Disgusting anti-union and anti-worker preferences of Labor governments relative to Aborigines

Submitted by Diet Simon on Wed, 22/12/2010 - 8:07am

By Ray Jackson, President of the Indigenous Justice Association

the call to action from the intervention rollback action group, alice springs and the following articles clearly show the disgusting anti-union and anti-worker preferences of labor governments in power when spinning their crocodile tears relative to aborigines in the nt (and elsewhere i suspect) whilst pushing their anti-human rights agenda known as the nter.

they are more than willing to waste millions whilst at the same time robbing those workers caught up in their cynical exercise by forcing them to work for cdep wages and then, to add insult to injury, then forcing the centrelink basics card that only helps coles and woolworths become richer whilst aborigines are frog-marched into further poverty.

that the labor party lies is nothing new but to trumpet how they will eradicate poverty in aboriginal communities, that communities will only benefit from the government's input and that 'they' know what is best for us and our communities is derisory at best or criminal at worst.

no governments can be trusted. they continue to grab our lands and the resources of those lands.

they know only one truth and that is they want to assimilate us. for us that is the big genocidal lie that must be fought against at every twist and turn of their greed-filled machinations.

if we do not fight, we lose.

it's as simple as that.

we begin however with a dart from my new good friend, andrew, that is aimed squarely at one tony abbot. may his aim be always true!

fkj

Tony Abbott a "racist bigot, worse than Pauline Hanson"

Hi Tony,
I confronted your idol John Howard at his book promotion at the Spit
about the totally failed Intervention, which is collective punishment
about some supposed child abuse. Collective punishment was used by the
Nazis against the Jews during the Holocaust, but there is no true
democracy, that would lower itself to such criminal injustice apart
from the fake Liberal Coalition led by a conservative demagogue. You
voted on the 700 page of Intervention and you admitted to me that you
haven't even read it. You also became the Shadow minister for
Aboriginal Affairs, but you don't give a damn, because you are a
racist bigot. You are far worse than Pauline Hanson and you should be
behind bars for all the damage you caused to innocent Aboriginees.
John Howard was on the defensive. He said that he is getting mixed
reports and he admitted that the Intervention didn't achieve what it
was supposed to.
You are nothing but a whinger and you will drown eventually in your
own bullshit.
Your favourite constituent,
Andrew

Sign petition demanding justice for Aboriginal workers

Dear all,

Please find attached a petition demanding justice for Aboriginal
people working for the BasicsCard under new CDEP arrangements
introduced alongside the NT Intervention. Also attached is an
information sheet that can be used with the petition.

The petition is being sponsored by the CFMEU and Unions NT. It has a
particular focus on the use of CDEP workers by the $672 million
Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program (SIHIP). We
are demanding backpay at appropriate award rates for all of these
workers, along with an end to arrangements forcing people to work
for the BasicsCard and investment in community based employment
programs across all Aboriginal communities.

SIHIP has been plagued by controversy due to bureaucratic waste and
disempowerment of communities. Close to $200 million was spent
before a single house was built. Only 16 communities will receive
new housing under SIHIP despite desperate need across all Aboriginal
communities. New housing is contingent on the signing of 40-year
leases with the government. All communities are now being charged
'market rent'.

To offset this controversy, the federal Labor government has
trumpeted a 30% Indigenous employment participation rate in SIHIP.
But under questioning by Greens Senator Rachel Siewert, Indigenous
Employment Minister Mark Arbib conceded that CDEP workers have been
included in this 30%. He falsely claimed that all work done as part
of SIHIP has been paid at or above award rates.

The testimony of Aboriginal workers from Santa Teresa and Amoonguna
tells a different story. This story is outlined in a piece I wrote
for Crikey in November and backed up in a subsequent article by the
employment services manager at CatholicCare NT. Both articles are
pasted below.

Please print off the petition and circulate amongst friends and
workmates. The petition will be presented to the Senate in March
2011, so please return all copies to the CFMEU Darwin, PO Box 3046,
Darwin NT 0801 by March 10 2011. Please contact me if you would like
a high resolution copy of the info-sheet.

In other news, the Intervention Rollback Action Group is currently
working to assist with costs for Aboriginal workers standing up
against the Intervention to attend an ACTU Indigenous workers
conference in Darwin February 16-18. Due to large distances and lack
of transport options, costs are expected to be more than $1000 per
person. Any donations are much appreciated. Please see http://rollbacktheintervention.wordpress.com/fundraising/
for details on how to donate to IRAG.

