Posted by Bill, July 4th, 2009 - under ABCC, ALP, Australian Building and Construction Commission, Australian Labor Party, Australian politics, Building industry, Building unions, CFMEU, Class struggle, Industrial action, Safety at work, Strikes.
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John went to a CFMEU activist meeting on Thursday in Canberra. There were about 120 people there, including members of other unions and ALP members.
Speakers included the CFMEU SA state secretary Martin O’Malley, the national secretary Dave Noonan, the local secretary Sarah Schoonwater and academics Humphrey McQueen, John Buchanan and George Williams.
There was a good video (available on rightsonsite) about the criminal proceedings against Ark Tribe, a CFMEU member in South Australia. Here is what rightsonsite says about Ark’s case:
Ark Tribe is a construction worker from South Australia facing six months in jail. He has been charged with not attending an interview with the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC).
Ark was working on the Flinders University site in Adelaide. Conditions were so bad that workers drew up a petition calling for safety improvements, on a handtowel. It took an intervention by the union and the state government safety regulator to get the most pressing problems fixed and finally, after several days, things began to get back on track.
One by one workers from the site were called before the ABCC. The penalties for those who don’t cooperate with ABCC investigations are frightening – fines of up to $22,000 for things like stopping work to make sure workers are safe and jail for up to 6 months if you don’t answer their questions.
Even the police don’t have the powers the ABCC have. In Ark’s words, “If I’ve done something wrong, I’m prepared to cop it, but I won’t be treated unfairly.” We need to get the Rudd Labor Government to get rid of these laws, before another construction worker faces jail.
Most of the talk was about outreach to the community, telling them what was really happening and how draconian the ABCC laws were.
Dave Noonan, the national secretary, spoke about industrial action if Ark Tribe is jailed.
John spoke towards the end of the meeting about an injury to one being an injury to all and that that was why he was there.
John stressed that these were Labor’s laws, that lobbying MPs and passing motions at the ALP national conference wasn’t going to change a thing and that cutting off profit to the bosses was the way to force them and the Government to back down.
Others had mentioned Clarrie O’Shea’s jailing in 1969 and the strikes across Australia that saw him released and made the penal powers a dead letter. But the conclusion they drew was that those were different times and so strikes weren’t possible.
John rejected this, saying in fact that workers’ anger coupled with leadership saw the penal powers defeated and the same anger existed today about Labor’s laws, designed specifically to smash one of the main unions prepared to stand up for its members.
There was an undercurrent among the workers there of wanting an answer about what to do, and John seemed to have filled the gap, at least rhetorically.
Unions ACT leader Kim Sattler talked about not rushing off and being picked off by the ABCC but being disciplined and united. This is code for ‘don’t take industrial action and follow the orders of your leaders’.
While the support John got might have been satisfying personally, it showed that there was no organised oppositional group or even anyone thinking along those organised lines within the union.
Unless such a group develops to challenge the ‘lobbying not strikes’ approach of the leaders of most unions across Australia, the campaign may well peter out or end up in the dead end of advertising.
Nevertheless there was a strong sense of disquiet with the ALP and the possibility of Labor jailing Ark. The task now is to build on that anger and turn it into action.
As John argued, the bosses only understand one thing. Cut off the flow of profits and they can be forced to back down.
If you don’t fight you lose.
For an analysis of why Labor’s Fair Work Australia is Work Choices Lite, read John’s December 2008 article Rudd’s Work Choices.
Posted by Bill, July 3rd, 2009 - under Honduras, Imperialism, United States.
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MILITARY OFFICERS and right-wing forces in Honduras with long ties to the U.S. government organized a coup to topple the democratically elected president at the end of June–and the reaction of the Obama administration was lukewarm criticism at best.
President Manuel Zelaya was rousted from his bed in the early-morning hours of June 28–the day that Hondurans were supposed to vote on a nonbinding referendum on changing the country’s constitution–and forced onto a plane that took him to Costa Rica. Other members of his government were detained throughout the day.
