US to ban dangerous microbeads

The US is set to ban personal care products that contain microbeads after the House of Representatives approved a bill that would phase out the environmentally-harmful items.

The bill, which had been backed by a bipartisan committee, will now go to the Senate for approval.

The Microbead Free Waters Act would start the phase-out of the tiny pieces of plastic found in soap, toothpaste and body washes beginning 1 July 2017. Microbeads can flow into rivers, lakes and streams where, they can be mistaken for food by fish. This can lead to the spread of pollutants throughout the food chain, including to humans.

Microbeads are typically smaller than a pinhead but are causing significant problems in the Great Lakes. Research conducted in 2013 by the State University of New York found that the lakes were riddled with microbeads, with Lake Ontario containing an estimated 1.1m plastic particles per square kilometer.

Ohio, which has most of the Lake Erie shoreline, is considering microbead legislation, as is Michigan. Illinois became the first state to ban the sale of such products in 2014, with California recently finalising a bill to phase out microbeads by 2020.

Research by Oregon State University found that a stunning 8tn microbeads a day were being emitted into bodies of water in the US. This plastic adds to the vast quantity floating throughout the world’s oceans, with a recent study finding that up to 90% of the planet’s seabirds have pieces of plastic in their guts.

“These microbeads are tiny plastic, but make for big-time pollution,” said Republican Fred Upton, a co-sponsor of the bill. 

“The Great Lakes have survived many a foe – severe pollution, oil spills, discharge from refineries, zebra mussels, and attempts to steal our water, just to name a few,” Upton said. “We will fight any activity that puts our beloved Great Lakes in jeopardy.”

ACOSS: Tax reform cannot be a deal struck behind closed doors on GST

Tuesday 8 December 2015

Ahead of Thursday’s Council of Australian Governments’ meeting, ACOSS is warning leaders against striking any behind closed doors deal on GST, adding this risks compromising the public’s confidence in genuine tax and federation reform.

“While we welcome the debate and have agreed that all options should be on the table, we are concerned at the current fixation on changing the GST as some sort of panacea,” said ACOSS CEO Dr Cassandra Goldie.

“The states are rightly seeking to secure their long term budgets, particularly to pay for essential services such as health, education and community services into the future. However, it would be foolish to rush to an option when the reform processes in tax and federation have barely begun.

“A number of options for reform have been floated by State Premiers. These range from the South Australian Premier’s proposal to increase the GST to 15% with states relinquishing that revenue source for a share of national personal income taxes, to the Victorian Premier’s proposal to increase the Medicare levy to fund the growing costs of services.

“Any such proposals need to be considered in the broader context of the tax and federation reform agenda, rather than standalone reform proposals. In assessing options, leaders must ensure that reform is structural not piecemeal, addresses long-term revenue problems, improves fairness and efficiency, and ensures adequate funding for health, education and welfare services into the future.

“A shift in the tax mix away from progressive income taxes to regressive consumption taxes will not result in a fair or balanced tax reform package.

“A better starting point for tax reform is to curb tax shelters and broaden the base of the personal income tax system. If we are keen to foster greater investment in new innovative enterprises, we should be closing down generous tax shelters and concessions that are distorting current investment decisions, including through superannuation, private trusts and companies and tax breaks which drive investment into existing real estate, particularly negative gearing and capital gains discounts. This should be our priority rather than giving further potentially poorly targeted tax breaks to help drive innovation.

“We urge the COAG Leaders to focus on these areas as well as ways to shift to more efficient tax bases, such as removing inefficient stamp duties for more efficient land taxes. This was a key area of common ground at the recent National Reform Summit and should be at the heart of these COAG discussions, not the GST.

“Any reform should provide a guarantee that people will have access to quality services regardless of their income and where they live in Australia. A guarantee, underpinned by Commonwealth, State and Territory legislation, could replace tied funding models, provide some greater flexibility to the states while increasing accountability for outcomes achieved.

“We believe that essential community services should be funded mainly through the tax system and paid for according to people’s ability to pay, and have flagged the possible earmarking of tax revenues to expenditure in community services as a way to secure these vital services into the future.

“The current federation and tax reviews offer an opportunity for us to achieve long sought after and urgently needed reform. It would be a mistake for leaders to look to strike a premature deal while these important processes are underway, especially when there are better and fairer policy options available,” Dr Goldie concluded.

