Category Archives: Unions

Anti-Capitalism, Unions

TP 2016 May Day, International Workers Day Statement

DON’T ACCEPT THE ELECTION’S MISERABLE “CHOICE” WE NEED MILITANT CLASS STRUGGLE TO SMASH ALL ANTI-UNION LAWS AND WIN JOBS FOR ALL WORKERS

1 May 2016 – Last month the building industry authority launched legal action in the Federal Court against the NSW Branch of the CFMEU construction workers’ union and ten of its officials. Their supposed “crime”: organising strike action, necessarily including action to stop scabbing, in order to force the reinstatement of a union delegate who was sacked by the bosses at Sydney’s Barangaroo site. In launching the legal action, the Australian state’s building industry authority boasted that it now has 108 CFMEU officials before the courts! All these attacks on workers’ rights are being unleashed under the cover of anti- worker laws introduced by the openly anti-union, Abbott/Turnbull government, right? Well, actually no! This repression against the workers’ movement is being conducted under the provisions of the Fair Work Act introduced by the Labor government in 2009. That act formally replaced John Howard’s hated Workchoices but retained nearly all its draconian anti-strike provisions. Meanwhile, the construction sector’s industry “watchdog” that is today feverishly persecuting CFMEU and other union members is the body formed by the previous Labor government: the Fair Work Building and Construction (FWBC) authority. FWBC replaced the Liberals’ notorious ABCC. However, while a few of the most extreme powers of the ABCC were taken away, the FWBC retained the ABCC’s central purpose – to use prosecution to attack struggles for workers’ rights in the construction industry and to obstruct union officials entering worksites. This purpose the FWBC has carried out with crusading zeal, often invoking the star chamber powers that it retained from the ABCC to force trade unionists called before it to answer questions under threat of six months’ jail.

It is not simply that the existence of an openly anti-working class Liberal-National government has given the FWBC and the courts the impetus to attack staunch trade unionists. During the reign of the previous Labor government, authorities were also carrying out legal action against trade unions left, right and centre. In mid-2013, the Federal Court found the CFMEU guilty of contempt of court for its picket lines blockading Grollo construction sites during its August-September 2012 struggle against that company’s atrocious disregard of workers’ safety. It was this court ruling and the civil litigation launched by the FWBC – both during the reign of the Gillard ALP government – that paved the way for the Victorian Supreme Court fining the CFMEU a massive $1.25 million the following year.

All this highlights the miserable “choice” that working class people face at the upcoming elections. On one side are the Liberals who would kick working class people in the stomach and then smirk at workers. Their rivals, the ALP, like to whisper sweet words in workers’ ears. But when the capitalists prod ALP leaders in the back signalling that “it’s time,” they will – like obedient little children – turf the toiling masses into the mud then quickly – with false remorse and fluttering eyelashes all wet with crocodile tears – turn back to these same workers they only just betrayed and beg for forgiveness. This not a “choice” that we need to accept! There is another road! The road of militant industrial action and class struggle to not only stop the return of the Liberal’s ABCC but to smash the ALP’s own FWBC, to demand the repeal of all anti-strike laws and all restrictions on union access to workplaces and to fight to stop bosses retrenching workers. Such a fight must unite with the struggle of all of the downtrodden. It must unite with the struggle against the forced closure of remote Aboriginal communities and must mobilise mass action to defend Aboriginal people against racist police violence and mass incarceration. We must demand free, 24-hour childcare to open the road to women’s full participation in economic life, we must fight for a massive increase in public housing and we must smash all attacks on the poor like cashless welfare and compulsory “income management.”

SOCIAL DEMOCRACY IS A DEAD END

FOR MILITANT CLASS STRUGGLE TO WIN GAINS NOW AND PREPARE FOR THE FUTURE REVOLUTION

There are a few differences between the parliamentary parties. The right wing conservatives launched the union-busting Royal Commission into the unions. The ALP did not support this but it has, treacherously, supported the ensuing legal proceedings against unionists for taking militant action to defend workers’ rights. This is hardly surprising! Victorian ALP leader, Daniel Andrews, hailed the persecution of the CFMEU over the 2012 Grocon dispute, branding the construction workers’ struggle as “appalling.” And, although it has been the Coalition that has plotted for a cut to Sunday penalty rates for workers, the ALP again betrayed working class people when Bill Shorten recently announced that a future ALP government would not try to reverse such a cut if the Fair Work commission ruled in favour of it. Indeed, because it accepts the capitalist system, the ALP shares the Coalition platform on key issues. Both parties are for draconian anti-strike laws, both accept the “right” of capitalists to retrench workers whenever that is necessary to maximise profits, both support the cruel incarceration of asylum seekers. Furthermore, both support the Australian capitalist  rulers’ militarisation campaign. This build up is essentially aimed at supporting the international capitalist drive against China, a country which, despite dangerous capitalist inroads, remains a socialistic state dominated by socialistic state-owned enterprises –  a huge gain for its people.
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For their part, The Greens promise some progressive social reforms and oppose several aspects of the war on refugees. Yet, The Greens reject the idea of the working class organised as a separate political force independently of the capitalists. It is telling that The Greens responded to Shorten’s announcement that Labor would accept a court ruling slashing penalty rates with –   not a promise to push legislation reversing such a cut – but merely a promise to “consider” such legislation adding – with the typical “even handedness” of their middle class base – that they “will wait to see the commission’s ruling.” It is notable, too, that The Greens support the Australian capitalist military’s recent huge purchase of 12 new submarines.

To seize on tiny offerings from the ALP and The Greens as an excuse to campaign for them at the elections as a “lesser evil” can only breed defeatism amongst the masses. It amounts to telling the working class and all of the oppressed that we must simply support whoever promises that they will punch us less hard. Yet the working class united with all of the downtrodden actually has the industrial and social power to challenge the capitalist exploiters because it is workers’ collective labour that is the source of capitalist profits and the whole running of the economy. This power needs to be made conscious of itself and unleashed against the capitalist exploiters. Illusions in salvation through parliamentary elections undermine this self- awareness and, instead, encourage the masses to be passive and dependent upon the mythical “good Samaritans” working in the enemy’s political administration. That is why it is not enough for those who understand this to simply ignore the elections. We cannot ignore them because there are millions of working class people who do have illusions that their road to a better life is through electing the ALP or The Greens (while no class-conscious worker is going to support the Liberals, of course). We need to organise actions that will help convince the masses that support for any of the pro-capitalist, current parliamentary parties is completely counterposed to the class struggle. Every time a class conscious worker is convinced not to vote – either directly or through preferences – for any of the current parliamentary parties because she or he subscribes to a class struggle path instead, the working class is better prepared to organise struggle to oppose the attacks of whichever party is elected to administer Australian capitalism.

Belief in salvation through the ALP is a big part of what is disorienting the union movement right now. Even while they are sometimes personally persecuted by anti-strike laws, the current pro-ALP union leaders are resigned to largely playing by these bosses’ rules and looking to “progressive” parliamentarians for salvation. Accepting the straightjacket of these laws and of the pro-capitalist framework of the ALP, the current outlook dominating our unions is to recoil from the idea of industrial action to prevent bosses from retrenching workers. Instead, many of our unions hope to protect jobs by calling on bosses to favour “Aussie workers” in hiring instead of overseas workers and by proposing schemes to “save Australian jobs” by favouring Australian companies over their overseas rivals. Apart from harmfully pushing workers into an alliance with their own local exploiters, such schemes do not save jobs. As a workers’ movement in one country calls for local bosses to favour them over overseas producers, workers abroad also start demanding the same. In the end all that happens is that workers are divided and greedy capitalists everywhere are laughing all the way to their respective banks. Especially when we are facing ever more draconian attacks, workers’ unity is indispensable. We must be aware that the capitalist rulers are seeking to divide our side by intensifying racist attacks against Aboriginal people and against Muslim and other coloured ethnic communities. That is why the workers’ movement must mobilise in defence of these embattled communities, must demand freedom for the refugees and must mobilise to decisively crush the violent far right racist groups.

