right to collective bargaining

Australia had the world's first Labor government ever and ratified the United Nations' International Labour Organisation's "Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining Convention" in 1973, but in 2011 nurses are threatened with jail when they take industrial action. Footage of 24 Nov 2011 nurses' march on Parliament on Channel 9 plus coverage of associated and earlier related news on Channel 9 (unfortunately interrupted by ads for Pringles chips- which are unhealthy - and Westpac - whose land-speculation and growth lobby activities push up price cost of living and therefore wages).

As news.com.au reported on 19 November, nurses who defy the orders of "Fair Work Australia" to end industrial action in support of their claims for some compensation for huge recent increases in costs of living and civilised working conditions, risk 12 months' jail -- this, in a country, which had the world's first Labor government ever and ratified the United Nations' International Labour Organisation's "Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining Convention" in 1973.

In fact, only 3 years after Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam signed the Convention, his successor, Malcolm Fraser, enacted the vicious sections 45D and 45E of the Trades Practices Act, which outlawed "secondary boycotts". Since then Liberal Governments, in collusion with subsequent "Labor" Governments, have taken away ever more of our collective bargaining rights.

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