Nick Fredman, Lismore
Following a successful tour last September, Unions NSW has again decked out a bus in orange and the Rights at Work logo and taken the campaign against the federal government's Work Choices legislation to regional NSW. Many of the 29 local campaign groups that have sprung up across the state in the past year have organised activities to greet the tour, including a public meeting packed with 150 people in Lismore on June 21.
Unions NSW secretary John Robertson and activists from the Northern Rivers Unionist Network addressed the meeting. Australian Services Union member Angela Pollard and Lismore Teachers Association president Mark Ippolito outlined how NRUN had been building support through rallies, meetings and campaigning stalls since forming 14 months ago, and how the Work Choices legislation was beginning to bite locally.
Robertson, relating many of the stories heard on the tour, pointed out that the government was using a range of legislation to force down wages and conditions. Apart from Work Choices gutting union rights and unfair dismissal rights and allowing individual contracts with stripped-back conditions, the government was moving to make it easier for bosses to force workers to become "self-employed" contractors and to pay overseas guest workers lower pay.
Robertson argued that the campaign was a long-term fight for communities and over "values", and that it needed to pressure the Labor Party and continue irrespective of who wins the next federal election.
NRUN is organising a rally on June 28 at 12.30pm in Magellan Street, Lismore, as part of the ACTU-called national day of protest against Work Choices.
From Green Left Weekly, June 28, 2006.
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