Naarm/Melbourne

Dave Noonan, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union’s construction division national secretary, has slammed the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) for “intimidating and bullying” workers.

The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) and Electrical Trades Union (ETU) have established an ongoing protest embassy outside the front office of Toyota's Altona assembly plant to protest the dismissal of AMWU delegate Tony Carvalho. Carvalho was dismissed for allegedly bullying two employees who are currently on stress leave. The charges from the two complainants were drafted by a prominent law firm and were directed at Toyota. But Toyota management suspended Carvalho during an investigation, and ultimately sacked him on May 3.

John Howard was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for his “friendship and commitment” to Israel at a gala dinner at Melbourne’s Crown Casino on May 20. The award, by the Zionist Federation of Australia, the State Zionist Council of Victoria and the World Zionist Organisation, includes the “John Howard Negev Forest”, which will be planted by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) over an ethnically-cleansed Bedouin village.

“Australian Tamils demand protection not persecution” was the theme of a gathering of more than 500 members of the Tamil community outside the Victorian parliament on May 22.

The Victorian Labor Party has gone on a propaganda offensive against the Greens, accusing them of selling out on nuclear issues and taking away Victorians’ right to protest against nuclear reactors. Large posters have been put up and pamphlets will be sent to households in the four lower-house seats where the Greens pose the most direct challenge to the ALP.

At its May 15 meeting, Geelong Trades Hall Council passed a motion declaring that “GTHC is opposed to any laws that fetter and/or criminalise union activity and workers’ rights under International Labour Organisation conventions to organise and take action to advance or defend our economic and social conditions. To this end we call on the Victorian Trades Hall Council to organise a mass delegates’ meeting to discuss how we can best help the ACTU [Australian Council of Trade Unions] defend its own industrial relations policy and thus the rights of all workers.”

A group of construction workers in Somerton have proved that it is possible to get off an individual contract (Australian Workplace Agreement — AWA) and onto award rates and an enterprise agreement.

In 1974 hundreds of people crowded into a room in the Carlton Pram Factory and hatched a plan to build a media outlet that would tell the stories of those neglected, marginalised and ignored by the mainstream media of the day. Two years later 3CR began transmitting the voices of trade unions, the working class, the Indigenous community, youth and students, people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, peace and social justice activists, greenies, socialists, anarchists, lovers of jazz and nostalgia music, feminists, queers and people with disabilities.

Two blockades halted logging in high conservation value native forests two hours east of Melbourne on May 8, Friends of the Earth reported.

Two leaders of Melbourne’s Tamil community have been arrested and charged with terrorism offenses. Aruran Vinayagamoorthy and Sivarajah Yathavan have been accused of diverting funds raised to help tsunami victims to assist the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Melbourne’s Stop the War Coalition (STWC) held a public meeting at Trades Hall Bar on May 1 to discuss organising a contingent to protests at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference, being held in Sydney in September.

Less than two weeks after resigning to protest against substandard wages and conditions, construction workers at the Coles-Myer distribution centre in Somerton have secured a collective agreement with construction industry-standard wages and conditions. Coles re-opened negotiations with the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union soon after community activists organised by Union Solidarity blockaded the centre’s gates on April 13. The workers had been employed as casuals on individual contracts with wages approximately $10 per hour below industry standards.