File spoon-archives/aut-op-sy.archive/aut-op-sy_2001/aut-op-sy.0108, message 272


From: "Margaret" <margaret-AT-rie.net.au>
Subject: AUT: the man who worked too hard & Gomer Pyle!
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2001 10:05:41 +1000


From: "John" <jfos-AT-net-tech.com.au>
Workers Online: http://workers.labor.net.au/
LaborNET: http://www.labor.net.au/
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'Man Who Worked Too Hard' Wins Back Job
News

Sacked Centrelink worker Geoff Scott has been reinstated after the
Australian Industrial Relations Commission gave his employer 14 days
to take him back and awarded back pay.

On December, 29, Centrelink sacked Geoff Scott from his job in
Wollongong, alleging he had failed to follow agency instructions. It
was the contention of Geoff, his union and workmates that he had been
victimised for assisting workmates and clients when the office had
been under pressure.

The Sydney and Wollongong media quickly dubbed Geoff "the man who
worked too hard".

Wollongong workers stuck beside Geoff. Some gave evidence on his
behalf before the AIRC. Last week, dozens in offices throughout the
Illawarra wore green ribbons to work to mark "Geoff's Day".
Interstate colleagues sent emails of support.

On learning of today's reinstatement order, Geoff expressed thanks to
workmates around the country.

"It's a relief to be vindicated," he said. "I am grateful for the
support my case has received from other Centrelink workers,
especially those I had worked with in the Illawarra.

"I'm looking forward to getting back to work."

CPSU national secretary, Wendy Caird, said Geoff's case had to be
seen in the context of the current debate over Centrelink breaching
procedures.

"We've got a situation, leading up to a federal election, where the
Government is trying to hang Centrelink workers out to dry to
cover-up for its meanness.

"What happened to Geoff Scott is an illustration of what can happen,
in that environment, when a worker is prepared to go the extra mile
on behalf of workmates or clients."

Ms Caird praised the "independent umpire" role of the AIRC, and said
she hoped its decision would lessen pressure on other Centrelink
workers.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
StandUp

StandUp (a community group from Redfern) has organised
a rally at the head office of Leonie Green and
Associates one of Australias biggest Job Network
providers for 10am Thursday August 30.
71-77 Regent Street Redfern.

Leonie Green and Associates has been accused of
manipulating the privatised Commonwealth Employment
Service system to create phantom jobs and received up
to $400 000 of 'success' money that should be going to
unemployed workers.

The Federal government has now announced a public
enquiry into the system. StandUp wants to let the
Howard government know what the Redfern community
thinks of a system that preys on the vulnerability of
unemployed workers and exploits those that can least
afford it.

StandUp has fought for and won the retention of
Redfern Centrelink last month and is looking for help
and support from all other individuals and
organisations that believe workers deserve dignity as
much when they are looking for work as when they have
it.

StandUp meets every 2nd and 4th Wednesday in South
Sydney Rugby League Club Chalmers Street Redfern.

Our next meeting is at 5pm Wednesday August 22.

Contact standup_-AT-hotmail.com or 0407 58 22 00

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Life's a Breach

Tool Shed

Canberra's own version of Gomer Pyle, Larry Anthony, stumbles into
the tool Shed this week with one of the worst impersonation of a
politician in living memory.
********************
For those born after 1970, Gomer Pyle was a 60 s TV icon, the
homespun, all-American country boy who went to boot camp to be turned
into a man. But no matter how much the Sarge bawled him out, Gomer
remained Gomer, someone who believed in the virtues of goodness and
niceness, even as the world threatened to blow itself to bits.

A parallel life is the only explanation of how a doofus like Larry
could ever become a federal minister. Here is a bloke who honestly
thinks the world is a nice place, charged with responsibility for
coordinating the Howard Government's response to all the ills that
befall society.

And like Gomer, when things go bad, Larry shrugs his shoulders and
says 'well Golly!" He was doing it this week, when it was revealed
that unemployed people - including those with physical disabilities -
were being thrown off social security for minor breaches of their
agreement with Centrelink.

The 'crimes' that these people committed including failure to turn up
to an interview - even where they had not received their letter of
notification. It had all the trappings of a harsh and punitive policy
pandering the popular prejudices of 'dole bludgers' - along with
finding a nice little way of cutting social security costs. It's
mean, it's counter-productive and it reflects a system that has lost
sight of its reason for being.

Reader Laura Macfarlane drew our attention to Larry's excrutiating
performance debating Cheryl Kernot on the 7.30 Report this week over
Centrelink's breaching policy. As Laura observed: Larry proved
himself a master of political rhetoric when he said something along
the lines of 'at least we have policies...Labor doesn't have any
policies'. Brilliant".

What Anthony did was to play the politician. No crime in that. But
when an issue of such substance arises its not enough to say - "well,
look at what Labor did" as Larry kept trying to do. In such a
situation a real politician would actually address the issue - that's
what they are there for. The real test of a politician is, when the
heat is on, to be able to play sincere - and fake it genuinely. Larry
can't because, despite being a third generation Member of Parliament,
he lacks the basic skills of a local councillor.

Seasoned Canberra observers say that Larry is constantly vying with
Jacqui Kelly and Bronwyn Bishop as the most hopeless member of the
Howard front bench. Whenever he approaches the dispatch box in
Parliament, even his enemies cringe. The bollocking he received from
the PM over his handling of the impact of the GST on caravan parks is
legendary - when the pressure of the parkers got too much, Anthony
unilaterally announced that it was something the government would
need to address. Howard was Red Hot - he's the only one who does the
back-flips around here!

And on the campaign trail the following titbits from the Richmond
campaign, giving further weight to his nomination for the Shed:

* At a recent 'Friends of the ABC' rally Larry got up and spoke, and
in a speech strictly limited to five minutes, spent the first four
enthusing about all of the ABC radio programs and personalities that
he really liked, while the crowd bayed for blood or at minimum an
explanation for the outrageous funding cuts inflicted on the ABC.

* Larry has also been quoted as saying work for the dole is not a
training scheme, it was never meant to be a training scheme. (Because
in an electorate where there is over 18% unemployment in some areas,
people on the dole are obviously just not trying hard enough and need
to be punished...)

* Larry's greatest attack on ALP candidate Jenny McAllister is that
she is a union organiser. That is all he ever says in the media. This
is despite the fact that he has recently advocated a dairy farmer's
union. Shit sheets are constantly circling the electorate about
Jenny's union communism.

But the final word on Larry must go to the SMH's cranky old Alan
Ramsay, who this week gave Anthony such a touch up, that he made the
Tool Shed feel like an amateur sledger.

"Larry Jnr has as much feel for politics as a cat. To watch him on
7.30 report ... was to see a minister utterly out of his depth. He
simply has no business being in politics, let alone Howard's ministry
- or anybody's else.

"Nor would he be if his family name was anything but Anthony. To see
him floundering, with his cliches and his political slogans, in a
portfolio as sensitive as Community Service was to see a travesty of
government every bit as profound as Bronwyn Bishop and that ghastly
smile trying to rationalise the disgrace of her aged care regime."

And so it went. As Gomer himself would have said "well Golly!"

www.iwww.org
Living in the Seventies:
Frank Terrugi, a student member of the IWW machine-gunned to death by the
Chilean fascists after the 1973 coup that overthrew the Marxist Government
there. Terrugi was in Chile studying worker movements when he was arrested
by rightist troops. He was found machine-gunned after he had been released
from a soccer stadium-prison. A year later in 1974, IWW journalist Frank
Gould disappeared in the Phillipines while covering the Moslem rebellion in
Mindanao.


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