Today is international workers’ day. Basing ourselves on its spirit doesn’t mean just repeating nice sounding platitudes about international workers’ unity on one day of the year only to then put out the call to favour Australian workers over overseas workers the rest of the year! Instead, it means standing as one with our overseas and guest worker sisters and brothers in a common fight for improved wages and jobs for all workers. The way to fight for jobs is to prevent companies from laying off workers and to fight to force wealthy capitalist bosses to increase hiring by accepting lower profits. Of course, they will not do this willingly. We will need to force them and their governments to accept such concessions through militant class struggle. That means we need a union movement that is prepared to build up forces to defy the anti-strike laws and unleash the full power of the united workers’ movement in the face of the bosses, their governments and their anti-worker laws. The capitalists will scream like bloody murder that any loss of profits that results from being forced to hire more workers will inevitably lead to economic collapse. We must then be ready to reply that if you capitalists are incapable of stably running the economy in a way that provides jobs for all then we workers will take the running of our economy into our own hands by confiscating the industries, mines, banks and communication networks from you and putting it all into the collective hands of the people in a socialist economy under workers’ state power.

This is actually the crux of the question – capitalism or socialism? In the end the current parliamentary parties are against the masses’ interests not just because of their respective ideologies but because they all accept capitalist rule. The demands of the capitalist system simply require any party administering it to continually seek to increase the rate of profit sweated out of working class people. Look at what has happened in Greece. A radical left-talking, nominally socialist party, Syriza, was elected to government. Yet, once in office, it has proceeded to administer the brutal austerity demanded by the capitalists who still hold the reins of state and economic power. Whether in Greece, Australia or any other capitalist country, any party no matter how much it pledges commitment to working class people must necessarily betray these same working class people if it assumes office in such a capitalist society. No matter who win elections they will be merely administering state institutions – courts, commissions, police, prisons and the military – that are tied to the wealthy capitalists by a thousand threads. That is why we should be aware, too, that any gains we make today through class struggle will not be secure as long as the capitalists retain state power. Yet the struggles of today are the indispensable preparation for the future revolutionary struggle for the working class seizure of state power. That is provided that today’s struggles are waged in such a manner that they always teach our side to trust only our own united power and never any of the parties and state institutions of the capitalist exploiters. Today, that means fighting to convince the most class conscious workers to reject any electoral support for any of the current parliamentary parties and to, instead, organise militant mass struggles based on unity with all of the oppressed and genuine unity with our overseas working class sisters and brothers.

Anti-Capitalism, Unions

STOP CAPITALIST JOB SLASHING THROUGH CLASS STRUGGLE

On 2 January 2014, the MUA, CFMEU, CEPU, RBTU and other unions participated in important rallies in Sydney and Melbourne in support of the struggle of Korean railway workers against the privatisation of the South Korean rail network. Class struggle and internationalism is what can turn back the worldwide attacks of the capitalist classes against workers.
On 2 January 2014, the MUA, CFMEU, CEPU, RBTU and other unions participated in important rallies
in Sydney and Melbourne in support of the struggle of Korean railway workers against the privatisation of the South Korean rail network. Class struggle and internationalism is what can turn back the worldwide attacks of the capitalist classes against workers.

STOP CAPITALIST JOB SLASHING THROUGH CLASS STRUGGLE

FORCE BOSSES TO INCREASE HIRING AT THE EXPENSE OF THEIR PROFITS!

8 January 2014 – Billionaire Kerry Stokes has been “busy” cruising around in his luxury yacht. He is riding high. But the same can’t be said for the workers whose toil made him his fortune. Last month, workers at one of Stokes’ Seven Group subsidiaries, heavy machinery supplier WesTrac, were told that 630 of them would be retrenched. These workers are among tens of thousands who are being laid off across the country. Last September, Telstra announced that it was axing 1,100 workers. And this is after its owners made an obscene $3.9 billion profit last year. Although the media like to focus on jobs lost through off-shoring, these recent Telstra cuts – like most job slashing in Australia – has little to do with that. Most of the Telstra jobs axed in this latest round are those of line maintenance technicians – hardly roles that can be off-shored. Telstra’s latest profit grab is about cutting jobs by driving remaining workers harder and by reducing service quality to the public.

What has especially highlighted the jobs crisis was General Motors’ announcement last month that it will axe 2900 jobs and end manufacturing in Australia in 2017. This follows Ford’s announcement that it will slash 1,200 jobs and stop manufacturing here. The combined effect of the closures on parts manufacturers means that over 50,000 workers in all could lose their jobs in the automotive sector. This will not only be devastating for workers but shows the basic irrationality of capitalism in that skills built up over many decades will now be lost. And the trend of workers being ripped away from permanent jobs in unionised workplaces and dumped into insecure, casual jobs – where workers have little chance of learning skills and enjoy minimal rights – will be all the more deepened. As usual, the car bosses have justified the layoffs by crying poor. This is a scam! The $153 million loss that GM made last year in its Australian Holden operations – after paying for fat management salaries – is dwarfed by the $4.9 billion profit that it made worldwide. Thus GM’s owners, who include billionaire Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway which holds a $1.4 billion portion, would only lose 3% of their profits if they kept the jobs of the soon to be axed Holden workers.

Enough is enough! It is high time for the working class and its allies to act. We cannot allow the likes of Kerry Stokes’, whose Seven Group made a huge $486 million profit last year, to get away with his firm axing jobs at its WesTrac subsidiary just so that he can suck even higher profits to buy even more extravagant mansions. We need to say to the capitalist owners: we are simply not going to allow you to slash jobs. We are going to force you to keep employing more people than you think would be ideal for maximising your profits and you will have to wear this. And if that means you are going to have to sell one of your luxury yachts and delay buying your private jet – then tough! And if having a larger workforce means that you will be pushed to lower your prices in order to sell the extra production that a larger workforce could bring then all the better for it!

The luxury yacht that Australian billionaire Kerry Stokes likes to cruise around the world in. In the previous financial year, Stokes Seven Group made a $486 million profit. Yet in December 2013, Seven Group subsidiary, heavy machinery supplier WestTrac, announced the retrenchment of a further 630 workers. Workers’ jobs are being axed to pay for the extravagant lifestyles of Kerry Stokes and the other capitalist tycoons.
The luxury yacht that Australian billionaire Kerry Stokes likes to cruise around the world in. In the previous financial year, Stokes Seven Group made a $486 million profit. Yet in December 2013, Seven Group subsidiary, heavy machinery supplier WestTrac, announced the retrenchment of a further 630 workers. Workers’ jobs are being axed to pay for the extravagant lifestyles of Kerry Stokes and the other capitalist tycoons.

However the corporate bosses-loving Abbott regime sure isn’t going to help us stop company owners from slashing jobs! Indeed, many in his ministry seemed to be partly happy about the crumbling of the car industry – since they know that workers in this sector are a bastion of trade unionism and once upon a time even had a reputation for class struggle militancy. Yet whether it is the ALP, the Greens or the Palmer United Party, none of the opposition parties also ever talk of measures to make it illegal for the corporate bosses to cut jobs. Thus, while the ALP leaders would actually like to be able to appease their working class support base by campaigning to save the jobs of GM and other workers, their subservience to the capitalist “order” and its principle that business owners have the “right” to do whatever it takes to maximise their profits means that they are completely incapable of preventing the job cuts. All the ALP could propose over the crisis facing Holden workers is to offer more handouts to GM – an idea they soon dropped. For the over $2 billion that governments handed over to the Holden bosses over the last 12 years did not stop them from axing their workers’ jobs. In the end, what handouts to companies actually do is to divide workers as workers in other sectors, whose taxes in good part fund government handouts, are made to feel resentful that they are propping up workers in a particular sector when their own jobs are also on the line. Indeed, any handout to GM effectively means that workers are, in good part through their taxes, handing over tens of millions of dollars to the likes of the billionaire Warren Buffett. One is reminded of the obscene spectacle that took place in November 2008 when the heads of GM, Ford and Chrysler flew into Washington to beg the U.S. government for a bailout, all arriving in their luxurious private jets!

