CALLING ALL TRADE UNIONISTS, BROTHERS AND SISTERS Will you join us to Stand Up for the Burrup? WE RECALL the Pilbara Strike of 1946-49, when 200 Pilbara LawMen asked three leaders – Clancy McKenna, Don McLeod, and Dooley Bin Bin – to organise a strike and walk-off by Aboriginal workers and their families for land [...]
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Crisis
Labor can deal with its crisis in a labour way by Rob Durbridge The crisis besetting the Federal Government looks like a rising Queensland flood, while Abbott and Co watch and wait for the Government to drown. It’s a crisis with multiple causes, linked by the failure of a leadership without a sense of identity [...]
Minimum wage claim
Unions call for a $26 wage rise to help our lowest paid catch up to average earnings Unions will seek a $26 a week pay rise for Australia’s lowest paid workers in 2012, whose wages have fallen well behind average income earners over the past decade and are not keeping pace with the cost of [...]
The strike
National union congress talks Right To Strike Saturday, May 19, 2012 By Paul Benedek, Sydney About 100 unionists packed the Unions NSW Atrium on May 14 to discuss the right to strike campaign, at a fringe event of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) Congress that began the same day. Titled “Advance Australia Fair? [...]
Give a pluck
At the ACTU Congress,Paul Richardson Assistant National Secretary of the NUW reported on the campaign to unionise some 3,000 workers in the chicken industry – mostly migrant-the sucesses e.g. the strike and two week community picket at Baida -see reports early on this blog, ending precarious contracts, enforcing OHS laws – you will remember the [...]
IWW – then and now
IWW -then and now by Humphrey McQueen The ashes of Joe Hill Let’s start from three interlocked expressions of the IWW’s approach to educating, organising and agitating: its humour, its slogans and its songs. In comparison, today’s grouplets, including the IWW, seem po-faced. The first aspect is the power of IWW satire, sarcasm and irony. [...]
ACTU on the economy
ACTU Congress Jobs & the Economy Australian unions have been central to the advancement of progressive economic and social policy in the past. Unions have fought for, and secured, vital elements of the social wage, like pensions, superannuation, Medicare, and income for the unemployed. Australian unions have always had a vision for a fair and [...]
US union winning struggles in Ohio and Wisconsin
At the ACTU Congress inspiring reports from two US union activists Shari Obrenski Clevand Teachers Union and Eric Barnes from Wisconsin explaining how US unions are sucessful in mobilising hundreds of thousands in Wisconsin and Ohio pushing back the extreme Republican state anti-union and no collective bargaining allowed attacks. Their campaign extended to mobilisation citizens [...]
Howe: ACTU report Lives on Hold.
Extract from Brian Howe’s speech to the ACTU launching his 84 page “Lives on Hold” report: “Australia must pursue universality in labour law. Doing this effectively requires: Expanded definitions of employers and employees; Reforms to better capture indirect employment arrangements like labour hire and dependent contracting; A firmer definition of casual work; and Expanded National [...]
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