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“The union movement can fight back and grow overall in the next period”, Tim Gooden, secretary of the Geelong Trades Hall Council, told Green Left Weekly on April 18. He was responding to reports in the mainstream press highlighting figures indicating a further fall in national union membership last year.
Clothing and sexism Anne Horan (Write On, GLW #746) writes that in feminist circles it's a no-no to discuss what women wear and that feminists do not criticise women themselves for wearing skimpy clothing. She states that the argument that
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Palestinian al Nakba (the Catastrophe) — the razing of up to 418 Palestinian villages and the driving of 700,000 Palestinians from their homes by Zionist forces to create the State of Israel.
“Clashes with Shiite militiamen flared in two cities Wednesday as a US drone fired two missiles in Basra and US-backed Iraqi troops battled in Baghdad’s sprawling Sadr City slum”, Associated Press reported on April 16.
Glenn Stevens, the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, has argued that working people should be forced to absorb the cost of higher power bills when a carbon emissions trading scheme is introduced in 2010. Speaking to the April 5 Sydney Morning Herald, Stevens argued that “the policy would need to be well explained to consumers to head off calls for higher wages”.
“Now, to producing Venezuelan steel at the service of the revolution and socialism!”, proclaimed Jose Melendez, referring to the victory obtained after 15 months of struggle at the steel factory Sidor, located in the heartland of Venezuela’s basic industry in Guayana.
Bush vs Chavez — Washington’s war on Venezuela
By Eva Golinger
Monthly Review Press, 2008
$26.00 (pb), available at <http://www.resistancebooks.com>
The detail of the federal Labor government’s plan for its new industrial relations system, to come into force in January 2010, is beginning to come to light. On April 9, the Australian Financial Review reported that it had obtained a copy of a letter sent by workplace relations minister Julia Gillard to a range of unions and businesses. It canvassed their opinion on issues including the scope of allowable content in workplace agreements, the scope of individual “flexibility” clauses to be mandatory in all awards and enterprise agreements and regulation of industrial action during a bargaining period for a new enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA).
It’s time to apply our pressure against theirs. All the forces in favour of the electricity privatisation, proposed by NSW premier Morris Iemma and treasurer Michael Costa, have been heavying the delegates to the NSW ALP conference as well as state Labor MPs.
Green Left Weekly caught up with some of the Climate Change — Social Change conference participants. Here’s what they had to say.
Black Soldier Blues — Black GIs from the US during WWII were initially turned away from Australia due to the racist White Australia Policy. SBS, Friday, April 25, 12.55am. True Stories — Looks at an exhibition of Aboriginal art from the East
Teachers around the country are in protracted disputes over wages and conditions with their ALP government bosses. Federal education minister Julia Gillard has come out in opposition to teachers’ unions’ proposal to place bans on administrating national literacy and numeracy testing in pursuit of claims for real wage increases and to demand an improvement of working conditions.