Leaders of the right-wing majority in Congress claimed that Zelaya had quit voluntarily, displaying a resignation letter that was quickly exposed as a forgery. Roberto Micheletti, the Speaker of Congress, was sworn in as interim president.
The coup was an attempt by the country’s elite to reassert their traditional grip on power after Zelaya had begun following the example of left-wing Latin American presidents like Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia–in particular, with his proposal to convene a constituent assembly to rewrite Honduras’ constitution.
Zelaya is hardly a radical. He comes from a wealthy landowning family and ran for president as the leader of Liberal Party, one of two main parties representing Honduras’ elite. He came to office as a supporter of the neoliberal Central American Free Trade Agreement, for example.
But he has moved closer to Chávez and other more radical political leaders in Latin America. Last year, for example, he led the country into the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, a coalition of Latin American countries that includes Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba.
WITH ZELAYA on a military plane out of the country last Sunday, coup forces imposed a blackout on Honduran television, radio and the press.
Nevertheless, according to reports, large numbers of people learned of the military’s actions and poured into the streets to show their support for Zelaya and demand his return. Members of the left-wing Democratic Unification Party burned tires and held a vigil outside the presidential palace, according to the news agency Inter Press Service.
In the following days, many U.S. media accounts reported contending pro- and anti-Zelaya demonstrations in the capital of Tegucigalpa, but the unions and popular organizations are plainly on Zelaya’s side.
Demonstrators continued to brave the crackdown by police and army troops, building traffic blockades in various parts of the country. The teachers union announced an indefinite strike in primary and secondary schools, and other reports confirmed walkouts and actions by workers around Honduras.
Zelaya’s ouster was roundly denounced across Latin America, even among conservative political leaders like Costa Rica’s Oscar Arias. The Organization of American States (OAS), representing the countries of North and South America except Cuba, immediately issued a statement condemning the coup.
By midweek, the OAS had called for Zelaya to be restored to power within 72 hours. Micheletti and the coup makers rejected the ultimatum. “[Zelaya] can no longer return to the presidency of the republic unless a president from another Latin American country comes and imposes him using guns,” Micheletti told the Associate Press.
Though the U.S. went along with the OAS statements, its overall response has been contradictory.
As reports of Zelaya’s ouster emerged from Honduras last Sunday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the coup and called for respect for “constitutional order.” But at almost the same time, Dan Restrepo, presidential adviser to Obama for Latin American Affairs, was interviewed on CNN en Español, where he explained that the U.S. was communicating with coup forces, and was “waiting to see how things play out.”
Speaking for U.S. conservatives, the Wall Street Journal celebrated the coup, claiming that the military was merely following an order of the Supreme Court–stacked with creatures of the elite–in forcing Zelaya out of office. The Journal did admit, however, that the coup makers “would have been smarter–and better off–not sending Mr. Zelaya into exile at dawn.”
But, of course, the manner of Zelaya’s ouster perfectly illustrates the way that power has been wielded for decades in Honduras by a small landed oligarchy and its U.S.-backed military. As Eva Gollinger, a Venezuelan-American writer, put it:
Honduras is a nation that has been the victim of dictatorships and massive U.S. intervention during the past century, including several military invasions. The last major U.S. government intervention in Honduras occurred during the 1980s, when the Reagan administration funded death squads and paramilitaries to eliminate any potential “communist threats” in Central America. At the time, John Negroponte was the U.S. ambassador in Honduras and was responsible for directly funding and training Honduran death squads that were responsible for thousands of disappeared and assassinated throughout the region.
During the week, U.S. officials were careful to sound sharper criticisms of the coup makers. But they steered clear of tough action, beyond suspending ties with the military. On Thursday, for example, U.S. officials put off a decision to cut off economic aid to Honduras unless Zelaya was returned to power.
This stalling is telling. With Honduras dependent on the U.S. economically and the Pentagon’s long relationship to Honduran military leaders–several conspirators were trained at the notorious School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Ga.–Washington could have stopped the coup makers in their tracks. It chose not to.
