Archive for October, 2008

Survey on crisis

Posted 31 October 2008 | By chriswhite | Categories: Capitalist Financial Crisis | No Comments

Please see the link below to an online survey based on the ‘work-in-progress’ developed by SEARCH Foundation members on the global finance and economic crisis. Take a few minutes to work through the questions, to assist in finding the best way to communicate about this crisis with working people, and to find practical demands and [...]

Australia at work

Posted 29 October 2008 | By chriswhite | Categories: Collective Bargaining, Featured, Labour Law, WorkChoices, Workers Rights | No Comments

This research on Australians in work is essnetial for understanding industrial relations and labour law debates. From the Executive Summary. ‘The aim of the Australia at Work project is to contribute up-to-date evidence-based research to a rapidly changing industrial relations policy environment.
Australia at Work tracks 8,000 workers over five years to understand the [...]

Capitalising the banks

Posted 27 October 2008 | By chriswhite | Categories: Capitalist Financial Crisis | No Comments

Full and partial takeovers of banks are reviving interest in their nationalisation as a good in itself. This notion has significance here because the failure of the Chifley government’s failure to do so in the late 1940s served as a sop “true believers” in the ALP’s milk-and-water Socialist Objective. Hence, it is important to understand [...]

Safe work week

Posted 27 October 2008 | By chriswhite | Categories: Labour Law, Workers Rights | 1 Comment

Safe Work Week timely reminder of human cost of workplace tragedies and need for strong OHS laws Friday, 24 October 2008 from ACTU
The unacceptably high human cost of workplace death and injury highlights the need for stronger national workplace health and safety laws, the ACTU said today.
As union members around the country hold events [...]

PM could say this

Posted 25 October 2008 | By chriswhite | Categories: Collective Bargaining, WorkChoices, Workers Rights | No Comments

PM and the DPM could say this on TV and at meetings…it may assist.
Obama says it.
any Labor MP?
Being in a union assists facing the coming depression.
Being in a union assists your rights at work.
Being in a union assists collective bargaining.
Being in a union is about fairness.

Australia destroys its own Stonehenge

Posted 23 October 2008 | By chriswhite | Categories: Environmental crisis, Featured, Social justice | No Comments

Australia destroys its own Stonehenge:
First images showing full impact of Woodside’s new LNG plant
in the heart of the Burrup Peninsula, Western Australia.
http://www.standupfortheburrup.com/1.jpg
Friends of Australian Rock Art is today releasing recent aerial photographs which show for the first time the full extent of Woodside’s destruction of a globally significant rock art area on the Burrup [...]

Depression

Posted 21 October 2008 | By chriswhite | Categories: Capitalist Financial Crisis | 1 Comment

“The Depression: A Long-Term View” by Immanuel Wallerstein.
The depression has started. Journalists are still coyly enquiring of economists whether or not we may be entering a mere recession. Don’t believe it for a minute. We are already at the beginning of a full-blown worldwide depression with extensive unemployment almost everywhere. It may take the form [...]

Chinese workers fight back

Posted 21 October 2008 | By chriswhite | Categories: China | No Comments

The case of Ole Wolff (Yantai) Electronics Ltd
This case of unusual rank and file union activism in China can be seen as both good and bad news.
The good news is that, in the North-Eastern Chinese port city of Yantai there are workers’ willing to struggle for two years for their right to form their own [...]

Safe Work Australia?

Posted 20 October 2008 | By chriswhite | Categories: Labour Law, Social justice, Workers Rights | No Comments

Safe Work Australia – Joint Greens, Coalition & Xenophon statement
The Deputy Prime Minister is walking away from safety consultation at the highest level by refusing to incorporate the Senate amendments in the Safe Work Australia Bill.
An unlikely alliance of the Greens, the Independents and the Coalition says that Julia Gillard is turning her back on [...]