Last week we heard about the Priceline decision, which upheld the right of a company to sack its workers to cut costs. It didn’t take long for other companies to cotton on to that strategy. Workers at Vopak Terminals in Sydney have been trying to negotiate a collective agreement. Vopak has been refusing to negotiate, [...]
Here’s an interesting story: Dancers at the WA Ballet, Australia’s oldest ballet company, yesterday borrowed a lawyer from the union for boilermakers and welders, the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union, to take on management over dancers’ pay, which the Industrial Relations Commission heard described as scandalous yesterday. That’s what solidarity is about — workers sticking up [...]
The Office of Workplace Services has launched a prosecution against Tristar in the Federal Court. It alleges that because workers have not been provided with work, they have effectively been made redundant. OWS will push for these employees to be paid out their full entitlements — up to four times what Joe Hockey got for [...]
Infamous car parts manufacturer Tristar is screwing its workers again, this time picking on a dying man. John Beaven put in 43 years of loyal service to the company, but now that he is on his death bed with cancer, the company is refusing to offer him a redundancy package: When Tristar began to wind [...]
In a previous post, I highlighted ABS figures that show a decline in average wages since the introduction of WorkChoices. A rightist blogger attempted to explain away the figures, saying that an influx of low-paid workers were dragging the average down, “but not the earnings on average of those who already have jobs”. While that [...]
Although this blog is usually quite strictly focussed on Australian issues, I have been asked by the LHMU to mention something that happened in the United States last week, and which is one of LabourStart’s Act NOW! campaigns. As you know, this blog supports the LHMU’s Clean Start for Cleaners campaign. A similar campaign — [...]
A CEPU organiser noticed that postmen were listening to iPods while doing their rounds, and the union realised that this was a great way to provide their members with information about the current Australia Post EBA negotiations. So far, three episodes of the EBA7 podcast have been produced: [audio:http://www.cepu.asn.au/comms/section_campaigns/ap_eba7/media/podcast-01.mp3] [audio:http://www.cepu.asn.au/comms/section_campaigns/ap_eba7/media/podcast-02.mp3] [audio:http://www.cepu.asn.au/comms/section_campaigns/ap_eba7/media/podcast-03.mp3] Keep an eye on [...]
… apart from my return to the blogosphere. Union membership is on the rise, thanks to WorkChoices and the union movement’s excellent response to the Beaconsfield disaster: Tasmania’s unions are experiencing a surge in popularity, with an upswing in membership for the first time in decades. The union movement had been steadily losing members since [...]
Labor’s collective bargaining policy, which will be slightly different to the one proposed by the ACTU, will enshrine the right to a collective agreement if a majority of workers votes for one. It will give the staff in a workplace the choice between a collective agreement, or individual agreements, by a fair vote overseen by [...]
