Our Rights at Work

Don't let Turnbull ruin Christmas

Did you know this week the Productivity Commission  handed down their final report into workplace relations?

But still no word from the Turnbull Government on whether they are going to cut wages just in time for Christmas.

Send the Prime Minister a message and tell him all we want for Christmas is penalty rates.

The Commission’s recommendations are of vital importance to working people with many of our fundamental rights on the chopping block if the draft report handed down last year is unchanged.

Penalty rates, worker’s allowances, the minimum wage and other hard-won working conditions are all up for grabs.

We are hoping the Commissioners have listened to reason and withdrawn moves to cut weekend rates for hospitality, retail, entertainment, café and restaurant workers.

But if not, the take home pay of more than 4.5 million hard working Australians will be slashed by about 30%.

These workers are already some of the lowest paid in our society - and at a time when many are struggling to make ends meet - this will be a huge blow they simply can’t afford.

Penalty rates are in place as compensation for working unsociable hours that take workers away from their families and events that only happen on the weekends.

But the Turnbull Government and greedy employers don’t seem to care about the sacrifices workers make and will do everything in their power to cut wages.

Even if this means workers will have less money to spend at the very businesses Turnbull is claiming he wants to help. That’s why we must make a stand to stop them.

Tell the government today that they have no right to rip penalty rates away.

Australian Unions recently released disturbing figures that show the true impact of any cuts to penalty rates, not only on workers and their families but on entire communities.

Regional Australia alone will take a hit of up to $1.55 billion every year if penalty rates are scrapped. We can’t let this happen.

The Prime Minister needs to know that these regional workers are voters too and one in five work in the retail and hospitality industry.

It’s time for the government to stand up for working Australians and protect our living standards.

Send the PM a message now.

In union,

Mark Lennon

Secretary, Unions NSW

Damian Cobley-Finch Funeral Details

“My aim for Acoustica is to bring people of all

ages together, create community bonds, encourage music and performing arts and celebrate

inclusiveness; and of course listen to some great music,”

Cr Damian Cobley-Finch 

Damian was a long time member of the UTS CPSU Branch serving as a delegate and represented many members over the years. He worked as a Counsellor/psychologist in the Universities student services until retirement.  
Damian was also a strong Labor Party member. Serving in his local council of Leichhard in many ways.

He knew how to stir up the rat bags as well. 

Alan Barnes past UTS branch President said; "a man that knew right from wrong".



"His conduct in public office and as a private citizen was exactly the same - he believed passionately in public service and local activism dedicated vast quantities of his time accordingly." Darcy Byrne

Can you pass on funeral details to comrades and friends at UTS PSA/CPSU.
Damian's funeral will be at St Augustine's Church 3 Jane St., Balmain NSW 2041 at 2:30 next Tuesday December 8th.

Superannuation Attack

Members Beware. The banks are coming after your super. Contact the cross-bench Senators before it’s too late. Our not-for-profit system of industry superannuation has seen workers retire on significantly larger nest eggs than those who used superannuation schemes run by the banks. But legislation is currently before Federal parliament that would fundamentally change the nature of our not-for-profit system of industry superannuation. That means more workers’ super contributions would be handed over to the banks. Which in turn, would mean $267,000 less at retirement for a 25 year old earning $50,000 in 2010. Taken as an income stream, it would be thousands of dollars less every year. That would make a huge difference in retirement. Contact the cross-bench Senators and tell them to vote to stop this. The union movement built our not-for-profit industry superannuation scheme. Now it is worth $1 trillion per year the banking sector want to get their fingers on it. That means more workers’ money diverted to corporate profits. Contact the cross-bench Senators now to defend our superannuation system. In union, Emma Maiden Assistant Secretary Unions NSW

Keep Super Safe Campaign

Australian Unions built the most successful financial story in Australia – industry superannuation. Now Malcolm Turnbull wants to dismantle it.

The Turnbull Government is proposing changes that will hand over our super to the big banks. I’m writing to ask you to contact the cross-bench Senators and tell them to vote to stop this.

Industry superannuation has low fees and high returns because they are run in the interests of their members, not to make profits for banks. All profits are returned to members, there are no sales people and it is secure. All of this is at risk if Turnbull succeeds in letting the big banks get their hands on our super.

