Talk about burying the lead!

John Sutton, secretary of the CFMEU, has an opinion article in today’s SMH, taking the government to task for its immigration policy. Sutton spends most of the piece essentially blaming underemployment on what he seems to consider to be the government’s far-too-lenient approach to letting employers employ people from overseas. But honestly, I would have [...]

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Calling all academic mothers!

Are you, or have you ever been, a mother academic? There’s a call for papers out for a collection of both narratives & articles about academic motherhood. (That takes you to a pdf, so if you don’t like those, try the general page here – the “Being a Mother Academic” link takes you to the [...]

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Quick hit – sexist police equipment

Sounds like the NSW police force has a real problem with officers suffering work-related injuries due to their equipment belts. Summary: the belts + equipment are bulky and weigh nearly 7 kg. Nearly one in six officers have reported health issues due to the belts. There’s some interesting issues involved in terms of the differential [...]

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Business more socialist than State Labor Government

If you know New South Wales politics, the title of this post may not particularly surprise you. However, the Business Council of Australia’s lobbying for better pay for teachers is something of a surprise to me. In fact, it seems the BCA first suggested this back in October, but it seems it got lost in [...]

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And that was when my head exploded

Women don’t WHAT?!?!?! Not only is this another misplaced article, in the Relationships sub-section of the Life&Style part of the Sydney Morning Herald, even though it’s clearly about work, (but hey, it includes comments about a report by the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency, so it’s about women, so it’s clearly not [...]

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Isn’t this story about business?

I find it interesting that a journalist can write a long feature article about Norway’s now-compulsory 40% quota of women on boards of public companies, and have the editors clearly not quite get the point. It’s in the Life & Style section. [First posted here.]

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Working mothers like jobs more than child care

The Sydney Morning Herald has an article today about the comparison between women’s and men’s satisfaction with various tasks. Unfortunately, I can’t find a link to the study – I’d be very interested in reading it. One of the findings that apparently surprised the (male) academic behind the study was that women were “significantly” more [...]

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Happy ending to a visa screw-up story (for once!)

Good news! I first heard about this story a couple of months ago. Two men had come to Australia from China on 457 visas (a visa which allows employers to sponsor foreign workers, I think on a temporary basis). The 457 scheme has certain protections in place for workers, such as a minimum wage. Their [...]

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