A community assembles at Ringwood for justice

When you can do nothing else:

bear witness.

~~~

Employee relations under the Howard Government were a low point in employer-employee relations in Australia. The election of the Rudd Government has not restored normal service - hence the ACTU has now embarked on Your Rights At Work Mark II.

Union Solidarity was established to provide community support for unions and union members who withdrew their labour from employers in an effort to gain better wages and conditions, to press for union involvement at the bargaining table, and generally to right those wrongs that can come into the workplace when employers consider only their rights and economic interests and no one else's.

You will find Union Solidarity community assemblies in support of unions and their members across Melbourne as and when the need arises. The caravan, the coffee pot, the barbie, the warm fire and a microphone and cardboard and textas to explain to passers-by what is going on. Union Solidarity is something of a free-form organisation. No membership fees, joining-up handshakes or anything like that. It relies on community support - and how often the community turns up!

On Monday next, 23 June,

Union Solidarity will assemble not at a workplace

but to rally outside the

Ringwood Magistrate's Court,

39 Ringwood Street, Ringwood

at 9.30am.

The prosecution at Ringwood Magistrate's Court that Union Solidarity is interested in is that against Anthony Elliott, of Elliot Engineering. Elliott is the defendant in a trial arising out of a community assembly in May 2007. Elliot faces a number of charges. The prosecution will argue that he drove a truck in a reckless manner through a picket line. A number of Union Solidarity supporters sustained injuries as a result of Elliot's alleged actions.

Union Solidarity expects to see that justice takes its course.

Workplace Relations and Aged Care

My friend Gina over at Patra's Place and Patra's Other Place has had trials and tribulations in recent times in relation to her employment. Gina is feisty - and a fighter. Now she has set up a new blog to document what has been happening. It is called Workplace Relations - what a farce!

Miss Eagle commends Gina for this well set up blog. Gina brings a personal take on some of the major issues at the forefront of the contemporary Australian workplace and highlights the often hidden practice of service delivery in aged care.

Miss E believes that Aged Care is, as a political issue, a major sleeper. The number of aged people is increasing - and so are their friends and relatives and the number of people employed in the Home and Community Care (HACC) program.

Gina is right! Let's get stirring. Please let her know your experience in the workplace - any workplace. If you work in a HACC program, please make getting in touch a priority. Major issues within Aged Care include:

1. Lack of a grass-roots consumer complaint system for those receiving Commonwealth packages or HACC services.
2. Lack of organisation among employees of private service providers - particularly those who are outsourced by local government.
3. Gender domination by women in delivering services to the aged. The dominance of women in service sector occupations can be equated with lack of employee organisation and inequities in pay scales.
4. Lack of a voice at the policy table for those who work at the coal-face of delivery of services to the aged in the home.
5. Governments are making major changes to policies affecting the delivery of services to the aged in the home with major input from doctors and nurses but not for personal care workers.
6. The role of guest workers in aged care services now and in the future.

Scrapping CDEP is dumb says Jon Altman

Scrapping CDEP is just dumb, dumb, dumb
Professor Jon Altman from the Australian National University writes in Crikey:

Ministers Joe Hockey and Mal Brough's decision to abolish the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme in remote Indigenous communities in the NT will have marked impacts on the arts industry, the management of Indigenous Protected Areas, and community based Caring for Country ranger projects. And it's not just these success stories that will suffer; it's likely that there will be wider local, regional and national costs from this myopic, ill-considered, policy shift. Hockey and Brough should have taken a history lesson before they made the announcement yesterday. If they'd bothered to look back, they would have learnt that unemployment was created in remote and very remote regions of Australia in the early 1970s when below-award training allowances were replaced by award wages. This unemployment in turn led to the establishment of the CDEP scheme by the Fraser government in 1977.

CDEP was first introduced to remote Indigenous communities as a progressive and mixed community development, employment creation and income support scheme. I noted then that its part-time characteristics might suit Indigenous people who may want flexible employment with the capacity to enhance income through additional market engagement like arts production and sale; or through participation in the customary (non-market) wildlife harvesting sector to generate livelihood benefits. In reality, most of the 5,000 Indigenous artists in the NT, as well as 400 community-based rangers in the Top End, are all CDEP participants. The beauty of the scheme is that it maximizes individual choice, participants could work part-time for a minimum income or work full-time and overtime if they were income maximisers. Now, as in the early 1970s, Indigenous people’s choice is being unilaterally and heavily circumscribed: they can participate in the mainstream ‘real’ economy or be welfare recipients.

