Last November, a gathering outside the World of Coca Cola Museum in Atlanta, Georgia heard a bloody story. Edgar Paez, a Colombian unionist from the Coca Cola bottling plant in Carepa, Colombia, told the crowd that on the morning of December 5, 1996 the paramilitary squad, United Self Defence Forces (AUC), appeared at the gates… Read more »
workers
We CAN organise the unorganised! Radical Women Organisers’ win shows the importance of militancy
There’s nothing like a union victory to make my day, and March 16 was one of them. When I received the news from Radical Women (RW) in Portland Oregon that RW Organiser Jordana Sardo won her job back, I was ecstatic! Like me, Sardo works in the community (social service) sector, notoriously exploitative of its… Read more »
Satellite nosedive shows queer workers must organise!
The collapse of The Satellite Group — the first publicly listed “pink dollar” company in the world — highlights the sharp class divisions in the gay and lesbian community. In 1999, Satellite blasted onto the scene, buying up 80 percent of Australia’s queer press — including the national magazine, Outrage — and establishing a media… Read more »
Your Say
Community Legal Centres Fight Back For the past three years, Community Legal Centres (CLCs) have been subjected to a review by the Federal Government which recommended that the 19 metropolitan generalist legal centres be amalgamated into four. This review has overloaded workers and reduced service provision in a sector that has had no significant funding… Read more »
Centrelink workers get fired up about anti-union misuse of Public Service Code of Conduct
Workplace Relations Minister, Peter Reith, is fond of advising private sector bosses to get tough with unions. Now he’s using the same script to tell Commonwealth Public Service heads how to bully public sector workers. Earlier this year, his department issued a disputes management manual advising department heads to lie, confuse, discredit and provide misleading… Read more »
Fight for the right to organise online!
The Accord era is well and truly over. Bosses now try to crush rather than co-opt as the preferred method to neutralise effective union delegates. The ability to organise during work hours, hold workplace union meetings and even the right of union organisers to enter a workplace is being severely squeezed, thanks to the efforts… Read more »
TAFE Workers Fight Breaks in Contracts
Western Melbourne Institute of TAFE (WMIT) has an appalling track record in the way it treats workers employed on fixed-term contracts. A favoured management tactic to prevent workers from being eligible to certain entitlements is to place breaks between the end of one contract and the start of the next. Members of both the Australian… Read more »
Nation Feminist Conference Backs TAFE Union Struggle
The 6th Women and Labour Conference (held at Deakin University in Geelong, 28 – 30 November) featured a workshop, “Resist Casualisation and Union Busting in TAFE: Frontline Fighters Speak Out!,” which was jointly sponsored by Radical Women and the NMIT Unionists Campaign Committee. Strong women unionists from the Australian Education Union (AEU) and National Tertiary… Read more »
“My life is mortgaged to the university”
Wendy Harper is a 22-year-old working class student from The Basin, who is studying first year humanities at Latrobe University. “One of the impacts of the education cuts is day students being forced to take classes in the evening, because the University is no longer prepared to fund both a day and evening class. Full-time… Read more »
“When a school closes, it can kill a community”
Susan Garrett is a TAFE student who lives in the small Gippsland town of Meeniyan. Her daughter, Liz, has just completed grade 6 at Meeniyan Primary School. “I’ve lived here for five years. I’ve had four children go through the state school system. I’m a firm believer in consultation and parent involvement. This year, Meeniyan… Read more »
