Selfish to refuse a wage freeze
Tasmania’s Treasurer is labeling unions “selfish” for deciding to walk off the job in an action that will inconvenience parents, school children and people on hospital waiting lists.
Unions are flagging the biggest campaign of industrial action in years to protest against Treasurer Peter Gutwein’s budget savings measures which include a 12-month pay freeze in exchange for a non-binding promise not to cut an extra 300 jobs.
Union leaders intend to ignore the Treasurer’s ultimatum. (Source: ABC)
RAAF wife slams government pay offer
The wife of a serving RAAF member about to be deployed to Iraq has lashed the Federal Government’s “insulting and non-consultative” pay offer and cuts to allowances.
An Adelaide based defence force wife whose husband is due to deploy to the Middle East next week and who will miss out on Christmas with his family, said she had chosen to speak out because: “Defence is not like the public service. Defence Force members can’t strike, they can’t speak out”.
She told the media her husband would lose his Members with Dependents food allowance under the proposed pay offer, which is worth $4905 annually.
At the same, her husband will receive a pay rise of just $1280 annually in line with the below inflation 1.5% offer – leaving her and her family $3625 worse off each year. She added that she had been “lectured” by a staffer when she rang the office of Assistant Defence Minister Stuart Robert about Labor’s legacy of debt before being told the Minister was “too busy to ring someone like me back”. (Source: Fairfax Media)
Who snubbed the Unions?
The British Prime Minister David Cameron snubbed international trade unions at the G20 summit – even though jobs tops the agenda and other centre-right leaders have met them.
Unions from across the G20 are trying to get a commitment to improving working conditions and increasing wages included in the summit final communiqué. The 20 member countries, which account for nearly 86% of the world’s economy, are supposed to be considering targets set in the communiqué as part of their policy plans over the next year.
Mr Cameron, however, joined King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto and President Joko Widodo of Indonesia in not talking to the unions either before, or during, the summit.
By contrast, Chancellor Angela Merkel offered union leaders breakfast yesterday morning, to discuss their ideas, and President Vladimir Putin met the leaders in the afternoon. France, China, Brazil, and Argentina have also found time for the union representatives. (Source: The Independent)
Ticket sellers out earn performers
The Royal Opera House was at the centre of a pay storm recently after it was claimed that professional dancers were being paid just
This month in labour history
- 1-11-1835 Philadelphia has the first general strike in US history.
- 29-11-1849 Chartist leader William Cuffay arrives in Australia, having been transported from Britain after his treason trial.
- 22-11-1900 2800 workers at the Penrhyn quarry in Wales, walk off the job over pay and union recognition. The strike last a staggering three years.
- 19-11-1915 Joe Hill, a SwedishAmerican organiser for theIndustrial Workers of the World, is framed and executed for murder in Utah.
- 1-11-1923 Police in Melbourne strike against the use of labour spies.