The Hockey/Brough focus on award-based ‘real jobs’ at the expense of CDEP jobs and CDEP organizational support could have the perverse effect of increasing unemployment at these communities. This is partly because those on CDEP are classified as employed. But it is also because National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Survey (NATSISS) data collected in 2002 by the ABS shows that one in five CDEP participants already get full-time work through the efforts of their organizations. Altogether, between 85 and 90% work more than the funded CDEP hours in remote and very remote Australia according to NATSISS 2002.

Brough and Hockey should also have looked at the ABS publication Labour Force Characteristics of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians 2006. The ABS figures for the NT for 2006 show that the NT unemployment rate for Indigenous people was estimated at 15.7%, more than three times the Australian rate of 4.9%.

But this rate includes an estimated 8,000 CDEP participants as employed. If the total number of Indigenous people employed in the NT (15,300) is reduced by 8,000 and between 1,655 and 2,000 ‘real jobs’ are created (there is some inconsistency here between the Joint Media Release and data in the attached CDEP in the Northern Territory Emergency Response documentation) by replacing all non-Indigenous employment with Indigenous workers, then the unemployment rate will still increase to at least 50%. The ABS itself notes the labour force participation rate (at 44.8% in the NT) is particularly low in remote areas as these are regions ‘which generally have an underdeveloped labour market and this is reflected in the low number of Indigenous people actively looking for work and therefore not in the labour force’. The employment to population ratio in the NT is the lowest by far in Australia at 37.8% (and 61.8% for all Australians).

Economy where, employment when??

It comes as no surprise - the Minister's announcement regarding the abolition of the Community Development Employment Program (CDEP). CDEP schemes operating in Aboriginal communities in various regions across Australia were precursors of Work for the Dole schemes in mainstream communities.

Miss Eagle has made her suggestions previously on economic participation in and by Aboriginal communties:

1. All weather roads to Aboriginal communities. Without this basic lifeline of transport and communication no community, black or white, can begin to build an economy.
2. Air strips - for similar reasons.
3. Building communities which specialise in the delivery of community services. Employment classifications for Tennant Creek are dominated by the number of people employed in community services. This is duplicated across the nation in rural Australia. With investment, intentionality, mentoring and direction, Aboriginal communities - just like white communities - can build themselves up economically as a service centre. Services can be commercial, health, educational, or tourism.
4. Such participation should go far beyond the Work for the Dole schemes. Work for the Dole schemes should be seen as transition schemes of basic economic participation - not as ends in themselves

The Minister says the CDEP will be progressively replaced by real jobs, training and mainstream employment programmes, complementing the work already in train to lift remote area exemptions.

Radio interviews with the Minister earlier this evening indicate that the Government plans have an initial focus on local indigenous replacement in local positions where outsiders (can one read hear non-indigenous outsiders rather than indigenous outsiders?) are presently employed.

This, in principle, is a reasonable idea - but it is clearly one that has been implemented as far as possible by local indigenous organisations. Aboriginal organisations have been active in or actively managing and sponsoring training schemes for many,many years. Is the minister merely re-branding previous ATSIC-funded programs? Is he going to stand up and take credit for operational modes currently in place with strong indigenous organisations?

But, the question to be asked above all is this:

Is the Howard Government going to fund basic economic infrastructure such as transport and public utilities as well as the buildings and staffing levels for public service provision regarded as the norm in mainstream communities?

The Howard Government has been a poor steward in provisioning infrastructure replacement and development in mainstream communities preferring to fund endless tax rebates and refunds to individuals for personal spending rather than stewarding (or should one say quarantining?) the money and channelling it into economically productive infrastructure.

Governments, Federal and State, seem to be establishing public projects which can be built by Thiess and privatised by Macquarie Bank.

If the Howard Government does not come to the party with funding for economic and service infrastructure will it turn to the Mac Bank and the BOO (build-own-operate) schemes to establish infrastructure in regional and remote Australia?

But if none of this happens and people who cannot be placed in meaningful work end up on Work for the Dole schemes rather than the abolished CDEP schemes (as the Minister's media release seems to indicate) what will all this mean? Just more venal grandstanding by Howard and Brough?

Shopping: therapy, festival, compulsion, illness, manipulation

Ramada - Mall of America

Shopping is better than sex.
If you're not satisfied after shopping you can make an exchange for something you really like.

Adrienne Gusoff

Shop Til You Drop Magazine

What is it about shopping? What is it about shopping and the female of the species? Can we live with it? Can we live without it?

We talk about retail therapy. There seems to be a word for shopping til you drop: oniomania. Melbourne - which has more than its fair share of bread and circuses - is contemplating, as Miss Eagle has mentioned before, a shopping festival. Dubai actually has one and so has Hong Kong.

It is lovely to walk through beautiful shops selling beautiful things - even if one doesn't spend. Miss Eagle can still dream about Prada and Bulgari even if she can't afford it. This is why, even though she has not spent a cent there, Miss E was thrilled by the refurbishment of the Ground Floor at David Jones' Burke Street Mall store.

