workers

Worker Worms Are Turning: Watch Out Reith!

Winter/Spring 1999

“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.

Privatisation hits home – Women bear the burden of under-funded services

Winter/Spring 1999

“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

Summer/Autumn 1999

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.

The deadly consequences of private neglect

Summer/Autumn 1999

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.

New South Wales TAFE: Casual Teachers Fire Up

Summer/Autumn 1998

The activist Special Interest Group model within the structure of the union has resulted in significant gains for casual workers in the NSW TAFE system. It is a model TAFE workers in other states must consider.

Organising the Unorganised

Summer/Autumn 1998

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.