Workers leaving work at Toyota’s Altona plant. An estimated 2500 jobs in total will be lost as a result of the closure of Toyota’s assembly plants in Australia. The combined impact of the announced closures of the Holden, Ford and Toyota plants and the flow on effects to supplier firms will see up to 50,000 workers lose their jobs in the automotive sector.
Workers leaving work at Toyota’s Altona plant. An estimated 2500 jobs in total will be lost as a result of the closure of Toyota’s assembly plants in Australia. The combined impact of the announced closures of the Holden, Ford and Toyota plants and the flow on effects to supplier firms will see up to 50,000 workers lose their jobs in the automotive sector.

IF THE CAPITALISTS CAN’T PROVIDE JOBS FOR WORKERS THEN THE ECONOMY SHOULD BE TAKEN OUT OF THEIR HANDS

Despite the nature of all the current parliamentary parties, the working class is far from powerless to stop job cuts. Strong union industrial action could force companies planning job cuts to retain their workers. For such action could compel business owners to realise that industrial action could cost them far more than the profits they will save by having a smaller workforce. The potential to stop the job cuts at Telstra and WesTrac is especially strong as not only could workers’ strikes shut down their hugely profitable operations in Australia but many of the workers in these firms are union members. Moreover, solidarity action by workers at other parts of Stokes’ Seven Group – including Channel 7, equipment hire company Coates Hire and lighting supplier AllightSykes – could really bulldoze his moves to bury jobs at his WesTrac subsidiary.

The situation is slightly different at Holden given GM plans to shut down its manufacturing in Australia. Yet, if Holden workers were to occupy GM plants at Elizabeth (in Adelaide) and Port Melbourne insisting that they will not allow GM to sell the billions of dollars in equipment there then these workers would find thousands of workers at supplier companies and hundreds of thousands of other sympathetic workers supporting their battle to save their jobs. However, to override GM’s job slashing also requires workers at GM’s profitable operations in places like South Korea and the U.S. to take solidarity action with Holden workers here. Workers at GM’s South Korean subsidiaries have already waged militant struggles and although U.S. GM workers have not taken such action for years, U.S. GM plants are still among the most unionised sites in the U.S.A. In 1998, the knock-on effect from a 54 day strike by over 9,000 workers at GM’s Flint component plant in Michigan ended up shutting down nearly 30 GM assembly plants and 100 components plants across the U.S. and ended up costing GM bosses nearly $3 billion.

However, if we are going to have the struggle that we need, there needs to be a radical change in our unions. Reflecting the politics of their ALP mates in parliament, most current union leaders accept the notion that for workers’ jobs to be safe, company profits must be maximised. Yet it is precisely in the drive to maximise profits that bosses are slashing jobs. The dominance of this ideology that workers’ welfare depends on capitalist business success has allowed the bosses to gut workers’ rights, casualise large chunks of the workforce and weaken our unions without our side putting up the resistance that could have smashed these attacks. Furthermore, the union tops’ approach makes the workers movement vulnerable to bosses’ threats that unless workers accept reduced conditions, profits will suffer and the bosses will be “forced” to cut jobs. This is precisely the threat that Toyota is making as they callously feed off workers fears following the Holden layoffs.

Workers at unionised workplaces will be the spearhead in the fight to defend jobs and a powerful struggle waged by these workers could spur on the building of unions at currently non-unionised sites. However, in the struggle against job losses, we need to unite union workers with workers at currently non-unionised sites as well as with unemployed workers and with working class youth worried about their future job prospects. To build such united struggle, we should launch a campaign of industrial action and rallies to demand laws that restrict the “right” of profitable businesses to slash jobs. In waging a struggle for such demands we should have no illusions that the pro- capitalist governments will in any way be on our side. Instead, we should see our fight as being aimed at forcing concessions from the enemy – just like in the past our struggles have won laws granting certain minimum leave entitlements and maximum working hours. Among the demands that such a movement could fight for are:

  • That no enterprise can retrench workers’ jobs if it or its parent company is currently making a profit.
  • That no firm can slash jobs if its total profit over the previous four years exceeds the total wages of all the potentially axed workers.
  • An end to and a reversal of all the draconian public sector job cuts which Liberal and ALP state governments have implemented in recent years and which Abbot’s Liberal/National Coalition want to deepen at the Federal level.

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Fighting for such demands will help start to mobilise action around the truth that fighting to save workers’ jobs means forcing the bosses to wear lower profits. As a class- struggle movement for jobs develops, our demands should not stop with this. We must emphasise the demand for full employment at the capitalist bosses’ expense – through reducing the working week with no loss in workers’ wages to the level needed to spread the available work around among all those who want to work.

MUA maritime workers union leadership’s campaign for “Local Jobs” against overseas labour on local shipping. Such divisive campaigns set local workers against their overseas sisters and brothers and undermine the necessary workers’ unity needed to defeat “multinational” corporate bosses through class struggle. The unions should instead focus the struggle on fighting for overseas workers to get the same wages and conditions as local workers and should unite all workers in industrial action to force the capitalist exploiters to cede improved conditions and more jobs for all.
MUA maritime workers union leadership’s campaign for “Local Jobs” against overseas labour on local shipping. Such divisive campaigns set local workers against their overseas sisters and brothers and undermine the necessary workers’ unity needed to defeat “multinational” corporate bosses through class struggle. The unions should instead focus the struggle on fighting for overseas workers to get the same wages and conditions as local workers and should unite all workers in industrial action to force the capitalist exploiters to cede improved conditions and more jobs for all.
June 30: Workers at Woolworths Distribution Centre in Warnervale (in NSW’s Central Coast) take strike action after the company issued many warnings for workers “taking too much time between jobs”. A program of industrial action is needed to defend workers’ jobs and to fight to force the capitalist bosses to accede to hiring more workers at the expense of their bloated profits.
June 30: Workers at Woolworths Distribution Centre in Warnervale (in NSW’s Central Coast) take strike action after the company issued many warnings for workers “taking too much time between jobs”. A program of industrial action is needed to defend workers’ jobs and to fight to force the capitalist bosses to accede to hiring more workers at the expense of their bloated profits.

As we fight for such demands, the capitalists will howl that this will drive them out of business – just as they do every time workers call for a pay rise. To this we must respond: if you cannot operate enterprises in a way that provides jobs for workers then you should not own these enterprises. They need to be ripped from your hands and brought into public ownership so that production can be planned to provide jobs for all and to utilise all available labour to serve society. However, not only are all current parliamentary parties thoroughly hostile to this idea of confiscating the factories, banks, transport systems and mines from the capitalists, any party that in the future attempted to do so would face fierce resistance from the judiciary, police, army and top echelons of the bureaucracy. For the current state apparatus has unbreakable, generations-old connections to the rich capitalist elite. That is why for our struggles to triumph, they must culminate in the working class leading all of the oppressed in a revolutionary movement to sweep away the current capitalist state and to build a new workers state that will implement a socialist system – a system based on people’s common ownership of the economy.

