet. In the meantime, here’s some video and music you might find interesting. Kath & Kim: “Bloody Howard” You’ve surely heard that this week’s episode of [...]
An employer in the film industry has admitted paying his staff illegal, below-award wages, and has been caught on tape making threats of violence against a union official. Film producer Brad Diebert rang the MEAA’s Simon Whipp: How dare you say we have the money to pay actors more money… fuck you, spreading shit like [...]
An inspirational nature film. Watch what happens when the lions pick on the weakest buffalo.
In yet another admission that WorkChoices is a failed policy, the head of the OEA, Peter McIlwain, has been demoteed. His organisation is being renamed the Workplace Authority, and its new director is Barbara Bennett. As Mark Bahnisch points out, this is part of a spin exercise. This is how the Minister explained the new [...]
You might have seen this Government advertisement (pdf) in the newspaper, or in some of the commentary since. I most recently saw it mentioned as the hook for a David Peetz column in The Courier-Mail. He points out the hypocrisy involved in encouraging small business to consider collective bargaining in order to “to be on [...]
The Australian Catholic Council for Employment Relations today published a scathing criticism of WorkChoices, saying it is biased towards bosses. Denis Peters’ AAP story is quite good — it mentions the long list of problems with WorkChoices, including “the minimum wage, minimum conditions and bargaining, unfair dismissals and the role of unions.” But Peters gets [...]
Alexander Downer has suggested Australian Labor should look to the Tony Blair’s industrial regime for inspiration. Downer says the British ex-PM …saw the modernisation of his national economy as the key to job creation, fairness and equality for all workers… [and] set a strong example for future Labour leaders, both in Britain and around the [...]
Labor’s new industrial relations policy, Forward with Fairness, includes a commitment to abolish AWAs in favour of collective agreements. The policy is very good: Collective enterprise agreement making and democracy will be the heart of Labor’s industrial relations system. Collective bargaining allows balanced, cooperative arrangements that foster improved productivity across a business and provide the [...]
This is a guest post by Chris White. He hass worked for the AWU and LHMU, and is a former Secretary of the UTLC of SA. He is now a Canberra based labour law researcher. He is an ALP member. Union history includes that of struggle to protect striking workers from unjust penal powers. Workers [...]
When Labor announced it would retain WorkChoices’ limits on the right to strike, Jeff Sparrow argued that the “most striking” feature of the policy “is precisely how little it is driven by the polls.” After all, there’s absolutely no evidence of the public demanding a crackdown on strikes. Yes, industrial relations is a key issue—but [...]
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