Passy, my experience is that OHS has been a much more effective tool for workplace safety than building unions ever were. The culture of safety, the mandated ongoing training for workers, the requirement for individual responsibility of all on site, and the heavy penalties for non compliance all have produced a new and better culture at work. A quick peruse of the net indicates that injury and fatality rates are falling over the last decade.

Times have changed Passy, we do things differently now.

Safety has become the responsibility of everyone and turning up to work in the required dress is part of this. Yes employers should provide basic PPE, and subbys(self employed) should provide their own. Labour hire companies are required to provide for their employees.

Productivity is a measure per time unit and not of total time at work.

Productivity is not the bosses construct, it is the non inflationary way we all get to earn more.

The way forward is not to adopt 1860's thinking.

Palimpsest it is law, an employer by law, must suppy or pay for PPE.
All of it.
In defending Labour hire for not handing it out you give protection to some near criminals.

The future of the movement can not be far from its members, that is not the very left or even the ALP.
A union must first serve its members not a party that has forgotten its own birth, and midstream will always be the path most of our members want.
Increasing serious injury's are taking place in construction, employees are Lent on if they act on safety, believe me we are to see more trouble in this area.
Bantam rooster officials must go, it is no crime to talk to your members even to call them Friends.
A bantam enters the lunch room like a movie star preachers his spiel and walks out without truly making contact with members
To watch an official place those propaganda sheets on empty lunch room table and run of to another job sickens me.
As I enter the same shed and talk ,even more important listen to those men I see the sheets head unread to the rubbish bin.
We must not take workers for granted.
And to ignore them like this is seeing them ask why am I paying that bloke?
Fix ohxs issues asap do not use them as weapons.
Settle dispute by talking issue out not warfare.
service is our best tool

You do not need to be from the left to be an activist.
One last thing till I can fight no more I will fight this one town labour hire firm who knowingly give one shirt for a construction site worker working a six day week.
Fight to see they never again tell battling workers you must join this union or you do not work for us.
Only after I am dead will I forget the blackmail behind that gutless deal by a union.
I will forever believe forced unionism is pure evil.

Apparently my thinking is out of date. Yet the system itself and its manic competitive drive for profit is older than the politics and analysis which appeals to me.

Capitalism is capitalism, and it is the same in its essentials now as it was in 1848 or 1917 or 1989.

That's why Marxism is a relevant now as it was when Marx wrote the Communist manifesto and Capital.

Belly, most activists are on the left. Keep up the good fight

Passy you and I could talk left vs right for days, yet we both I have no doubt are militants and activists.
Yep I am fairdinkum you can be right and both.
That is the very reason unions need to change, to stay alive we must not wait for a return to the great depression.
We must find the same path as our membership not try to live in the past.
New ways to service membership must include helping our members find jobs, do C V,s for them have truly interesting home pages.
Listen to members at least as much as talk to them.
I think we should focus in construction at least on casualisation, it is a crime against workers.
We must one day focus on fees, it is no answer to raise fees as membership falls.
We actually can increase membership and income if we drop fees.
I highlight you can not plant spuds and harvest pumpkins, the right people, not mates must get union jobs.
Each Labor federal government has taken more away from workers ,unions too.
A truth we must except my life has been dedicated to the party yet the current party has members who think they do not need unions.
Far from winning members by going further left we just may do better by not pledging our vote to anyone.
Rudd and the once darling of the left Gilard have a task in front of them.
To draft IR policy that will last after the next conservative government.
You and I must be ready to work for our people not our party every time.
I know the new laws will not be quite what we want but wait until I see them.

Thanks Belly. I was a union militant, but as my union became more and more conservative (adopting the Accord and all the sell offs, trade offs and sellouts that went with that) and power became centralised in a small group of officials at the expense of delegates, to be a militant became a tag, not a reality.

I suspect you and I are on the same side, so let's not fight over terms like left and right.

I support compulsory unionism. To not belong to a union is not an exercise of a democratic right but an undermining of the democratic rights and industrial power of unionists. Of course, if unions actually defended their members and their living standards and jobs instead of trading off hard won conditions for a pittance, we would see a marked increase in union membership.

When we had to be in unions ,unions got fat and lazy.
I agree we unionists should not have to work for non unionists.
We could have fee for service, but it would be fairer if we won wages and conditions ONLY for our members on every site and job.
Recruitment is the hardest job we do.
However it is in the hands of a good union official our most rewarding.
New directions are coming brother, we must not be afraid of them.
And yes we must train activists and militants ,but not to drag our members in directions they do not want to go.
On Wednesday I will fill both roles.
After 3 months battling that non supply of PPE , finally winning re payment, and each week being told it fixed.
I will bring a news letter to the site.
Done here at home.
Page one? the major contractors mission statement on PPE.
Saying every one on site shall have set out minimum standards.
Shirts boots glasses long pants more.
Page two the full story of 16 separate requests to them to fix it.
Third names of current long term casuals who have worked three months and only been issued one high vis shirt, no boots, no hard hat.,no protective glasses.
And who have not been fixed or even spoken to about why.
First copy to local work cover office last line of news paper tells of that action ,second copy to project manager.
Well after 80 copy's go to lunch rooms.
Want a laugh? he will tell me you should have come to me first!
Unions are not the only birth place of workplace strife.