Jason Dowling has been sacked. Not for behaving badly at work, but for behaving badly in his own spare time. Jason posted some offensive comments on Facebook, was dobbed in to his boss by a stranger who happened to stumble upon his page and then given his marching orders. What’s the world coming to? It’s […]

We’ve been staying on a farm in the Usumbara Mountains above Lushoto for a few nights. For the past seven years, it’s been run by a Swede and a South African from the German Lutheran church. Over dinner last night, the inevitable question arose: Why doesn’t Tanzania work? It’s certainly something that this couple has […]

I believe fundamentally in the importance of the unions. But I’m not a union member. In my first week as a fifteen year old check-out chick, I signed up as a member of the SDA. As a casual working the registers at Christmas time, it was only because of the the union presence in the […]

I applaud Matthew Spencer, I do. Here’s a kid who has enough nounce to rally 1500 signatures in his home town in aid of a cause he believes in. The 17-year-old from Terang is out of a job because of the new retail award that now operates in his industry. He and six others used […]

Much has been written about the Intervention since it first came into place in 2007. Reports have been filed, reviews undertaken. The Government PR machine has gone overboard ensuring media is good. In among all of this something has been missing: the creation of real jobs out in communities across the NT. As part of […]

International Day of Mourning on 28 April each year is a good time to be thinking about the workers. Mid morning at No. 4 Jetty Port Kembla, Wollongong workers gathered to think about the devastation that comes for the families and communities of the more than a million workers who are killed at work each […]

I’m in the market for a new job. I’m not sure if you’ve ever noticed, but there really isn’t that much information out there to help me narrow my search. Employers generally don’t advertise what the salary is, and if you phone them they’re often coy. So I’m going to have to wait until I […]

The National Retail Association (NRA) is having another cry. This time, it’s in response to the Fair Work Ombudsman’s announcement that it will be writing to 50 000 retailers across Australia to make sure they are complying with new workplace laws. It will then look at the employment records of 1500 staff, selected at random, […]

You may be a member of a union. But have you ever been approached by some other union – approached as a member of the community – and invited to join a campaign or activity broader than wages and conditions? For example, have you been encouraged to attend meetings about the closure of local services, […]

‘I bet you never stop-loss nobody no more.’ Iraq veteran Marc Hall, aka hip-hop artist Marc Watercus, is currently in pre-trial confinement awaiting court-martial in Georgia. He was jailed on 11 December because he wrote and performed a song called ‘Stop-loss’ – which he then sent to the Pentagon after learning that they were sending […]