Let's turn Long Service Leave into a real job right – not a virtual right

The Australian Workers’ Union wants to work with the Rudd Government to restore the right to long service leave to our union’s members, Paul Howes, AWU National Secretary, will tell the National Press Club today.

" The Labor Party at its last policy conference acknowledged that less people are becoming eligible for long service leave. Our union believes we must now actively explore ways in which long service leave can be returned to being a mainstream entitlement which reflects contemporary needs," Paul Howes said.

• Take a stand for workers' entitlements - join the AWU today

Paul Howes, the new AWU National Secretary, gives the first 2008 televised speech at the National Press Club today.

Apart from portable long service leave the AWU leader will:

• Launch a discussion paper on how unions and the government can work together to fight inflation and rising interest rates.

• Outline a vision for growing the community and economies of regional and rural Australia

" They were designed for an era that is not ours, the fair-go era of a job for life, high tariffs for what we grew and made and dug up, and China and India were faraway places with strange-sounding names, and not our trade competitors," Paul Howes, AWU National Secretary, will tell his NPC audience.

" Today very few of us stay in one place, for the ten or fifteen years that we need to accumulate long service leave.

"That makes long service leave a virtual right, and not a real one. Unfortunately in our modern fast-paced world the time you need to learn new skills is never there. When you need to lift your game, to master new tools, to upgrade your qualifications, and maintain your family's way of life, the time is never there.

" So to address this what we need is a revitalised portable long-service leave scheme. A 21st century scheme.We all have to catch up, and we all need time, if we're human, to recharge our batteries.

" This will be good for everybody, and the economy too.

" Our idea is a twenty-first century solution to a twenty-first century problem. And we'll get it when Government sits down with business, the community, academia and unions, and hammers out a decent consistent national minimum standards providing certainty, certainty for the workforce - and for employers. "