THE WORKERS UNITED WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED: TURNING THE SLOGAN INTO A REALITY

Key to unlocking the necessary fight back is to expose any illusions that local workers’ jobs can be protected through collaborative schemes with the bosses. Today, manufacturing union heads run a “Make it Here Or Jobs Disappear” campaign that appeals for government support for manufacturing firms and protectionist laws to favour local firms over overseas producers. Yet, the experience with Holden proves how little handouts to companies actually guarantee jobs. Protectionist measures don’t save jobs either for just as one country can take measures to protect its own firms, other countries can do the same. In the end all that protectionist appeals do is to set workers in different nations against each other while their greedy bosses – happy that workers are divided and looking out for the interest of their “own” firms rather than uniting against the bosses internationally – are left laughing all the way to the bank.

Yet, despite the failure of protectionist appeals to save jobs, most union leaders continue to make such calls because they fear the alternative: a strategy based on hard-fought industrial action. About the only time that most union leaders are taking any stand against job losses is if these layoffs are the result of off-shoring. The capitalist exploiters indeed do seek out lower paid labour they can find overseas just as they seek to replace workers here with lower- paid youth. However, our response to off- shoring should not be to counterpose the interests of local workers to their overseas comrades. That only serves to undercut the global workers’ unity that we so badly need if we are to defeat job slashing by multi- national corporate giants like Rio Tinto, Ford and GM, all of which have operations in many countries. Instead, we should say: we are happy if our working class comrades overseas get new jobs but there should be absolutely no job cuts locally. Furthermore, when a firm sets up a new operation in any country, we will fight for those workers to get the same conditions as the best paid workers at any of the firm’s global operations. Yet, instead of such an approach, Laborite union leaders promote divisive slogans like “Stop Aussie Jobs Going Overseas!” Similarly, instead of uniting the struggle of local workers with 457-Visa workers in the fight to defend the conditions of all workers, the current line of most union leaders is to make the divisive call to “Keep Out Guest Workers.”

We can see how campaigns that pit local workers against their overseas counterparts play out when we look at the results of the July 2012 “Local Workers First” rally in Perth. The trigger for the rally were moves by greedy billionaire Gina Rinehart and the likes of Rio Tinto to bring in overseas labour for their projects. Yet, when this same Rio Tinto announced last November that it was axing 1,100 jobs – including those of many Aboriginal workers – at its Gove alumina refinery in the NT, union leaders failed to organise any serious opposition. They could mobilise nearly 10,000 people to march for the blatantly divisive demand that Australian workers’ jobs be put ahead of those of overseas workers yet when capitalists are actually slashing Australian workers’ jobs in a move that had nothing to do with bringing in overseas workers, the union officials concerned didn’t want to organise any resistance at all. By channelling local workers concerns about their jobs into opposition to overseas workers, pro-ALP bureaucrats have diverted workers from the struggle that is actually needed – the one against the job-slashing exploiters.

Furthermore, consider what the July 2012 Perth rally means for potential efforts to save jobs in the automotive sector. Among the guest workers being rebuffed by the “Local Workers First” campaign are Korean workers. Yet, workers in South Korea’s GM plants are key to any struggle to stop job losses at Holden, not only because South Korea is where GM’s profits could seriously be hurt by solidarity strikes with Holden workers but because currently South Korean workers are much more willing to take action against their bosses than Australian workers are. Last month, rail workers in South Korea courageously faced down violent police attacks in a weeks long anti-privatisation struggle that triggered massive solidarity rallies by other workers. Yet, how in hell are Korean workers going to be convinced to risk their jobs to support their Australian sisters and brothers at Holden when they see Australian workers marching to put Australian workers ahead of overseas workers?

The influence of Laborite nationalism is so insidious that even many left wing groups like Socialist Alternative (Socialist Alternative, 3 July 2012) and the Communist Party of Australia (The Guardian, 11 July 2012) hailed the July 2012 “Local Workers First” rally. To be sure, these groups sought to distance themselves from the most jingoistic aspects of the rally. Yet, no matter in how cleansed a form they present it, as the rally’s main banner slogan “WA Kids Miss Out When Miners Use Overseas Workers” made all too clear, this is a poisonous campaign that pits local workers against their overseas comrades. It is a complete violation of the main call of The Communist Manifesto, which all nominally Marxist groups claim to stand on, “Workers of All Countries Unite.” It is not that there are no healthy feelings of solidarity toward overseas workers amongst sections of the Australian working class. After all, on January 2, officials of the MUA, CFMEU and the Rail, Tram and Bus Union held a rally outside the South Korean Consulate in solidarity with Korean rail workers. Yet what is needed is not only a show of solidarity but Australian workers truly standing as one with their overseas comrades. As The Communist Manifesto stresses:

The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality…

That means just as at an individual workplace one group of workers should not ask the boss to favour them at the expense of other workers, workers in one country should not ask capitalists to favour them at the expense of their overseas comrades.

Trotskyist Platform works to contribute to the building of union leadership that will be based on The Communist Manifesto’s principles. We do, of course, understand that capitalists hire guest workers in order to drive down wages. Yet, we maintain that this should be entirely met by union demands for guest workers to be given the same wages as the best paid local workers, to be given citizenship rights and to be fully unionised and not at all by divisive demands to “keep out guest workers.” If you understand that the only way to protect jobs is by struggle against job-slashing bosses then you will do everything to build workers unity – without which struggles are doomed to failure. That is why our unions must also oppose racist scapegoating of Aboriginal people, refugees and “ethnic” communities which is used by the exploiting class to divert workers’ anger away from the true source of their problems – the corporate bigwigs. Kerry Stokes epitomises how the capitalists use such methods. Although Stokes likes to present himself as an enlightened person – all the better to promote his Asian business interests – the Channel 7 station that he owns churns out a stream of hostile stereotyping against the likes of refugees. How better for Kerry Stokes to divert workers at his WesTrac subsidiary from the fact that it is his greed that is the sole cause of the job cuts there!

The class struggle leadership of the unions that needs to be built must be linked to a revolutionary party that will organise the workers struggle in all political arenas. Such a party would draw around the class struggle all those downtrodden by capitalism – from Aboriginal people suffering terrible racism, to “ethnic” youth, to working class youth facing joblessness and to low-income women and single mothers facing hostile stigmatisation and enforced poverty. We badly need such a struggle against capitalism. For capitalism has proven that it cannot guarantee workers’ livelihoods and periodically falls into crises that bring untold suffering – like the Great Depression of the 1930s and the recent Great Recession that has ravaged the masses in Europe, America and the rest of the capitalist world. If workers here did not suffer the same unemployment level during this recent crisis it is only because the Australian economy was saved by surging exports to socialistic China’s booming state-owned steel and energy producers. Yet China’s ruling Communist Party is moving that country to focus more on services and high-end manufacturing – that is, to an economy that will need smaller increases in imports of Australian iron ore and liquefied gas. This means that when the inevitable, next capitalist crisis hits or if this one lingers for much longer, even socialistic China will not be able save the Australian economy. Unless we reject the capitalists’ “right” to sack workers whenever their profits demand it, as part of beginning to challenge their whole system, we will end up here with the catastrophic situation that our working class sisters and brothers in Greece and Spain face right now – where three out of every five young workers is unemployed.

Anti-Racism, Unions

LET’S MAKE WORKING CLASS UNITY STRONGER & STOP THE FAR RIGHT FROM DIVIDING OUR WORKING CLASS. SHUTDOWN THE RACIST RALLY!

Aside

LET’S MAKE WORKING CLASS UNITY STRONGER & STOP THE FAR RIGHT FROM DIVIDING OUR WORKING CLASS. SHUTDOWN THE RACIST RALLY!

