David Letterman’s boys’ club: a former Late Show writer tells allIn the wake of the David Letterman blackmail and sex scandal, one of the few women to ever write for Letterman dishes the dirt on the sexist and sexually-charged working environment in a tell-all piece for Vanity Fair
Industrial relations
leaked Memo: We’re not a happy team at The Advertiser
Some folk at the Adelaide Advertiser seem less than happy. Fresh from the Crikey fax machine (well it did come from Adelaide) this morning was an angry internal memo.
PHOTO GALLERY: Passive-aggressive kitchen notes
The Crikey bunker kitchen has seen its fair share of passive-aggressive post-its (because some people can’t wash dishes. You know who you are), but these ones take the cake. (Don’t really take the cake, though. IT’S MINE!)
Can bloggers pull a sickie?
An amusing Gawker post recently exposed the large number of sick days taken by Deadline Hollywood Daily’s Nikki Finke. But as blogging become a “real” job, it raises a genuine puzzler for the media industry: can you pull a sickie for a job you already do on the couch in your PJs?
A peek inside the PM’s office
Katharine Murphy spends 24 hours inside the Rudd batcave, meeting the notoriously industrious — and overwhelmingly young and male — spinners and staffers who keep the country running.
Companies struggle to plug online leaks
More and more workers are leaking embarrassing and confidential information from their workplace (or former workplace) online, fueled by a rise in both unemployment and the popularity of social networking. This just in: The Crikey office is out of biscuits.
IKEA ahead of the pack on maternity leave (for Australia)
With the announcement of 26 weeks’ fully paid maternal leave late last week, IKEA might be well ahead of the pack in Australia, but they are still laggards in world terms.
Fair Pay: the perils of politicians appointing ‘independent’ experts
The Fair Pay Commission is a classic example of when politicians appoint independent experts, things often don’t turn out exactly the way they planned.
Gillard’s other ABCC dilemma: making it work
There is a major clash of cultures between Fair Work Australia tand the Australian Building and Construction Commission, writes Professor David Peetz.
French court rules reality TV stars have workers’ rights
Participants on the French version of Temptation Island have won compensation for unfair dismissal and the right to be treated as salaried workers.
Naomi Klein: Fire your boss!
Naomi Klein looks at workplaces around the world where workers are fighting back against their bosses and the GFC — and winning.
It’s time to redefine success
After a century of badgering from pinkos and greenies, captains of industry are grudgingly starting to accept that profits are not everything, writes Peter Vogel.
No business takers for The Australian’s phony IR war
Confronted with employer bonhomie on Julia Gillard’s Fair Work bill, the IR dinosaurs at News Limited have been struggling to find an angle, writes Andrew Crook
Richard Farmer’s political bite-sized meaty chunks
Meaty snippets from the home of government plus the daily reality check and the pick of other people’s political coverage. Richard Farmer writes.
Fairfax push for hand-picked staff to resign “voluntarily”
“Voluntary redundancies to be sought on a case-by-case basis”. It is an unusual concept, writes Margaret Simons.
Why aren’t we letting skilled asylum seekers work?
Amid all the hoopla about the skilled migration program and the budget, another significant story has been buried, writes Margaret Simons.
Staffers must be better protected from chair-sniffing MPs
Now that the dust has settled and Troy Buswell has clung onto his leadership, we can consider some of the less obvious aspects of his case, writes Bernard Keane.
Rudd and Gillard face the realities of restraint
For the past decade, no-one has had to worry too much about the inflationary impact of wage rises. No more, writes Bernard Keane.
The Incredible Shrinking Julia Gillard: silence the best policy
That the importance of occupational health and safety in the work place relations debate is not seen as a subject of importance by the national press is hardly the fault of Julia Gillard, writes Richard Farmer.
Rudd caught between a buck and a hard place on IR
Kevin Rudd’s biggest challenge is probably coming from a direction he didn’t expect, industrial relations. The union campaign against WorkChoices has been so supremely successful it appeared that opposing WorkChoices offered a cruise to electoral success. But ground is shifting. What and why?
Crikey Policy Comparison Part 3: Federal-State relations
The give and take between the Federal and State governments is an on-going source of political debate.
Bias in action: how the broadsheets covered IR
Industrial relations dominated the political debate during May, and polls show it is likely to be a big issue in the federal election later this year. So, how did Australia’s three major broadsheet newspapers cover this issue?
