Workers & unions

Queensland coalminers will strike for a week from February 15 to step up the longstanding dispute with BHP Billiton over safety, wages and conditions. The company's seven coal mines in Queensland will be closed down after 15 months of negotiations broke down between the Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union (CFMEU) and management. The BHP Mitsubishi Alliance (BMA) operates the mines. It is likely to lose up to 1 million tonnes in forgone or deferred production. The value of the coal production lost will total $200-300 million.

Mike Crook, Socialist Alliance candidate for the seat of Sandgate in the March 24 Queensland state elections, released the statement below on February 10. *** The Socialist Alliance pledges its full support to the Queensland mining unionists engaged in industrial battle with Australia's biggest corporation, BHP Billiton. The company is now in line to make a full-year profit almost equal to that of the four big Australian banks combined.

Cutting the working day to a maximum of seven hours, eliminating subcontracted work and raising maternity leave to a period of five months were some of the proposals put forward by thousands of workers across Venezuela for the country's new Labour Law, Socialist Bolivarian Workers’ Central president Will Rangel said on January 31. Venezuelan workers have been mobilising across the country since President Hugo Chavez announced his government would overhaul the country’s Labour Law (LOT). This came after a sustained campaign by workers to have the law changed.

A vast icy pool of Siberian air, the coldest in 50 years, settled over all Europe in late January. At least 150 people without shelter were killed. Yet the suffering from this extreme cold snap will be nothing compared with that of the economic ice age now threatening to entomb Europe’s most vulnerable economies. Over the past fortnight southern Europe’s growth prospects have become increasingly wintry:

Recent national figures published by the Sydney Morning Herald show the rate of youth unemployment in Australia is well above the national average, hitting 17.3%. The figure is more than triple national unemployment, which stood at 5.2% in December. Almost one in five people aged 15 to 19 and not studying are out of work.

In an historic decision, Fair Work Australia (FWA) awarded pay rises of 19-41% to 150,000 mostly female workers in the social and community services sector (SACS) on February 1. It was the most important equal pay case since equal pay for work of equal value was formally recognised in 1972. The decision awards an extra 4% rise in loadings, designed to recognise impediments to bargaining in the industry. Workers will also be entitled to any wage review by FWA each year. The pay rises are effective from December 1, to be phased in over eight years.

Port Kembla Coal Terminal workers began a week-long strike on February 1. The action is a result of management scaling back conditions during negotiations over a new enterprise agreement. BHP Billiton operates the coal terminal on behalf of its owners, which include Xstrata, Peabody Energy, Gujarat NRE and Centennial Coal. Management’s latest offer triggered Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union (CFMEU) delegates to take industrial action. About 100 workers had previously voted to approve a seven-day stoppage from February 1, unless management made a late offer

Thousands of Victorian nurses, mental health workers, public servants and others have been trying to negotiate new enterprise bargaining agreements with the Coalition government. Premier Ted Baillieu's intransigent state government has insisted it will not agree to any pay rises above 2.5% a year without productivity trade-offs. The exception was the police force, which won a 4.5% annual pay rise a few days after more than 500 police violently evicted Occupy Melbourne protesters from City Square.

A new government report has found that just 174 of the 700 workers laid off by BlueScope Steel late last year have found new jobs. The federal Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education compiled the report.

About 200 unionists gathered at King George Square on February 2 for a meeting to commemorate the centenary of the 1912 Brisbane General Strike, one of the first of its kind in the world. The Rail Tram and Bus Union (RTBU) and the Queensland Council of Unions (QCU) jointly sponsored the meeting. Speakers, including RTBU state officials Owen Doogan and David Matters, ALP Senator Claire Moore, and QCU assistant secretary John Battams outlined the history of the 1912 strike and its significance for today. Murri elder Bobby Anderson gave a welcome to country.

Community workers have today been handed long awaited pay rises in a historic decision by Fair Work Australia in the equal pay case. The case was lodged by the Australian Services Union on March 11, 2010, to address the gender-based undervaluation of the community services sector and deliver long overdue pay increases. Australian Services Union (ASU) Victorian and Tasmanian Assistant Branch Secretary Lisa Darmanin said this was a day community workers around Australia would never forget.

These days when an online conversation turns to international affairs, even here in Australia, it’s not long before the Ron Paul supporters arrive. Not since the height of Obamania have so many Australians been so enthusiastic about a  US politician. But what makes the passion about Paul even more remarkable is that he’s a Republican — and many of his local fans identify as progressives.