Could there possibly be a down side?

There is the illness. The cultural distortion which sees Hot Cross Buns - an Easter tradition - on sale before Epiphany. Advertising manipulating our children. The sexualization of our children. And for more information on how, when we consume, we are consumed go here.

Then there is the economic impact. Some see the globalization of retail and commodities which it sells as a positive thing. This article - brief as it is - comes out on the positive size while mentioning social disruption and the loss of jobs in some sectors of the economy.

We need to remember that when we purchase all that stuff from China and India it is great for their economies. And they really do need jobs. But when we lose jobs in this nation, we also lose skills - skills that are not always readily replaced with new ones. We can also lose access to jobs and personal economic development for women and young people.

So what is the solution? Miss E has none except the caveat emptor (buyer beware) provisions. Be aware! Demand accountability - not just from individuals but from governments and corporations.

If we become aware and demand accountability, we will become smart, ethical shoppers.

And for increasing numbers of us, we will go this way to the opp shop.

The times they are a-changin' as chickens roost?

Chickens are coming home to roost:

not only for John Howard but for globalization, too

Dear Reader, do you sometimes think you have a different wisdom from the professionally wise? By the professionally wise, Miss Eagle means politicians, senior bureaucrats, leaders of commerce and trade.

Do you think that you recall a certain history of events which the professionally wise - use above definition - seem to have either forgotten or completely bypassed?

Miss Eagle has come across to-day two articles which should reassure you, dear Reader, in regard to your memory and your powers of interpretation and comprehension.

The first is about John Howard in the long, long ago - before he became Lazarus with a triple by-pass - when he was Treasurer and when that name of "Honest John" was coined, not as a compliment as some use it to-day but as a perjorative.

The second concerns the fact that some Americans with strong economic and business credentials are finding holes in that smelly gorgonzola cheese that is globalization. You knew, dear Reader, as did your present correspondent that all was not well in the globalized world. We knew, you and I, that many people were ending up the poorer and missing out on the much- and oft-touted benefits of free and globalized trade.

Now, Miss Eagle is not railing against globalization in and of itself. It is an old and ancient phenomenon. Modern people like some things such as international communications and travel and dislike others like the migration of jobs off-shore, the driving down of wages.

In Miss E's view there should be one catch-cry against globalization and that is Accountablility.



Not the unctious and self-righteous catchcry of CEOs and senior mangers about looking after the stakeholders. No, dear Reader, CEOs and senior managers need to be held accountable in regard to what they deliver and the amount of remuneration, share holdings, and sweet deals they receive. Companies need to be held accountable in their countries of origin as well as their countries of location. They need to be accountable to the communities in which their places of business and their employees are located. They need to be transparent and accountable when governments give them favourable and special treatment. Of course, companies need to be accountable to their shareholders but "stakeholders" goes well beyond shareholders.

Finally, those who believe in free trade, need to be honest - not unctious - about the hidden favours they give or receive from governments and the taxpayers.

For instance, why are companies allowed to go bankrupt or into liquidation without paying workers their wages and entitlements? What happens in Australia is that businesses and corporations can avoid honouring workers entitlements, avoid paying any remuneration, or perhaps pay very poor and minimal redundancy payments and then the shoddily treated employee is thrown on the welfare heap for the taxpayer to take responsibility.

In other words, the employer; the business; the corporation can make a decision to offload employees and offload their responsibility for workers' entitlements. The employer, the business, the corporation can make a decision to benefit itself to the detriment of others. The taxpayer then has the pleasure of paying for the consequences of a decision it had no part in.



But then Australia does not provide subsidies to business! Yeah!?!

Police in Aboriginal communities

Aboriginal Community Police Officer Don St Clair, Alice Springs Police.

Joined the ACPO Scheme in December 1997

The Queensland Police Union is threatening to cut ties with Aboriginal communities.

Interesting idea! When the going gets tough, the tough get right out of there!

Miss Eagle is interested in this little interchange:

QPU spokesman Denis Fitzgerald says it may be time to sever ties completely. "If they don't want the police there, get them out," he said. "Let tribal law take over, let them police their own communities." Mr Fitzgerald says watch-houses need to be upgraded if officers are wanted."No watch-house in an Aboriginal community anywhere is this state can possibly comply with black death-in-custody recommendations," he said.The union says 200 extra police and more video cameras would be a start, but Queensland Premier Peter Beattie has rejected across-the-board changes."In small communities, it is simply a waste of money," he said.

Interesting to see the Queensland Police Union having some input into Aboriginal policy matters. These comments are worthy of closer scrutiny.