The 2nd of May 2014 Brisbane anti-fascist action brought construction workers from the CFMEU, BLF and ETU unions together with anarchists, Trotskyist Platform, Socialist Alliance and other anti-racists. This action was important xenophobic propaganda from the bosses' media and fascists often tries to put a divide between workers especially those of different nationalities, religions, and races. In Australia countering divisive racism is the recipe for uniting the workers in the class struggle.
The 2nd of May 2014 Brisbane anti-fascist action brought construction workers from the CFMEU, BLF and ETU unions together with anarchists, Trotskyist Platform, Socialist Alliance and other anti-racists.
This action was important as xenophobic propaganda from the bosses’ media and far-right racists often tries to put a divide between workers especially those of different nationalities, religions, and races. In Australia countering divisive racism is the recipe for uniting the workers in the class struggle.

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On July 19, various far-right groups calling themselves “Reclaim Australia” will be holding a rally in the heart of Sydney. Their slogans will incite yet more attacks on Muslims. However, these groups which have been busy spreading hate against Aboriginal people, Asians and Africans, see this as but a tactic to whip up violence against all people of colour. Anti-racists and trade unionists are mobilising a counter demonstration to this white supremacist rally. The counter-demonstration is scheduled for 10am – half an hour before the start of the fascist provocation. We add our voice to the many others building the counter-action and urge proud working class people and all the intended targets of the racist thugs – Aboriginal people, Middle Eastern people, Asians, Africans, Muslims, Jews, gays and lesbians and other members of the LGBTI community, feminists and leftists – to join us. We say that what is needed is not simply to protest against the fascists but to shut their racist violence- manufacturing demonstration down. Contingents of trade union members must take the lead. Let’s be there at 10am on Sunday, July 19 at Martin Place between Pitt and Castlereagh Streets to sweep the racist filth off our streets. Let’s emulate the victory that was scored in Brisbane on May 2 last year when over a 100 construction workers (members of the CFMEU, ETU and other unions) were the vanguard of an anti-racist action that drove a neo-Nazi rally off the streets of Brisbane.

Continue reading LET’S MAKE WORKING CLASS UNITY STRONGER & STOP THE FAR RIGHT FROM DIVIDING OUR WORKING CLASS. SHUTDOWN THE RACIST RALLY! →

Anti-Racism, Unions

PROVOCATION BY VIOLENT RACISTS CRUSHED IN BRISBANE

The 2 May 2014 anti-fascist action brought construction workers from the CFMEU, BLF and ETU unions together with anarchists, Trotskyist Platform, Socialist Alliance and other anti-racists.
The 2 May 2014 anti-fascist action brought construction workers from the CFMEU, BLF and ETU unions together with anarchists, Trotskyist Platform, Socialist Alliance and other anti-racists.

PROVOCATION BY VIOLENT RACISTS CRUSHED IN BRISBANE

UNIONS UNITED WITH LEFTISTS & OTHER ANTI-RACISTS GOT THE JOB DONE!

This was a taste of the power of the organised working class. It was the workers movement at its best. On 2 May 2014 in Brisbane, over a hundred construction workers from the BLF, CFMEU and ETU trade unions formed the core of a demonstration of 200 anti-racists that successfully shut down an attempted march by the fascist Australia First Party (AFP).

The violent, white supremacist AFP had planned a march in support of its larger, Greek neo-Nazi counterpart, the Golden Dawn party. However, when they showed up for their provocation they found a multiracial group of construction workers and other anti-fascists facing them down. The Queensland police, of course, came to the defence of the extreme racists. However, the cops were not able to push around this anti-racist rally the way they often do. The contingents of trade unionists embodied strength in numbers, the inherent collective ability to act in tight unison and the threat of retaliatory industrial action if the police attacked them. As a result, despite a police line protecting the fascists, the anti-racist mobilisation was able to surround the neo-Nazis at various times.

Most construction workers appeared to be self organising, although there was at least one CFMEU organiser there. They were very well aware of what danger open Nazi organising in their own town meant for them as well as for everyone else. The construction workers, supported by other anti-fascists, made sure the Golden Dawn supporters could not march anywhere. When they managed to reach the city by car, to set up in front of the Greek consulate, the mass anti-Nazi action prevented them from doing this also. At this point, the Nazis were compelled to jump in taxis and hot-foot it out of there. Some of the fascists also ended up being taught a literally painful lesson by the construction workers. Brilliant – the workers united will never be defeated!

We congratulate all those that took part in this anti-fascist victory. Trotskyist Platform is proud to have joined the unionised construction workers anarchists, anti-racist students and other anti-fascists in participating in this action and to have actively built the mobilisation. In the days leading up to May 2, we mass distributed a leaflet in working class suburbs in Brisbane calling for trade unionists and other anti-racists to join the action.

What the union participation in the May 2 anti-fascist mobilisation was based on is the understanding that the violent racism of the likes of the AFP – incited by the “civilized” racism of the Abbott conservative government – is a threat to the unity of the working class, unity without which the workers movement cannot win strike struggles to defend their rights. In joining the May 2 anti-racist mobilisation, these trade unionists proved that they are at the forefront of the workers movement and are workers who really understand the often chanted slogan at union rallies: The Workers United Will Never Be Defeated! Unfortunately, there is also another, quite opposite, consciousness that is deeply prevalent in the workers movement – a nationalist consciousness promoted by the pro-ALP union tops that portrays overseas workers as rivals for jobs with Australian workers. This Laborite ideology see the union movement using divisive slogans such as “Stop exporting Aussie jobs overseas” and “Keep out overseas guest workers.” Such slogans go against the principles of unionism and workers unity as they pit local workers against their overseas sisters and brothers. It sees one group of workers – local workers – looking to cut a separate deal with the bosses at the expense of another group of workers – overseas workers. Not only is this divisive but it harms the struggle for workers’ rights. Politically savvy trade unionists know that even if the boss at a particular workplace is using the employment of one group of especially exploited workers (like young workers) to try and undercut working conditions, it is always destructive to workers’ rights for the remaining workers to demand that the business owner favour them at the expense of the others. This only allows the boss to divide workers and distract them from the boss’ sole responsibility for the workers’ grievances.

2 May 2014, Brisbane: Neo-Nazi filth (wearing a black shirt and leather jacket) cower in the face of the mass trade union centred mobilisation. The workers when truly united - and conscious of their collective class interests - can never be defeated.
2 May 2014, Brisbane: Neo-Nazi filth (wearing a black shirt and leather jacket) cower in the face of the mass trade union centred mobilisation. The workers when truly united – and conscious of their collective class interests – can never be defeated.

Instead, politically advanced trade unionists know that what is needed is for all workers to unite against the capitalist boss and to demand that the conditions of the most exploited workers be brought up to that of other workers. Only this will, ultimately, stop the corporate bigwigs from undercutting workers’ rights. This applies both at a national and international level. The union movement must unite local, 457 visa and international workers to stand up together against the capitalist exploiter both here and abroad while simultaneously demanding that the conditions of 457 Visa workers and the employees of Australian- owned corporations operating overseas be brought up to that of local workers.

May 2, Brisbane: Staunch trade unionists teach one of the violent fascists a lesson in workers’ power. The organised working class has the power and interest to decisively crush the fascists.
May 2, Brisbane: Staunch trade unionists teach one of the violent fascists a lesson in workers’ power. The organised working class has the power and interest to decisively crush the fascists.

The construction workers’ role in the May 2 victory pushes against the stream of divisive nationalism that the pro-ALP, current leaders of the working class pump into the workers movement. By enhancing workers’ unity across racial lines and by also giving workers greater confidence in their own power as a class, the May 2 anti-fascist action increases the workers movement’s ability to stand up to the myriad attacks it is facing today – from the anti-working class, anti-poor Abbott/Hockey budget to the developing ruling class offensive against the union movement. The fact that the capitalist rulers’ anti-union campaign is targeted in the first place against construction workers’ unions makes the May 2 anti-racist mobilisation all the more important.

