By CHARLES DUHIGG and DAVID BARBOZA

January 25, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-ipad-and-the-human-costs-for-workers-in-china.html?ref=global-home

http://securejobs.org.au/

I recommend two changes for more secure work.

1. Amend the Fair Work Act to have an effective right to strike.

2. Amend the Fair Work Act to restrict casual and other forms of precarious work to a limited period and apply more secure contracts of employment. Fair Work Australia is to have the discretion to conciliate and arbitrate the transition to the more secure employment contracts.

1. The right to strike

I submit the lawful strike is essential for beginning to enable employees and their unions to respond to dire precarious work of existing capitalist labour relations.

The international capitalist crisis daily worsens putting more pressure on business to further move to precarious and exploitative work.

In response, there is a driving imperative for employees to have the FWA balance the more powerful corporate and government forces by amendments that protect the right to strike.

I have written on this blog for a right to strike, firewalling industrial action for protection for employees and their unions.

I argue the right to strike is vital for employees in all the forms of non-standard work.

Arguments are strong for amendments to the Fair Work Act to protect the right to strike. I urge as necessary the repeal of the Australian Building and Construction Act, and the ABCC functions and powers.

All of the existing provisions from the earlier Workplace Relations Act and Work Choices still in the current repressive regime against strikes are to be deleted.

Instead, a broad legal protection for all forms of industrial action is inserted.

At a minimum, commonly accepted ILO principles protecting the right to strike are to be adopted. The history of such ILO principles and their non-application by Australia is well known in the industrial relations and labour law community.

Similarly, labour law critical analysis by Shae McCrystal ‘The Right to Strike in Australia’. I recommend Keith Ewing’s research on the right to strike and Tania Novitz (see this blog).

There is much criticism of the failure of the current FWA to have an effective right to strike in writings by industrial relations specialists, labour lawyers, the ACTU and unions.

Firewalling the right to strike I submit is essential to assist strategies for secure jobs.

2. Job security in the Fair Work Act

The overall merit evidence from employees’ adverse experiences in precarious work and the unjust impact socially at many levels in the Australian community requires Fair Work Act amendments for job security. Here are some recommendations.

2.1 One amendment is to clearly restrict casual employment to only short periods, such as 4 hours daily and no more than fortnightly.

Then a provision that compels employers and allows employees the transition from existing casualisation to more permanent on-going employment contracts.

Such a provision has bargaining rights for precarious workers to change to secure employment with the terms to be negotiated and agreed. The clear right exists when not being able to reach an agreement for the employee(s) to access conciliation and arbitration from FWA to gain process steps for more permanent work.

The same applies to ending many short-term contracts. After two short term contracts, then the employer is required to move to more permanent, on-going contracts.

Special attention is to support any employee with service e.g. more than seven years who is to be on a permanent contract, as is an existing employee with 10 years before retirement. Other non-standard employment sectors could be protected such as in the disability sector.

2.2 The next new section is to ensure that labour-hire contract provisions are not attractive to employers for lowering costs. The aim is have protections against precarious work in the labour-hire industry.

Such provisions are to ensure the same wages and conditions in the user firm in similar work employees from must be hired permanently for not less than two years. There is a formal written contract with the same rate and benefits. The worker may join the user firm’s union. Labour-hire is to be implemented ‘generally for short-term, supplementary and substitute positions’.
Provisions for transition and
compliance need to be put in place.

2.3 Strengthening enforcement provisions by employees and unions to ensure that employers pay legal wages and comply with all employment conditions of the contracts of employment, with speedy measures for exploited workers to recover wages. Increased penalties and damages against non-complying employers.

2.4 A provision that deems for compliance that legal minimums exist in contracts of employment so that those entitlements can be enforced even if there is no evidence of a written contract of employment.

2.5 Amend the unfair dismissal section so that the right applies to all employees, irrespective of the employee’s status or contract of employment or the size of the employer’s workforce.

The big lie that employers may not employ was made up by Peter Reith’s press secretary and is repeated ad nauseum in the media, but is to be rejected.

Even precarious workers ‘dismissed’ ought to have an opportunity to state their case about why they were unreasonably dismissed before a user friendly FWA conciliator then arbitrator for reinstatement or not.

