Victorian Trades Hall Council

New Campaign Campaigns

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  Pay up before profit!

  Working people are absorbing price increases on everything they buy and spending more of their wages on bills. Meanwhile, company gross operating profits rose 10.6% seasonally adjusted for Dec 2022. The Reserve Bank continues to increase interest rates to tackle inflation, but excess corporate profits account for 69% of additional inflation beyond the RBA’s target. Rising unit labour costs account for just 18% of that inflation. It's time that struggling Australians got their fair share of these massive corporate profits. Pay UP!

  254 of 300 Signatures

  Created by Victorian Trades Hall Council
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  Every Victorian deserves sick pay

  The last few years during the pandemic have shown us what happens when Victorians don't have access to sick pay. Working as a casual in retail I couldn’t afford to cancel the few shifts I had. I’d often be forced to go in sick, because it was the difference between me paying my rent and not. This is why it's critical that the State Goverment ensures that all workers have access to sick pay and expand the industries covered by the guarantee.

  2,893 of 3,000 Signatures

  Created by Clare Elliot, casual worker
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  Stop Paying Pipecon

  Ballarat Council giving money to Pipecon is a slap in the face to all of us as Ballarat ratepayers and Victorians. Councillors must immediately review this decision, award the tender for Tait St road reconstruction to another company, and apologise to the community.

  1,186 of 2,000 Signatures

  Created by James Raynes
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  Don't pinch our public holiday

  Hardworking people need time off now and then. The Grand Final Eve Public Holiday is a day to spend with family and friends and celebrate Victoria's love of football. For the last 3 years record numbers have attended the Grand Final parade, spent the weekend in regional areas or simply enjoyed quality time with family and friends. Melbourne is the sporting capital of the world and what better time to spend with loved ones than the day before the Grand Final of the national game. Victoria is not just an economy, we are also a society.

  1,995 of 2,000 Signatures

  Created by Felicity, footy fan
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  Make wage theft a crime.

  Stealing is wrong and yet every year thousands of workers in Australian are robbed. They are victims of wage theft. Wage theft, where companies deliberately underpay workers or refuse to pay superannuation, is affecting thousands of workers every year. It’s literally big business stealing money from workers’ pockets. The current laws make wage theft too easy and the punishment is too light. Wage theft is now so common that in some places it’s the business model. There are business owners right now in Australia getting rich by stealing from their staff and the current industrial laws make it far too easy. WE NEED TO CHANGE THE RULES Prime Minister, if you are serious about ending wage theft, make wage theft a criminal charge and introduce bigger fines. We need to hold companies to account for their theft. ________________________________________________________________________________ RECENT WAGE THEFT CASES George Calombaris – The MasterChef celebrity was recently caught underpaying staff $2.6 million in overtime across his restaurant empire. Calombaris and his business partners were putting employees on low salaries and then pressuring them to work long hours with no overtime so that their pay would be less than a casual worker being paid on an hourly basis. Calombaris also failed to pay superannuation to workers. 7-Eleven – The international company was systematically underpaying thousands of workers and then, once caught, pretended to pay workers full wages but was actually making employees pay back a portion of their wages in cash. A 7-Eleven internal survey taken in July and August 2015 indicated that 69 per cent of franchisees had payroll issues, including fraud. It was remarked at the time that “the business model will only work for the franchisee if they underpay or overwork employees”. Some franchise owners were accused of physically threatening workers who complained. The amount of stolen wages in 7-Eleven was estimated at over $110 million. Domino’s – Systematically underpaid workers by hundreds of thousands of dollars over years. Pizza Hut – Deliberate underpaying, misclassification and denial of entitlements for delivery drivers. Of the 34 franchisees, 24 were found to be breaching workplace laws, while only two were meeting all of their legal obligations to delivery staff. Some staff were being paid as low as $5.70 an hour. Caltex petrol stations – An audit of franchise stations found that almost 80 per cent were underpaying their staff. Caltex was required to establish a $20 million fund for repayment of workers, but didn’t admit to any wrong-doing. Bakers Delight – by using an outdated EBA, Bakers Delight was paying some staff as little as $8 an hour.

  15,967 of 20,000 Signatures

  Created by Anthony H
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  Stand up for working people and support penalty rates

  Malcolm Turnbull and the Liberal Party have a simple option: to stand up for working people or not. It’s never been more important to tell MPs our stories and demand they stand up for us. The more MPs who come out in support of penalty rates, the harder it is for Turnbull to remain silent.

  134 of 200 Signatures

  Created by Victorian Trades Hall Council
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  We demand a Banking Industry Royal Commission

  Australia's big banks mishandle, mismanage and misappropriate our hard earned wages on a daily basis. And the Liberals haven’t done a thing about it. If former investment banker Malcolm Turnbull is serious about cleaning up the banks, he can't sit on his hands any longer while workers are getting ripped off. We're sick of the way we're being treated by the banks, and believe the best way to get to the bottom of the problems in an industry riddled with fraud, corruption and mismanagement is with a royal commission.

  1,879 of 2,000 Signatures

  Created by Victorian Trades Hall Council
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  Send Michael Sukkar a message: Where are all the highly paid jobs?

  Read some more #Liberallogic here: http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/coalition-mp-tasked-with-improving-housing-affordability-says-highly-paid-job-is-first-step-to-home-ownership-20170220-guhboc.html See the disaster interview here: http://www.smh.com.au/video/video-news/video-nsw-news/sukkar-get-a-highly-paid-job-20170220-4qt8i.html

  464 of 500 Signatures

  Created by Victorian Trades Hall Council
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  Build publicly-owned renewable energy

  In the first two weeks of March 2021 alone, energy retailers cut off the electricity to 1,000 Victorians who have fallen on hard times. Energy is an essential service; you can't find a new job with a flat phone battery. We were promised privatisation would deliver lower cost energy - it hasn't. Instead, we have had cost blow outs, crumbling infrastructure, poor just transition planning for workers, and companies holding government to ransom to prop up their failing assets. Not to mention companies dragging their feet on a transition to clean energy sources. With Victoria at an energy crossroads, now is the time to fix the mistake of privatisation by investing in publicly-owned renewables. Queensland has established CleanCo - their own publicly-owned renewable energy retailer, and we think Victoria deserves the same. Further, the cold snap that caused the collapse of the entire energy system in Texas USA has shown us the problems of a fully market-driven, privatised electricity system. This must never happen here - we need a properly planned energy transformation in Victoria with public ownership a key plank of that plan.

  2,506 of 3,000 Signatures

  Created by Colin, Just Transitions Organiser
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  Save our eggs-cellent public holiday

  The Easter Sunday public holiday is a chance for hard-working Victorians to enjoy a much-needed break and quality time with family and friends. Others won't be so fortunate and they will spend Easter Sunday making our coffees, caring for the ill, pouring our pints and cleaning our hotel rooms. They deserve to be fairly compensated for missing valuable time with family and friends.

  1,026 of 2,000 Signatures

  Created by Victorian Trades Hall Council