Show 8/8/09
Pete & Teishan jump on the mics for another week looking at recent attemps at coalition building between student environmentalists and workers in coal effected areas, and have a chat to Addy and Sam from the new Melbourne Uni. Book Co-op. Plus a round-up of the latest education news…
-Emergency Services Officers at Morwell’s Hazelwood power station in the La Trobe Vally have been striking for almost 4 months now, demanding better pay and conditions on par with their follow workers at Yallourn and Loy Yang power plants, and an increase in numbers and proper safety training.
The Emergency Safety Officers are responsible for fires, leakages, equipment failures and all other safety risks in the Hazelwood mine and the power plant. Yet their base rate of pay is just $19.32 per hour, only slightly above minimum wage.
While these workers have been on strike, International Power, who own the Hazelwood facility, have tried to distance themselves from the dispute. However, according to the union, they have been using scab labour who are not adequately trained for the work and subsequently Hazelwood staff could be in serious danger and maybe receiving sub-standard emergency support, the Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union says. [1] [2]
On Friday the 31th of July a bunch of student environmentalists went down to the headquarters of International power to join the striking Hazelwood staff.
Blazing Textbooks spoke to one of the students about why climate change campaigners might want to work in solidarity with workers in coal effected areas. Listen here.
-Next up Blazing Textbooks went on down to Melbourne Uni to check out the rad new student run Book Cooperative. The Book Co-op is open Monday to Thursday 12-2.30pm. 1st Floor of Union House, Melbourne Uni (Parkville Campus), opposite the food co-op. Addy & Sam give us the lowdown…
-In the news roundup we put the blowtorch to Glyn Davis’s ‘Economic Response Program’, which will see a further 220 job losses at Melbourne University. This, of course, is part of a wider trend in staff cutback and redundancies at prominent universities, which threatens to compromise teaching quality and put academic staff under even more pressure than they already are. In response the NTEU is asking members and staff to support strike action in September.
Concommittant with the cutbacks and redundancies is the increase commodification of education and subsequent decline in education quality. Central Queensland University is offering its students ipods, laptops and flights home if they can convince other students to enroll at the university. And students at a Rockhampton Tafe were astounded when they were informed that they would not be taught, but would have to educate themselves.
Next up we look at a disturbing article in the Australian which discusses the lack of interaction between local and international students, which led to one student at an Adelaide campus to attempt suicide. A claim is made that suicide rates in overseas students may be up to four times higher than those among their domestic counterparts. Blazing Textbooks will be investigating further in the coming weeks.
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Emergency Services Officers at Morwell’s Hazelwood power station in the La Trobe Vally have been striking for almost 4 months now, demanding better pay and conditions on par with their follow workers at Yallourn and Loy Yang power plants, and an increase in numbers and proper safety training. On Friday the 31th of July a bunch of student environmentalists went down to the headquarters of International power to join the striking Hazelwood staff. I spoke to Lian about why students and climate change campaigners might want to work in solidarity with workers at coal-fired power stations… |
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