The claims of U.S. leaders to respect democracy–issued so loudly in the case of Iran–should be judged against this record of weak rhetoric and inaction on Honduras.
This article first appeared in the weekly US newspaper Socialist Worker on 2 July.
Posted by Leonie, July 1st, 2009 - under ACTU, AMWU, ATO, Anna Bligh, Australian Council of Trade Unions, Australian Fair Pay Commission, Australian Labor Party, Australian Tax Office, Australian politics, BlighBorg, CPSU, Community and Public Sector Union, Fair Work Australia, Industrial action, Industrial relations, Strikes.
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Were colleagues in your workplace breaking out the champagne to celebrate the beginning of Labor’s Fair Work laws? Yours neither.
The reason is simple. For most workers Labor’s industrial relations laws are a continuation of Howard’s laws with some minor adjustments.
For building workers they are a disaster. Gillard’s gestapo on building sites will continue to arrest workers for taking industrial action over safety issues.
How many building workers will Rudd and Gillard sacrifice on the altar of profit for building bosses?
Rudd’s new industrial laws won’t make much difference where it really counts – saving jobs and increasing real wages.
Industrial action could defend jobs and win real wage increases by pushing back the boundaries of profitability, but union leaders and a fair section of the workforce won’t do that. Yet.
Most union officials accept the logic of capitalism and the need for wage restraint.
For many employees the fear of job losses forces them to accept wage cuts.
For example here in Canberra teachers have accepted 6 percent over two years reluctantly because of the financial climate and calls from the ACT Labor Government for wage restraint. Their agreement sets the new low for wage restraint for other Canberra public servants.
In the Tax Office workers have just voted for a wage cutting job cutting agreement. But despite all the rhetoric of the bosses 44 percent of staff who voted still voted against it.
The agreement will see the ATO attack staff over the next few years, slowly, slowly slowly spreading the disease of contract type work and reduced conditions and hours to more and more staff.
They hope the frog won’t notice the water heating up until it begins to boil.
But 6000 staff voting against the rotten deal is a good base for the CPSU to build on – first recruiting many of them, and secondly becoming more militant and standing up to job cuts and wage cuts on the shop floor.
The AMWU- the metalworkers’ union – is preparing to launch a campaign for real wage increases. Despite what the daily Torygraph and its big brother The Australian argue, there is nothing remarkable about this.
The wages share of GNP is at its lowest in the history of records being kept.
Wage cuts won’t save jobs. They will, at best, postpone sackings for a few months and also transfer job losses to consumer sensitive areas, which will then multiply to some of the productive areas of the economy.
Rudd’s Fair Pay Commission is likely to deliver real wage cuts to workers on the minimum and low wages. That’s why the AMWU campaign is so important.
If metal workers can win real pay increases these can flow through to the low paid.
Labor as boss shows where its interests really lie.
In Queensland teachers are about to strike against the Bligh Labor Government. The teachers’ union has been negotiating since November last year for a pay increase and job security.
It was only after teachers struck in May that the Queensland Government offered a 12.5 percent increase over 3 years.
This would still leave them at the bottom of the pay scale nationally within 12 months.
The teachers have rejected the offer and will strike at the end of July and into August.
Rudd’s industrial laws don’t radically alter the incredible power that bosses have over workers in the workplace. They reinforce it.
And as some unions begin to move against the reality of Labor’s Workchoices Lite – see for example John’s article on Rudd’s Workchoices last December – we may be witnessing an historic break between industrial and political reformism.
Queensland teachers are showing us that industrial action has a much better chance of getting real wage increases and protecting jobs than relying on Rudd’s largess and industrial laws.
Posted by Leonie, June 30th, 2009 - under Alienation, Lotto, Michael Jackson, Oz Lotto.
