Newcastle and the Hunter

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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The train line running through Newcastle’s CBD has been under threat for years now.

At regular intervals the people of Newcastle have a new plan with a new risk analysis thrust before them – to cut the heavy rail line at Wickham or Civic, to build a new interchange, to turn the rail line into a ‘green zone’, to transport people to the city via a bus link.

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If someone told me just a few years ago that I’d be fighting against a Labor Government’s plan to sell a prison, I’d have locked them up and thrown away the key. Stirring things up: the community rallied to save Cessnock

But that’s what happened when one day the NSW Government announced a plan to privatise our prison, the Cessnock Correctional Centre. In the beginning we couldn’t really understand the motives and reasons to sell off Cessnock along with Parklea Gaol. But we fought. And on May Day in 2009, we knew our fight against the sale of Cessnock had been worth it.

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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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Firefighters, like all public sector workers, need to know that our state government is committed to providing decent services for the people of NSW.Saving lives: proper funding can make the difference

This is why the ‘Better State’ campaign led by Unions NSW is an important initiative in the lead up to the next state election.

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