You’ve been a member of the ASU for many years, can you tell us about your working history?
I first became a member of the ASU in about 1996. My real involvement with the ASU was through community activity. I’ve been on the management committee of a neighbourhood centre and I’d also been a foster carer for young female adolescents. I also wanted to be linked to the work of a union that I felt close to so the ASU was the right union for me.

Procedural fairness is quite a large and old legal doctrine that reaches almost every area of modern law. There’s little wonder then that it continues to remain largely misunderstood by employers, who often undertake an array of practices that continue to be “unfair” towards their employees.

The following fact sheet attempts to dispel some of the confusion and give members an overview of the basic principles:

Case study South Australia
In 1996 the French and British conglomerate United Water Consortium signed a contract to manage and operate Adelaide’s entire water supply and disposal system. The result? A bit of a smelly mess actually.

The second year of the contract brought with it, the “Big Pong” as Adelaide was enveloped by a widespread and unbearable stench. The sewerage system had broken and was never fixed! This is the problem when profit is placed ahead of performance. Monitoring and maintenance of the treatment plant were cut to the bone and raw sewerage was accidentally released into open treatment ponds at Adelaide’s Bolivar water treatment plant. Subsequently, the sewerage system was restored – at government/taxpayer expense.