Last week Paul Howes said that his union, the AWU, were fully behind Julia Gillard in her determination to bring in a carbon tax and threatened to name and shame any company who sacked workers using the carbon tax as an excuse.
But this week, another union, the TWU doesn't agree. Let's face it, we should all be concerned about what sort of stress truck drivers are under as they thunder across the country every day, trying to meet impossible deadlines. National secretary of the TWU, Tony Sheldon, has accused Senator Chris Evans of being incompetent and endangering the lives of truck drivers.
After Paul Howe's endorsement of the AWU last week, the government weren't expecting any trouble from the unions but Mr Sheldon is not a happy man. He describes the tax as a "death tax" which will apply to the heavy transport industry from 2014 and affect 90,000 of his members.
It's obvious to him that trucking companies will pass on the cost of the tax and this will increase stress on drivers and it won't just affect truck drivers, everyone on the road will be at risk. Mr Sheldon is worried that the TWU's "Safe Rates" campaign has been derailed - it was supposed to bring in conditions that would stop truck drivers from endangering their lives by having to meet impossible deadlines. He's also concerned about procurement contracts - in 2009 the Rudd government promised to bring in measures that would ensure subcontractors complied with a set of principles that would guarantee that their employees' conditions met those of the Workplace Relations Act, but so far it hasn't happened.
"If federal Labor demonstrated the same sort of urgency in these areas that it has on climate change, then working people who can't think of a reason to support Labor, might just take a second look" Mr Sheldon said.
So next time you are on the freeway and find yourself stuck in between two B-doubles on either side of you and one looms up from behind, spare a thought for the drivers and hope they are having a good day.
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