If you’re young these changes will cost you the most. You could end up paying up to a quarter of your retirement savings in fees. We can’t let this happen.

After a lifetime of work and saving, you deserve better than that.

We built superannuation. Now we need to defend it.

Contact the cross-bench Senators today.


Ged
Australian Unions Team
http://www.australianunions.org.au/

GST HIKE

The Multinationals and Co-operations  in Australia who do not pay any taxes are the ones who should be paying up not our poorest workers.

Lets sack Eric Abetz by text

members Last Thursday nearly one hundred Hutchison Port workers were sacked by midnight texts and emails and told not to come to work the next day. To add insult to injury Employment Minister Eric Abetz told ABC TV that sacking by text message was “an appropriate methodology”. Let’s see if he really thinks so. Here’s your chance to sack Eric Abetz by text. For the first time in 20 years, Australia has more than 800,000 people unemployed. What will it take for the Abbott government to stand up for jobs? If our Employment Minister won’t support Australian jobs then he’s in the wrong job. Send a text to sack Eric Abetz. In unity, Dave and Ged Australian Unions Team http://www.australianunions.org.au/

Productivity Commission report attacks penalty rates, minimum wage and rights at work

Productivity Commission report attacks penalty rates, minimum wage and rights at work

NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into TAFE

Bulletin - NSW Parliamentary Inquiry

into TAFE

Make your voice heard

The Economic Impact of Penelty Rate Cuts on Rural NSW

Minimum wage 1990 > 2015

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MINIMUM WAGE 1990 > 2014

The Economic Impact of Penalty Rate Cuts on Rural NSW A RETAIL INDUSTRY CASE STUDY

" Penalty rates have long protected the Australian weekend. For over a hundred 

years they have incentivised regular hours of work and compensated working 

families for the time apart. 

Now there are increasing calls from employer 

groups and parts of the Federal Government 

to cut back penalty rates in an effort to increase 

the profitability of companies and the nation’s 

level of productivity."

Privatisation of vocational education isn't working

By Serena Yu, University of Sydney and Damian Oliver, University of Sydney

Recent weeks have produced various horror stories of the workings of dodgy private providers of vocational education and training, including the latest: a recall of certificates due to sub-par standards in these institutions.
Vocational training is crucial for both young Australians and the future of our economy, yet in recent years private providers who face little oversight or scrutiny have turned the sector upside down.

The problems with private providers

Private providers are amassing huge profits at taxpayers' expense, the quality of the system is declining and students may face large debts for courses they either didn’t complete or were not of a high standard.
Unscrupulous practices by some private providers include:

• aggressive marketing with a common “buy now, pay later, plus free iPad” hook
• subcontracting out course content, teaching and assessment to other providers, including unregistered providers
• up-selling students into courses they hadn’t intended to enrol in
• delivering courses in fewer hours and online
• significant merger and acquisition activity, with large enterprises owning portfolios of registered and unregistered training brands, which are out of the regulator’s line of sight.

Online marketing material from an unregistered student recruitment site. Direct online marketing email

These practices were brought sharply to light by a government review of Vocation, a large provider which had over 24,000 new course enrolments in 2013. At the time of the review, Vocation’s government funding was forecast to grow to A$1.2 billion by 2017.
The review resulted in the forfeiture of A$19.6 million after identifying unscrupulous practices. These included an over-reliance on third-party student referrals, enrolling students in courses inappropriate to their needs and delivering a low-quality training experience. After initially declaring to investors that the review would be immaterial to earnings, the company has been forced into multiple trading halts on its free-falling shares to ensure adequate transparency over its operations.
Privatisation was supposed to improve the range and quality of training offerings, make the sector more responsive to the needs of industry, and to provide greater transparency. None of these promises has been met. The lack of transparency seen with Vocation is far worse for unlisted providers and for unregistered providers party to subcontracting arrangements.
All of this has contributed to a loss of public trust in the vocational training system and huge damage to the long-term sustainability of TAFEs.
The annual report of the Australian Skills Quality Authority last year found that 75% of Registered Training Organisations failed to meet minimum standards on a first inspection.

