News

An October 17 National Union of Students (NUS) report on the impact of the Howard government’s “voluntary student unionism” legislation argued that VSU has failed to deliver “self-sustaining student organisations just able to survive off voluntary memberships, investments and trading operations”. It documented a series of job losses and closures of student associations’ campaigning departments as a result of VSU robbing them of funding.

The campaign to stop the dredging of a new shipping channel in Port Phillip Bay had a partial victory on January 30 when a Federal Court judge ruled that the Blue Wedges environmental cCoalition must be given at least 24 hours’ notice of any plan to begin work on the $969 million project.

The United Firefighters Union (UFU) of Australia Tasmanian branch plans to escalate industrial action on February 11 if their demands are not met. Members are calling for a fair resolution to a superannuation dispute from last year and for a proper pay increase. They also want an independent review into workload and other problems at the dispatch and communications centre.

More than 40 people gathered at the Katoomba YHA on February 2 to demand that the Labor state governments in NSW and Victoria overturn their decisions to end the ban on the commercial growing of genetically modified (GM) canola. From March this year, NSW farmers can apply to grow GM canola.

Demanding, impatient, spoiled, bad at communicating — allegedly these are the character traits of “Generation Y”. Originally used in 1993 to describe children born between 1980 and 2000, the label has been featured in the media quite a lot lately.

The National Tertiary Education Union’s class action around AWAs against the University of Ballarat has ended with an out-of-court settlement. The action commenced early in 2006 out of a long-running dispute over enterprise bargaining. As Green Left Weekly reported at the time, the university offered AWAs (individual contracts) to break the NTEU’s bargaining position. A strong campaign by the union resulted in a collective agreement in August 2006.

As employers continue to push individual Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs), some union leaders have urged the labour movement to press the new Labor government of PM Kevin Rudd to move more quickly and decisively against the former government’s Work Choices policy.

For the first time in 11 years we are under a new government, a Labor government. PM Kevin Rudd’s government was elected off the back of mounting dissatisfaction with the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, inaction on climate change, the Northern Territory intervention and Work Choices, but the battle for change has not been won.

NSW TAFE teachers will consider industrial action when they return to work on January 29, in an attempt to maintain a quality TAFE system. A campaign of rolling stoppages and longer-term action will be discussed.

Workers at the Foster’s brewery at Yatala, south of Brisbane, have stepped up their campaign for a union agreement, following a victory over the latest attempt by the company’s management to impose a non-union agreement on the workforce at the plant.

On January 26, most people around the country celebrated “Australia Day”. Thousands of Australian flags with the British union jack were raised, shrimps rolled on the barbie and beer poured like water.

Professor Sharon Beder, a research fellow at the University of Wollongong, prepared a submission on behalf of Unions NSW to the Ownen Inquiry that makes a powerful case against Premier Morris Iemma’s government’s proposed energy privatisation.