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Crane driver reinstated after year of picketing

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Djinn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Nov-29-07 09:02 PM
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Crane driver reinstated after year of picketing
Edited on Thu Nov-29-07 09:05 PM by Djinn
A Sydney crane driver will return to work today more than 12 months after he began a one-man picket about being sacked.

Barry Hemsworth says he was sacked under the WorkChoices laws over a safety dispute at Botany Cranes last year.

The 59-year-old union delegate says he has maintained a picket outside his workplace for the past year in protest against the laws.

Mr Hemsworth says the union and the company have now reached an agreement that will see him go back to work for the first time today.

"I think the company realises now that the Government has been defeated and they will now come back and continue that good relationship that we had previously," he said.

"We'll hopefully get things back in order again and work towards better outcomes and fairer outcomes."

A company spokesman says Mr Hemsworth's sacking had nothing to do with WorkChoices.

He says it was about an undisclosed disciplinary matter, which was dealt with under an existing enterprise agreement.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/11/29/2104796.htm?section=business


It's laughable for the company to claim this sacking had nothing to do with Workchoices. Prior the abolition of unfair dismissal protections for anyone working for comapnies of less than 100 people*, Barry could have cheaply filed an unfair dismissal claim and the company would then have to justify his sacking. Clearly they're aware that the remove of this atrocious legislation would see Barry back at work because they were completely unable to come up with any evidence of the need to sack him.

People often tell tall stories about the evil employee who was unsackable under the previous system, which is a total and utter crock of shit.

Incompetent employers often got into to trouble because they thought they were allowed to sack people and replace them with their kids, or that they could sack someone for being a certain religion/sexuality. Or they were just too hopeless to give someone written warnings.

If you have a shit employee, you give them a written warning, and performance management targets, they don't improve they get two more warnings (can be within the same bloody week) and bango - almost certain to not have to payout a cent to unfair dismissal claims.

Barry had 40 years experience and he was sacked for "insubordination" because in his role as OH&S officer he would not agree to attend a meeting on a safety issue only on the condition that he agreed not to argue his point of view. (???)

*this 100 people rule is very very easy to dodge under Workchoices, casuals can be counted as staff, companies can be split into seperate bodies and the Howard govt's friendly workplace advice stated "the employer’s ‘related bodies corporate’" were also able to be excluded from staffing figures. Many companies have also been able to use an incredibly generous interpretation of "operational reasons" to sack people (despite having WAY more than 100 employees) and get away with it.
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