Chris White Online

For almost two years the Australian oil rig workers – members of the MUA-AWU Offshore Alliance – have been trying to seal a union deal with an iconic Danish shipping giant Maersk. But Maersk refuses to talk to the union – and favours workers who are non-union.
Support the Australian union members now campaigning for [...]

Abbott tells corporate leaders that WorkChoices was not an economic mistake, not all bad, but politically a mistake.
WorkChoices was necessary as regulation for unlimited freedom for profit making and undermining unions.
Turnbull was to hide WorkChoices 2. With Abbott the contest is back in the open.
But the Murdoch press weekly has propaganda “Abbott [...]

Typical media reactions against current workers’ strike actions hides the political reality analysed in detail on this blog that Labor’s Fair Work fails to ensure the right to strike, largely denies workers’ lawful industrial action, and so continues one of the worst repressive regimes against unions.
I will look at in 2010 some of the specifics [...]

Increase in workplace deaths means health and safety laws need to be strengthened: new data
A sharp rise in work-related fatalities last year shows that proposed new workplace health and safety laws need to be strengthened, not watered down, say unions.
There were 177 fatal injuries in workplaces in 2008-9, according to newly released statistics from the [...]

Interesting reading at Global Labour column.
http://column.global-labour-university.org/

TWO young Victorian workers have died in the past 24 hours.
It is reported in the Age yesterday that “A 24-year-old Wangaratta man was hit by concrete as he cleaned out a concrete pump hose yesterday, and a 21-year-old plumber died in hospital on Monday night after receiving an electric shock while working at Stawell in [...]

How fair is the Fair Work Act 2009? A socio-political legal analysis
By Michael Tubbs
The Opposition’s anti-union and anti-employee WorkChoices IR regime cost it Government on 24 November 2007. Thus one would expect the new
Rudd Government’s Fair Work Act (The Act) to be the complete opposite – liberating.
Unfortunately, inexplicably this is not [...]

Political discourse and contested debates on the labour movement. Margarita Windish in a Socialist Alliance discussion of union work.
http://alliancevoices.blogspot.com/2009/11/notes-on-our-trade-union-work.html

National OHS Harmonisation – Campaign for best practice continues. By Brian Boyd, VTHC Secretary.
Back on the 28th September the Federal Government, through the Workplace Relations Minister’s Council, released for public comment a proposed new OHS national model law.
The six weeks ‘public comment’ period gives the trade union movement an opportunity to promote and [...]