Chris is a labour law researcher, specialising in China and the right to strike. He spent 27 years in the SA union movement. Chris now lives in Canberra. More →
Women on the Verge of Recession: Confronting Gender Issues in Turbulent Times Speech by Elizabeth Broderick Sex Discrimination Commissioner and Commissioner responsible for Age Discrimination Australian Human Rights Commission. We urge Labor to deliver on these gender issues. http://www.hreoc.gov.au/about/media/speeches/sex_discrim/2009/20090429_Press_Club.html
The ACTU supports construction workers stop work protests across Australia for today’s International Workers Day of Mourning. Disgracefully, but predictably, the ABCC and the MBA threaten unions risk unlawful industrial action (still kept by Labor) if they attend stop work meetings. Such is the limitation on our democratic freedoms, our right to associate with a [...]
Australian workers grieve for lives lost in workplaces. Families of victims of workplace deaths will join with unions at rallies and memorial services tomorrow (Tuesday 28 April) to mark lives lost in workplace accidents. ACTU media release Monday, 27 April 2009 Loved ones, colleagues and unions will also call for greater health and safety protections [...]
THE GREAT FINANCIAL CRISIS CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES by John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff (Monthly Review Press, New York, 2009, out in paperback) is a good critique of this period of the financialization of capital in crisis. Based on their earlier Monthly Review analysis of what was happening in the crisis of capitalist development with [...]
The Welfare Rights Centre rightly says the $90 for MPs a week from the 30% increase in electorate allowance was what a young unemployed person had to pay for food, rent, transport and bills each week. Pensioners are pushing for $30. ‘We know politicians work hard for their money but the timing of this increase [...]
Julian Disney at the CrunchTime conference summarised the case for tax reform. (If I can access a link to his presentation I will post it). He is Professor and Director of the Social Justice Project at the University of New South Wales. He is Convenor of TaxWatch. He is Chair of the National Affordable Housing [...]
If one central thing can be drawn from reflecting on Anzac Day, it is this: In war, the best offer their own lives, the worst offer the lives of others. Andy Alcock continues. Graham Cornes should be congratulated for his story in SAWeekend Magazine on 25.4.2009 about returning to Vietnam. It reminded me of a [...]
John Connor CEO of The Climate Institute at the Crunchtime Conference gave a devastating critque of the Government’s plans to give 58 billion to polluters, with their inadequate targets for CO2 reduction and the failure of the private market ETS model. Details were given of a new direction needed for investmet in clean energy and [...]
I attended this week the CrunchTime Policy Conference in Sydney put on by leading Progressive ThinkTanks. http://www.crunchtime.org.au/ In the coming blogs, I report on the speakers and organisations. Here LEAN, the Labor Environment Action Network. http://www.lean.net.au/ I had heard of LEAN in NSW and recently in Victoria, but it was the first time to experience [...]
