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Letters may be e-mailed to guardian@cpa.org.au.
Letters of 300-400 words are preferred.

Letters to the Editor:

The service model vs the organising model

A recent Court decision confirms it is legal for unions to charge non-
union members a fee for service. This goes back to a few months ago since 
the plumbers union charged non-members a bargaining fee after successful 
EBA negotiations. The matter was taken to court and a decision has been 
delivered in favour of the unions.

While it might be a victory at first, the court decision could work against 
the trade union movement in the long run. The ultimate aim should be to 
organise the workplace and not just to provide a service.

There are workers who don't belong to a union but happily pick up any 
benefits union members fight for, and it is only fair to make them pay.

For strong industrial unions this probably is not an issue if workplaces 
are well organised with a functioning union structure and any non-union 
labour has been organised.

The problem is for the small and medium workplace with little or no union 
structure. Here the main demand should be unrestricted access for union 
officials and the right to organise.

If unions rely on this decision to make bludgers pay and content themselves 
with the idea of getting the fee for service, the future might be very 
uncertain, particularly in workplaces with low union membership.

The fact is that some unions according to their specific circumstances may 
use this court decision but the fees should be made so unattractive that 
non-union labour would choose to join the union rather than pay the fee.

For example, this can be done by making fee for service more expensive per 
year than a year's union fees.

Blackie White
trade unionist, WA

Philip Ruddock has taken Orwellian newspeak to a new low with his claim 
that Australia is not imprisoning the children it holds in detention 
centres. They're free to leave Australia whenever they like, he says.

This, then, is the choice he offers refugees: You don't have to stay here 
in detention centres. You could always "choose" to be shipped back to the 
very place you have travelled so far and suffered so much to escape. To the 
country where you fear persecution, torture, and death. Some choice!

Ruddock's hypocrisy demeans the Australian public. This country's detention 
centres have been condemned by every independent group that has inspected 
them — our own Human Rights Commission and now the United Nations.

The Minister and his government must respond to such moderate critics with 
genuine change, not hide behind fatuous double-speak. The Australian 
people, and the innocent men, women and children behind razor wire, deserve 
nothing less.

Free the refugees!

Linda Gale
Vice-President, Progressive Labour Party

"Travelling around the world to appear at industry-sponsored symposiums 
is more to do with marketing than with technology transfer", said a "New 
England Journal of Medicine" article quoted in an opinion piece recently in 
"The Age" newspaper. The latter was about medical education in the 
pharmaceutical industry and how doctors become ensnared in the marketing 
and promotion of particular products.

This process has reached the point in the USA where the promotion of drug 
brand names is big business. Drug companies are up near the top of the 
most-profitable-list on the NY Stock Exchange and spend more on marketing 
than on research.

In the US, where it is legal to advertise prescription medicines, such 
promotions are a widespread practice. Here in Australia it is against the 
law, but the direction our health system is headed under the hand of the 
current Federal Government is toward a system based on the one in the USA.

My children, raised as they have been under Medicare, are constantly amazed 
when characters on US television programs, having had to go the doctor or 
hospital, are then presented with a bill which they must to pay.

In that country, whose President rants against nations he brands as "human 
rights violators", an astronomical number of American citizens continue to 
die because of a system of health care that deliberately denies them health 
care because it is based on profit.

Toward that end, the huge pharmaceutical transnationals pour hundreds of 
millions of dollars into the campaign coffers of both the Republican and 
Democratic parties. And Bush's terror war has also diverted attention and 
funds from health, which is in deep crisis.

According to The Wall Street Journal, in 2000 the pharmaceutical 
industry spent over US $80 million in public relations, advertising, 
campaign contributions and lobbying to keep the Democrats from retaking the 
White House and Congress.

The Washington Post reports that "the jump in medical costs fuels 
the price of premiums and, depending on one's income bracket, health 
insurance can account for a third of a person's earnings.

For those with serious illnesses, there may be no insurance plan willing to 
insure them.

"For those without insurance a single office visit to the doctor can cost 
as much as US $400 if tests are required, which they almost always are, 
while filling prescriptions can almost double that amount depending on the 
medications."

As the Howard Governments bleeds Medicare to death, standing by while the 
insurance crisis forces more and more GPs to abandon bulk billing, the 
profit-driven, US system looms large. The drug companies and private health 
conglomerates like Mayne must be rubbing their hands with glee.

Lizbeth Campbell
Townsville, Qld