I post more on the relentless corporate and LNP attack on workers and their unions and our response.
These laws have tame, even innocuous names like the Proper Use of Workers Benefits Bill, the Corrupting Benefits legislation and the Ensuring Integrity Bill. They also target secondary issues like superannuation, entitlement funds or the abilities of unions to merge.
Thousands of Workers in their unions rally in Sydney to protest Turnbull/Cash attack on our rights to organise. Campaign to change the rules.
The system is broken. Esso's corporate greed is out of control.
Together with contractor UGL, Esso is slashing the wages & conditions of hundreds of Gippsland workers.
Esso is ripping off consumers with outrageously high gas prices.
And Esso is even avoiding paying its fair share of tax. In fact in 2014-15 they paid NO tax on $8.4 billion revenue.
We need to return power to the hands of working people.
We need to change the rules.
Make sure you get down to this rally to support the Esso workers who have been out on the picket line for over 145 days.
We need to show greedy corporations like Esso that working people are standing up and fighting back!
In this lopsided contest between workers and employers, workers need all the help they can get.
…The more aggressive its attacks on the union movement become, the further the government sinks in the polls. And the failure of its scapegoating strategy does not solely reflect errors in political judgment.
…Data on labour compensation per hour of work (from the GDP accounts) suggest nominal wages actually fell 0.5 percent over the past year — the worst showing since World War II.
Many other indicators confirm workers need more power, not less, and hence that the government's anti-union crusade is fundamentally misplaced. The share of GDP paid to workers fell to its lowest point since the ABS began collecting the data.
Minimum wages are one-quarter lower than 30 years ago, relative to overall wages. Union membership is down to 13 percent of total employment, in large part because of decades of unremitting legislative hostility. Enterprise agreement coverage is collapsing in the private sector, down 25 percent since 2013. The transformation of work from permanent jobs to insecure "gigs" further undermines the ability of workers to demand, and receive, higher pay.
In this lopsided contest between workers and employers, workers need all the help they can get. The power of collective representation is one of the most important tools in their toolbox. It's no accident that unions and collective bargaining have been the primary target of business-friendly labour law changes over the last generation. But the legacy of that crusade is the stagnation and growing inequality of wages. Most Australians are suffering because of it. And that's why they're turning a blind eye to the Coalition's effort to rouse yet another anti-union witch-hunt.
In the first judicial ruling against so-called "sham" enterprise agreements, the Federal Court has overturned a major labour hire deal voted on by just three workers but which later covered more than a thousand in the mining industry.
The precedent ruling against One Key Resources, which is one of the biggest labour providers in the black coal industry, could mean the end of a common practice for labour hire firms that unions argue undercuts wages and conditions.
Justice Geoffrey Flick found One Key Resources' 2015 enterprise agreement was invalid because three workers with limited job experience could not genuinely agree to a deal that covered 11 job classifications extending well beyond mining and construction and into road transport, clerks and hospitality.
So Dave and his workmates won an EBA with their employer that included a laundry allowance so their dirty work clothes could be cleaned. Despite it being a legal entitlement, the employer refused to pay it. Because our workplace laws are so broken, it is not quick and easy for working people to enforce our rights – even if they are in black and white in an agreement. Employers who refuse get away with it because the independent umpire does not have to power to enforce rights, workers have to go to the expensive and very slow Federal Court. So the workers had a 10 minute protest in their undies to try and convince the boss to abide by the agreement they had made. They sacked the delegate for it.
It should have never got to this point! We need to change the rules so the independent umpire has teeth again, so it is quick and easy to enforce our rights.