Comments: 1
We live in an alienated world. I was reminded of this by the massive queue at my newsagent’s to buy tickets in the $90 million OZ Lotto draw and the outpouring of grief for Michael Jackson. And the constant booze and gambling ads on during the football.
In The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Marx summed up alienation:
The fact that labour is external to the worker, does not belong to her essential being; that she therefore does not confirm herself in her work, but denies herself, feels miserable and not happy, does not develop free mental and physical energy, but mortifies her flesh and ruins her mind. Hence the worker feels herself only when she is not working; when she is working she does not feel herself. She is at home when she is not working, and not at home when she is working. Her labour is therefore not voluntary but forced, it is forced labour. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need, but a mere means to satisfy need outside itself. Its alien character is clearly demonstrated by the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists it is shunned like the plague.
Alienation arises from the very way production is organised. To abolish alienation means overthrowing the very system which produces it in the modern era – capitalism.
They are easy words to write, but they will go unheeded for the moment.
The working class in times of social peace can respond in destructive ways. Grog, drugs, religion, entertainment, gambling, sea change, tree change – all express in some way or another the desire to escape wage slavery.
And so we stand in line to buy tickets to win an amount that is incomprehensible to most people. Or we buy the music of a person divorced himself from our reality.
And maybe we baby boomers see in Jackson’s death our own mortality, our life in being between becoming and nothingness.
One common outlet is the booze which escapes us for a time only to reinforce and worsen the alienation our individual humanity suffers.
Yet only a collective response can address this profound human fissure that is alienation under captilaism.
The hope of winning and the grief of loss are real, as is the relief of grog.
So too is wage slavery real and for all of us - workers and the ruling elite. It pervades and distorts us all.
I long for the day when we are all superstars, drunk on our collective power and rich beyond our means.
Posted by Leonie, June 30th, 2009 - under Capitalism, Chris Harman, Marxism, Zombie capitalism.
Comments: 1
Chris Harman, who has just written a new book about why Marxist ideas are key to grasping how the system works, spoke to British weekly Socialist Worker.
Your new book about the economic crisis is called Zombie Capitalism. What is this?
Some commentators are using the term “zombie banks” to describe a situation in which the banking system is seizing up and having adverse effects on everything around it.
A zombie bank is worthless but it continues to operate because of government support. So the dead are having a terrible effect on the living.
I thought it was appropriate to use the term “zombie capitalism” to describe the system as a whole.
My new book looks at how the theories of Karl Marx can explain why crisis is endemic to the system.
Marx referred to capitalism as the domination of the dead over the living, the past over the present. He described how the products of people’s labour come to dominate their lives and the lives of those who follow them.
Workers have no control over what they produce, how they produce it, how much they produce or what happens to the goods once they have been made. So the products appear as alien with a power all of their own.
Zombie capitalism is a particularly apt term to use in the current period.
When industrial capitalism began 250 years ago it was a fantastically dynamic system that went on to engulf the whole world. It has always experienced crises.
But since the mid-1970s it has been going through a long phase of crisis, in which booms are interspersed by deeper and deeper slumps.
Capitalists have not been motivated to invest all their profits on expanding production, because the rate of return they get on their investments has been low.
They have cut workers’ wages to try to maintain their profits. This has led to an increase in borrowing and debt. But the banks and financial institutions loaned more money than they would ever get back.
This sparked the “credit crunch” of two years ago and the crisis we are now in.
What caused this crisis?
Most mainstream economists said that this was just a problem of finance.
This is not the case. It reflects a much deeper, more fundamental problem in the system.
Marx identified crisis as a central feature of capitalism.
Competition drives the system forward. But because each capitalist competes to grab as much of a market for themselves as possible, there is always the danger that the total that is produced is more than can be bought.
Two things can help to overcome this tendency. The first is that workers can spend their wages on a certain proportion of the goods produced.
The second is that capitalists can invest their profits in new factories, buying up other goods that have been produced in the process, such as iron, steel, oil and electricity.
If either of these sources of demand collapse then the economy can go into crisis.
