Tag Archives: gig workers

Anti-Capitalism, China, Unions

Support the Drivers
Standing Up to
the Bosses of
Couriers Please!

Above photo, 24 October 2023: Couriers Please drivers and supporters rally outside the company’s Western Sydney depot on the eve of the workers submitting a petition to the bosses demanding their rights. The workers are threatening industrial action if their demands are not met.

Brave Gig Workers Take a Stand

Support the Drivers Standing Up
to the Bosses of Couriers Please!

27 October 2023: Sydney drivers working for Couriers Please are taking a brave stand against their exploitation. Two days ago, nearly fifty drivers sent their bosses a petition demanding improved working conditions. Fed up that the company has been arrogantly dismissing their grievances, workers are now threatening industrial action. These drivers are amongst the increasing number of workers in Australia who are employed in gig-type arrangements in sectors like food delivery, taxi/ride-sharing, courier and cleaning. Although workers in these sectors toil away for bosses, they are often not classed as employees. Instead their bosses engage them as “contractors” or “franchisees”. This allows the corporate owners to avoid paying workers annual leave and sick pay while ensuring that those that work for them do not have even the modest protections available to employees. With no job security, business owners very often rip-off gig workers at an even more extreme rate than they exploit other workers.

Bosses play up to these “contractors” the – in truth very remote – possibility that they too could eventually build up enough financial resources to themselves hire and exploit other workers. This is in order to instill an individualistic outlook amongst workers. This helps the bosses separate workers from each other – a goal that is also facilitated by the bosses paying each “contractor” differently depending on output. The bosses’ goal is further advanced by the fact that in such “contractor” arrangements, workers are not even technically employees of the same firm. By dividing workers from each other, the capitalist bosses make it harder for workers to unite together to stand up for their rights. Thus it takes particular resolve for gig worker “contractors” or “franchisees” like the drivers at Couriers Please to indeed take a stand. They deserve and need the backing of all class conscious workers and all supporters of workers rights.

Intense Exploitation

Before even starting work, Couriers Please drivers have to “buy” a “franchise” from the company – that is the “right” to service an area for the company! Currently the company is advertising the sale of such “franchises” for $15,000 to $25,000. Yet while engaging their drivers as “franchisees”, the corporation imposes on them all the usual obligations of employees. Drivers have to wear the company’s uniform and brandish the company’s logo on their vehicles. Most tellingly, drivers are obliged to conduct deliveries for the company five days a week. If they do not, they are often effectively fined because they have to pay any amount that the replacement driver hired by the company delivers below a set amount. Yet while having all the obligations of employees, Couriers Please drivers have none of the protections available to employees and all the obligations of a franchisee. Thus drivers have to provide and service their own vehicle, pay for fuel use and pay for all the different insurances that they need. All this combined with the poor amount that Couriers Please pays drivers means that, after expenses, most of the drivers receive very low net hourly incomes. Meanwhile, the company imposes financial penalties on drivers if they fail to meet “On Time Performance” (OTP) delivery targets that are so unreasonable that two-thirds of drivers constantly struggle to meet them. A survey found that half the drivers were working more than 50 hours per week and beginning their shifts around 3 or 4am.

The pressure to meet delivery targets, low net pay, long hours and unnatural daily start times combine to cause high stress and a poor lifestyle for many drivers. Three years ago, a Courier’s Please driver died due to the extreme fatigue of his job. Since then life has become even harder for drivers. Fuel prices have surged, as has general inflation, thus greatly increasing drivers’ operating costs. In contrast, the company has increased its margins by lifting the price that it charges customers for delivery of non-standard-sized items – but the drivers’ payment has not been lifted.

Company Set to Slash Legally-Mandated “Safety Net”

There are some modest legal rights available to courier drivers formally employed as “contractors”. A NSW Industrial Relations Commission determination mandates a minimum “safety net” payment that a “contract” courier must receive over each two month period. It consists of the “safety net” hourly rate multiplied by the number of hours worked by the driver. If the driver receives less gross income than this “safety net” over a two month period, their boss must top up the drivers payment until the “safety net” is met. However, this “safety net” is so low that, even with it, one-third of Couriers Please drivers, after paying vehicle expenses, were receiving less net income than Australia’s minimum wage! When the “safety net” was finally raised in 2022 for the first time in 15 years (!), it gave just a 40% rise from the 2007 level to be phased in over three years. This is despite 2025 prices predicted to be nearly 60% higher than 2007 levels. In other words, the state has significantly cut the “safety net” in real terms since 2007.

Yet, the amount that Couriers Please pays drivers for deliveries is so low that more than half the drivers surveyed relied on the “safety net” to top up their incomes. Now, Couriers Please is suspending paying the “safety net” for the November-to-December period. They dishonestly claim that drivers don’t need it, because they will make in excess of it in a peak period. If this were actually true they would have no need to axe it! It is the company’s announced axing of the “safety net” that is the biggest cause of drivers’ moves to fight for their rights. Aside from demanding the restoration of the “safety net”, the drivers’ other key demand is for an increase in the payments that drivers receive for deliveries – accounting for the increased prices that Couriers Please are charging their customers for some deliveries. The drivers also demand an end to the punitive OTP system of financial penalties and demand an increase in their oil subsidy. They point out that Couriers Please has actually reduced this oil subsidy even as fuel prices have surged.

