Stick Together

Today two struggles from two different ends of the spectrum with the same issues at the core – pay and conditions.  First we hear from Tony Mavromatis, Victorian State Secretary of the AMWU, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union about the strike action by workers at the Visy Plant in the rural centre Shepparton in Victoria.  Support the strike fund:BANK: NABBSB: 082-057ACCOUNT NUMBER: 18-898-9948ACCOUNT NAME: AMWU Disaster Appeal AccountREFERENCE: Visy Shepp We follow up with a report on the NTEU, National Tertiary Education Union strike action at Sydney University on March 31 and to be repeated on April 5th in the longest eba negotiation in the University’s history.

Today we listen to a fascinating talk by Andrew Leigh, MP Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury in the Federal Labor Government. The talk was fascinating because Leigh gives some analysis of why workers wages are so low despite productivity increases and now soaring prices. Put on by Per Capita the talk was titled : How Uncompetitive Markets Hurt Workers.

Today we are looking at the use of legislative manoeuvring by Governments to suppress dissent. First in Victoria and then in the UK.

This episode continues the interview with James Brennan speaking to David Spratt and Jacob Grech.  For Stick Together's 'Make Love Not War' episode on 15 February they spoke about the 20th anniversary of the Valentines day peace protest. This episode looks at how political organising has changed since then and how we reflect on the peace movement in its succeses and failures.

To honour International Women’s Day we look at two stories about working women the first a work place victory and the second a push for positive change. We hear from Australian Education Union organiser Hanae Honda here about her days as an AEU delegate and then follow-up the work going on to increase women in the trades first from AMWU's Courteney Munn here and then Hacia Atheron from EWT,  Empowered Women in Trades here.

Two reports today. We hear from Danny Miller, AMWU the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union organiser at the Visy plant in Shepperton in rural Victoria where the workers have been taking strike action for fair pay since mid-January.   Reminder to those wishing to support the Visy workers you can still donate hereBANK: NABBSB: 082-057ACCOUNT NUMBER: 18-898-9948ACCOUNT NAME: AMWU Disaster Appeal AccountREFERENCE: Visy Shepp We follow that with a word with Dr Alison Barnes, the national president of NTEU, the National Tertiary Education Union, about wage theft, precarious work and a call for an enquiry into the management ethos in our universities.

Workers in Australia have seen the slow increases in wages over the last decade wiped off the map by recent inflation. Wages for essential workers are thousands of dollars less than they were 10 years ago. Should workers have to shoulder the brunt of the new inflation wave or is business floating on a wave of profits that they have become addicted to? We ask the hard questions.

On the Valentines day weekend in 2003 millions of people took to the streets across the world to protest the invasion of Iraq. This year marks the 20th anniversary of those protests. On this week's episode of Stick Together host James Brennan speaks with two organisers of the Melbourne protest that kicked off the weekend David Spratt and Jacob Grech.

Part 2 in a chat with Kristen O' Connell from the Anti-Poverty Centre looking at if the change of Federal Government is changing things for people dealing with social security.

We speak with Kristen O'Connell from the Anti-Poverty Centre in a  two part conversation about the political nature of poverty and the practical bureacracy which maintains it in Australia.