A new survey suggests that Australian employees are feeling increasingly overworked.

The survey of almost 2000 workers by recruitment firm Talent2 found seventy per cent saying they were expected to do more work than they were five years ago, while 64 per cent said longer hours were demanded of them.

71 percent of workers said they were expected to do the job of more than one person.

(Source: ABC News website)

 

A curfew has been placed on the NSW Police college at Goulburn after a drunken spree by off-duty officers.

Police Commissioner Ken Moroney ordered the 11pm curfew when he learnt that several officers were involved in a series of drunken incidents at hotels and clubs over three days.

One officer has been charged with offensive behaviour, and another was expected to be charged with failing to leave a licensed premises. Two further assaults in Goulburn were being examined to determine if off-duty police were involved.

(Source: Sydney Morning Herald)

 

A police commander's report reveals a failure to stop widespread sexual harassment in the force, despite police knowing for years that pornography has been forced on two-thirds of policewomen, and half have been inappropriately touched.

The report by former chief inspector Mark Szalajko says police anti-harassment policies are ineffective because they fail to tackle a macho culture difficult to change.

Delivered in his personal capacity to a women-in-policing conference last year, it cites studies as far back as 1988 showing disturbing levels of sexual harassment, including one from 1995 in which 80 per cent of respondents said they had been subject to unwanted sexual comments.

The Ombudsman this week reported that 23 officers at Goulburn police college had sex with students in 2002, with a further 18 sexual complaints since 2003.

One asked a student for a sexual favour to pass. Another sent a student a mobile phone photo of his genitals and asked her to bite a chocolate bar placed at his groin.

Both were transferred, but Police Commissioner Ken Moroney said they could not be sacked.

Mr Moroney played down the importance of the Ombudsman's report, saying "it's called being the commissioner of the NSW Police, looking across a whole range of issues impacting on the whole of the state. Important as this issue is, it is one of a myriad of issues I've got to cover on a daily basis."

(Source: Sydney Morning Herald)

 

Quote of the Moment:

"He's disabled."
"They can't cope on their own and it's more than they would get in their own country"
"The workers can't speak English."

Three of the excuses given by British employers for not paying the legal minimum wage. Between August 2005 and July 2006, minimum wage enforcement teams identified nearly 3.3 million pounds in underpaid salaries across the UK.

 

Tasmanian's Health Department has been accused of under-paying nurses on shift work by a total of about $10 million.

The Nurses Federation says it first made the department aware in 2001 that public sector nurses were not being paid their award entitlements for public holidays and annual leave loading.

But the union says nothing has been done.

It is taking the State Government to the Industrial Commission next month to argue its case for back payments for the six years allowed under the statutes.

The federation's acting secretary, Agnes Stanislaus Large, says a minimum of 5,000 nurses are each owed about $2,000.

"You know there's a lot of double-dipping from the department in the sense that they're sort of ripping the nurses off on numerous occasions regarding public holidays, and the accrual of the public holiday for annual leave," she said.

(Source: ABC News website)

 

Six Sydney airport baggage handlers boarded an aircraft suspected of containing a bomb because they feared that if they didn't they'd lose their jobs, their union says.

A total of 102 passengers were evacuated from the Pacific Blue 737 from Fiji on Thursday night after an anonymous caller warned there was a suspicious package aboard.

The Transport Workers Union (TWU) says despite the threat the handlers still boarded the plane to line the baggage up on the tarmac to be inspected by sniffer dogs.

Meanwhile passengers were being evacuated from the plan and bomb expert teams moved out of a potential blast radius.

TWU leader Tony Sheldon said the workers carried out the potentially "fatal task" because they feared otherwise they'd be sacked by their employer Aerocare.

"These men were treated like canaries being sent down a mineshaft," Mr Sheldon said.

"Who would have thought the day would come in this country when Australians had to choose between risking their lives and risking their jobs?".

(Source: The Age)

 

Chicago police beat, kicked, shocked or otherwise tortured scores of mainly black suspects in the 1970s and 1980s to try to extract confessions from them, prosecutors reported Wednesday.

However, the prosecutors - appointed by a Cook County judge four years ago to look into torture allegations - said that the cases are too old or too weak to prosecute anyone now.

Prosecutors Robert D. Boyle and Edward Egan said they found evidence that police abused at least half the 148 suspects whose cases were reviewed. Nearly all of the suspects were black.

Among other things, the suspects claimed that police beat them, played mock Russian roulette, administered electric shocks with a cattle prod-like device and a crank-operated 'black box', and threw typewriter covers over their heads to make them gasp for air.

The investigators were not able to substantiate all of the allegations, but made it clear they believed many of the claims, including the use of the black box on at least one man, and said that in the majority of cases, suspects were beaten with fists, feet or telephone books.

Boyle and Egan said that in only three cases involving a total of five former officers was there enough evidence to prosecute, but the three-year statute of limitations has run out.

"We only wish that we could indict on these three cases,'' Boyle said, after a $6.1 million investigation that involved more than 33,300 documents, the issuance of 217 grand jury subpoenas and interviews of more than 700 people.

Among those five officers was Jon Burge, a lieutenant who commanded a violent-crimes unit and the so-called 'midnight crew' that allegedly participated in most of the alleged torture.

