Beware! Labour hire
Little Jonny Howard's anti-worker IR laws are alive and well and living in a state near you.
After asking if we could have a cleaner to look after the lunch sheds and toilets, I was sent an email while on RnR telling me I was no longer required, even though the Gorgon/Chevron gas project is still ramping up workers with my qualifications.
North West Labour Solutions, based in Albany, WA, has taken advantage of workers and their good faith by offering employment under the guise of what is essentially an AWA.
I wonder if my being the Union delegate had anything to do with being sacked? I am now forced to go through legal proceedings to ensure the return of my personal belongings over a month after getting the boot, not to mention the withholding of my mail.
Two more Union reps have received similar treatment. With good representation through Union organisers we have a fighting chance.
The Chevron gas project may be environmentally concerned, but its treatment of workers’ concerns are at the mercy of Labour hire vultures like North West Labour Solutions. Stay vigilant and speak up!
Phil Penberthy
Bendalong, NSW
Guantanamo
We live in a vacuum of inhumanity while purporting a journey to a civil and just humanity. Everything we know is subject to revision, especially what we know about the truth. If we are to believe David Hicks' account of his five and half years imprisoned at Guantanamo then we must acknowledge the most horrific ailments of our inhumanity.
Example is our only immortality. What the prisoners endured at Guantanamo and at Abu Ghraib depicts a cruel and vicious, narcissistic and essentially mad inhumanity. If we are to believe the means is the end then violence will continue to beget violence. What hope do we as human beings have if we continue with violence as the means to the end? Especially as we increase our destructive weaponry, contaminants and as we enter the fully-fledged nuclear age?
George Bush was a President of the US and we had a President of the most powerful nation on this Earth justify Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Military Police caged human beings, tortured them and senselessly propagated violence as the means to everything under the sun. George Bush described those caged at Guantanamo as the "worst of the worst", however I would describe Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and the murderous invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as the part of the "worst".
Our ability to discover the truth is only outstripped by our ability to manifest deceit.
Gerry Georgatos
Harrisdale, WA