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 Home Campaigns Support the Newcastle Boeing Workers News
Boeing Workers Ask: Do We Have The Rights You Say We Do Or Not?About 20 maintenance engineers locked in an industrial dispute with their employer Boeing will visit Parliament House in Canberra today (Wednesday 10 August) to call on the Howard Government to support their right to choose a collective agreement in their workplace.The workers, employed at the RAAF's Williamtown base near Newcastle, will arrive in Canberra early this morning, having travelled on bus through the night. AWU National Secretary Bill Shorten, who will lead the delegation, said the workers would be attending Question Time in the hope the Government would use the forum to finally stand up for their right to choose a union-negotiated collective agreement. Mr Shorten said the engineers were also looking forward to meeting this morning with Opposition Leader Kim Beazley, Opposition Industrial Relations spokesperson Stephen Smith and Newcastle Federal MP Sharon Grierson. "These qualified technicians, who maintain Australia's fighter jets, have been taking legal industrial action for ten weeks now, which hasn't been easy on them or their families," Mr Shorten said. "They've decided to make the trek to Canberra because they are fed up with the Government ignoring their plight, or worse still, rubbing their noses in it. "John Howard is spending millions of taxpayers' dollars on advertisements telling us one of the key points of the government's IR proposals is to 'preserve the right of workers to have a union negotiate a collective agreement if they wish'. "Well, our members have clearly demonstrated they want the right to a collective agreement, rather than being forced to stay on unfair and discriminatory individual contracts." AWU Newcastle Secretary Kevin Maher said the existing contracts were in breach of the principle of equal pay for equal work, as Boeing was paying the workers up to $2 an hour less than their counterparts elsewhere who were doing the same job at the same skill level. Mr Shorten said the Government had a clear responsibility to help resolve the dispute. "How can the Government justify allowing this dispute to drag on, when they claim to support the workers' cause and the dispute puts at risk Australia's defence readiness?
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© 2004 The Australian Workers' Union Level 10, 377-383 Sussex Street, Sydney NSW 2000 Phone: 02 8005 3333 Members Hotline: 1300 885 653 Fax: 02 8005 3300 Email: members@awu.net.au This page: http://www.awu.net.au/national/campaigns/boeing/news_1123739768_10811.html Site produced by Social Change Online |
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