Water & Ports

FROM THE SECRETARY

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Published on Wednesday, 21 May, 2008

All ASU members in the Water industry face considerable challenges in locking in decent pay-rises and protecting their working conditions in the next round of Enterprise Agreements.

NSW Maritime workers created history by being the first group of workers to break Michael Costa's 2.5% pay rise limit. It was only through a tough 18 month campaign which involved rolling industrial action that they were able to do this.

Members at Sydney Water, Hunter Water Corporation, Hunter Water Australia and the Sydney Catchment Authority now face the same challenge.

And while we are on the subject of Michael Costa, members should watch carefully the campaign waged by unions against power privatisation. The disaster that the New South Wales Government has now become, in my view, is largely due to Michael Costa. Costa has spent his whole life remaking himself and has gone from one extreme to another. As a young person, he was a far left wing Trotskyist. Now he is on the far right, championing privatisation and denying that we have a problem with climate change. There are few people left in the world who still deny that we have a serious problem with global warming and it is a problem that we have created. Michael Costa is one of them.

He is so hell bent on privatising the NSW power industry that he is threatening to ignore his own Party's policy and to laugh at a decision of a Labor Party conference. I understand he is entitled to a Government pension some time later this year. It can't come soon enough! Perhaps he can go and work with Macquarie Bank or Veolia.

The trade union movement is standing up to him and his crazy and destructive ideas. We will oppose privatisation on behalf of the people of NSW who overwhelmingly oppose it. Thank god we are a strong union movement, if Costa could get away with privatising Power, not doubt Water would be next. An historic standoff is brewing between unions representing working families and the State Government's privatisation agenda - we have no intention of letting him win