George Calombaris is held up as an industry leader, yet he is not the leader the hospitality industry wants or needs. Aside from stealing millions of dollars from hospo workers, he’s been charged with assault. He’s been given enough chances, now it’s time for him to go. Wage theft is rife throughout the hospitality industry. Celebrity chefs like George Calombaris have gotten rich by stealing from their hard-working employees. This issue has stayed in focus for one reason and one reason alone. Because of the relentless agitation and campaigning by Hospo Voice members about wage theft by George and countless other hospitality employers. The hospitality industry is changing, workers will no longer put up with excuses, we want real action on wage theft. How can we expect the industry to improve if we continue to honour celebrity wage thieves. Ten network; it’s George’s turn to face elimination.

Hochi Mama is a Vietnamese restaurant at the top of Melbourne’s Chinatown. It’s also Melbourne’s number one Asian restaurant on the venue rating site, TripAdvisor. I worked there as a bartender. And I was on a flat rate of $20 per hour, no penalty rates. In just four months I had over $3000 (including super) stolen from me. Often, we felt we were treated like dirt. Hochi Mama had a staff WhatsApp group where we got our rosters, we swapped shifts and management would give us instructions about our jobs. This was also how workers found out they’d been fired, by seeing we’d been deleted from the staff WhatsApp group. It happened to me. It happened to lots of other staff. In front of everyone. Most bosses have the decency to actually TELL you that you'd been fired. Not these guys. And it left everyone feeling afraid and wondering: who’s next? Migrant kitchen staff were treated even worse. They worked double shifts of 13-14 hours for a flat rate of $70 or $100, in cash. I even saw them sleeping on milk crates out the back of the restaurant between shifts. It’s not okay for any worker to be treated like this, particularly in a wealthy country like ours. All over this industry, we see migrant workers treated like an underclass. It’s just wrong. We need to stand together and demand fairness and respect for ALL hospo workers. That’s the only way anything is ever going to change.

The call from students organising the strike states: “Last year’s UN intergovernmental panel on climate change’s special report on global warming was clear about the unprecedented dangers of going beyond 1.5C of global heating. Emissions must drop rapidly – so that by the time we are in our mid- and late-20s we are living in a completely transformed world. But to change everything, we need everyone.” Already the NTEU, the GSA and UMSU who represent staff and students at the University of Melbourne, have endorsed this call to action. We will work together to ensure the widest possible stoppage of work and study so that staff and students can attend demonstrations on this historic day. The University of Melbourne has an opportunity to be a global leader on climate action – an opportunity that staff and students want the University to take. Climate change and climate action is a top concern within our university community for students and staff. As students and workers in the higher education sector, we have a particular responsibility and opportunity to campaign on climate action. Universities will play a leading role in the research and development and retraining that will be needed for the transition. Our fight against casualisation and the marketisation and commodification of education is inseparable from supporting our fellow workers and unionists in energy, transportation, and agricultural industries to decarbonise the economy and create dignified clean energy jobs. Transforming our destructive relationship with the environment requires a system change at all social, economic and political levels. To that end we stand with Indigenous people in struggles to protect their lands and waters from impending expansion of fossil fuel projects. We stand with workers in fossil fuel industries and their communities facing insecure work and an uncertain future. We stand against the vested corporate and political interests placing profits above the future of the planet. Students and staff call for the University of Melbourne to be bold on climate action and agree to stop work and class for all members of the university community to join the global climate strike on September 20th. There is no education on a dead planet.

The presence of US marines in Darwin, under control from Washington:- Makes us a target; Makes us less safe; Makes us enemies (when we need have none - e.g. China); Means we are being exploited by the USA, for its military ambitions, and Jeopardises Australia’s national sovereignty.

A war between the US and Iran would have devastating consequences for all the people of the region. It is not in Australian people’s interest to go along with the Trump administration’s ‘regime change’ agenda. Only the people of Iran can decide their government. The US is not under attack from Iran and nor is Australia. A peaceful resolution of outstanding issues is essential and possible.

In the lead up to the 2018 Victorian Election, Premier Daniel Andrews guaranteed that 92% of the steel used on local projects would be local steel. Local steel means local manufacturing jobs. Andrews has gone back on that local content pledge on the West Gate Tunnel project, with the announcement that the tunnel builder will import 33,000 tonnes of Chinese steel for the project. This is not what Victorians voted for and Premier Andrews needs to reverse this.

