Independent politician: guilty of using others money.

[stui magpie]

I agree with Stui in broad on amalgamation, it was a mixed blessing overall. (My union days finished up about the time that the amalgamation craze was more-or-less finishing with just a few left to go.)

The big modern unions don't have the hands-on workplace understanding that the little ones did. On the other hand, someone of David's generation probably doesn't even know what a demarkation dispute is, which is most certainly a blessing. Dreadful bloody things!

Stui's suggestion that unions now somehow have a "monopoly" which the unions of, say, 40 years ago did not is, to say the least, odd. There used to be occasional to-ing and fro-ing around the edges (thus demarkation disputes) but this was very much the exception. In 99% of cases, there was one union to which everyone in a given occupation belonged (juast as there is today), and (outside of rare edge cases) certainly no question of having several different ones covering the same occupation in the same workplace. (That was more a US thing - the Yanks were big on that as I recall. No-one knows why. Daft idea.) The main organisational difference today is that you can change occupations to something else vaguely related and still retain your membership of the same union 'coz it covers lots more trades.

And, of course, the modern unions have, by working hand-in-hand with employers, set up a whole string of mutual non-profit industry super funds which have been fabulously successful and saved members billions of dollars in fees and consistently return substantially higher benefits than the grasping banks and for-profit super companies.

Actually there were lots of cases of 2 or more unions covering the same employees in the same workplace, which was the whole point of the amalgamations. You also had different unions covering different employees in the same work place who hated each other and were made to merge as well, which was interesting for all concerned.

[Tannin]

^ Depends what you mean by "lots". My term "edge case" is an appropriate one. (As mentioned, I've lost touch in recent years, but we are talking the good old days now when men were men and the beer was used to it.)

[Culprit]

Now we have a Liberal stealing Liberal Party Money. No charges laid as yet and no royal commission.

[Dangles]

Still won't be enough to get the "lesser of two evils" voters to vote for anyone other than the ALP or Liberals.

[Pies4shaw]

Is it really nearly 7 seven years?

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-23/ ... /100931492

[stui magpie]

And perfect timing with the HSU back in the media.