2.6 For strengthened redundancy provisions in a new minimum entitlement that has a provision for one month’s pay for each year of service for redundant employees. This new minimum deters employers from making employees redundant and assists redundant employees in this recessionary period.

2.7 A specific process provision for precarious workers with non-standard work arrangements to have the legal right to union representation and to be able to organise in unions.

I support the ACTU campaign for Secure Jobs.

As the many issues of insecure work in Australia has overseas the same issues this Inquiry will investigate other countries attempts to deal for greater protection for their employees. I recommend China’s attempt (see this blog).

I urge support for the Independent Inquiry into Insecure Work in Australia

Doug Nesbitt

A wage cut of fifty per cent. An elimination of pensions. Cuts to benefits. These demands have inevitably led to a major showdown
at a locomotive factory in London, Ontario between the 700 unionized workers of Electro-Motive Diesel (EMD) and Caterpillar,
a massive U.S.-based corporation.

The workers, members of Canadian Auto Workers Local 27, responded to the employer’s
demands with a positive strike vote of 97 per cent. The employer, Progress Rail, a subsidiary of Caterpillar, locked out the workers on New Year’s Day.

In addition to facing down a notorious anti-union employer who
hammered the American United Auto Workers in the 1990s, there are plenty of rumours about Caterpillar closing the London plant and
moving operations to Muncie, Indiana. EMD workers in London make $36/hour while their counterparts in Muncie are paid only
$12.50-14.50 (Cdn). Indiana is also on the cusp of becoming the first rust-belt state to introduce a “Right to Work” law, a
notorious form of anti-union legislation made possible by the even more infamous Taft-Hartley law of 1947, the long-standing
crown jewel of American anti-union legislation.

Click here to continue reading:
http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/586.php#continue

Review by Howard Guille

This is the second book of Humphrey McQueen’s research into builders’ labourers and their unions.

Read it, as the author says, with the earlier volume ‘Framework of Flesh: Builders’ labourers battle for health and safety.

This book is a history of builders’ labourers and their work from colonialisation onwards. More especially, it is an account of the formation and operation of the Australian Building Labourers’ Federation from 1910 to the amalgamation of its residual bits into the CFMEU in 1991.

The book cannot be summarised in a review that is two words for each of the years McQueen covers.

One impressive aspect is the weight given to the outlying states as well as to Victoria and New South Wales. Another is the section on the ‘money flow’ within unions; put plainly, a union will fold if it fails to collect and bank members’ dues. McQueen also looks past ‘a cult of individuals in the Jack and Norm show’ (p12). Even so, his account of the genesis of green bans and his analysis of the conflicts between Norm Gallagher and Jack Mundey will raise controversy.

McQueen tells how workers tried to control what was happening to them – in practice, what bosses were trying to do to them – in the face of economic and social forces and changing technology.

There are fascinating insights – for example, other things being equal, concrete gave labourers’ opportunities and increased their relative power and work value but scissors lifts reduced them. He makes subtle use of Marxist political economy weaving ideas of surplus value, socially necessary labour and the like into understanding the actual economic forces pressing on workers.

Unionised labourers fought with trades, with judges, arbitration commissioners and other unions as well as with bosses.

The Arbitration system was a site for almost constant contest about which union covered which jobs and how these fitted into award coverage – for example was a plasterers’ labourer a trades’ assistant or a labourer; is a bridge or a communications tower a ‘building’. There was, especially in Queensland, an incessant coverage battle with the AWU. This went beyond the Builders’ Labourers and was a general fight from 1915 to 1996 between the AWU as Labor Government ally and the unions affiliated with the Trades and Labour Council. This was reprised after 1989 with Goss ALP Government.

I finished reading the book just as Alan Joyce gave Qantas shareholders ‘certainty’ by grounding the entire fleet of planes. The Qantas dispute and media shrieking about unions came after a period of ‘official quiet’ about industrial disputation that McQueen’s book helps to put into perspective. Disputes fell off in 1990s and 2000s apart from a few unions including the CFMEU, CEPU (ETU) and NTEU that adopted disciplined pattern bargaining. This has a clear lineage from the Victorian Building Industry Agreement of the 1950s onwards led, as McQueen documents, by the Builders’ Labourers. This was ‘collective bargaining’ on an industry basis designed by unions. It is far cry from today’s ‘enterprise bargaining’ designed by the Business Council of Australia and their legal and academic advisers as a second best if individual contracts could not be achieved.