The working class needs to build a new leadership that can clarify and spread the lessons of struggles such as the 2 May 2014 Brisbane mobilisation to the entire union movement. Such a workers’ party would   use   powerful   internationalist- minded struggles such as the May 2 action to help drive out the influence of divisive Laborite nationalism from the workers movement. This would, in turn, make the working class more politically prepared to mobilise against the fascist threat. As the 2 May 2014 events in Brisbane showed, it is the organised working class that must spearhead the fight against fascism and racism. The workers movement will be at the forefront of this fight because the interests of their class demands that it be so, because their power to shut down production gives them the ability to deter police attacks against anti-racist mobilisations and because their collective toil at common workplaces gives workers a unique ability to organise and to act in disciplined unanimity. Most crucially, it will be when the working class lead all of the poor and oppressed in sweeping away the rotting capitalist system that fascism and racism can be swept away from this planet for good.

Below is reprinted the leaflet that Trotskyist Platform distributed to help build the May 2 anti-fascist mobilisation in Brisbane. The leaflet was titled, “Crush the Violent Racists’ May 2 Mobilisation! Unions United with Aboriginal People, “Ethnic” Minorities & Leftists Can Do the Job! Drive Out the Fascists from Brisbane to Athens!”
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Vietnamese student Minh Duong was savagely bashed in Melbourne by three Neo-Nazi skinheads in June 2012. The racist scum kicked and punched him 70 times, stabbed him, smashed a brick over his head so hard that it broke in two and then left him for dead. Fascists cannot be debated but must be crushed by mass action.
Vietnamese student Minh Duong was savagely bashed in Melbourne by three Neo-Nazi skinheads in June 2012. The racist scum kicked and punched him 70 times, stabbed him, smashed a brick over his head so hard that it broke in two and then left him for dead. Fascists cannot be debated but must be crushed by mass action.

Some people may have believed that the Second World War definitively put an end to the evil of fascism. Yet on 2nd May in the heart of Brisbane, a neo-Nazi group, the Australia First Party, will hold a march in support of its larger Greek fascist counterpart, the Golden Dawn. The Australia First Party was among the extremist forces that incited the December 2005 white supremacist rampage at Cronulla Beach against Arab, Asian and other non-white people. Just three months ago, the Brisbane Australia First Party attacked the January 26 Invasion Day Aboriginal rights march. Members of their Golden Dawn fascist colleagues in Greece are notorious for murderous attacks on dark-skinned people, leftists and anti-racists including the January 2013 stabbing murder of Pakistani migrant Shehzad Luqman and the September 2013 murder of anti-racist rapper Pavlos Pyssas. That the fascists plan to openly parade on 2nd May is an immediate physical threat to Aboriginal people and to the Asian, African, Middle Eastern and Islander communities of Brisbane. It will embolden every violent racist out there to commit yet more attacks – like the Neo-Nazi skinheads who in June 2012 savagely bashed Vietnamese student Minh Duong on the streets of Melbourne and left him for dead. The 2nd May fascist mobilisation is also a direct threat to the multiracial working class of Brisbane. Like Hitler and Mussolini, if fascists took power again they would exterminate real trade unions and all independent working class and leftist organisations. Yet long before they get anywhere near government, the fascists’ racist violence is already threatening the workers’ movement. For their actions sow the division, distrust and fear that is so harmful to efforts to build workers’ unity – the unity that is so crucial for workers’ rights struggles to succeed. The union movement must draw around itself all the intended victims of the fascists in a mass action to stop the 2nd May neo-Nazi threat. Indeed, a counter-mobilisation to the fascist march has been called and already hundreds have committed to this urgent action. Anti-fascists will gather at 11am, outside the Greek Club at 29 Edmondstone Street, South Brisbane. We call on trade unionists, Aboriginal people, Asian, African, Middle Eastern and Islander communities, Muslims, Jews, gays and lesbians and all anti-racists to be there on 2nd May to stop the fascist parade and drive the violent racists off the streets.

What is needed on 2nd May is not simply a protest against the Australia First Party and Golden Dawn but an action so overwhelming and determined that it will physically stop the fascist parade in its tracks and decisively disperse the violent racists. Fascism must be stopped! Fascism cannot be defeated by arguments or by debates or by ideological struggle alone. Because fascism uses physical force to “win” its battles, it must be confronted and overcome by a physical force that is far greater than itself. This force is the organised working class. In fact, it is the working class that has the most to lose if ultra-racist ideas take hold. In the long run, the working class is unable to win any gains for itself while elements of racism persist. Yet racism and fascism can be quashed if workers are mobilised in a disciplined and united manner.

Racism in Australia is undoubtedly being fed by the major parties in government, especially via their inhumane actions towards refugees and asylum seekers. Capitalist governments are acutely aware of their need to divide workers during a protracted recession. Such extreme racism from capitalist governments, however, can only proceed in the absence of class struggle and, particularly, in the absence of struggle led by the Trade Unions. If the working class does not mobilise to challenge mass unemployment and social decay – and the faltering capitalist system that causes it – then masses of disillusioned unemployed and semi-employed people and struggling sections of the middle class can fall prey to fascist movements of the ilk of Golden Dawn in Greece today.

The grotesque anti-human actions taken by fascist groups such as Golden Dawn inevitably lead to some with genuine intentions to call for Golden Dawn and/or Australia First to be banned, to have them made illegal. We are certainly not going to get in the way of the mainstream capitalists reining in their fascists guard dogs for a while. However, we absolutely should not be making any appeals to mainstream capitalists to act against their fascist counterparts. For the masses mustn’t be lulled into a false sense of security and fall into the fatal illusion that the capitalists can be trusted to keep their vicious fascist killers caged.

In reality, they are just throwing them pieces of meat, making sure that they are ready to be truly unleashed when the need arises. If we in the workers and left movement are not ready for this and have failed to put down the fascist animals ourselves – instead, leaving these dogs’ leashes in the hands of the capitalists – then, ultimately, we may well get devoured! The Australian capitalist state is itself founded on racism. It is based on the continued dispossession of the Aboriginal people of this land and racist oppression of other communities as well, most specifically seen in the barbaric treatment of refugees and asylum seekers. The capitalist state in Greece certainly has jailed some Golden Dawn leaders – but Golden Dawn continues to flourish there virtually unchecked. In fact, there are many cases where Greek police have literally stood by while Golden Dawn have beaten and assaulted immigrants and anti-fascist activists. Indeed, it is claimed that up to 60% of the police in Greece politically support Golden Dawn!

Make no mistake about it, the Australian capitalist state is no less racist and no less anti-worker than the Greek capitalist state. Here, the Australian government is leading an unremitting drive against the Union movement, in the form of Royal Commissions and page after page of anti-Union legislation stripping away workers’ rights won through over a century of struggle. In Queensland workers and community groups have lost the right to association with any group being able to be declared “illegal” at the stroke of a pen. The capitalist state is not neutral, it will not stop the fascists and does, in fact, often enough aid them. For example, in January 2011, when anti-racists mobilised to protest against a racist mural in the Sydney suburb of Newtown, the police attacked and arrested eight anti-fascist activists. Moreover, it is the capitalist state itself which creates fascism via the corporate media and corporate politicians whipping up racist hysteria in order to distract workers from their real enemies such as the banks and mining magnates who cream obscene wealth from the labour of toiling people.

Brisbane, 2 May 2014: Trade unionists and anti-racists pursue the Australia First Party and Golden Dawn fascists.
Brisbane, 2 May 2014: Trade unionists and anti-racists pursue the Australia First Party and Golden Dawn fascists.

