These posts are about the Howard Government’s anti-worker “WorkChoices” package.
After being fairly quiet lately, I thought I had better make an effort to put up an election eve post to sum up the campaigns and tell you how I recommend you vote tomorrow. In truth, IR did not feature very much in the campaign. The parties’ positions have had a lot of publicity over [...]
The Government has pinned its hopes on industrial relations, and especially the union movement’s influence on Labor. But it was caught lying about some ALP members, and pretending that student politics counts as industrial unionism. Besides, voters know that the Liberal frontbenches are stuffed full of business lawyers, while union leaders bring a range of [...]
The Government’s reds-under-the-bed fear campaign has been kicked up a notch, with Peter Costello accusing Julia Gillard of being a closet Communist. And isn’t it awful that Labor’s candidates come from a tradition of representing Australian workers and their families? Seriously, if the ALP was in the pockets of the unions, wouldn’t the ACTU guarantee [...]
“Are you now or have you ever been…?” was the joking title of a recent post at Larvatus Prodeo. It was responding to a despicable Government/Gazette tag-team attack on academics whose research found that WorkChoices and AWAs were slashing wages. Because there was no basis for attacking the merits of the findings, the research team [...]
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 [...]
As Michael Bachelard pointed out in The Age recently, the ABCC was ostensibly set up to deal with organised crime in the building industry — yet “almost two years after the ABCC was set up as a statutory commission, not one alleged organised criminal has been charged.” Instead, it uses its extraordinary powers to persecute [...]
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 [...]
Take a look at this breathless reporting from Brad Norington in the Government Gazette: Businesses are using John Howard’s workplace laws to strike a better balance between work and family life, with a dramatic increase in time off allowed so employees can look after sick children or elderly relatives. Almost 40 per cent of employers [...]
Wow. In April 2006 I wrote that the Employer Advisor Program was an anti-union slush fund, with the Howard Government “blatantly tipping a bucket of money into the business lobby’s coffers, to subsidise its anti-union campaigns”. A year later, in April 2007, I pointed out that Julia Gillard thought business would be expected to run [...]
The business lobby today launched its election propaganda campaign. The president of the Business Council of Australia, Michael Chaney, made the laughable claim that the ads are non-political, but Australians saw through the last “information” campaign and they’ll see through this one, too. The leader of the Liberal Party tells business they had better spend [...]
Comments