McQueen says his book is about ‘defeats as well as victories, drunks and thieves as well as militants and revolutionaries’.

More importantly, as he says, it shows ‘why a union should be a school for the working class’ (p11).

The book should be compulsory reading for new and old union officers and organisers: it will certainly challenge them to decide whether they are workers representatives or ‘workplace relations practioneers’.

This review appears in the magazine Australian Options no 67

Sit-in strikers at General Motors’ Fisher No. 1 plant.

By Don Fitz

[See also With Babies & Banners, the classic 1977 documentary about the 1936-37 Flint sit-down strike, and the role of women in it.]

January 3, 2012 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — The year 2012 marks the 75th anniversary of the great sit-down strike wave of 1937. It also begins the second year of the Occupy movement, which has more than a few similarities to the time when hundreds of thousands of Americans occupied their workplaces.

The first recorded sit-down strike in the US was actually in 1906 among General Electric workers of Schenectady, New York. When three organisers for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or Wobblies) were fired, 3000 of their fellow workers sat down and stopped production.

By the 1930s, the IWW was on the wane, but many of its organisers were active and workers across the US had seen its tactics first hand.

In 1933, workers in the Austin, Minnesota, Hormel plant had many complaints against the company: raises habitually went to foremen’s friends; workers were fired and then rehired in other departments at lower pay; before election day, foremen would threaten layoffs if Farmer-Labor Party candidates won, and employees who challenged the practices were told that they could quit. The final straw came when Jay Hormel, who fancied himself to be a “benevolent dictator”, attempted to impose a weekly pay deduction for an insurance plan.

When a worker in Hog Kill was pressured to sign up, other workers shut down the floor for 10 minutes, until his insurance card was torn up. News of the brief sit down spread throughout the plant. That July night, workers met at Austin’s Sutton Park to form a union.

The union charter followed the IWW pattern of grouping all workers into one big union regardless of craft. It invited membership from labourers throughout Austin and the surrounding area. The workers named themselves the Independent Union of All Workers (IUAW).

Jay Hormel promised to recognise the union, grant seniority rights and arbitrate grievances. But for six weeks, Hormel refused to put anything in writing and on November 10 workers voted to strike. The Farmer-Laborite Minnesota governor made public speeches backing the strikers while he secretly mobilised the National Guard 30 miles from Austin.

Support for the strike was overwhelming. Since the IUAW had endorsed farmers’ efforts to raise their prices, the Farmers’ Holiday Association patrolled roads leading into Austin to halt livestock and scabs. Strikers occupied the plant and, as Stan Weir recounted the story,

food, bedding, cigarettes, reading material and playing cards were brought to them by family and friends. They came out of the plant several days later with one of the first industrial union contracts in mass production history.

Great Goodyear Strike

The best-known early sit-down strikes were in Ohio. Jeremy Brecher described their humble beginnings in his book, Strike! Sometime in the early 1930s, two factory baseball teams in Akron, Ohio, objected to the umpire because he was not in the union. They stopped playing and sat in the field until a new umpire was found.

A few days later, a supervisor at a rubber factory insulted several workers. Remembering the ball game, they turned off their machines and sat at their work benches. The work stoppage spread throughout the plant and, in less than an hour, the company had given in. Between 1933 and 1936, the practice of sit-down strikes grew among Akron rubber workers.

Read the whole article here
http://links.org.au/node/2685

THREE UNION MEMBERS DISMISSED FROM MANDIRI BANK FOR DEFENDING WORKERS’ RIGHTS

Mandiri Bank in Timor-Leste recently dismissed three of its employees for defending workers’ rights. The individuals concerned are Brother Joaquim Gonzaga, Brother Helder do Rego Barreto and Brother Leonardo Bele Bau Amaral. The dismissals were authorised by Mohamad Yani, General Manager of Mandiri Bank, on November 30, 2011 and December 12, 2011. Mandiri Bank is a private bank based in Jakarta, Indonesia.