Above: Couriers Please notify drivers that they are suspending the top up payments (which they call a “subsidy program”) that they are required to make in order to comply with the legally-mandated safety net that they must pay drivers. They dishonestly claim that because “we will have a significant increase in volume” drivers don’t need it. If this were actually true they would have no need to suspend the payments!

Australian Chinese Workers Association Steps Up
to Help Courier Drivers Organise Their Resistance

The existence of a “safety net” for “contract” couriers is the result of the efforts of the Transport Workers Union (TWU). However, the TWU leadership has thus far failed to mobilise the union’s immense industrial muscle to win courier drivers truly decent conditions or to compel companies to employ drivers in secure, wage-paying jobs (as opposed to as “contractors” or “franchisees”). Moreover, at Couriers Please in Sydney in particular, TWU officials have thus far done little to stand by the drivers in recent years. As a result, several of the drivers taking a stand had earlier quit the union after having previously been members. Many of the other rebel drivers never joined the TWU upon hearing from their co-workers of its failure to stand up to the bosses. Recently, when the drivers standing up to the company – now unfortunately mostly non-union members – shared their intention to resist with the TWU delegate at Couriers Please, the latter sought to discourage any struggle by claiming that it would be futile and result in the rebels copping heavy financial penalties. Dismayed, the drivers turned to a community group, the Australian Chinese Workers Association (ACWA) for support. Although the company’s drivers are of various ethnicity, thus far the overwhelming majority of the drivers standing up to the company are immigrants from China. The ACWA is an organisation that links ethnic Chinese workers with the broader Australian workers movement. It also helps Chinese workers defend their legal and social rights against discrimination, while supporting broader progressive causes. Thus the ACWA is an ally of Australian unions and not a competitor. However, on this occasion, it was compelled to step into the void created by the TWU’s indifference to the Couriers Please drivers’ plight and carry out the work that the TWU ought to have been doing.

After receiving an appeal from the drivers, the ACWA carried out surveys of drivers to accurately determine their actual working conditions. They organised drivers to elect an Industrial Action Guidance Group to direct their struggle. The ACWA then helped drivers to assemble a petition of their demands to submit to Couriers Please management.

Protest Stands with the Drivers Fighting for Their Rights

After being contacted by the drivers, the ACWA in turn appealed to ourselves in Trotskyist Platform to organise support for the drivers to coincide with their petition submission and their threat of strike action. So, in the afternoon before the petition was submitted on Wednesday morning, a spirited demonstration was held at very short notice outside Couriers Please’s Western Sydney depot in solidarity with the drivers’ demands. Drivers’ representatives were joined by supporters of Trotskyist Platform, the ACWA and other supporters of workers rights. Chanting, “Support the Drivers, Fighting for Their Rights” and “The Workers United Will Never Be Defeated”, demonstrators carried banners and signs like, “Couriers Please Profits and Oil Prices Are Soaring. Raise Payments and Fuel Subsidies for Drivers!” Tuesday’s action met with overwhelming sympathy from drivers going in and out of the depot. Many either tooted their horns in approval of the rally or waved and gave a thumbs up to the protestors.

This drivers struggle has great significance. Since this is a rare case of gig workers being able to organise resistance to their own exploitation, a victory could inspire resistance from other workers hired on bogus “contractor” arrangements. Trotskyist Platform fights to not only improve the rights of gig workers but stands for the conversion of all gig jobs into secure jobs where workers will be engaged as employees rather than “contractors”. As signs carried by drivers at Tuesday’s rally indicated, it is the aspiration of many Couriers Please drivers themselves to have their jobs converted into secure, wage paying jobs. This is essential to reducing the level of exploitation of those currently engaged in the gig economy and to protecting these workers from the great insecurity of gig work. It is also crucial for another reason. By separating workers and promoting the self-centred, small business-person outlook, the hiring of workers as “contractors” undermines workers unity. It therefore undercuts the struggle to build working-class resistance to capitalist exploitation. The fight to convert gig “contract” jobs into secure, employee jobs is thus an essential part of today’s struggle to build a militant workers movement. The workers movement must demand laws forcing companies who hire any particular individual “contractor” for more than, say, fifteen gigs in a month, or more than fifty jobs in a year, to offer these “contractors” secure, wage-paying jobs as employees of the company.

Representatives of Couriers Please drivers are joined by supporters of Trotskyist Platform, the Australian Chinese Workers Association and other supporters of workers rights in a rally in support of drivers’ demands.

Turn Our Unions Into Organisations of
Militant Working-Class Resistance!

Tuesday’s rally boosted the morale of the rebelling workers, flung at the bosses a sample of the wider support that the workers struggle will inspire and popularised the struggle amongst other Couriers Please drivers. Another key purpose of Tuesday’s protest was to try and shame the leadership of the TWU into doing what they ought to be doing: standing resolutely with courier drivers against the attacks of the greedy corporate owners.

Although we understand why the drivers standing up to Couriers Please are not part of the TWU, we are nevertheless strongly encouraging them to join the union immediately. Being in the union gives them an opportunity to appeal for support from the union’s ranks – that is from other transport and courier sector workers. This will be especially crucial if the drivers go ahead with strike action. Union truck drivers and other workers are much more likely to respect a picket line of striking courier drivers if they know that the picketers have shown – by paying to join the union – that they are not only willing to stand up for their own rights but to stand in solidarity with other workers in the industry.

