We Built This Country – Builders’ Labourers and their Unions, by Humphrey McQueen, Ginninderra Press, Port Adelaide, 2011, 364pp, $30.00 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 [...]
Tag Archives | Work Choices
Elliott Johnston speaks
Elliott Johnston’s title was ‘the rule of law’ but he soon turned to capitalism and politics and cites Don Dunstan and supports self-determination for aboriginal people, the environment and workers rights and more… Public Forum on the 5 October, 2004, to a packed Elder Hall University of Adelaide. Organised by Australian Options with the support [...]
Firewalling the right to strike? -1
The ACTU in lobbying the new Labor government achieved advances in collective bargaining, provisions to ensure this happens if a majority of employees want it, with new good faith bargaining obligations and employment rights for individual workers, but not for the right to strike.
the Fair Work Act (2009) is a sell-out of the YRAW movement.
Ark’s Tribe
On Wednesday, June 3 2009 Unions at the ACTU Congress called on Gillard to abolish the ABCC. Ark Tribe, a South Australian construction worker, faces six months jail after being charged with allegedly refusing to attend an interrogation by the Australian Building and Construction Commission. http://www.arkstribe.org.au/ The Australian union movement stands behind Ark and urges [...]
Fair Work Bill:breach of promise on collective bargaining
On the issue of fair collective bargaining rights, there is a deliberate breach of the ALP’s election promise by the government not to allow unions freedom to negotiate over the content of collective agreements. One of the extreme outrages of the WorkChoices regime unique in the OECD world was the ‘prohibited content’ regulation. Without listing [...]
MPs pattern bargain but not workers
In the Financial Review yesterday, DPM Gillard remains tough in Labor’s crack-down on pattern bargaining. Pattern bargaining – industry-wide industrial action in pursuit of an industry agreement or identical enterprise agreements – is like workChoices specifically prohibited by her Bill (sections 412 and 422). Her “Fair” Work Bill retains all of the WorkChoices repressive regime [...]
Labor’s Education Counter-Revolution
LABOR’S EDUCATION COUNTER-REVOLUTION by Rob Durbridge, AEU Federal Industrial Officer State and Territory Labor governments are “pattern bargaining†against the AEU and its associated state unions to remove education quality guarantees from industrial agreements. Howard’s Workchoices proscribed staffing guarantees as unlawful; Minister Gillard recently announced that the new IR laws will proscribe matters which don’t [...]
1984 remains: DPM firm
It is frustrating to see Julia Gillard DPM on Insiders this morning repeat Howard’s mantra about ˜tough cop on the beat against building unionists and Reith’s and Abbott’s and Andrews and Hockey’s…and the Master Builders. 1. The DPM provides no evidence based analysis of why continuing the most repressive penal system against unionists for legitimately [...]
Inside your rights at work campaign
When Labor won the November 2007 election it was widely accepted that the Your Rights at Work campaign, against the Howard Government’s Work Choices legislation was a key to the victory. Public opposition to Work Choices grew from the commencement of the ACTU’s television advertising campaign in June 2005 and remained high throughout the period [...]
News from LabourStart
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- Germany: IG Metall get highest pay rise in 20 years
- Australia: BHP's aim is to break the power of unions
- Canada: UFCW App Locates Unionized Stores
- Mexico: Worker rights defender kidnapped, beaten and threatened with death in Puebla
- Turkey: Support for Arrested KESK Women
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