On Thursday September 18 at 6pm the Student Housing Action Collective (SHAC) will host a public meeting to discuss the situation facing international students at work. The address is 272 Faraday Street Carlton.
The meeting will be held at the site of an ongoing occupation. Supporters of SHAC have recently taken possession of four double story terrace buildings in Carlton that have been lying vacant for three years.
Last Friday UNITE staged another successful action against 7-Eleven. This time activists blockaded the 7-Eleven petrol station on Victoria Street in East Melbourne. The usually busy store did next to no business while the action was taking place.
About 50 people attended the action in protest against the poverty wages that 7-Eleven franchisees pay their workers. UNITE has recently revealed that some 7-Eleven workers are paid as little as $8 per hour!
The following article was written by Helen Westerman and published on the websites of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald today.
Foreign students living in Australia are in danger of being exploited by ‘’unscrupulous employers'’, Australia’s workplace watchdog says.
UNITE will be staging another action against 7-Eleven this Friday.
The details are: 5pm – 6pm Friday September 12th outside the 7-Eleven petrol station at 23 Victoria Street East Melbourne. The store is directly across the road from Trades Hall.
National young workers conference in Melbourne
On September 12 & 13 the Victorian Young Unionists’ Network (YUN) is hosting a national young workers conference called ‘Maintain the Rage’. All sessions of the conference will be held at Trades Hall on the corner of Lygon and Victoria Streets in Carlton South.
UNITE will be staging the first of many actions against 7-Eleven this Friday. The details are: 12 – 1pm Friday September 5th outside the 7-Eleven store at 263 Bourke Street City. The store is very close to the corner of Bourke and Swanston Streets.
UNITE is currently campaigning to organise 7-Eleven workers, some of whom get paid as little as $9 per hour. We call on 7-Eleven head office to urgently meet with UNITE officials so we can start to work through the many problems that exist.
A UNITE organiser recently interviewed one of our newest members. Below he tells us a bit about his working conditions and life as an international student. Peter (who has withheld his real name for fear of discrimination) is 22 years old and works at a 7-Eleven store in the Melbourne CBD.
Become a solidarity member today
UNITE is one of the only organisations in Australia promoting trade unionism amongst young people. We have a proud record of campaigning for workers rights especially in fast food and retail. We want this to continue.
But organising young workers is no easy task. We need all the help we can get. There are many things that you can do to help our work both big and small. Here is a brief list of our achievements in recent times. Judge for yourself as to whether we are an organisation worth supporting.
UNITE has been made aware of an incident that occurred on Saturday night at the KFC on the corner of Watton and Bridge Streets in Werribee. A drunken customer entered the store and assaulted one of the workers. He also verbally threatened several others.
The usual procedure after such an incident would be to close the store and send the workers home. Injured workers should be able to seek medical advice and all workers on the shift should be provided with couselling.
Video Dogs in Carlton has been forced to back pay over $4800 to its workers after UNITE revealed that the shop was paying young workers with DVD rental instead of wages.
After a full investigation by the Workplace Ombudsman, Video Dogs owner John Mallalieu has now been forced to stop his dodgy employment practices.
From The Age newspaper in Victoria. August 16th 2008, by Sushi Das
The national workplace watchdog is conducting a blitz on 24-hour convenience stores in central Melbourne to see if workers, many of them overseas students, are being exploited.
The crackdown follows claims by UNITE, a fast food and retail workers union, that 7-Eleven stores are underpaying staff, with some earning as little as $9 an hour.
UNITE has been informed of yet another example of young worker super-exploitation. This time it is convenience store 7-Eleven. Some workers have complained that they are only paid $9 per hour for late night and weekend shifts! Most of these workers are international students.
Do you have a 7-Eleven store near your house or workplace? If so please print out this leaflet and give it to the workers in the shop. If you can volunteer a couple of hours to visit 7-Eleven stores and let the workers know about the UNITE campaign please contact Anthony Main on 0417368215.
Below is the text of our 7-Eleven leaflet or click here to download the PDF.
UNITE is deeply disappointed about the news that Starbucks will axe 685 jobs and close 61 of its 84 stores in Australia. This follows the news that Starbucks are closing 600 stores in the US resulting in over 12,000 job losses.
It has been revealed that 17 Victorian outlets will close, including three inner city stores - in Queen, Collins and Bourke streets. Also two stores at Cheltenham and outlets at Port Melbourne, Ballarat, Ringwood, Deer Park, Frankston, Maribyrnong, Forest Hill, Wantirna South, Docklands, Tarneit and the Tullamarine Airport will also close.
Union membership among younger workers is continuing to fall. Currently only one in every ten workers aged between 15 and 24 years belongs to a union. The recently released Social Trends 2008 study actually confirmed union membership rates fell across all age groups between 1986 and 2007.
The ACTU has blamed the membership decline among young workers on the hostile environment created by Work Choices. This has obviously contributed but it is not the only reason.