However, joining the TWU does not mean that the drivers should submit to the agenda of its pro-ALP, leadership. Drivers should maintain their elected Industrial Action Guidance Group and ensure that this body retains ultimate control over the struggle. Should they join the TWU, the rebel drivers should be ready to regularly send large delegations into the union office in order to pressure TWU officials to mobilise the union’s industrial muscle behind their struggle. To help with such efforts and to win solidarity action in support of their fight, the drivers will need to appeal to the ranks of the TWU (and other unions) that are employed in other companies – especially those working in the highly profitable FHM group of companies (including efm Logistics, BagTrans, Niche Logistics, GKR Transport and Spectrum Transport) that is owned by the same Singapore Post corporation that owns Couriers Please. Given that Couriers Please and FHM form the most lucrative part of Singapore Post’s operations, joint action by workers employed by these companies can put immense pressure on their bosses to accede to workers demands.

However, the pro-ALP union bureaucrats are highly adept at corralling union ranks away from militant struggle strategies. If the militant Couriers Please drivers join the TWU, as we hope, then in the face of the arguments that TWU officials would inevitably throw out to discourage intransigent industrial action, it will be a challenge for the militants to maintain the allegiance of the more wavering drivers who signed the petition, let alone win over broader union ranks. To prevail, the leaders of the struggle will need to be armed with both a very clear understanding of what is wrong with the program of our current union leaders and what is the alternative program that the union movement needs.

The main reason that our current union officials discourage militant industrial action is because they think that while particular practices and bosses need to be resisted, in the “big picture”, workers interests are best served by accepting the overall domination of society by rich capitalists and the regime that serves them. They either argue that this is actually desirable – in the case of more right-wing bureaucrats – or claim that the capitalists are too powerful to challenge. Thus the current union heads seek to limit union struggle to that which is compliant with the restrictive anti-strike laws and industrial courts of the capitalist state. Their main strategy is to elect Labor and then encourage these ALP governments to make as much pro-worker reform as possible without decisively upsetting the powerful capitalists – which isn’t much! Thus, when Labor is in office, like right now in both NSW and federally, union officials are especially reluctant to unleash industrial action. This entire “strategy” of collaboration with the capitalists has been a disastrous failure! Following it, the pro-ALP union tops have allowed business bosses, over the last four decades, to both greatly increase their exploitation of workers and drive a big chunk of the workforce into insecure gig jobs. Still, these officials delude themselves that their strategy is in their ranks’ best interests. This is in good part because by subordinating the workers to the capitalist order, the pro-ALP union tops gain a respected social position within elite circles as loyal-to-the-system “rebels”. Moreover, many union heads are careful to ensure that their actions remain within limits tolerable to the ruling class because they want to leave the door open to future lucrative careers as corporate executives or mainstream politicians (as in the case of long-time TWU secretary and now Labor federal senator Tony Sheldon). 

To ensure that the maximum force is mobilised behind their struggle, the leaders of the Couriers Please drivers struggle and their supporters will need to convince other drivers and sections of the broader working-class that everything significant that the working-class has ever won has been through resolute industrial action and other mass actions. That all bureaucratic organs in capitalist societies – from the police to the courts to the industrial relations commissions – are subordinate to the interests of the capitalist class. This is the case whether the regime is administered by conservative governments or social-democratic Labor Party-type ones. Therefore, contrary to the strategy of pro-ALP union tops, the working-class cannot expect to win significant gains through the benevolence of the capitalist state or its courts no matter which party is in office – the more so in this era of frequent capitalist economic crises. To those who say that workers must limit demands in order to ensure that companies remain highly profitable so that they will not layoff workers, we must say that we must instead fight to improve workers rights across industry so that companies with the worst working conditions cannot undercut other operations. We must explain that the way to fight for jobs is by forcing companies to maintain a greater number of workers than is most profitable for them. And to those who say that such an agenda, in the “big picture”, would cause economic collapse, we must reply that if the ultra-rich corporate bigwigs cannot run their companies in a way that ensures both decent working conditions and jobs for all without collapsing, this only proves the need to eventually rip the economy out of their hands. In short, the fight to mobilise the maximum force behind the Couriers Please drivers struggle must be accompanied by a struggle to promote a new agenda for our workers movement: one that insists that the working-class must not restrict its struggle to what is tolerable by the capitalists but must fight unyieldingly for what it actually needs, on the way to an ultimate “big picture” goal of the collective ownership of the economy by all the people under workers rule.

Immigrants from Mainland China
Energise Australia’s Workers Movement

The Couriers Please drivers struggle is not the first time that immigrants from mainland Peoples Republic of China (PRC) have been at the forefront of workers struggle. In February 2021, largely Chinese immigrant drivers working for British-owned food delivery company Hungry Panda unleashed Australia’s first ever strike by gig workers. Organised in the TWU, their weeks of stopworks and protests won them modest but important gains. In November 2012, 180 bus drivers who were “guest” workers from China waged Singapore’s first strike in 27 years! So why do migrant workers from China, even when on precarious employment arrangements, have a great propensity to struggle? The reason is that in 1949 China had a massive revolution that brought workers to power. To be sure, the complete victory of the working class over the capitalists is still far from complete in China, or even certain, and there remains capitalists of some influence there. Nevertheless, people growing up in the Chinese workers state are immersed with the sense that workers ought to be treated with respect. This is reinforced by the fact that, very opposite to capitalist Australia, PRC courts – and sometimes even police – are known to usually favour workers in disputes with private business owners. So when Chinese workers migrate abroad they bring that workers don’t have to put up with crap spirit with them.