The three dismissed individuals are the leaders of the Mandiri Bank Workers Union, which has had a presence at the bank since 2003. Over eight years at Mandiri Bank, each of the employees contributed exemplary work towards the company’s growth in Timor-Leste. None had received any warnings or reprimands prior to their dismissal.

Brother Joaquim Gonzaga (head of the union’s Advocacy and Networking Department) was dismissed on November 30, 2011 for defending the rights and interests of union members. After his dismissal, Brother Helder Barreto (chairman of the union) made efforts to reach a settlement with the bank, but was dismissed himself, along with Brother Leonardo Amaral (the union’s vice chairman).

The three individuals lodged a complaint to the General Workers Union (SJTL), which covers the banking sector.

In response, SJTL Secretary General Almerio Vila Nova issued a demand to Mandiri Bank management for the three union officials to be reinstated, given that there had been no fair cause for their dismissal. However, Mandiri Bank refused this demand.

Given that the dismissals were arbitrary and contrary to the Constitution and the Labour Act of Timor-Leste, SJTL and the Mandiri Bank Workers Union organised a strike in accordance with the procedure outlined in the national legislation on public protests.

The strike took place on December 19, 2011, and was attended by all 43 members of the Mandiri Bank Workers Union.

However, on the second day of the strike the protesters were forcibly dispersed by the police.

This police intervention occurred after a two hour meeting between Police Commander Longuinhos Monteiro and the General Manager of Mandiri Bank, Mohamad Yani, at the Mandiri Bank offices.

The Peak Union Body of Timor-Leste (KSTL) and SJTL promptly contacted the Parliament and the Secretary of State for Vocational Training and Employment (SEFOPE).

A tripartite mediation was held, led by labour relations officers and the Secretary of State for Vocational Training and Employment, Bendito Freitas.

Unfortunately it became clear that the government sided with Mandiri Bank management, and no settlement was reached during the mediation.

It is KSTL’s opinion that the Government of Timor-Leste, SEFOPE and the police have become accomplices and protectors for employers, especially foreign companies such as Mandiri Bank.

This is far from the only case in which the government of Timor-Leste and the police have acted to protect employers. Police action against legal industrial action in Timor-Leste has occurred several times previously: five times in 2004-2009, and twice in 2011. The government has neither addressed the issue of police violence nor taken action against exploitative employers. Without the government to protect workers’ rights, workers are increasingly subject to unfair and arbitrary treatment by their employers.

In light of the above, KSTL calls for the solidarity of fellow trade unions in demanding:

1. That the management of Mandiri Bank (Mohamed Yani) immediately and unconditionally reinstate the three union officials who were unfairly dismissed.

2. Fairness from the government of Timor-Leste when it is mediating industrial disputes, and that it exhibit respect for workers rights as stipulated in the relevant legislation.

3. An immediate cessation of police intervention in legal labour disputes.

For media inquiries, please contact José da Conceição da Costa
President
Timor-Leste Trade Union Confederation-KSTL
Phone: + 670 7239824, E-mail: zito.kstl@gmail.com

By Michael Moore

On this day, December 30th, in 1936 — 75 years ago today — hundreds of workers at the General Motors factories in Flint, Michigan, took over the facilities and occupied them for 44 days. My uncle was one of them.

The workers couldn’t take the abuse from the corporation any longer. Their working conditions, the slave wages, no vacation, no health care, no overtime — it was do as you’re told or get tossed onto the curb.

So on the day before New Year’s Eve, emboldened by the recent re-election of Franklin Roosevelt, they sat down on the job and refused to leave.

They began their Occupation in the dead of winter. GM cut off the heat and water to the buildings. The police tried to raid the factories several times, to no avail. Even the National Guard was called in.

But the workers held their ground, and after 44 days, the corporation gave in and recognized the UAW as the representative of the workers. It was a monumental historical moment as no other major company had ever been brought to its knees by their employees. Workers were given a raise to a dollar an hour — and successful strikes and occupations spread like wildfire across the country. Finally, the working class would be able to do things like own their own homes, send their children to college, have time off and see a doctor without having to worry about paying. In Flint, Michigan, on this day in 1936, the middle class was born.