After a term of trimesters, it is clearer than ever that this change is detrimental to UNSW staff and students. Students cannot learn effectively under such tight time constraints, and our teachers are struggling with the increased workload. UNSW management should be more concerned with the wellbeing of its students and its workers than the size of their profits. We the undersigned call on UNSW Management to CANCEL TRIMESTERS.

Our boss, Andre Chaaya, kept promising us that we would get paid. But each week, no money came. Now we realise that was just another lie he told us. As weeks turned into months, rent fell behind, the bills piled up, and grocery shopping wasn’t done. At least one worker was left homeless. One worker was reduced to eating plain rice. A worker has cancelled an overseas trip to a wedding of one her best friends because she doesn’t have any money. Suppliers kept calling the pub, demanding to know when they would get paid. Cheques bounced. A major brewery stopped delivering. The coffee machine was repossessed. Our boss disappeared and we had to keep making excuses for him. Last year Mr Chaaya sold the pub’s building and planned to use the $6.15 million from the sale of the property reinvest in his pub business. Where is that money? Why hasn't he used it to pay us? Please stand with us and insist that Mr Chaaya pay us as his first priority. https://vimeo.com/338783413

WesTrac is refusing to talk to its workforce and resume negotiations and refuses to speak to union representatives. This comes after the employer has been actively trying to strip conditions from its workforce. WesTrac employees took a small 1.9% offer in their last agreement because the times were tough on the condition the company would pass on the profits when it was growing again. WesTrac is now expecting 40% growth this financial year and is still trying to undercut it's workforce at every opportunity. AWU members have been undergoing protected industrial action and will continue to until WesTrac starts to play ball and brings a decent offer to the table. Stand in solidarity with WesTrac members and call on WesTrac to accept the AWUs invitation to resume negotiations.

Workers at the Perfection Fresh glasshouse in South Australia were the first group of workers to kick out dodgy contractors and win their first enterprise agreement. They are now joining with other Perfection Fresh workers to win basic rights as workers, have the company recognise their freedom to be union and make sure workers are able to speak out! By speaking out together and supporting the struggle of brave farmworkers we can make sure REAL action is taken to end worker exploitation and abuse that is happening throughout the supermarket supply chain. "The company puts too much pressure on us and has no respect for our rights. They target any worker that joins the union. The working conditions are extremely unsafe and many of us have become injured. As farmworkers we are asking Coles and Woolworths to support us and help us fight for our right to speak out!" - Safdar, worker and union delegate at Perfection Fresh

I am a bartender at a La La Bar Group venue on Chapel Street and they are stealing about $16,000 (plus super) from me each year I work on weekends and into the early hours of the morning but all I’ve ever got was a flat rate, no penalty rates. All given to me in an envelope stuffed with cash. La La are a big player. They’ve got about 100 staff. They own seven bars on Chapel Street and across Melbourne, including Blue Bar, Electric Ladyland, Holy Grail, Wonderland, Lucky Liquor and La La Land.   $16,000 is a huge amount of money. Long term employees I work with would have had this amount money stolen from them, year in, year out. I don’t understand how a company of this size keeps getting away with stealing so much money from its workers.   What’s clear is that the current rules are a joke. And what has the watchdog done to enforce those rules? Nothing that I can see, where I work, or any of the venues in Chapel Street, where people are working for as little $10 per hour. I feel like we’ve been left to fend for ourselves by this government. It’s wrong. Hospo workers deserve a government that will come down on wage thieves like a ton of bricks.

The Australian Building and Construction Commission has started Federal court proceedings against the AWU, an AWU Workplace Organiser and 55 rank and file members. The ABCC is alleging that more the 55 individual workers from Liberty OneSteel took unlawful industrial action last year by attending an ACTU Change the Rules rally. The affected members work in a steel manufacturing plant in Noble Park, Victoria’s manufacturing heartland. That the ABCC can go after steelworkers who are neither building nor construction workers just goes to show that the ABCC is a politically motivated agency not about improving the construction industry. We need safer workplaces, not fines. No-one should die at work but construction workers are being killed on the job and the ABCC spends its time on politically motivated fines for workers they say attended a rally. The ABCC is a hopelessly politicised, biased and compromised agency that is acting outside its jurisdiction and abusing its power. It must be abolished in the interests of democracy. These are unjust laws, these laws don’t protect Australian workers, and they don’t protect construction workers. The ABCC has to go. Authorised by Ben Davis, State Secretary, 685 Spencer Street West Melbourne VIC 3003.