A particular reason that Chinese immigrant gig workers are unwilling to cop extreme exploitation is that they may be aware of the measures that the PRC has taken to defend gig workers’ rights back in China. In July 2021, the PRC decreed new rules compelling food delivery companies to ensure that delivery workers receive at least the local minimum wage, provide their workers social insurance and considerably relax the times that workers have to make a delivery (the latter being equivalent to forcing Couriers Please to greatly weaken its hated OTP system). The measures had such an impact that they caused the rich owners of China’s biggest food delivery platform, Meituan to immediately lose $A56 billion in share value! However, unlike here, where opposition from wealthy corporate owners is able to weaken or postpone any mooted pro-worker measures that would harm their interests, the PRC state went ahead with the new measures and is extending them to other sectors. Therefore, the workers movement must force Australia’s regime to retreat from its role in the Western capitalists’ drive to destroy the PRC workers state and must instead compel it to implement PRC-style anti-poverty measures here – like decreeing guaranteed minimum wages and social insurance for all gig workers.

Above: One of the protests held in Sydney in early 2021 by delivery riders working for British-owned food delivery platform Hungry Panda. The mainly Chinese migrant workers conducted the first strike by gig workers in Australian history. After weeks of industrial action and protests, the delivery workers won some modest but important gains. They achieved the first ever victory by gig economy workers in Australia. Below: Chinese bus drivers outside their dormitories in Singapore during their November 2012 strike. These Chinese guest workers defied Singapore’s extremely harsh anti-strike laws to wage the country’s first ever strike against a locally-owned boss since the country’s 1965 independence! Five strike leaders ended up being jailed by the Singapore capitalist regime and 29 other strikers were sacked and deported back to China. The struggle did, however, force the bosses to make a few improvements to the housing conditions of the bus drivers. In a country with an extremely repressive capitalist regime, the daring strike by the Chinese workers had the political effect of an earthquake.
Imbued with the healthy sense of entitlement that comes from having been raised in a workers state, Chinese migrant workers in Australia and abroad are energising workers movements.

Some courier drivers are non-citizens. They would be able to struggle even more resolutely if they were not shackled by the restriction of rights that non-citizens face. Moreover, anti-Chinese and other racism intimidates migrant workers and can make them reluctant to stick their heads up. Just four days ago, a Sydney University Chinese student was bashed by an unknown white man screaming racist insults. To unleash the full fighting energy of migrant workers, our workers movement must take action to oppose racist attacks and to demand the rights of citizenship for all migrants.

An Important Struggle to Win

There are literally millions of workers in this country who are hired on a gig basis, on sham “contracts” or on other forms of casual and insecure employment. These intensely exploited workers could be inspired to fight for their rights if they see the Couriers Please drivers struggle succeeding. Therefore, if these courier drivers end up going ahead with industrial action, it is crucial that those who joined Tuesday’s rally – and the many more who could not attend the snap rally but gave it moral support – go into overdrive to build support for the action. Let us build mass picket lines outside the company’s depots to help enforce any strike! Most crucially, we must fight to build secondary solidarity strikes amongst the less vulnerable sections of the working class. This is possible to do. For since the especially severe exploitation of gig workers is used to drive down the wages and conditions of all workers, it is in the interests of the entire working-class to actively support the struggle to improve the rights of gig workers. Let’s make the Couriers Please drivers’ struggle a springboard to launch a broad struggle to convert all gig jobs into secure, wage-paying jobs!

Anti-Capitalism, China, Public Housing

Rally Opposes Privatisation and Exploitation, Demands that
China-Style, Anti-Poverty Measures Be Applied in Australia

Photo Above: Sydney, 2 April 2022 – Demonstrators march to demand that the measures China is using to beat poverty be applied here.
Photo Credit: Demi Huang/New Impressions Media

Rally Opposes Privatisation and
Exploitation in Australia,
Demands that the Measures
China is using to Beat Poverty
Be Applied Here

5 April 2022: Last Saturday, supporters of workers rights from a broad range of racial backgrounds came together in spirited protest against privatisation and the growing exploitation of working class people in Australia. To inspire the struggle to win anti-poverty measures here in Australia, the Sydney rally highlighted the anti-capitalist and other pro-worker measures being taken right now in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). At its height, the April 2 protest was some 70 strong, although one of the community media sites reporting on the protest puts its size at “nearly one hundred.”

The united-front protest began with the rally emcee, Yuri Gromov, who is also the editor of Trotskyist Platform’s journal, The Spark, introducing the purpose of the action:

“While the business owners who make their money from exploiting workers’ labour are getting richer and richer, the poor are getting poorer. Prices are soaring but workers’ wages have barely risen. The living standards of low paid workers has been falling.