Overproduction causes strains in the system. If goods can’t be sold then factories lose money and sack workers. This means that those workers can’t buy goods produced by other factories, and these factories then sack workers, leading to deeper problems.
In the current crisis, governments have poured vast sums of money into the system. What will the effects of this be?
No one knows. Each multinational and bank keeps their level of debt a secret because they don’t want their competitors to have an advantage over them. And capitalists exaggerate their profits because they want their stock exchange value to rise.
So no one knows what the real profits, or losses, of the system are.
Governments are trying to use money to fill a huge hole, but no one knows how big it is. At some point in the near future they will try to get their money back – but they will try to take it from ordinary people, not the bankers.
In this situation, some governments are better positioned than others. For instance, the US is the world’s biggest economy and can probably afford to postpone the moment of truth for a time. But eastern European states such as Latvia are in dire straits.
Britain is in an intermediary position. It is still one of the world’s most powerful economies.
Many mainstream economists are saying that the British government will have to get the money they have ploughed into the banks back through either huge tax increases or attacks on public services, or probably both.
The Tories and Labour are having an argument over the level of public spending cuts needed. Labour wants to make the cuts but pretend they’re not happening while the Tories have openly admitted they’ll make the cuts.
Has the economic crisis had an impact on the ideology of neoliberalism, the free market policies that have dominated the world for the past 30 years?
Neoliberalism is an ideology primarily used to justify attacks on workers. Despite the rhetoric of non-intervention in the free market, governments have continually moved to support big business.
But this was always done behind closed doors. The difference today is that they have had to do it in broad daylight.
This means that it is much easier to argue that this crisis has been caused by capitalism than it was during the crisis of the 1970s. Then the turmoil was blamed on the trade unions and the oil sheikhs.
Most people today can see that the banks were a major part of the problem.
That does not mean that the arguments against the system can be won automatically. Every day sees a new attack in the right wing tabloids against asylum seekers, “benefit scroungers” or migrant workers.
The idea that “bosses and workers are in it together” is still there. The aim of this sentiment is to argue that we all benefited in the “boom” years so now we all have to suffer in the slump.
This idea has concrete effects. The Balpa pilots’ union, for example, has recommended pay cuts and longer hours for workers at British Airways to “help” the company.
But ordinary people did not benefit from the economic boom. Many had to borrow massively just to get by.
In any crisis people are thrown onto the defensive and can accept the idea that we’re all responsible.
But at the same time they can be angry about the worse conditions they’re living under.
Socialists have to put forward the arguments against the system and for uniting all workers.
Workers will listen to these arguments most when they’re involved in struggle and they begin to see clearly that there’s a divide in society along class lines.
There has been a revival of interest in Marxist ideas as a result of capitalism’s problems and a revival of Marxist economics among academics.
The mainstream economic periodicals, such as the Financial Times and the Economist, have had to switch from talking about the prophets of the free market to taking about John Maynard Keynes, an advocate of state intervention.
In the process they couldn’t avoid talking about Marx as well. And if anyone wants to understand the dynamics of capitalism they should look to Marx.
Are there signs of a recovery?
‘In recent weeks, a number of commentators have said that the economy should now start to recover. This shows how these people have no ideas. The stock exchanges have grown again by about 20 percent in the last four months – after falling by around 50 percent.
It’s still a long way from where it used to be. But if you’re trying to make a quick buck by gambling on the stock exchange, you can again.
Some say that “inflection point” has been reached. They don’t mean that the recession has ended but that the economy is not declining so dramatically.
They don’t know whether the vast amounts of money thrown into the system will bring the crisis to an end.
If the economy does start to recover, the impact for ordinary people will not be felt for some time. There will be a lag in terms of unemployment beginning to fall, for example.
Our leaders haven’t solved the root of the crisis. If you take ibuprofen when you have influenza, your headache goes away for a few hours, but it will come back later.
So if the bosses do get out of this crisis, they will have created the preconditions for an even deeper crisis to come.’