CFMEU: Government desperate to mount an attack on working rights.

CFMEU Victorian secretary John Setka and his deputy Shaun Reardon are facing blackmail charges after being arrested on Sunday in separate operations that a senior union official said “reek of overkill”.

The union slammed the way the men were arrested in front of their family and children.

“The CFMEU has cooperated with every request from the royal commission and the police could have conducted their business at the office during working hours,” CFMEU construction division national secretary Dave Noonan said in a statement.

The charges are understood to relate to Boral and its supply of concrete to Grocon, a developer that has been the target of CFMEU industrial action.

In a statement, Mr Noonan said “treating union officials like fugitives on the run was obviously designed to create maximum political damage to the union with little regard for their families”.

“The community expects more of the police. We should be able to trust that our police are not doing the grunt work of a Government desperate to mount an attack on the working rights of people in this country,” he said.

“The Federal Liberal Government has taken 57 police and assigned them to a taskforce whose only achievements to date include two theatrical raids whose legality is in doubt, the prolonged questioning and harassment of staff in their homes, the failed pursuit of Johnny Lomax without any evidence and now, the hyper-staged arrests of two senior officers of the union.”

Tens of thousands march through downtown Seoul

Tens of thousands of anti-government protesters have marched through downtown Seoul, demanding that South Korean president Park Geun-hye apologise for cracking down on a protest last month when farm and labour activists clashed with police. 

An estimated crowd of 30,000 people, many of them wearing masks in defiance of Ms Park's call for a ban on mask-wearing during protests.

They marched through the city centre behind a banner reading "Resign Park Geun-Hye", chanting slogans. 

Saturday's rally went ahead after a court rejected the government's request for an injunction made in the aftermath of the violent scenes at the earlier demonstration, which had been organised by some of the country's most militant activist groups to protest against Ms Park's labour market and education policies.Ms Park's conservative government plans to make it possible for employers to dismiss workers based on performance and to cap the salaries of senior employees in order to encourage employers to hire younger people and ease youth unemployment.

Activists were also protesting against Ms Park's decision to replace privately published school history textbooks with government versions, a move they say is an attempt to whitewash military dictators' oppression of democracy and human rights in South Korea until the mid-1980s.

Charges were laid against dozens of people in the wake of the rally last month, which saw riot police use water cannon and pepper spray after some protesters attacked police with metal pipes and sharpened bamboo sticks.

An arrest warrant has been issued against the head of the militant Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), who has taken sanctuary in a Buddhist temple in Seoul, from where, on Saturday, he repeated a call for a general strike.

"What is our demand? Stop the move to worsen labour conditions that only fattens capitalists," KCTU chief Han Sang-gyun said in his video message to the rally.

KCTU has frequently issued calls for a general strike in recent years but the only significant action taken has been rotating work stoppages at locations where unionised labour is highly organised.

Unions NSW: Farewell to Mark Lennon

Posted on December 03, 2015

Tonight NSW unions paid tribute to long-serving leader and dear colleague and friend Mark Lennon after almost eight years in the top job as Secretary of Unions NSW.

A true stalwart of the movement Mark has been at the forefront of the fight for workers’ rights since joining Unions NSW in 1988 where he worked in a number of different roles before becoming secretary in 2008.

Mark’s commitment to the cause and his tireless contribution to improving the lives of working people in NSW over the past three decades will never be forgotten.

Unions from across the movement shared their appreciation and memories of a man who has steered them through the lows of the WorkChoices years to the incredible highs like holding James Hardie to account.

From jobs cuts, wage caps, workers compensation attacks and penalty rates slashed, Mark has been a relentless advocate of workers’ rights, social justice, fairness and equity for all.

For the past 30 years he has been at the helm of every campaign and valued for his passion, honesty, integrity and calm and considered approach to the issues at hand.

A  champion of Your Rights at Work and the cause of Jobs, Rights and Services, Mark will be missed by the multitudes but leaves behind him a wonderful legacy - most notably with the 30 local community union alliances he helped pioneer that bring back the power of community grassroots campaigning.

A truly unifying force, hero, mentor, leader and friend we thank you for always emulating the union values we hold dear.