“Bosses are driving more and more workers into casual and gig jobs with no job security. A huge number of workers do not know how many hours of work they will get from week to week. Having so little job security, it’s easy for capitalist bosses to force us into accepting terrible working conditions. In the food delivery sector, many drivers and riders are doing deliveries all day and not even making the minimum wage.

“Australian governments of all stripes are carrying out policies that are making life harder for working class people. They have been selling off public housing like crazy. Much of the public sector has now been privatised and this always leads to job losses, attacks on workers’ conditions and higher prices for consumers. Federally, the Morrison government is now set on privatising the NBN. Here in NSW the state government continues its surreptitious, gradual privatisation of bus and rail services.

“We are here today to push back against all this. We demand a guaranteed minimum wage for all food delivery and other gig workers. We demand that the sell-off of public housing stop now and that instead there be a massive increase in public housing. We demand an end to all privatisation. Instead of privatisation we call for the nationalisation of the banks. That is the way to ensure that credit is allocated to areas of public need like poverty alleviation projects rather than a crazy huge amount of money being siphoned off as bank loans to housing speculators, a truly horrendous waste of funds which is only pushing house prices up and up and making life harder for working class families struggling to keep up their rent and mortgage payments alike.

“…Today, we want to highlight something positive that can inspire our fight against poverty and exploitation. There is one particular country that has been heading in the opposite direction to the agenda of privatisation and neo-liberal attacks on workers rights that has been happening throughout the capitalist world. And this country headed in the opposite direction is not just any country. It is in fact the most populous country in the world with a fifth of the earth’s people: the Peoples Republic of China.

“Last year the PRC not only decreed that food delivery platform companies must ensure that all food delivery drivers and riders always get at least the minimum wage but started expanding those protections to all gig workers. At the same time, China has been on an intense campaign to provide public housing to her low and lower-middle income population. Moreover, rather than carrying out large-scale privatisations, all of China’s banks and most of her other key sectors remain under public ownership.

“Therefore, socialistic China’s path can be an inspiration to the struggle for working class people’s rights in Australia. That is why Australia’s capitalist regime and pro-capitalist media are doing everything they possibly can to denigrate the PRC. They don’t want the masses here to be inspired to resist privatisation and exploitation. We need to condemn these lying propaganda attacks against China as part of standing up for working class people’s rights in Australia….”

Rally participants listen to an address to the demonstration by rally emcee, Yuri Gromov.
Photo credit (above photo): Demi Huang/New Impressions Media
Photo credit (below photo): Sydney Today APP

Last Saturday’s demonstration was jointly initiated by the Australian Chinese Workers Association and ourselves in Trotskyist Platform. It was additionally endorsed by the Communist Party of Australia’s Wollongong Branch and by the group, Communists West Sydney. Representatives of all the endorsing groups as well as other individuals addressed the united front rally. Chairwoman of Trotskyist Platform, Sarah Fitzenmeyer stressed in her speech the need for a class struggle strategy for defending working class people’s rights. She also emphasised that the fight against capitalist exploitation in Australia requires solidarity with socialistic rule in China:

“The fact is that during the last few decades, Australia’s capitalist business owners have increased the rate at which they exploit workers’ labour….

“Today, while Morrison’s Liberals have made it clear that they want to sell off the NBN, the only response from the ALP is to say that they oppose an immediate privatisation while leaving the door open to a sell-off in the future. The only way we can push back against privatisation and the ever growing exploitation is through mass struggle and workers’ industrial action. This is how the working masses have always won whatever rights we still have left now. The more that working class people understand that nothing can or will be gained through supporting any of the parliamentary parties at the upcoming election, the more determined we the working class people will be to build the mass actions that are needed.

“… In February last year, guest workers from China spearheaded the first ever strike by gig workers in Australia when they and other food delivery riders took action against British-owned company Hungry Panda and WON! However, we must be very wary that such struggles are not undermined and workers don’t buy into the national security obsession being promoted by the Australian ruling class. This national security propaganda deceptively claims that workers and the capitalists who exploit them have a common national interest. Now, in the name of national security, Australia’s capitalist regime has joined the U.S. in aggressively interfering into the Ukraine-Russia War with sanctions and arms grants. The regime here has also used the war to further ramp up their Cold War drive against China.

“Trotskyist Platform says that when Australia’s capitalist ruling class push `national security’ they only mean the `security’ of their profits and their system of exploitation. However, the current leaders of the workers movement, the Labor Party, joins the Liberals in fully supporting the ruling class’ so-called `national security’ agenda. In doing so they are obscuring the need for workers to resist the local, all Australian, capitalist exploiters who are undermining the security of our living standards in the capitalists’ drive for ever greater profits.

“We need a new agenda to guide our workers movement. An agenda driven by us, the workers, fighting for what we actually need….

“Whenever such a pro-working class agenda is promoted, the ruling elite screams that such violations of free-market principles are `impractical’. But this is a lie because many of the things we are calling for here today are actually being quite successfully implemented right now in the Peoples Republic of China.

“The reason that China is able to carry out such policies is that it is the working class who hold the power there. The toiling classes grabbed power through a massive revolution in 1949….

“China’s success makes Australia’s capitalist regime very fearful. They are petrified that the masses here will look at the great gains of the working masses in China and decide that they too need to fight for socialism here. That is why the rulers of Australia and other powerful capitalist countries are intent on crushing socialistic rule in China. We must NOT allow the imperialist powers to succeed!