Finally, a Youtube clip documenting a stop work rally against the
Intervention by Gurindji workers from Kalkaringi and Daguragu on
October 20 has been uploaded at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guge6MI6cTA
in solidarity,

Paddy Gibson
Intervention Rollback Action Group Alice Springs
0415800586

-----------------------

Friday, 12 November 2010

Workers say they’re being ripped off under indigenous housing
program

by Paddy Gibson, senior researcher, Jumbunna Indigenous House of
Learning, UTS

Aboriginal people say they are working for the BasicsCard on the
federal Government’s $672 million Strategic Indigenous Housing and
Infrastructure Program (SIHIP) in Northern Territory communities.

The scheme has been a serious cash cow for bureaucrats and
contractors. The first two years of the program failed to deliver a
single house.

A Tasmanian couple overseeing SIHIP as part of their role with NT
Housing told The Australian in August 2009 that they had each been
given new Toyotas and paid $71,000 per year “to do absolutely
nothing”.

But Sheldon Stuart from the community of Amoonguna, about 20km south
of Alice Springs, says that he was doing repairs and maintenance as
part of SIHIP and only being paid his Newstart allowance through
Centrelink. Fifty per cent of this was quarantined onto a BasicsCard,
which can only be used to buy certain items at government-approved
stores.

Sheldon told Crikey: ”We started around June. We patched all the
walls, patched the ceiling, painted the walls, painted the floor. We
did everything in there.

“We’d start at eight and knock off at about 3.30. We did that for
three-four months.

“When we first got paid, there was $300 on top of our Centrelink
every
fortnight. Then the top-up just started going down and down and then
went out completely. It was just working for the dole. I was on the
BasicsCard too. It was a complete rip off.”

An income managed Newstart allowance pays about $115 cash per week and
$115 on the BasicsCard.

Sheldon’s repairs and maintenance work was being completed under the
direction of New Futures Alliance (NFA), a consortium comprised of
major corporate builders including Leighton Contractors and Broad
Construction. NFA were supposed to pay the workers top-up for any
hours they completed above the 16 per week required by CDEP.

For the weeks Sheldon was receiving $300 top-up from NFA, his pay
works out to $8.15 cash an hour. For the weeks he received no top-up,
the hourly cash rate was $3.50.

Workers at Amoonguna were engaged by SIHIP as participants in the
Community Development Employment Program (CDEP), which is administered
by Community Enterprises Australia (CEA) in the Macdonnell region.

The federal government claims that 30% of workers on the SIHIP program
are indigenous. It is unclear whether this includes CDEP participants.
But workers at Amoonguna featured on the front page of a July SIHIP
newsletter boasting about Aboriginal workforce participation.

Under reforms to CDEP introduced by the Labor Government, workers who
first entered the program after July 2009, or have re-engaged after
absence, are paid through Centrelink.

Many of these workers were previously paid through CDEPs run by local
Aboriginal community councils, which have been abolished alongside the
intervention. Activity requirements for Centrelink are now compelling
them to do similar work for drastically reduced wages.

Scott McConnell is the general manager of Ingkerreke, an
Aboriginal-run outstation resource organisation, which contracts for
SIHIP through its commercial arm.

Scott explained how CDEP workers were used by SIHIP at Santa Teresa,
another community in the Macdonnell region: ”When we started working
at Santa Teresa, we were asked to attend some workforce development
meetings with New Future Alliance and Community Enterprises Australia
(CEA).

“We immediately became very uncomfortable. They wanted us to pay
people who were CDEP participants. To pay them top up. So someone
would be working on a site with a CDEP participant on some CDEP rate
and then, once they’d done their 16 hours through that little
arrangement, then they’d work for Ingkerreke on a top up
arrangement.

“We disengaged and said this is an absolute no go for us. But they
went ahead and did it anyway. These guys ended up working on the sites
for CDEP, then any extra hours were paid directly by New Future
Alliance.

“Because it was a flexible arrangement and they weren’t getting
paid
properly, some people were treating it like it wasn’t a job. Others
were really putting in and trying to learn. Some would work for three
days, be promised top-up and then find out that they weren’t getting
any — they were just getting the dole anyway.

“Working in SIHIP, Ingkerreke has to send our contracts and all of
our
information about how we remunerate staff to the government and get
all the formal accreditation. Yet CEA have got these guys working on
sites alongside us, doing the same work but getting paid next to
nothing.

“If they’d done it properly, there could have been five or six
people
at Santa Teresa working for Ingkerreke for at least $25 an hour, up to
10 hours a day, 13 days in a fortnight. Our organisation is very
concerned about this practice. There’s no way that you would have a
white fella getting paid on a BasicsCard working on a $672 million
construction program.”

