Archive for July 5th, 2012
Melbourne and Perth: a tale of two union actions
Posted by John, July 5th, 2012 - under 457 visas, Australian Council of Trade Unions, Australian working class, Baillieu, EMAs, Enterprise migration agreements, Nationalism, Racism.
Comments: 3
Aussie jobs and similar slogans are part of the problem, not the solution. Class struggle offers the best way to defend foreign workers and win them residency and employment rights and conditions the same as other workers in Australia. That fight can then lead to a fight against the same and other bosses when they sack workers in Australia or cut their wages or conditions.
And that is what happened in Melbourne today. Workers responded to direct government attacks on them by walking off the job, an action that is illegal under Labor’s industrial laws. It may be just the start of a real fight against these draconian laws against construction workers.
Workers in Perth could follow suit, not for Aussie jobs and other dead ends but for more jobs, for permanent residency for all who come here to work, for proper wages, for empowering unions to police all worksites and for more spending on education and training, paid for by the bosses.
