“The public system needs to be preserved so that good education is available to everyone in the community.” Teachers are fighting, using their unions, to defend the rights that are being taken from them.
workers
Privatisation hits home – Women bear the burden of under-funded services
“Community care.” It has such a nice ring to it: society’s thrown-away people being brought back into community life, no longer shut away in large, impersonal and uncaring institutions. But do we believe for one minute that the State has emptied its publicly-funded institutions because it cares? Of course not!
Unionists and the community fire up to fight Centrelink cuts
Centrelink is a corporatised agency, which in 1997 replaced the Department of Social Security. It currently has contracts to deliver services on behalf of seven government departments. As each expires, these contracts will be put out for private tender, forcing Centrelink to compete for the delivery of welfare services.
Research proves what workers always knew: capitalist work practices are a Health Hazard
Poverty makes you sick. There’s nothing surprising about that idea. But two recently reported studies take this much further. They came to the same conclusion: that class is the major determinant of health.
The deadly consequences of private neglect
Australians have experienced a number of infrastructure breakdowns in the last few years. The country has vast supplies of energy, but the infrastructure to distribute it is at the point of collapse. This is life in late capitalist Australia.
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 »
Organising Against Intimidation at Northern TAFE: Support Swells for Union/Community Campaign
Former union leaders from the Australian Education Union (AEU) sub-branch at Northern Melbourne Institute of TAFE (NMIT) are prepared to campaign for as long as it takes to bring the union busting management at the Institute to heel. The No More Intimidation of Teacher (NMIT) Unionists Campaign Committee, established at an AEU sub-branch stopwork meeting… Read more »
Organising the Unorganised
Australia has one of the highest rates of part-time and casual work in the world, and three-quarters of part-time and casual workers are women. Casualisation is growing sharply. Two years ago, one in five workers was part-time or casual. Now it is one in four.
Teamster reform movement sabotaged by reliance on Big Brother and ties to Democratic Party
The Carey affair again exposes the Achilles heel of the U.S. labour movement – its class-collaborationists, co-dependent relationship with the Democratic Party.
