Utilities and Local

Here in NSW, manufacturing workers build everything from passenger train carriages through to massive naval air warfare destroyers.Support the campaign: www.buildthemhere.com.au

But in recent years, more and more of our transport manufacturing contracts have gone to low-cost overseas competitors. 
 


Buses and rail rolling stock, along with all sorts of other heavy equipment, are commonly imported from China in tube or flat-pack form. After they’re shipped over, the skilled NSW tradespeople who used to build these buses and trains from scratch now assemble and fit them out. 
 


This trend puts valuable jobs, skills and apprenticeship opportunities at risk.  
 


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The NSW Government’s budget surplus averaging $800 million each year for the next four years would be better spent improving the public services that have been razed by years of cost cutting.

What a waste: we need services not surplusesIf we are to successfully implement the budget’s infrastructure plans and meet projected population increases across NSW, we’ll simply need more public sector workers.

As the NSW economy recovers and major infrastructure projects begin to take off, it is concerning that no efforts are being made by the Government to keep up with demand.

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The NSW Government must commit to growing the public sector at next month’s budget if it is to keep up with the demand for essential services.

This is one of the key findings revealed in Keeping Pace: The Impact of Population Growth on NSW Public Services, a report launched at the PSA’s annual conference in Sydney today.

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A decision in the Industrial Relations Commission recently to allow all breastfeeding mothers in the public service lactation breaks and the right to a private space to express milk has been hailed as a breakthrough for women’s rights, and it is hoped more workplaces will follow suit.
Breastfeeding: more milk please

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During our last Award negotiations for NSW firefighters, I sat in a meeting with other FBEU officials, and NSW Treasury.

While discussing the limit placed on public sector wages, we floated one of many ideas that firefighters could implement to save the NSW government millions of dollars in school infrastructure through fire prevention. We suggested that a portion of that could be returned in wages.

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At the beginning of any campaign things can seem a little bit daunting. After all who are we to tell governments what they should or should not do?

Who are we to tell big business what they can and cannot buy?

My question to you is: if not us then who? That’s exactly how we felt at the start of the Your Rights at Work campaign and look what that achieved.

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Launching the Better State campaign in Newcastle today was a great experience.

Nurses, police officers, teachers, council workers and employees of utilities and government departments across the Hunter gathered to kick off a campaign that puts the public services essential to our growing state front and centre.

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Rubbish collection is the latest service our state government wants to flog off for a quick cash injection.
Dumped: waste management goes private
But the proposal to sell WSN Environmental Solutions, a government-owned company that services local councils with pick-up, recycling and waste management, would push up costs for ratepayers and threaten garbos’ jobs.

Most of us don’t think much about our rubbish after we throw it in the bin.

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