Aboriginal communities have been dispossessed of millions of dollars
worth of land and housing through the intervention and SIHIP. Using
the intervention’s compulsory five-year lease over Aboriginal
township
land, all housing stock was transferred from local Aboriginal housing
committees to the NT Department of Housing.

Crikey has been told that at Santa Teresa, rents of $180 per week are
expected on houses for which residents paid $40 for before the SIHIP
renovations. Despite the common occurrence of 15-20 people per house
across all NT communities, only 16 of the 73 “prescribed
communities”
will receive any new housing under SIHIP. And only if they sign a
40-year lease with the Government.

On October 20, Gurindji workers went on strike in the communities of
Kalkaringi and Dagaragu over the unemployment, exploitative working
conditions and loss of services and land rights through the
intervention and cuts to CDEP.

On October 29, a National Day of Action was held demanding “Stop the
Intervention — Jobs with Justice for Aboriginal workers”,
supported by
a broad range of organisations including Unions NT, Australians for
Native Title and Reconciliation, the Tangentyere Council and the
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Ecumenical Commission.

On Thursday, a high-level trade union delegation including ACTU
secretary Jeff Lawrence will begin a tour of the NT to investigate the
impact of the intervention.

---------------

Monday, 15 November 2010 / No comments

Indigenous workers are getting screwed under the SIHIP program

by Carl Russelhuber, Employment Services Manager, CatholicCare NT

As a federally funded Job Services Australia provider we are
contracted to deliver services to job seekers in Amoonguna and Santa
Teresa, the communities your Friday article (“Workers say they’re
being ripped off under indigenous housing program”, Item 5) relates
to, and the majority of the Community Development Employment Program
(CDEP) participants are linked to us.

I would like to begin by saying that I knew this was going to be a
rort right from the start.

Two of my employment consultants have received a number of complaints
from CDEP participants about being underpaid for working on Strategic
Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program (SIHIP) projects using
CDEP as a vehicle. We have had to tell these job seekers that our only
affiliation with CEA is as a Job Services Provider and that we have
nothing to do with CDEP participants wages.

There are another two communities we service — Titjikala and
Finke —
who will also have SIHIP work done using CDEP as a vehicle. SIHIP work
using CDEP workers and some coerced from one of my work experience
programs has just begun in Titjikala and again CEA is the CDEP
provider.

It has always been my belief that when the federal government rolled
out SIHIP that it was supposed to provide actual paid work at the
proper industry award pay rates and employ local indigenous people in
each of the affected communities. It was also a requirement that these
workers receive an accredited qualification.

Right from the beginning when I tried to find out who the actual
employer was in Santa Teresa where SIHIP began I was told by CEA that
“Ingerreke” were going to be the lead contractor and that they
would employ and pay the wages for local indigenous workers at the proper
award rates. Later on this changed to being told that CEA would be the
employer paying the wages and they (CEA) would be reimbursed by
invoicing the contractor. What difference if any to what was invoiced
and to what workers actually got paid is another question!

The reason that I needed the correct information was that to be
entitled to employment outcomes as a Job Services Australia Provider
and to comply with our contract with the Department of Employment and
Industrial Relations (DEEWR) we needed to correctly record details
into the system including correct start dates for each job seeker.

We also needed this information because the details of who the CDEP
job seekers were working for and the days of work that they were
working (etc.) also had to be recorded in each person’s Employment
Pathway Plan. CEA was well aware of DEEWR’s requirements that these
details had to be recorded in each job seeker’s Employment Pathway
Plans.

The correct information was never forthcoming. We did not know who
they were working for, what days they were working, how much they were
getting paid, and what training was going to be done as this was also
required to be recorded in their Employment Pathway Plans.

The end result was that we achieved no placements or outcomes for
Santa Teresa or Amoonguna and the same will apply for Titjikala and
Finke. The end result of this is that job seekers have been underpaid
and CatholicCare NT has lost money for placement and outcome fees.

Before the SIHIP program commenced in these communities I attended a
number of meetings with CEA and NFA at the CEA office together with
other stakeholders to talk about the SIHIP program, but it did not
take me long to figure out that this was going to be a rort which
would benefit CEA and NFA and no-one else, and that the majority of
CDEP participants who were also our job seekers were going to be
screwed. I stopped going and declined each further invitation to
attend.

As this concerned our job seekers I also voiced my concerns with the
Department Of Education and Employment Relations to no avail.

There are quite a number of other communities whose CDEP programs are
run by CEA that we do not service who, if SIHIP is going to them, will
be in the same position as the communities named in your article.

Sydney Uni Anti-Racism Collective meets Tuesdays