A fly on the wall – overheard at union meetings and other conferences:
At the March meeting on the government’s new strategic plan on Aids:”We need to address men as vectors of the disease. Men need to be rehabilitated about their sexuality. I’d like to see that as part of the plan. I’m sick and tired of children killed and raped by men.”A representative of the men’s sector. “We need to target the boy child at an early age so they don’t replicate the behaviour of their fathers. Men are like mosquitoes who spread malaria. We spread HIV/Aids.”And at Ditsela’s conference November 2006:”Many male trade unionists view women in the unions as being the “˜fringe benefits’!”
Moses Mayekiso Conference Centre disappoints some While everyone that has attended Numsa’s new Moses Mayekiso Conference Centre has been full of praise for the new centre, the Centre is disappointing some! These are the past clients of the Diggers Inn Hotel who are still coming looking for ”rooms by the hour.”
Zee Hassan, the manager of the Centre, says you don’t want to know what was found in those rooms when Numsa took over the building!
And still on Moses Mayekiso Conference CentreUnearthing the history of the building is proving to be an eye opener. Building plans going back to the early 1900s (“˜a very unusual find’ historians say) already show how entrenched racial segregation was even at this early stage of the city’s development. Plans for the “˜Native boys quarters’ had to be redrawn so that “˜natives’ were housed on top of the building instead of inside it!
CPI-X + improvement factor for CEOsDon’t ever let employers tell you that they have nothing to learn from workers. Remember those demands that Wits Central West and Ekurhuleni always used to put at the National Bargaining Conference – Wages: we want CPIX + improvement factor of 10% to 15%?
It seems that CEOs have taken the idea to heart. How else could they be receiving increases way in excess of the CPI-X regardless of whether their companies are performing well?
Workers increases
Average CEOs increases
2004-2005
+- 6%
18,5%
2005 – 2006
+- 7,5%
34%
Did you know?(what they never put on Chappies bubble gum wrappers)
The code name originally given to the US attack on Iraq – Operating Iraqi Liberation – OIL
Before the war, Iraq produced 4 million barrels a day. Now it produces only 2.1 million barrels (equal to the entire planet’s reserve production capacity)
Price of oil under Clinton – $18 a barrel; 2007 – $60 a barrel
Since the Iraqi war the price of Haliburton stock has tripled to $64 a share. (Haliburton is an engineering services company that has secured massive contracts in Iraq since the war. Its chairman used to be Dick Cheney, now vice president of the US)
Last quarter Exxon Mobil reported a record $10 billion profit)
(Information taken from an article by Greg Palast, author of Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans – Sordid secrets and strange tales of a White House Gone Wild)