As you might expect, the Government has been ramping up a campaign about so-called “dirty tricks” being employed by the unions. First John Howard slammed an ACTU document as “a dirty tricks manual”, but couldn’t explain how unions phoning or visiting their members is a problem. Howard’s complaint to the electoral commission went nowhere, as [...]
Put this in your diary: the ABC’s new drama, Bastard Boys, will screen in two parts at 8:30pm on Sunday, 13 May and Monday, 14 May. The show tells the story of the War on the Waterfront, in which the Howard Government ganged up with a stevedoring company to try to smash the Maritime Workers [...]
The ACTU has started showing more television advertisements, like this one (warning: rude words): Wait, that’s not the right one — but it is great! Anyway, here’s one of the real ads: There’s another, more recent ad called Boys in the Boardroom, but I can’t find a clip online yet. It looks like there’s a [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Yesterday’s anti-WorkChoices rallies were quite good, but bad planning and publicity decisions by the unions led to poor media coverage. In Melbourne and Perth, at least, the choice of huge venues away from the city centre led to a smaller crowd that looked even smaller. If you promise to “Fill the G”, you’d better have [...]
Tomorrow is the national day of protest against the unfair WorkChoices laws. Local rallies around the country will be linked up by a national telecast. Jimmy Barnes will headline the festivities at the MCG, and hundreds of thousands of workers are expected to join in around the country. Even staff from the Office of the [...]
TWU members in Sydney struck for two hours this morning, due to concerns about threats that were allegedly made to their delegates. The first incident occurred on 19 July: Three drivers at the Westbus depot at Bonnyrigg — all union delegates — and a union official claim the manager told them during a meeting on [...]
When you’re reading the flood of commentary that will follow this morning’s High Court decision, it is important to remember that it was not a ruling on the merits of the legislation. Just because the law is constitutional does not mean it is good or worthwhile. In fact, the High Court majority went out of [...]
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 [...]