“…it is in the interests of at least 90% of Australia’s population to uncompromisingly defend socialistic rule in China. We must oppose the U.S. and Australian military build up aimed against socialistic China. Just as importantly, we must rebuff the lying Western propaganda attacks on the PRC over Uyghurs, Tibet and Hong Kong!

“It is true that China’s victory over capitalism is incomplete. China’s anti-capitalist crackdown does need to go much further. The PRC’s march towards `common prosperity’ – if it is to truly succeed – requires that the tech, real estate and light manufacturing sectors be confiscated from China’s tycoons and brought into public ownership as well. And this is why we need more solidarity actions with socialistic rule in China right here and all across the world. Solidarity from comrades abroad will give confidence to staunch socialists within China to defy the hostile pressure coming from the capitalist world.  Solidarity with the PRC will help to drive them towards complete socialism.

“If socialistic rule in China continues to strengthen, it will embolden the struggle against capitalist exploitation in this country. Right now, let’s use the fact that the world’s most populous country is successfully operating a system based on public ownership to inspire our own fightback against privatisation and exploitation in Australia. Let’s start working towards common prosperity here in Australia by advancing the struggle for working class rule.”

Trotskyist Platform chairwoman, Sarah Fitzenmeyer speaks at the April 2 demonstration.
Photo credit: Demi Huang/New Impressions Media

Speaking to the media during the rally, Jenny Zeng, general secretary of the Australian Chinese Workers Association (ACWA) called for improvements in people’s livelihoods in Australia that will “allow everyone to have jobs and food, without having to worry about life.” The ACWA is a group that organises Australian-Chinese workers to defend their workplace conditions and assert their rights to access social services. As part of their contribution to the April 2 action, the ACWA’s art troupe put on a captivating cultural performance. This included a drum performance in the classical style of North China, a classical dance routine paying tribute to China’s long history and a classical dance performance in the style of China’s Tibetan Autonomous Region signifying blue sky and a happy life.

Top and Above: Signs carried by the Australian Chinese Workers Association (ACWA) at the April 2 action.
Below: The ACWA’s art troupe gave a wonderful cultural performance as part of their contribution to the protest rally.
Photo credit (top photo): Trotskyist Platform
Photo credit (above photo): Demi Huang/New Impressions Media
Photo credit (below photo): Demi Huang/New Impressions Media

Also addressing last Saturday’s demonstration was long-time community activist Peter Butler. He powerfully motivated the need for public housing and for other measures that put the needs of the masses first. Peter Butler also attacked the Australian media’s portrayal of the troubles of large Chinese real estate developer, Evergrande. He pointed out that the media wanted to portray Evergrande’s crisis as a sign of China’s supposed impending doom but had hidden the most important aspect of the events surrounding Evergrande: wealth and power were being transferred out of the hands of Evergrande’s greedy billionaire owner and into the hands of the public. In this he was referring to the fact that not only were Evergrande’s troubles the result of the PRC’s moves to curb housing speculation in order to make housing more affordable for the masses and not only had Chinese authorities forced Evergrande’s owner Hui Ka Yan to sell some of his personal assets – including two private jets, several mansions, expensive art works and shares –  to ensure that Evergrande’s workers keep on getting paid but they have pushed Evergrande to sell off to PRC public sector enterprises at low price a number of property assets, while the PRC state has also confiscated parcels of land and other assets owned by Evergrande. Indeed, as in the recent cases of financial conglomerate Tomorrow Holdings, former insurance behemoth Anbang and the real estate and airport operations of the now defunct, giant conglomerate HNA Group, the PRC state has handled the collapse of large private sector corporations in China in such a way that it leads to the transfer of assets from the hands of tycoons into the collective hands of all the people.

For his part, Zac, representing the Wollongong Branch of the Communist Party of Australia, concluded his speech by stressing that unlike what the mainstream media say, China is no military threat whatsoever to the people of Australia. Rather China is winning out in economic competition with capitalism through its own system. Zac emphasised that it is this system of China’s, a system of socialism, which is what Australia’s capitalist rulers really fear.

After several speeches and the cultural performance, the rally marched southwards through city streets from its starting point in Sydney’s Chinatown. Marchers energetically chanted: “More public housing”, “Public housing for you and me – Just like in the PRC”, “Hey ho, hey ho, privatisation has got to go”, “Stop privatisation – Nationalise the Banks” and “P-R-C, Is fighting poverty!”

Some of the Trotskyist Platform placards at the April 2 united-front demonstration against privatisation and exploitation of workers in Australia.
Photo credit: Trotskyist Platform

The final part of the action was a picket outside the offices of the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) to protest anti-PRC bias in the Australian media. About one-third of the participants from the main part of the rally joined this brief protest picket. As demonstrators approach the ABC’s premises they chanted, “A-B-C: Always Bashing China!” As rally emcee, Yuri Gromov explained:

“… because the PRC’s socialistic system favours working class people, the capitalist ruling classes in the likes of the U.S.A, Australia and India see the mere existence of such a system as a threat. Hence the media owned or controlled by capitalist tycoons have been waging non-stop propaganda attacks against China. The ABC – which let’s be honest forms the propaganda department of the Australian capitalist state – is one of the worst but will be even worse, if you can imagine it, if it ever becomes privatised itself. In attacking the PRC, the ABC and other media outlets are necessarily denigrating China’s anti-capitalist and pro-working class measures. The media are therefore undermining support for the type of measures needed in Australia to alleviate poverty and combat exploitation of workers.”

