Victorian Trades Hall Council

New Campaign Campaigns

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  Michaelia Cash Must Resign

  The raid on the AWU last year was an outrageous abuse of power, an attack on democracy, and a waste of taxpayers money. After spending days denying her office had anything to do with the AFP raids into AWU offices in Sydney and Melbourne, Michaelia Cash was caught out. A staffer of the employment minister resigned after admitting to speaking to the media before the raids took place. Cash is now refusing to answer any questions about the incident in estimates. Earlier this year, she hid behind a whiteboard rather than facing the Australian public. Cash needs to take responsibility and stand aside. She's go to go. Turnbull must go. This government must go.

  12,903 of 15,000 Signatures

  Created by Anthony H
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  Wesfarmers & Engie: Don't Cut Our Jobs

  The Latrobe Valley community is in the midst of the worst jobs crisis in decades. From the closure of Hazelwood, to local stores shutting their doors -- the Valley needs local, fair, permanent jobs now more than ever. Wesfarmers, which owns Target and Coles, is an international mega-profit company. Last year, they reported $2.9 billion in profits. Engie, one of the world's largest energy companies, made a profit of $4.1 billion. Increasing the bottom line off the back of cutting local jobs is wrong. This should not be allowed to happen. Wesfarmers & Engie, don’t slash jobs in our community for your billion dollar bottom line.

  106 of 200 Signatures

  Created by Nadia Montague
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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.

  15,977 of 20,000 Signatures

  Created by Anthony H
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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.

  1,881 of 2,000 Signatures

  Created by Victorian Trades Hall Council
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  Josh Frydenberg: Don't Make Us Work Into Our 70s

  Working people deserve the dignity of retirement. Not to mention there already aren't enough jobs to go around for anyone - young or old. The CEOs and greedy Liberal politicians who gutted TAFE and want to attack our super are the same people who want us working until we’re well into our 70s whether we like it or not.

  448 of 500 Signatures

  Created by Victorian Trades Hall Council
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  Billionaires out of Australian elections

  Australians deserve to have confidence in our democracy. Government has the power to make decisions in our collective interest, and to build physical and social infrastructure that benefits us all. But when billionaires can use elections to spread lies and plant seeds of division in our community to protect their own power and influence, Australians lose trust in government and in each other.

  251 of 300 Signatures

  Created by Edwina Byrne
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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

  471 of 500 Signatures

  Created by Victorian Trades Hall Council
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  Take Action For Working Women

  As we deal with this ongoing pandemic, we must ensure that women are not unfairly burdened with the impact of the crisis and are recognised as integral to our planning for recovery. Throughout the pandemic women have been unfairly burdened by its impacts. Women: * are on the front line and doing the vital work that sustains our community * are working their paid job and doing the additional work of caring for kids at home and assisting remote learning * have disproportionately had their jobs cut as female dominated sectors like hospitality and retail shut down and lay off workers * have lost or have no income because they are excluded from JobKeeper * are experiencing family violence in lockdown where their home may also now be their place of paid work. We're calling on the Morrison government and the National Cabinet to urgently take action for working women. Women need time to care for themselves and others, to be financially supported, to be safe at work and to be an integral part of the recovery plan. Sign the petition if you agree!

  1,716 of 2,000 Signatures

  Created by Wil Stracke
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  IT'S NOT ME. IT'S YOU.

  Whether it's his savage cuts to schools and hospitals, slashing penalty rates, $13 billion in tax cuts for the big banks, voting 26 times to block a banking royal commission, inaction on climate change, failure to deal with stagnant wage growth, the harmful marriage equality survey or his complete inability to do anything about housing affordability, everyone has a good reason to break up with Scott Morrison and the Liberal Government at this election.

  1,551 of 2,000 Signatures

  Created by Felicity S
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  Send a message to Louise Staley - make wage theft a crime

  Stealing is wrong. Yet every year thousands of workers in regional Victoria are robbed. They are victims of wage theft. Wage theft is when companies deliberately underpay workers or refuse to pay superannuation. If workers stole from the till, we could go to jail. But if bosses steal from us, all they have to do is pay it back, if they’re ever caught. How is that fair? The rules are broken. The current laws make wage theft too easy and the punishment is too light. It’s now so common it’s become a business model. Business owners right now are getting rich by stealing from their staff. WE NEED TO CHANGE THE RULES Louise Staley, the Andrews Labor Government has committed to make wage theft a crime, will you?

  111 of 200 Signatures

  Created by Emma Pritchard, We Are Union volunteer