Private providers are strangling TAFE

TAFEs have historically been the main provider of training, especially in regional Australia. They offer a range of career-focused courses for students not going to university.

TAFE enrolments are suffering from the influx of private providers. Empty classroom image from www.shutterstock.com

In recent years the states, headed by Victoria, opened up government funding to all training providers, public and private, who vie for it. This has meant public TAFEs have had to compete for the funding previously allocated to them.
This has led to a proliferation of private providers – now over 3000 – hoping to get a share of this lucrative taxpayer-funded training.
Unlike universities, there are no caps on what private providers can charge students for courses through the VET FEE-HELP scheme, under which students incur a debt similar to the HECS debt for a university course.
We have seen huge profits accruing to private providers, which are far in excess of what a company in a genuinely competitive market could reasonably expect. For example, Australian Careers Network, another large private provider, recorded a 51% profit margin in 2014, while several other providers recorded profit margins of over 30%.
In Victoria, TAFEs now have just 27% of enrolments. Other states are also seeing TAFE’s share of funding drop. TAFEs still provide the majority of training to disadvantaged students and those in regional areas, as well as many courses in traditional skill shortage areas, which do not deliver as big a profit margin to private providers.

So how can we fix this?

The standard answer is better regulation, but there are huge doubts as to whether this could work. This is not just because of the huge number of private providers, whose business models are so complex that regulators will always struggle to keep up.
Education is what economists call an “experience good” – meaning it’s impossible to judge the value of a course of study until you’ve completed it and tried to use it to get a job or undertake further study. That’s why, in a fast-changing marketplace fuelled by taxpayer subsidies, trying to regulate by giving more information to students will not work.
The VET FEE-HELP scheme means that courses are “buy now, pay later”, which makes it easier for unscrupulous operators to sell students courses that are low-value or useless. For young students who are eager to find work, it is easy to take at face value the promises made by private training organisations and realise too late that they have made a mistake.

Students have been left with large debts for incomplete or low-quality courses. Vocational training image from www.shutterstock.com

In order to reverse this trend there must be a minimum hours requirement to stop year-long courses being completed in just a few weeks, providers should not be allowed to sub-contract training to unregistered third parties, who are effectively out of reach of regulators, and more scrutiny is needed of how for-profit training organisations are marketing themselves to potential students.
We also need to recognise that the public sector, through TAFE, should remain at the heart of vocational training and that it needs support to remain a sustainable provider of high-quality, trusted vocational qualifications. Where private providers have lagged, TAFEs continue to service the needs of students from disadvantaged backgrounds (including those in regional areas), and are more likely to offer higher-cost courses in skills-shortage areas.
TAFEs just can’t fairly compete with private providers who can choose to offer only profitable training courses and to educate only students of their choice - usually those who can pay high fees and from relative advantage. Some recognition of this public role of TAFEs needs to be built into the funding system.
A cap on the funding available to private operators would give TAFEs some certainty about their operations and ensure they remain the custodians of high-quality vocational training.
If a more sustainable funding model for TAFE is not found, then it is very likely that public confidence in the entire system of vocational qualifications will be fatally eroded, robbing future generations of a chance to improve their skills and find quality jobs.
We need to recognise that the rhetoric of privatisation has not matched reality, and work out how to shift to a system that reliably delivers what students expect – a high-quality course at a fair price.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Brighter Future

A lifetime of debt is not the right answer

Letter from the Australian Unions Team

Dear mark,

You may have heard that the Abbott Government has bowed to community pressure and backed down on their latest changes to Medicare.

Your quick response had an impact - in just 24 hours you and nearly 10,000 others signed the petition to the Senate.

We then announced nation wide protests the day before Parliament resumes and less than two hours later Sussan Ley the Health Minister was sent out to deliver the back down.

Together we sent a clear message to the Abbott Government that we'll stand together and do what it takes to defend Medicare.

But the fight’s not over and we'll all be on standby ready to mobilise when Tony Abbott makes his next move on Medicare, remember he still wants to introduce a $5 co-payment.

We will defend the Medicare Australian unions fought to establish 40 years ago – a universal and affordable healthcare system for everyone.

Yours in union,

Ged

Australian Unions Team

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The add that the Fed's should have put on TV

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