Comment 9 for bug 187677

I have made a script which fixes this issue, it's attached. Save it somewherere, make it executable and add it to the startup programs (in the "System/Preferences/Sessions" Gnome menu).
In the file there's an initial delay (at line 3): it is necessary in order for it to work: on my system I set it to 45 seconds, so that the code executes right after gnome startup completion (for me, it doesn't work unless all the applets are loaded). If it doesn't work for you, you may have to edit the script and increase that value a bit.