Victoria’s Labor premier, John Brumby, and education minister Lyn Kosky have refused to meet with the Australian Education Union (AEU) to resolve a deadlock in negotiations over a new enterprise bargaining agreement for teachers.
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One-hundred-and-seventy Qantas valet parking staff nationally are affected by a companys last-ditch effort to move workers onto five-year fixed-term Australian Workplace Agreements (individual contracts) before changes to industrial relations legislation abolishing AWAs come into effect.
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It seems that Victorian Labor Premier John Brumby wants to be remembered, not as a rational leader advocating solutions to an urgent problem facing the survival of the human species — climate change — but as the creator of some of the most potentially destructive infrastructure projects in the state’s history.
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The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) is holding a series of forums across the country to get feedback from delegates about the direction that the union is taking. The first was held in Melbourne on February 19, attracting more than 300 delegates from the metals, print, food and T&S divisions from across Victoria.
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For the first time in Australia, a convergence of climate change groups was held in Melbourne on February 9. While the convergence was focused on bringing together climate change groups from Victoria, several groups from Bondi, North Coast, Albury and Wagga Wagga in New South Wales also attended.
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On February 14, at least 10,000 striking government school teachers rallied in the Vodafone Arena in the Melbourne Park complex in the largest stop-work meeting in the history of the Victorian branch of the Australian Education Union.
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Medical scientists employed in Victoria’s public hospitals began industrial action for a new wages deal with a 24-hour strike at hospitals in Melbourne’s Southern Health region on February 5.
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Members of the Australian Education Union (AEU) employed in Victorian public schools will stop work for 24 hours on February 14 as part of their campaign for a new enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA) with the state government.
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On February 3, 300 angry Goulburn Valley residents, many of them farmers, blockaded the Sugarloaf reservoir just north of Melbourne to protest the construction of a pipeline from the Goulburn River to Melbourne’s water supplies. The Goulburn River feeds into the Murray River system, increasingly drained by irrigation and, for many years now, a record drought.
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As Victorian Labor Premier John Brumby prepared to deliver his first annual “statement of government intentions” to the opening of the 2008 parliamentary session on February 4, about 100 protesters gathered on the steps of Parliament House.
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On February 1, 100 people gathered outside the State Library of Victoria to protest the Israeli siege of Gaza. The protest was initiated by the Melbourne Palestine Solidarity Network and organised by a wide range of groups including Australians for Palestine, Women for Palestine, Melbourne Stop the War Coalition, Federation of Muslim Students and Youth, Socialist Alliance and Resistance.
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Although it stated at the last state election in 2006 that it would not go ahead with the construction of a desalination plant, the Victorian Labor government is now pushing for a desalination plant at Wonthaggi, on the South Gippsland coast. Before the environmental impact statement has even been completed, test drilling and compulsory land acquisitions have begun at the proposed site.