What we need to defeat the fascists is united front action. That means the broadest unity in action of the different tendencies in the workers movement and in the Left – all of whom are targets of the fascists – while at the same time each group completely maintains its own banner and program. Though we in Trotskyist   Platform have sharply differing political views to the anarchist who runs the Slackbastard blog and who has initiated the 2nd May counter- mobilisation to the fascist threat, we applaud the initiative he has taken and are thus actively building this action. Strong united front action can indeed stop the 2nd May fascist provocation.

If such a victory is the result of a union-centred action it will strengthen the unity of the working class, increase its confidence in its own power and encourage it to rely only on the methods of mass struggle rather than the dead end of parliament and the courts. In short, a victorious workers-centred mobilisation to crush the fascist parade on 2nd May will give a badly needed shot in the arm to the struggle to smash the capitalists’ escalating attacks on workers’ rights and their assault upon basic social services and the poor. Unite all the working class, poor, Aboriginal and “ethnic” forces in the struggle against fascism! Crush the fascists’ May 2 mobilisation!

 

Staunch, multiracial construction union workers gather at the anti-fascist counter rally in Brisbane on May 2. Sharing the conviction, expressed in a clear way in the Trotskyist Platform banner, that the organised working class in alliance with Aboriginal people, “ethnic” minorities and anti-racists of all colours could put the racist, neo-nazi threat to flight, groups of workers streamed in from all directions to join and, in effect, take command of the anti-fascist action. This points the way to the future and demonstrates how courageous workers can refuse to be bullied into inaction by the federal government's lousy current anti-union drive.
Staunch, multiracial construction union workers gather at the anti-fascist counter
rally in Brisbane on May 2. Sharing the conviction, expressed in a clear way in the Trotskyist Platform banner, that the organised working class in alliance with Aboriginal people, “ethnic” minorities and anti-racists of all colours could put the racist, neo-nazi threat to flight, groups of workers streamed in from all directions to join and, in effect, take command of the anti-fascist action. This points the way to the future and demonstrates how courageous workers can refuse to be bullied into inaction by the federal government’s lousy current anti-union drive.placardIMAG8255

 

Anti-Capitalism, Unions

Smash Abbott’s Budget

Photo Credit: AMWU Triumphant workers at the Ausreo site in western Sydney after learning that their struggle had forced the company to grant them a real wage increase. The workers, members of the AMWU manufacturing workers union, picketed the site for 10 weeks after the bullying bosses locked out the workers and refused to negotiate a pay rise. The workers defiant struggle won solidarity from many other trade unionists. Class struggle methods are the road to workers victory!
Photo Credit: AMWU
Triumphant workers at the Ausreo site in western Sydney after learning that their struggle had forced the company to grant them a real wage increase. The workers, members of the AMWU manufacturing workers union, picketed the site for 10 weeks after the bullying bosses locked out the workers and refused to negotiate a pay rise. The workers defiant struggle won solidarity from many other trade unionists. Class struggle methods are the road to workers victory!
Ausreo workers locked out. AMWU late Aug last day lockout. Photo Credit: AMWU
Ausreo workers locked out. AMWU late Aug last day lockout.
Photo Credit: AMWU
Melbourne, 1987: Members of the Builder Labourers Federation (BLF) protest against their persecution. The BLF trade union was deregistered the year before by the then Hawke Labor government with the assistance of the NSW Wran Labor government and the Victorian Cain Labor government. Governments sent in police to raid union offices and to surround major building sites in order to violently prevent BLF members from going into their jobs. The capitalists and their social democratic servants targeted the BLF because it dared to use militant industrial action to fight for workers’ rights and other progressive social justice causes. The ALP’s smashing of the BLF was criminal treachery against the ALP’s working class base.
Melbourne, 1987: Members of the Builder Labourers Federation (BLF) protest against their persecution. The BLF trade union was deregistered the year before by the then Hawke Labor government with the assistance of the NSW Wran Labor government and the Victorian Cain Labor government. Governments sent in police to raid union offices and to surround major building sites in order to violently prevent BLF members from going into their jobs. The capitalists and their social democratic servants targeted the BLF because it dared to use militant industrial action to fight for workers’ rights and other progressive social justice causes. The ALP’s smashing of the BLF was criminal treachery against the ALP’s working class base.

Rely on Class Struggle Not Campaigning for ALP/Greens Governments. Unleash Industrial Action Now to Reverse Three Decades of Attacks on Working Class People.

3 July 2014 – Over the last four months, tens of thousands of people have been marching in large rallies protesting against the right wing Abbott regime. The first budget of the Liberal-National government has rightly enraged working class people, students and leftists. In measures that will hurt the working class, retrenched workers and the poor the most, Treasurer Hockey’s budget has slashed funding for public hospitals and will make people pay a $7 fee for each doctor’s visit. The latter measure is likely to be the thin edge of a wedge aimed at slicing up any semblance of universal health care. Resources for Aboriginal services will be slashed, public funding for universities will be cut by 20% and graduates will have to pay their tuition fee debts back when their incomes are lower. People on the Disability Support Pension are to face nerve-wracking “re-assessments” of their eligibility for the pension. Most cruelly, unemployed people under the age of thirty are to be thrown off payments for six months a year. This will surely lead to even more homelessness, poverty and youth suicide.

Sensing public sentiment, opposition parties have come out against several budget measures. Even greedy tycoon Clive Palmer and his conservative party have stated their intention to vote against some measures. ALP leaders have tried to restore their battered credentials with their working class base by denouncing the unfairness of the budget to low and middle income people. But let us not forget that the previous government, for the most part a de facto Labor-Greens coalition, also made life harder for the poor. The former ALP/Greens government cruelly drove 84,000 low income single parents mainly single mothers – into extreme poverty when they threw them off the parenting payment onto the much lower Newstart Allowance. Furthermore, the last government undermined public housing. In 2010, then housing minister Tanya Plibersek a supposed “Left” who today is Labor’s main spokesperson at anti-Abbott rallies worked together with the then state ALP government to plan the sell-off of public housing from NSW’s biggest public housing estate at Claymore. Plibersek’s program, which saw a large number of public dwellings sold off, is now being carried through further by the present state Liberal government. Continue reading Smash Abbott’s Budget →

Anti-Capitalism, Anti-Imperialism, DPRK, Unions

An Eye Witness Account of Capitalist South Korea

An Eye Witness Account of Capitalist South Korea

Seoul’s subway at 7pm where 33 or more homeless people are resting. This situation in South Korea is in stark contrast to that in its northern socialistic neighbour where housing has been expropriated from the landlords and collectivised to provide free public housing.
Seoul’s subway at 7pm where 33 or more homeless people are resting. This situation in South Korea is in stark contrast to that in its northern socialistic neighbour where housing has been expropriated from the landlords and collectivised to provide free public housing.
An elderly working class man doing it tough in South Korea: it is common to witness many resorting to collecting recyclables for petty cash in a country where an aged pension is virtually non-existent.
An elderly working class man doing it tough in South Korea: it is common to witness many resorting to collecting recyclables for petty cash in a country where an aged pension is virtually non-existent.
South Korean Ssangyong workers armed with metal pipes during their 2009 industrial struggle with the car company. In South Korea workers have a strong history of resisting their exploiters and subsequently being brutalised by the capitalist state.
South Korean Ssangyong workers armed with metal pipes during their 2009 industrial struggle with the car company. In South Korea workers have a strong history of resisting their exploiters and subsequently being brutalised by the
capitalist state.

