Tag Archives: Unions

“Union Thuggery” Should Not Be Conflated With Misogyny

 

John Setka is a charismatic leader.

He embodies a lot of what the Australian trade union movement stands for: vocal about worker’s rights, visible through industrial action, and intimidating when necessary.

He is the archetype of a union ‘thug’. A big bloke with tattoos who is part of a ‘militant’ trade union. Setka and the Construction Forestry Maritime Mining Energy Union (CFMMEU) regularly push the boundaries of industrial action, incurring $15 million in fines since 2005.

There is nothing wrong with this.

Continue reading “Union Thuggery” Should Not Be Conflated With Misogyny

How to Stop Businesses Stealing from their Employees

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A Senate inquiry has revealed that wage theft and underpayment are so prevalent in some industries that they have become the norm. Around 79% of hospitality employers in Victoria, for instance, did not comply with the national award wage system between 2013 and 2016.

Regulators and unions don’t have the resources to combat this issue, and so we need another method to tackle wage exploitation. One way is to introduce a multi-stakeholder certification scheme, using market forces to reward companies that have committed to fair working conditions and punish those that don’t.

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Do No Harm? The Hidden Cost of Your Healthcare.

There are unacceptable hidden costs in the production and procurement of medical goods by Australian companies and government, according to a new report published on Thursday by the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation and The Australia Institute. The report – Do No Harm: Procurement of medical goods by Australian companies and government – documents mounting evidence of labour and human rights abuses in the overseas production of goods such as gloves, surgical instruments, clothing, footwear and electronics. It calls for action at corporate and government levels, saying Australia is not doing enough to stop exploitation of workers, including children, in low-wage countries in their supply chains.

The report’s author Martijn Boersma outlines the key findings and recommendations in the post below. Continue reading Do No Harm? The Hidden Cost of Your Healthcare.

Abusing Innovation

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Innovation and entrepreneurship are very much the flavour of the month. Widely regarded as instrumental in the next wave of economic growth, determining the ultimate recipe for innovation and entrepreneurial success is by many considered to be the holy grail. Indeed, we are all being encouraged to become like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and other hero entrepreneurs that somehow went from eating macaroni and cheese in a garage or a campus dorm room every night, to becoming obscenely rich by inventing new things we now obsessively use or log into every day.

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2SER Radio Interview about the Catalyst CSR Dashboard and Corporate Reporting

Annamarie Reyes from 2SER’s Radio Atticus talks to Martijn Boersma, Researcher at Catalyst Australia and the University of Technology Sydney, about the Catalyst CSR Dashboard and the poor corporate reporting on labour standards and supply chains.