1. Let tribal law take over. Aboriginal citizens are as entitled as anyone else to have police in their communities. As for tribal law, what tribal law should be implemented on Palm Island? Palm Island is a mess of whitefella's making when, a century ago, people were rounded up from various Aboriginal nations across North Queensland and herded into the Aboriginal penal settlement known as Palm Island. Really, its a bit like herding Canadians, Americans, Australians, British, and South Africans into one place and deciding whose law should take precedence. Traditional law does have a place alongside whitefella law in Aboriginal communities, just as Aboriginal culture does have a place alongside whitefella culture, but Palm Island is not the place to experiment.


2. No watch-house in an Aboriginal community anywhere is this state can possibly comply with black death-in-custody recommendations. Miss Eagle suspects that this statement is true. She wonders if the QPU has raised this matter before. However, the death of Mulrunji (Cameron Doomadgee) - based on the Coroner's report - does not appear to be attributable to short-comings in watch-house design in Aboriginal communities. There is a whitefella law - one of two laws in western European tradition and found in other parts of the world. It says: "Love your neighbour as yourself." If police on Palm Island had taken as much interest in the welfare of Mulrunji as they did in their own welfare, he would be alive to-day and Chris Hurley would not be about to face the justice system with the possibility of a prison sentence.


3. The union says 200 extra police and more video cameras would be a start. This does not sound an unreasonable request. However, these solutions do not address the issues of police attitudes and the attitudes of the Queensland Government to Aboriginal people and issues relating to poor race relations in Queenland, and in particular North Queensland.


4. Queensland Premier Peter Beattie has rejected across-the-board changes."In small communities, it is simply a waste of money," he said. Why is Miss Eagle not surprised at this statement! No money invested in Aboriginal people and their communities outside the law. When this leads to involvement with the law arising from poverty, unemployment, life on the dole, poor access to education, housing and so on and so on, there is no inclination to invest money to ensure the safety of Aboriginal people either through enlightened attitudes of the Queensland Police or through fully implementing the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.

Australia is not trying to address the issues of Aboriginal Australia. It is not lacking in goodwill of a rather generalised and fuzzy nature. It's just white Australia is not bothered about doing what really counts where it really counts.

Whitefellas are not just prepared to increase taxes to deal with the issue. They are not prepared to open up employment and education on a large scale to Aboriginal people. They are not prepared, on a wide scale, to come to grips with and acquire knowledge of Aboriginal culture. They are not prepared to sacrifice an ounce of their own comfort to ensure other Australians have the same opportunities.

Traditional Aboriginal communities are out of sight and out of mind and white Australia is quite content with that situation as it is with the out of sight out of mind prison system which has a strong Aboriginal population.

Miss Eagle has long held the view that she will know when there is no discrimination against Aboriginal people. It will be when she walks into a David Jones store and finds a traditional Aboriginal woman working on the cosmetics counter providing retail services to all Australians. This is such a long time coming that Miss Eagle thinks hell will freeze over first.

Please note: Miss Eagle has not intended the above comment as a side swipe at David Jones. The first floor of David Jones stores are sacred women's spaces in Miss Eagle's scheme of things. This is why she wants to see Aboriginal women in there too.

Students continue to protest the CPE (First Labour Contract)

Students in Marseille join the protests against the CPE

Protests against the CPE (First Labour Contract) continue (see previous post) in France and are spreading as students take up the cause for employment in proper jobs not the jobs with diminished conditions proposed by Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin.

It's about time other protests around the world were initiated on employment contract trends.

Student protests over 'Anglo-Saxon' job laws - World - theage.com.au

Miss Eagle is rather pleased with the news from Paris. Students are protesting about what they call the introduction of "Anglo-Saxon job laws". It seems the French Government is proposing to deal with a high level of youth unemployment by stripping away a lot of rights and entitlements.

Now some may think what I am about to say most illogical - but to Miss Eagle it is straightforward commonsense. Why are those who are poor and out of work to have their economic rights and entitlements lowered, removed or dismantled to place them in work? Surely, logic demands that those in positions of economic power with the ability to employ young people shoud face punitive measures if they ignore the plight of unemployed and deskilled youth. Surely, those with economic power should be forced to invest in the future, particularly the future of humanity, by investing in people and boosting their ability for economic participation.

Aah, but economic power prefers to use unemployment whether for the young, the aged or anyone in between as an economic tool: to have a surplus pool of unemployed people and thereby seek opportunities for driving down wages and dismantling sound emloyment conditions. Economic power would prefer the globalization of Chinese wages and working conditions. 'Onya students of Paris. I wish more of us would take to the streets and demand that governments, corporations, and business put an end to the use of the unemployed as economic tools.