Naarm/Melbourne

  • Defiant Victorian unionists put politicians on guard

    At least 20,000 Victorian unionists defied the federal government’s anti-worker laws and risked fines to show their opposition to Work Choices and the Australian Building and Construction Commission on September 26.

  • Environmental failure means job losses

    Job losses will result from 11 years of Coalition government policy on the environment, Gippsland Trades and Labour Council (GTLC) secretary John Parker told Green Left Weekly on September 26. He said Australia has been left 11 years behind in developing clean energy technology, which means instead of now being able to export these technologies, the industry has moved overseas. Employment opportunities are wasted and inevitably jobs will be lost as our own dirty industries are forced to close.

  • Save posties' jobs!

    #151; After several protests and weeks of leafleting, the postal and telecommunications branch of the Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union organised a public meeting on September 27 to stop the closure of Australia Post’s Fitzroy delivery centre and to save the jobs of 17 posties.

  • Burma pro-democracy protests supported

    Following a 500-strong vigil in Melbourne on September 27 protesting the Burmese military regime’s repression of pro-democracy protests, 600 people took to the city’s streets the next day in solidarity with Burma’s pro-democracy movement. They marched from Melbourne Town Hall to the claps and cheers of onlookers.

  • Worker threatened for exposing low wages

    Maurie Mahoney, Textiles Clothing and Footwear Union (TCFUA) delegate at Wangaratta’s Bruck Textiles, is being targeted at work with disciplinary action that could result in dismissal, after speaking out against Work Choices laws allowing the company to pay some workers less then the federal government’s Fair Pay standards. Bruck management informed Mahoney that he had breached his terms and conditions of employment. He was directed that he must not speak about the matter with anyone other than his wife, who is one of the Bruck workers currently being paid under the Fair Pay standard.

  • Greens challenge ALP in Victorian by-elections

    Labor has retained the seats vacated by former Victorian premier Steve Bracks and deputy premier John Thwaites. The results of the recent Williamstown and Albert Park by-elections confirmed the ALP’s Wade Noonan (a former Transport Workers’ Union assistant secretary) and Martin Foley (former state secretary of the Australian Services Union, who is chief of staff to Victorian police minister Bob Cameron) as respective successful candidates.

  • Should unions target employers after the elections?

    In an interview with the Australian Financial Review on September 17, Jeff Lawrence, the new secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), said that under a Rudd Labor government, unions would seek to engage constructively with businesses and employer groups. “There won’t be any targeting of employers who have used AWAs [individual contracts] … I specifically rule that out”, he said.

  • Solidarity with the Sahawaris

    A peaceful community assembly was held on Friday September 21 outside the Melbourne headquarters of Incitec Pivot Limited. Of the three Australian companies importing phosphate from Morocco sourced in Western Sahara, IPL has the largest share of the superphosphate market.

  • Australia must 'walk its talk' on climate

    “Each night we wonder whether we will see the morning, or if a tidal wave or tsunami might wash us away in the night”, Bernard Tunim of the Carteret Islands community in Papua New Guinea told a public meeting on September 19 organised by Friends of the Earth (FoE) and Oxfam Australia.

  • Meeting supports Tamil trio

    On September 9, 300 people met in a community hall in the east Melbourne suburb of Scoresby to show their support for three Tamil community members who were arrested in May under the “anti-terror” laws.

  • Textile workers resist AWAs

    Workers employed by the Bruck Textiles, Australia’s largest maker of woven fabrics, at its main manufacturing plant in the Victorian town of Wangaratta have twice voted to reject management’s non-union agreements that would significantly reduce their entitlements and have instead requested the company negotiate with their union, the Textile Clothing and Footwear Union (TCFUA).

  • Brumby extends Connex contract

    Victorian Labor Premier John Brumby said on August 21 that he will only extend his government’s contracts with Yarra Trams and rail company Connex until the end of 2009, after which there will be a world-wide tender for private operators of Melbourne’s public transport systems.