But 75 years later, the owners and elites have regained all power and control. I can think of no better way for us to honor the original Occupiers than by all of us participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement in whatever form that takes in each of our towns. We need direct action all winter long if we are to prevail.

You can start your own Occupy group in your neighborhood or school or with just your friends.

Speak out against economic injustice at every chance you get. Stop the bank from evicting the family down the block. Move your checking and credit card to a community bank or credit union. Place a sign in your yard — and get your neighbors to do it also — that says, “WE ARE THE 99%.” (You can download signs here and here.)

Do something, anything, but don’t remain silent. Not now. This is the moment. It won’t come again.

75 years ago today, in Flint, Michigan, the people said they’d had enough and occupied the factories until they won. What is stopping us now? The rich have one plan: bleed everyone dry. Can anyone, in good conscience, be a bystander to this?

My uncle wasn’t, and because of what he and others did, I got to grow up without having to worry about a roof over my head or medical bills or a decent life. And all that was provided by my dad who built spark plugs on a GM assembly line.

Let’s each of us double our efforts to raise a ruckus, Occupy Everywhere, and get creative as we throw a major nonviolent wrench into this system of Greed. Let’s make the politicians running for office in 2012 quake in their boots if they refuse to tax the rich, regulate Wall Street and do whatever we the people tell them to do.

Happy 75th!

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/75-years-ago-today-first-occupy

As argued on this blog, here is another reason why the lawful lock-out ought to be denied to the more poweful employer. Workers and their unions have such a limited right to strike that our so-called “fair” bargaining system is weak.

With protected action by workers in collective bargaining, here resisting Schweppes’ attack to reduce existing conditions, the employer has to be put in a position to respond with an agreement with its workforce and not be allowed the lawful lock-out.

See earlier posts on the Qantas lock-out and put ‘right to strike’ in this search.

Read about the lockout here
http://unitedvoice.org.au/news/locked-out-workers-defy-schweppes-as-stocks-dwindle

By Liana Foxvog and Sean Rudolph, International Labor Rights Forum

Today we published our list of this year’s Scrooges for workers’ right to unionize. The companies that topped our list are Dole, Hershey’s, Philippine Airlines, and Wal-Mart.

These corporations use intimidation and sometimes violence, either in the U.S. or in their supply chains abroad, to violate workers’ internationally recognized right to organize.

Among other rights related to freedom of association, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states that “everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests” (Article 23, Section 4).

Despite the labor rights protections in the UDHR and national labor laws, workers continue to see their rights trampled on a daily basis.

In its most recent survey of violations of trade union rights, the International Trade Union Confederation reports at least 90 unionists were killed, 2,083 were injured, and 4,599 were illegally fired last year as a result of their union activities.

Additionally, as the employment crisis continues to grow, many labor rights advocates fear that companies are using the crisis to attack union workers and institute employment schemes that reduce the number of workers guaranteed union protections.

The 2011 Scrooge corporations’ violations include intimidating workers with severe threats, standing by while suppliers aggressively suppress worker organizing, collaborating with military forces to undermine democratically elected union leaders, illegally firing thousands of workers, exploiting foreign exchange students, and turning a blind eye to forced child labor in the supply chain.

The right to freedom of association is typically violated through the use of bullying tactics and the spread of anti-union propaganda but this year’s Scrooges have taken violating workers’ rights to new lows.

As we celebrate the holiday season, consumers and labor advocates can support workers by telling these Scrooge companies that they need to respect workers rights.

As we celebrate the holiday season, you can support workers by calling on the Scrooges to respect workers’ rights:

Urge Philippine Airlines to reinstate fired workers and support job security
Tell Wal-Mart to stop doing business with contractors that repress labor organizing
Ask Hershey to end trafficked child labor in its supply chain
Call on Dole to stop supporting military propaganda campaigns against legitimate worker organizations

Click here to read more about these companies in our Working for Scrooge report.

http://laborrightsblog.typepad.com/international_labor_right/2011/12/this-years-worst-companies-to-work-for-if-you-want-the-right-to-join-a-union.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+typepad/ILRF/international_labor_right+%28