there's our catastrophe

A coalition of powerful building unions will launch a campaign urging the Napthine government to build more public housing to reduce waiting lists and create jobs.

The group, which includes the CFMEU and ETU, is preparing a submission for Premier Denis Napthine that outlines unused government-owned sites in inner-city Melbourne that could be transformed into public housing.

please be for real

ahipstory:

‘Aussie jobs’ are not being taken by 457 visa holders, no matter what Adam Bandt claims.

this is an article full of numbers, not just 457 but a lot of other numbers

the numbers are quite interesting

after having a dummy spit because an organisation with premises at Trades Hall held a widely publicised forum on police violence.  this has been a brewing stoush for some time now but I did not expect this outcome. 

I know this could get messy but honestly, I think it is pretty great news. I’m really fucking sick of people making excuses for the continued backstabbing the police association pulls on the actual trade union movement because they’re “working class”.  nobody else would’ve been allowed to get away with crossing picket lines for this long, let alone smashing them. I mean I thought unionists were supposed to roll their eyes at wishy-washy cultural studies analyses of class that ignored stuff like the role of cops in class conflict, but whatever. 

the police association is worse than you could possible imagine, by the way.  they come perilously close to outright fascism.  their former longtime leader — who still pulls big weight within the org — is on record as saying he wants to eventually ban street protest altogether. they can fuck off forever. 

A NEW code of conduct for publicly funded construction projects in Victoria will crack down on the display of union logos, mottos and insignia on building sites.

And ”no ticket, no start” signs on sites, or any indicators that imply union membership is compulsory, will be banned under the code.

…The guidelines will apply to contractors on major public construction work in Victoria, and will attempt to stop companies being pressured to make payments to staff that are above award levels.

The code is not backed by legislation but contractors who fail to abide by it could lose potentially lucrative future government work.

Finance minister Robert Clark said the new code did not seek to attack unions. ”It will only be anti-union if unions are anti-productive,” he said.

are you fucking kidding me?  this is treating signs of union affiliation like they’re hate speech or obscenity or something.  it’s anti-union on the face of it. 

in any case, pressuring companies to pay higher wages is pretty much what unions do.  it’s their thing.  if you’re anti-that then you are anti-union.  q.e.fucking d. 

ugh this Bailleu fuckery never ends.

related. 

UNIONS will launch a massive claim to lift the wages of more than 200,000 apprentices as they seek to double the pay of some workers.

The ACTU claim in Fair Work Australia will argue that apprentice wages have failed to keep pace with the increasing number of people starting an apprenticeship at an older age.

Unions will push for the wage rates of adult apprentices to be lifted to the minimum wage in their industry - which in some cases could double pay - and would also ask for a boost to the wages of junior apprentices, some of whom are paid as little as $6.32 an hour.

Unions regard it as the most important test case in Fair Work Australia since the equal pay claim by tens of thousands of workers in the community services sector.

ACTU president Ged Kearney said that the poor pay rates were a major reason for high dropout rates among apprentices. She said about half of all people who started their apprenticeships failed to complete them.

”Today, many apprentices are beginning their training at a later age and have family responsibilities, or at least no longer live with their parents and must support themselves,” she said.

obviously I hope they succeed.  but this campaign still seriously annoys me because “youth pay rates” have always been a rip-off and in any case you can’t assume that a young person isn’t living independently with bills, bills, bills.  plus youth rates affect people well into adulthood — an eighteen-year-old non-apprentice not working overtime has a minimum wage of about $10 per hour, compared to $15.15 for someone just two years older.  basically if a young person with few responsibilities is doing the same job as someone with three mortages, they should be paid at the same rate.  this is what allows people to have “savings” and “pay debts” and become “financially secure adults”.

here is a good primer from UNITE on why youth wages are a crock.