National Tertiary Education Union members went on strike at the University of Newcastle and UTS for job security, manageable workloads, fair pay and for casuals to be given permanent contracts. Steve O'Brien and Kerry Smith report.
Steve O’Brien
Newcastle community members and activists are fighting back against a council decision to close a community food pantry. Steve O'Brien reports.
Newcastle unionists and anti-poverty activists protested federal cuts to JobSeeker at a snap action outside Centrelink, reports Steve O'Brien.
Community concern about the federal government’s inability to develop a coherent national energy policy was evident at the national community summit on coal power transition, writes Steve O'Brien.
The world recently commemorated the anniversaries of the dropping of nuclear weapons on the people of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9) in 1945. But it hasn't been a good few weeks for world peace.
A member of the audience at a recent public meeting in Merewether cheekily referred to Newcastle as being run by the Property Council, not the city council.
“Join your union and bargain together” is the lesson from the recent pay campaign by EDI-Downer workers, Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) NSW assistant secretary Corey Wright told Green Left Weekly.
A three-day strike involving mass meetings, rallies and a march of 200 workers down Newcastle’s Hunter Street, encouraged the company to start serious discussions with the union after six months of stalling.
New South Wales transport minister Andrew Constance should note the observation by Victor Hugo, the French novelist, that the worst thing a minister can do is have policies that upset people so much that they protest publicly and loudly about them.
Any one of the 1000 people who attended a rally at Belmont on February 19 could have told their own horror story of bus privatisation.
Speaking on behalf of many, several community members exposed the lie that privatised bus services make it easier for people to get around.
New mother Kimberley Anderson described how she and her three-month-old baby, on the way to a medical appointment, waited in the rain for a bus that never showed.
For another parent, Bec Cassidy, the new timetable and service cuts meant she had to change her daughter’s primary school.
An “Act of God”, or lightning, was a key reason for the recent meltdown of Sydney’s rail network, according to transport minister Andrew Constance. He also claimed that the “dark arts of unionism” — presumably some sort of devilry — inspired rail unionists to vote to strike over pay and rosters on January 29.
Politicians may blame God and the Devil for recent transport chaos, but when the dots are joined between different aspects of the government’s transport policy the reality becomes clearer.
One hundred years ago this month, workers, peasants and soldiers in Russia overthrew the corrupt government that had led the country into a disastrous war and established the Soviet Socialist Republic.
It seemed that, for once, the people had won. Socialism had gone from theoretical possibility to practical reality.
The V8 supercars race due to run through Newcastle streets in November places “private profit over the common good and social justice” according to the Newcastle East Residents Group (NERG).
In a recent leaflet NERG points out that residents continue to be sidelined by Newcastle City Council, Destinations NSW (a government tourism body) and Supercars Australia Pty Ltd.
The race deal was worked out in a private briefing and closed council meetings without community involvement last year.
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