Demonstrators picket the ABC to protest the mainstream media’s extreme anti-PRC bias
Photo credit: Trotskyist Platform

The April 2 demonstration was intensively covered by two of the most popular Chinese language media sites in Australia: New Impressions Media (which runs the website Australian Impression and the Sydney Impression WeChat site) and Sydney Today. On the latter site, there was a hot debate amongst readers with 42 readers comments: most sympathetic to the demonstration but a few hostile as well.

Saturday’s action concluded with the rally emcee thanking participants for braving not only the pandemic but the hysterical China-bashing political climate. However as the rally chair pointed out: “with poverty, homelessness and exploitation in Australia ever increasing and with new rounds of privatisation looming we all have a massive amount of work to do.” In carrying out this work to build class struggle resistance against exploitation and privatisation in Australia we are inspired by the anti-capitalist and pro-working class measures being implemented in the world’s most populous country.

The main rally banner summarised the agenda of the April 2 demonstration.
Photo credit: Demi Huang/New Impressions Media
Anti-Capitalism, China, Social Democracy, Unions

LET’S WIN A MINIMUM WAGE AND PERMANENCY FOR ALL GIG WORKERS

Drawing Inspiration from the Hungry Panda Struggle
Led by Migrant Workers from Socialistic China:

LET’S WIN A MINIMUM WAGE AND
PERMANENCY FOR ALL GIG WORKERS

28 April 2021: On February 2, a group of delivery drivers took a brave step. They waged the first strike in Australia’s history by gig workers. The workers opposed cuts to their pay rates by the company that they toil for, British-based Hungry Panda. Hungry Panda, while having no operations in China itself, specialises in providing food delivery to expatriate Chinese communities. It is largely owned by Western investment firms like Swedish corporation Kinnevik and Britain’s Felix Capital. Hungry Panda responded to the daring strike by removing two strike leaders, Jun Yang and Xiangqian Li, from the platform dispensing gigs to drivers. But the workers stood firm. They organised with the Transport Workers Union (TWU) and held rallies and stopworks. And six weeks later, they made history again. They achieved the first ever victory by gig economy workers in Australia. The two sacked workers won their jobs back and Hungry Panda reversed the pay cuts, increased pay in certain areas and agreed to provide accident insurance to drivers.

In terms of improvement in conditions, the victory is modest. Like other gig workers, Hungry Panda workers continue to be terribly exploited. Many have to work long hours to make ends meet. For delivery riders, the resulting exhaustion can literally kill them. Last year, five such riders were killed on the job in Australia. However, the victory at Hungry Panda has enormous significance. It shows that even gig workers – who by definition have no job security because their income depends not on set hours but on being granted individual gigs by their bosses – can win gains through collective action. Let’s seize on this trailblazing struggle to organise other gig workers into our unions and fight for a drastic improvement in their pay and conditions. Let’s not only wage struggles against individual business owners but combine that with a fight for laws to improve the conditions of all gig and casual workers. To do this we need to bring the power of stronger sections of the union movement behind the fight for the rights of these most vulnerable workers. Let’s demand:

  • The granting of a decent, guaranteed minimum weekly wage to all currently gig and casual workers even if they are granted less hours in any week than that which would enable them to currently receive such wages.
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  • The immediate granting of permanency to all gig and casual workers – including the granting of all the rights of permanency like sick pay, annual leave and accident insurance.

MIGRANT WORKERS FROM THE CHINESE WORKERS STATE SPEARHEAD STRUGGLE

The backbone of the Hungry Panda struggle was made up of drivers from the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) who had come here as visa workers or students. This includes the two strike leaders who were initially sacked. This is not the first time that migrant workers from the PRC have energised the workers movement in the countries that they have worked in. In November 2012, 180 bus drivers from China waged Singapore’s first strike in 27 years! Their strike not only flouted Singapore’s harsh anti- strike laws but was done in defiance of Singapore’s union leaders who treacherously condemned the strike. Five of the Chinese strike leaders ended up being jailed by the Singapore regime and 29 other strikers were deported. The struggle did, however, win some improvements to the housing conditions of the drivers. In repressive, capitalist Singapore, the daring strike by the Chinese guest workers had the effect of a political earthquake.