I met relatives for the first time at Incheon Airport, South Korea. As we travelled towards Seoul, I looked out the car window. Out there were signs of highly urbanised life: tall, twenty storey buildings clumped together in the distance and we hadn’t even reached Seoul, the capital city, just yet. I remember being eager to see every aspect of South Korea, especially the ‘development’ of an ‘Asian Tiger Economy’ under capitalism. In the following article I will share my experiences of and some of my discoveries about South Korea: conversations with the people, a rally for workers’ rights that I attended and my thoughts on the situation in general of socialists and left-wing activists in South Korea. Continue reading An Eye Witness Account of Capitalist South Korea →

Anti-Racism, Unions

Win Freedom for Refugees! Defend 457 Visa Workers’ Rights!

Racist Scapegoating of Refugees and 457 Visa Workers Is Aimed at Attacking Workers’ Rights

Trade Unions:

Win Freedom for Refugees!

Defend 457 Visa Workers’ Rights!

Perth, July 2012: A setback for workers’ unity and the struggle against racism. Demonstration called by union tops demands Australian workers be put ahead of 457 Visa workers. Although rally leaders stressed they were not against immigration, pitting Australian workers against their overseas counterparts can only fuel hostility to migrants and refugees as well. Yet many left groups, like Socialist Alternative, hailed this divisive July 2012 rally.

Perth, July 2012: A setback for workers’ unity and the struggle against racism. Demonstration called by union tops demands Australian workers be put ahead of 457 Visa workers. Although rally leaders stressed they were not against immigration, pitting Australian workers against their overseas counterparts can only fuel hostility to migrants and refugees as well. Yet many left groups, like Socialist Alternative, hailed this divisive July 2012 rally.
Asylum seekers in Nauru protest against their cruel detention.
Asylum seekers in Nauru protest against their cruel detention.
March 2012: Police attack and arrest protesters at the Nyoongar Aboriginal Tent Embassy in WA. As refugees, guest workers and non-white migrant communities are attacked by the racist establishment spewing hysterical claims that these immigrants are “flooding the country,” this same ruling class establishment conducts vicious racist oppression of this country’s first peoples. Unlike refugees and other migrants who come to this country merely to seek a better life, the British colonialists that established capitalist Australia came with the purpose of conquering the Aboriginal people and plundering their land. The Australian capitalist rulers’ continued racist assaults on Aboriginal people are, just like their attacks on refugees, aimed at scapegoating vulnerable communities for the poor social services and other hardships caused by their system and additionally at justifying their ongoing conquest of Aboriginal people’s land.
March 2012: Police attack and arrest protesters at the Nyoongar Aboriginal Tent Embassy in WA. As refugees, guest workers and non-white migrant communities are attacked by the racist establishment spewing hysterical claims that these immigrants are “flooding the country,” this same ruling class establishment conducts vicious racist oppression of this country’s first peoples. Unlike refugees and other migrants who come to this country merely to seek a better life, the British colonialists that established capitalist Australia came with the purpose of conquering the Aboriginal people and plundering their land. The Australian capitalist rulers’ continued racist assaults on Aboriginal people are, just like their attacks on refugees, aimed at scapegoating vulnerable communities for the poor social services and other hardships caused by their system and additionally at justifying their ongoing conquest of Aboriginal people’s land.
Trotskyist Platform banner at Sydney May Day 2013 rally opposes competition for jobs between local and 457 Visa workers and calls for local and 457 Visa workers to unite to take industrial action to force bosses to increase hiring.
Trotskyist Platform banner at Sydney May Day 2013 rally opposes competition for jobs between local and 457 Visa workers and calls for local and 457 Visa workers to unite to take industrial action to force bosses to increase hiring.

July 10: “Nauru Same as Guantanamo!” Referring to the notorious U.S. jail and torture site at Guantanamo Bay, that was the chant of asylum seekers locked up in Nauru during desperate protests earlier this year. Whether imprisoned in Nauru or in the malaria-infested Manus Island camp or on mainland hellholes like Villawood Detention Centre, asylum seekers fleeing to Australia are today being treated every bit as inhumanely by this ALP government as they were by the former Howard government … and then some! Continue reading Win Freedom for Refugees! Defend 457 Visa Workers’ Rights! →

Anti-Capitalism, Unions, Women

Unleash Militant Class Struggle. Fight for a Huge Increase in the Newstart Allowance and Smash the ALP Government’s Attack on Low-Income Single Mothers!

Don’t Let Our Fellow Workers Who Lose Their Jobs Become Destitute!
Unleash Militant Class Struggle

Fight for a Huge Increase in the Newstart Allowance and Smash the ALP Government’s Attackon Low-Income Single Mothers!

ALP’s Slashing of Payments to Poor Single Parents Proves Once Again that None of The Current Parliamentary Parties Should Be Supported at The Upcoming Elections

March 8, 2013: At the turn of the year, Australian billionaire James Packer and his family were enjoying first uses of their latest family toy:  a 52-metre super yacht costing over $50 million! However, for tens of thousands of low-income, single parents the reality could not be more different. They are now going to struggle, even more than before, to buy their children medicine let alone merely a $2 toy. The ALP federal government has thrown over 84,000 low-income single parents off the Parenting Payment and on to the much lower Newstart Allowance. If this isn’t bad enough, those single parents who have part-time jobs face even more savage cuts to their income as the Newstart Allowance is more ruthless than the Parenting Payment in cutting payments to those who do manage to find any part-time work. Continue reading Unleash Militant Class Struggle. Fight for a Huge Increase in the Newstart Allowance and Smash the ALP Government’s Attack on Low-Income Single Mothers! →

Anti-Capitalism, Unions

Crush the QLD Government’s Attacks On Public Sector Workers!

LET’S NOT GET DIVERTED INTO CAMPAIGNING FOR AN ALP/GREENS GOVERNMENT!

THE ONLY THING THAT CAN SAVE JOBS IS ALL OUT STRIKE ACTION!

An unlucky participant at the September 12 rally in Brisbane - one of thousands being laid off from the public sector in an austerity drive resembling those occurring across Europe.
An unlucky participant at the September 12 rally in Brisbane – one of thousands being laid off from the public sector in an austerity drive resembling those occurring across Europe.

Queensland is in shock. Far from being a death by a thousand cuts, the unprecedented slashing of the public sector in Queensland enacted by the recently elected Liberal National Party (LNP) government headed by Premier Campbell Newman almost amounts to instant decapitation. For a long time a job in the public service meant greater job security than in the private sector. This has been demolished as the Liberal National Party moves to make the public service operate along lines identical to the private sector ie “perform” or you are out. Legislation has been passed by the LNP which overrides job security provisions in collective agreements. Continue reading Crush the QLD Government’s Attacks On Public Sector Workers! →

Aboriginal Struggle, Anti-Racism, Unions

Oppose Police Terror against Aboriginal People, “Ethnic” Youth And All The Poor!

Horrific Racist Savagery: After shooting Aboriginal youth Troy Taylor in Sydney’s Kings Cross, police drag and bash the teenager as he bleeds to within an inch of death. -Sunday Telegraph

Oppose Police Terror against Aboriginal People, “Ethnic” Youth And All The Poor!

Don’t Allow Business as Usual – Build Mass Actions Backed by Trade Union Power!

May 11 – Enough is enough! How many more mothers and fathers must grieve over a child killed by Australian police? How many more close friends must agonise over a dear one whose life hangs in the balance because they were attacked by cops? Police are getting ever more vicious. They must be opposed! Recent events have made this all too clear.

On March 21, six Sydney cops viciously killed Brazilian student Roberto Laudisio. After having identified Roberto as having allegedly stolen, of all things, a packet of biscuits, the cops hounded him as if he was the target of a hunting expedition. They smashed him against a shop window, capsicum sprayed him and then, in what resembled an horrific game of cat and mouse, repeatedly tasered him to death. Continue reading Oppose Police Terror against Aboriginal People, “Ethnic” Youth And All The Poor! →