Naarm/Melbourne

  • Free Muslim legal service launched

    The Islamic Girls and Women’s Group will make its office in Ross House on Flinders Lane available for use by Muslim Legal Services Victoria to provide free legal services for Muslims.

  • Trades Hall organises IWD rally

    This year’s annual International Women’s Day rally in Melbourne is being organised by the Victorian Trades Hall Council. To be held at the GPO at noon on March 8, the rally will focus on protesting against PM John Howard’s legislative attacks on the wages and working conditions of women workers.

  • Power industry unions push for OHS control

    Gippsland power industry unionists met on February 20 to discuss a plan for rescuing the industry’s occupational health and safety (OHS) standards after two deaths and one serious injury in the power industry late last year.

  • Oromo refugees appeal for solidarity

    MELBOURNE — On February 13, a rally was organised by the Oromo Community Association to protest the treatment of Oromo refugees in Somalia since the US-backed invasion by Ethiopia.

  • John Pilger calls for 'silent majority' to speak out

    Seven-hundred people crammed into the Melbourne City Conference Centre on February 8 to hear radical journalist and film-maker John Pilger’s call for mass action against the invasion of Iraq — “the paramount war crime against humanity from which all other war crimes follow”.

  • Redundancies vindicate Feltex workers' entitlements campaign

    On February 2, ABC News Online reported the laying off of 110 workers by Melbourne carpet manufacturer Feltex. A spokesperson for Godfrey Hirst, which took over Feltex late last year, said the workers’ jobs would go with the closure of the Feltex factories in Tottenham and Braybrook in Melbourne’s west. This “vindicated” workers and unionists who had resisted attempts by Godfrey Hirst to take away their redundancy entitlements, Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union media officer Tommy Clarke told Green Left Weekly.

  • AMWU power industry safety campaign

    The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) is launching a campaign to regulate safety in the power industry following two workers’ deaths late last year in the Latrobe Valley.

  • Connex fails the soapy water test

    Private train operator Connex is under fire after tests revealed its fleet of new Siemens trains were unable to brake if soapy water was on the tracks.

  • Aboriginal activist: 'It's time to stand up!'

    On January 26, more than 500 people marched through Melbourne to mark Invasion Day and to call for an end to black deaths in custody and for justice for Mulrunji, who died in the Palm Island police station in November, 2004. Rally chair Brianna Pike announced at the protest that Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley would be charged with Mulrunji’s manslaughter.