So why do migrant workers from China, even when toiling under precarious employment arrangements, often have a great propensity to wage struggles? The reason is that in 1949, China had a massive revolution that brought workers to power. To be sure, the workers state created by that revolution is bureaucratically deformed and is today being white anted from within by a capitalist class that China’s compromising leaders allowed to emerge over the last four decades. However, unlike in Australia, India or the U.S., where it is the tycoons that governments answer to, in China billionaires are often cut down to size. Indeed, China’s tycoons are terrified when rich lists are released because that can result in a popular upsurge against them on social media that can culminate in the PRC state imprisoning them. Just two weeks ago, the PRC forced one of the two main companies controlled by China’s most well-known capitalist, Jack Ma, to restructure in a way that will cripple its profitability. Indeed, ever since the PRC squashed a lucrative share sale of that company last November, the normally high-profile Ma, fearing arrest, has gone into seclusion. Could you imagine that happening to Gina Rinehart or one of the Murdoch dynasty here! As a result of these anti-capitalist crackdowns in China, while wages are lower, in keeping with the country still pulling herself out of her pre- revolution poverty, working conditions are better than in Australia. This is especially true in the PRC’s socialistic public sector that dominates the key parts of her economy. As a huge sprawling country, there are some private companies, especially those owned by Western or Taiwanese capitalists, which can quietly get away with abusing workers rights. However, ever since the PRC instituted a pro-worker law in 2008, workers rights have considerably improved. Article 4 of that law gives unions effective veto power over any modification to wages or conditions at a workplace. More significantly, when Chinese workers strike, PRC authorities often – though not always – support the workers not only in their court rulings but by tacitly allowing workers to picket and, sometimes, even take the bosses hostage with impunity. The result of all this is that Chinese workers have a sense of entitlement – a sense that comes from being a member of China’s ruling class. So, when they go as temporary workers abroad, they bring that workers don’t have to put up with crap spirit with them. The Australian workers movement, which has been on the back foot for decades, sure does need this kind of “communist Chinese interference”! Moreover, as the contribution by Chinese workers at Hungry Panda has shown, the existence of a workers state in China is good for the workers movement here. On the other hand, if the capitalist powers succeed in their campaign to destroy the PRC workers state and, thus, turn China into a massive sweatshop for capitalist exploitation this would drive down the conditions of workers the world over. Thus, we must stand with socialistic China against the capitalist powers’ Cold War drive. Rebuff the lying, anti-communist propaganda campaign over Xinjiang, Hong Kong and the pandemic! Oppose the U.S. and Australian capitalist regimes’ military build up against socialistic China!

DEMAND THE RIGHTS OF CITIZENSHIP FOR ALL WORKERS RESIDING HERE

As well as being from China, Hungry Panda workers are often also temporary residents from South Asian countries. Their powerful struggle has blown to pieces the nationalist notion that visa workers are simply people who “take Australian jobs” rather than a valued part of a potentially fighting workers movement. Nevertheless, that guest workers and international students can be deported so easily and have no access to social security is a huge deterrent to these workers engaging in struggle. Even as pro- ALP union leaders and their ALP parliamentary mates have been quick to use the Hungry Panda workers victory to strengthen their own reputations with workers, much of the pro-ALP union leadership isolates visa workers still further by calling to “keep out guest workers”. Fortunately, a small number of unions are now rejecting this divisive approach that weakens the ability of workers to unite and fight. We say that the workers movement must fight for the granting of all the rights of citizenship to every worker, refugee and student who is here. Let’s unleash the full fighting potential of migrant workers seen so powerfully in the Hungry Panda struggle.

There is something else holding back struggle by migrant workers and that is the incessant racism that they are copping. Such attacks intimidate these workers and make them feel that they don’t belong here and, thus, would be demonised further should they rock the boat. The entire workers movement must come to their defence. We cannot stop individual attacks as they take place at random and are committed by a large number of disparate racists. However, when organised white supremacist groups hold a public provocation, the workers movement should unite with Aboriginal people, all people of colour and all anti-racists to sweep the racist scum off our streets. By dealing severe blows to the most organised racists we can scare the more numerous, garden-variety rednecks into pulling their heads in. Right now, people of Asian background are especially being hit with racist attacks which are getting worse by the day. To stop this we need to oppose the main factor currently encouraging anti-Asian hate attacks – the Cold War drive against socialistic China. Yet, the current ALP leadership of the workers movement is at one with the right-wing Morrison government in its Cold War – and increasing push towards hot war – drive against socialistic China. The ALP does so for the same reason that they promote divisive slogans against guest workers. The ALP accepts the overall domination of the capitalist class and is only seeking to improve workers position within that framework. That necessarily means that instead of fighting to strongly challenge capitalist interests they are left with trying to improve the position of local workers at the expense of their migrant and international worker counterparts. We need to decisively turn the workers movement away from this divisive and failed “strategy.” We need a workers movement that understands that we cannot defend workers interests if we try to gain the acceptance of the big end of town – a movement that understands that workers interests only come by uniting workers of all races and nationalities in militant struggle against their common enemy, the capitalist exploiters.

LET’S USE THE INSPIRATIONAL STRUGGLE BY HUNGRY PANDA WORKERS TO
BUILD A WORKING CLASS FIGHTBACK

The struggle by Hungry Panda workers is not only crucial for gig and casual workers. By showing that even the most vulnerable workers can win through collective action, they provide inspiration to all sections of the union movement. And right now our workers movement sure is in need of inspiration! The bosses have used the pandemic to attack working conditions, retrench workers and make those still working toil yet harder for the same pay. Let’s unleash powerful industrial action to smash attacks on workers’ wages and conditions! Fight for a minimum weekly wage and permanency for all currently gig and casual workers! Win secure jobs for all by forcing capitalists to increase hiring at the expense of their profits! Build the unity we need to wage a class struggle fightback – smash racist attacks and demand the rights of citizenship for everyone who is here! Defend the PRC workers state that gave the Hungry Panda guest workers their “sense of entitlement” that enabled Australia’s first ever successful industrial struggle by gig workers!