FEBRUARY 15 1971 was United Kingdom Decimalisation Day: no longer were there 12 pennies to a shilling, half-crowns or 240 pennies to the pound.
That day, 50 years ago, was also just over halfway through the greatest strike this country had seen since the General Strike of 1926: the 44-day national strike of 200,000 Post Office workers.
Telegraphists, telephonists, Post Office counter clerks, cleaners, postmen (170,000 of them!) and PHGs (postmen higher grade), members of the Union of Post Office Workers (UPW), struck for their claim of 15 per cent, or £3 a week for lower-paid grades such as cleaners.
They picketed, they lobbied, they marched, but after six-and-a-half weeks they went back to work defeated: why was that?
This week in history: March 1-7
28 February 2021
Aznar in June 1996, after being sworn in as prime minister
On March 3, 1996, the right-wing Popular Party won a narrow victory in Spain’s national elections. It was only the second time in history that power passed from one party to another since the Spanish Civil War and the coming to power of the fascist dictator Francisco Franco.
The election brought an end to more than 13 years of rule by Spain’s Socialist Party and its leader Felipe Gonzalez. Yet the Popular Party and its incoming prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, whose father and grandfather were prominent Franco supporters, won by a margin of just 1.4 percent of the vote, barely 340,000 out of the more than 25 million ballots cast.
Australian Labor Party and unions pretend to oppose corporate offensive on workers’ jobs, pay and conditions
Desperate to halt the collapse of what remains of their working class support, the Australian Labor Party and its associated trade union bureaucrats are trying to portray themselves as workers’ champions in the face of the intensifying government-corporate assault on working conditions.
Having policed every attack on workers’ jobs, wages and basic rights for decades, and joined hands even more closely with the employers and the Liberal-National Coalition government since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, they are terrified of the prospect of rank-and-file opposition, such as that by the Coles warehouse workers at Smeaton Grange in southwest Sydney.
Date Time
1990 – Goss Government – great reforms roll out
Minister for Communities and Housing, Minister for Digital Economy and Minister for the Arts The Honourable Leeanne Enoch
Today’s release of the 1990 Queensland Cabinet Minutes shows the Goss Government’s bold steps towards transforming Queensland into a modern, progressive and productive state, after 32 years of conservative government – delivering reform which is still supporting Queenslanders today.
Minister for the Digital Economy, Leeanne Enoch said 1990 was truly the year when change came to Queensland.
“Premier Goss cracked down on corruption, took steps towards every Queenslander’s vote having equal weight, and turned the public service into a modern administration,” Ms Enoch said.
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In a recent decision by the Morrison Government, the Industrial Relations Bill (the IR Bill) will provide the first statutory definition of casual work for the Australian Commonwealth.
Industrial Relations (IR) Minister Christian Porter has expressed no doubt over the fact that this development will resolve the “neglect” of the Labour Government in 2009 to include a statutory definition of casual employment in the Fair Work Act. The proposed IR Bill will also crucially respond to key gaps in the law highlighted in the recent case of