Working families from the Blue Mountains will be travelling to Sydney on Sunday to take part in the annual Mayday march.
The march is held every year as a celebration of the achievements of working people and rights at work.
“With our rights at work under attack from Kerry Bartlett’s Liberal Party we are seeing a large increase in people interested in getting involved in the Your Rights At Work campaign,” said Pat O’Beirne from the Blue Mountains Unions Council.
Thousands of working families are expected to rally at Hyde Park North at 11am, this Sunday May 7 to send a message that rights at work are worth fighting for.
With no trackwork scheduled, many working families will be catching the 8.05 am service from Mt Victoria, which stops at all stations through the mountains.
For more information contact Patrick O’Beirne on 02 4758 6493
Sunday, May 07, 2006
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Japan: twenty five year picket at OKI
Tanaka Tetsuro has been protesting his dismissal from an electronics company for a quarter of a century. Now his struggle, one of the longest one-man campaigns in Japanese history, is to be the subject of a documentary.It's a Friday morning in Takao, west Tokyo and a sleepy grey army of salary-men and women is snaking through the gates of Oki Electric.
At a few minutes before 8 a.m., Tanaka Tetsuro pulls up on a moped outside the factory gates, sets up a mike stand attached to a bullhorn and begins strumming his guitar and singing:
There is a wall between you and me which we can't see
Wall of borders, wall of language, wall of history and life
Nobody -- not the bleary-eyed workers, security guards or even the schoolchildren and mothers walking by Oki -- acknowledges the odd sight of a middle-aged man in a cowboy hat crooning peace songs in English before one of Japan's largest electronics companies.
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Monday, May 01, 2006
South Africa: Australian MPs' visit sparks outrage
The Australian Members of Parliaments’ visit today(Saturday) at BHP Billiton’s Hillside Aluminium factory in Richards Bay, Kwazulu-Natal is expected to spark fresh anger and indignation among metalworkers.
Australian government recently ratified new labour market deregulation clauses which
encouraged casualisation and extensive liberalization of existing clauses in an effort to increase labour flexibility laws.
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa has vowed to mount furious protest demonstrations against the visiting Australian MPs in support of vulnerable casual workers in Australia since the introduction of the new flexible labour laws. Casual employment is prevalent in Australia in that it has expanded in the private sector and in the public service to more than 25% of employment population.
NUMSA is making preparations to display its displeasure at the visiting Australian MPs unwelcome at their reception in the Richards’ Bay airport at 10:30 am Saturday (29 April, 2006), the union’s vice- president Cedric Gina said yesterday.
“Australia has consistently recorded one of the highest levels of temporary employment among most countries. We have to show them they are not welcome here because labour market deregulation in conjunction with structural economic change in their country has
resulted in the expansion of unregulated sphere of individual contracts governed by the common law. That situation is not wanted in this country,”
read more
Australian government recently ratified new labour market deregulation clauses which
encouraged casualisation and extensive liberalization of existing clauses in an effort to increase labour flexibility laws.
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa has vowed to mount furious protest demonstrations against the visiting Australian MPs in support of vulnerable casual workers in Australia since the introduction of the new flexible labour laws. Casual employment is prevalent in Australia in that it has expanded in the private sector and in the public service to more than 25% of employment population.
NUMSA is making preparations to display its displeasure at the visiting Australian MPs unwelcome at their reception in the Richards’ Bay airport at 10:30 am Saturday (29 April, 2006), the union’s vice- president Cedric Gina said yesterday.
“Australia has consistently recorded one of the highest levels of temporary employment among most countries. We have to show them they are not welcome here because labour market deregulation in conjunction with structural economic change in their country has
resulted in the expansion of unregulated sphere of individual contracts governed by the common law. That situation is not wanted in this country,”
read more
Pilbara pastoral strike anniversary remembered
Indigenous people in Western Australia's north-west are commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Pilbara pastoral strike.
Aboriginal pastoral workers walked off stations on May 1, 1946, demanding wages and better conditions.
Fran Heintz from the Wanga Maya Aboriginal Language Centre says the event had a massive impact on Indigenous workers.
"It's been a fairly significant event for the region and in many ways we believe it's a significant national event," he said.
"Some people actually call it the black Eureka. It did set what's been in place now for 60 years and that is the equal respect.
"Those workers were as good as workers if not better than anybody else and they should have been equally payed. It's a major event and it really has changed the way people have lived."
listen to Clancy and Dooley and Don McLeodSolidarity: a necessity for our times
Only by organising the new workforce across companies and national borders can we win social justice and equality
Solidarity may be an unfashionable virtue today, but it is the best - and often the only - defence most people have in a world dominated by big money, growing inequality and unrestrained profit-making. May Day has, for over a century, been the day working people have proclaimed their common interests across industries and countries. Its message of the necessity for solidarity is even more decisive than in the past.
In recent months, millions have shown they want a different world of greater justice, democracy and equality: in Latin America, the global anti-war movement, and the French workers who defeated the recent attempt to slash labour protection. That world is the ultimate purpose of the union freedom we are demanding today.
read more
Solidarity may be an unfashionable virtue today, but it is the best - and often the only - defence most people have in a world dominated by big money, growing inequality and unrestrained profit-making. May Day has, for over a century, been the day working people have proclaimed their common interests across industries and countries. Its message of the necessity for solidarity is even more decisive than in the past.
In recent months, millions have shown they want a different world of greater justice, democracy and equality: in Latin America, the global anti-war movement, and the French workers who defeated the recent attempt to slash labour protection. That world is the ultimate purpose of the union freedom we are demanding today.
read more
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