Working women have lost their finest advocate. Lynn Beaton was one of the first of her generation to take up the fight for women's rights within the Australian trade union movement. Throughout her life Lynn was an active campaigner for the rights of women at work, as well as a researcher, strategist and historian of the labour movement.
Lynn was born in Victoria, but in 1960 the family moved to London. Lynn spent her teenage years in swinging London, returning to Melbourne in 1966.
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The Mt Thorley-Warkworth "final void" is too expensive to fill in.
Early this month mining giant Rio Tinto sold its mothballed Blair Athol coalmine to a tiny ASX-listed company called TerraCom for $1. Rio Tinto had been trying to sell the mine since it closed in 2012.
Nearly 70 staff at eheadspace — the national youth mental health service headspace's round-the-clock telephone and online counselling provider — were told they had just 24 hours to sign on to individual agreements that locked in year-long wage freezes, or they would lose their jobs.
A dispute has been listed in the Fair Work Commission after headspace refused requests to extend the deadline.
"For an iconic healthcare service, they don't treat their staff with any better respect than 7-Eleven or Grill'd," Health and Community Services Union organiser Serena Ho said.
About 60 anti-uranium protesters set up a bonfire in the middle of the road leading to Olympic Dam, in South Australia, stopping all traffic in and out of the BHP Billiton uranium mine for about 19 hours on July 3.
Olympic Way was also closed for about 90 minutes on July 2 as about 200 demonstrators undertook a funeral procession, carrying a black coffin and baskets of animal bones to the gates of Olympic Dam.
The protest was organised by Desert Liberation Front, which opposes toxic waste dumps in Australia and wants BHP Billiton's uranium mine to be closed within two years.
England lose to Iceland and “Brexit” from Euro2016, June 27.
What a time to be in London. My family's long-planned vacation has given us a ringside seat for the greatest humiliations suffered by Britain since boxer Frank Bruno tried to take down a young Mike Tyson.
United Firefighters Union (UFU) members handed out leaflets at polling booths in Victorian marginal seats on election day, in an attempt to counter a Liberal scare campaign against a new enterprise agreement for UFU members employed by the Country Fire Authority (CFA).
The Liberals falsely claim that the agreement gives the UFU the power of veto over CFA management decisions, and that it would prevent volunteer firefighters from fighting fires unless seven professional firefighters were present. They claim that the agreement endangers public safety.
About 100 people protested in Melbourne on July 3, International Al Quds Day, as part of a global weekend of action for Palestine.
The date marked 50 years since the Six Day War and half a century of Israeli occupation of the West Bank.
Nasser from Palestine Advocacy Network said: “We have entered 50 years of occupation of the West Bank and it's been 68 years since Palestine's Nakba.
"It represents such a disregard for human rights it is hard to wrap your mind around.
Protesters march against the education reform in Mexico City.
Public school teachers in Mexico City launched an indefinite strike on July 5, called by leaders of the dissident National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) teachers union to protest the education reforms imposed by President Enrique Peña Nieto.
There was some good news in the federal election. Ten Coalition members lost their seats in the July 2 federal election.
Jamie Briggs lost the seat of Mayo with a swing of 16%. Sophie Mirabella lost in Indi again with a further vote decline of 17.5%.
Andrew Nikolic lost in Bass with a decline of 10.8% and Wyatt Roy lost with a swing of 8.4%. Overall the Coalition vote was down 3.5%.
Other Liberal figures who lost support but not their seats included Christopher Pyne, down 9.53%; Tony Abbott, down 9.01%; Peter Dutton, down 5.6%; and Kevin Andrews, down 7.6%.
Jesse Williams used his award acceptance speech to denounce institutional racism and police brutality.
Grey’s Anatomy star Jesse Williams has been attacked for speaking out against racism with an online petition that garnered a paltry 1600 signatures in two days, demanding television network ABC fire the actor.
By contrast a counter-petition in support of the star had received 11,000 signatures by July 4.
Maintenance workers at Griffin Coal and their supporters held a protest outside the Fair Work Commission (FWC) in Perth's CBD on July 5.
They called for a stay on the commission's decision to terminate the recent enterprise bargaining agreement between the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) and the company, citing the latter's alleged unprofitability.
Griffin Coal claims to be surviving only due to financial support from its parent company, Lanco Infratech.
The 70 workers, who work at Collie in WA's south-west, face a 43% pay cut if the FWC's decision were to stand.
"We call on the Baird state government to re-block the Waterloo towers, not knock them down," Richard Weeks, spokesperson for the Waterloo Public Housing Action Group (WPHAG), told Green Left Weekly on July 6. He was referring to the NSW Coalition government's plans to demolish the public housing towers in the inner suburb of Waterloo, and replace them with high-rise, private apartments.
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