Neither Burge nor anyone else has ever been charged, but Burge was fired in 1991 after a police board found that a murder suspect was abused while in custody. Burge's attorney has said that Burge never tortured anyone.

In their 300-page report, the prosecutors accused then-police Superintendent Richard Brzeczek of dereliction of duty and said he and a former top official at the Cook County State's Attorney's office, William Kunkle, failed to pursue an investigation into allegations of torture.

The release of the report was the subject of a legal battle. The Illinois Supreme Court eventually denied a request from a former prosecutor, identified in court documents only as 'John Doe', to block portions from being released.

In May, a United Nations anti-torture panel said the Chicago investigation needed to go further.

(Source: The Guardian [UK])

 

Quote of the Moment:

"The Cold War lasted over 50 years...the war on terror could last a lot longer."

Treasurer Peter Costello.

 

A landmark American court case has confirmed that tobacco companies lied for decades about the safety of their products.

The huge case, which began in 1999, ended yesterday when Judge Gladys Kessler handed down a 1653-page decision, finding America's big tobacco companies engaged in multiple counts of deceptive behaviour until as recently as 2001.

The companies named in the lawsuit were Altria and its Philip Morris USA unit; Loews's Lorillard Tobacco unit; Vector Group's Liggett Group; Reynolds American's R. J. Reynolds Tobacco unit and British American Tobacco unit British American Tobacco Investments.

Among the deception and inappropriate behaviour were allegations of document destruction, first raised by the case of Melbourne lung cancer victim Rolah McCabe, who has since died. Mrs McCabe's case - initially won but then lost on appeal - prompted Australian whistleblower Fred Gulson to confirm a policy of destroying documents that might incriminate tobacco companies.

(Source: The Age)

 

A 'consultation session' between unionists and the Fair Pay Commission ended, when unions learned that none of the five commissioners had turned up.

When the government created the Fair Pay Commission, its head Professor Ian Harper promised that he would meet and hear directly from low paid workers.

Professor Harper said that "I don't meet many low paid people in my line of work, so I've got to find ways of getting to that constituency." He indicated that the public consultations would be used to provide him and the other commissioners with that education.

None of the five commissioners attended the 'public consultation' in Wollongong. Instead, the Commission outsourced the work to a PR firm.

The press is barred from Fair Pay Commission consultations and to gain entry, individuals have to register seven days prior to hearings.

(Source: LHMU)

 

John Howard has warned that Australian troops face a real risk of casualties as he announced a bigger deployment to Afghanistan.

The Prime Minister confirmed yesterday that roughly 400 Australian troops would take part in the mission, an increase of approximately 150.

Mr Howard added that "the possibility of Australian casualties can't be discounted".

(Source: The Australian)

 

An ABC radio station has censored criticism of ABC board member Keith Windschuttle.

On the Sunday Arts program on ABC 774, host Helen Razer was interviewing film director Bob Weis about his documentary on Aboriginal women.

Mr Weis began to criticse Mr Windschuttle, whose book 'The Fabrication of Aboriginal History' claimed massacres of Tasmanian Aborigines had been exaggerated.

However Razer cut the broadcast before Mr Weis could complete his sentence, saying "I can't possibly let you say that" and that "I will lose my job."

Mr Weis said that "the ABC, when we were kids, was the bastion of free speech, a fearless interrogator of ideas. Now you've got these people who are terrified of upsetting their political masters."

(Source: The Age)

 

Quote of the Moment:

"One police chief suggested that there had been so many black deaths in custody
because black people had weak necks."

The Guardian [UK].

 

Unemployment benefits are well below the poverty line - the amount considered to be the minimum necessary for survival - according to new data.

Data from the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research shows the relative poverty line for the March quarter of 2006 was $328.94 a week for a single person.

The maximum payment received on Newstart, sickness, mature age, widow or special benefit allowances was $251.85 a week - a gap of $77.09.

(Source: The Age)

 

Medical specialists routinely ask for 'gifts' from pharmaceutical companies worth up to $100,000.

The University of New South Wales study asked 823 specialists nationwide what companies gave them and what they asked for.

It found that almost all the specialists were offered food and gifts for their office and one in two received personal gifts - including harbour cruises and tickets to the opera - as well as money for conference travel. Fifteen per cent asked drug companies for gifts, money and travel.

The study found six specialists asked for money for the salaries of nurses, one being $80,000, while another asked for a $60,000 'donation' to their department.

The study found that personal gifts offered to doctors were valued up to $40,000 and included wine, flowers, a "spa" dinner, harbour cruises and tickets to events such as the opera. Tickets to non-educational events are banned under the ethical code of Medicines Australia, the pharmaceutical industry's leading organisation.

Each year, drug companies spend millions trying to persuade specialists to prescribe their products. The stakes are high because a recommendation from a specialist can add an expensive drug to a hospital pharmacy list and make the drug company large profits. Doctors are supposed to prescribe the best, most cost-effective medicines.

"Doctors are sometimes seen as the innocent victims and the villains in the piece are the pharmaceutical industry," the lead author, associate professor of ethics and law in medicine Paul McNeill, said. "In reality it is a two-way relationship."

(Source: The Age)