En Passant

Perhaps the difference in treatment in death is that police protect the profit system, whereas workers don’t. We workers make the profit for the bosses. We are expendable and our deaths at work are nothing to them compared to the death of a police officer.

By their eulogies shall ye know the bosses and their system.

The best way to ensure there is safety on building sites is to give the workers power to cut off the flow of profits to the bosses, without loss of pay, when sites are unsafe, or for workers to take that power. The stakes are high. It will take a long and bitter campaign of strikes and wildcat action to force the building bosses in Canberra and elsewhere to take safety seriously and to save lives.

If Grocon wins it will be a setback for all workers. That’s why it is important for building workers to fight back in the way that has the greatest chance of success – striking and shutting down the building industry and cutting off the flow of massive profits to bludgers like Grollo and his ilk, and in doing that calling on other workers to join them to bury Labor’s anti-worker Fair Work Act.

A letter of mine in today’s Australian Financial Review in defence of the CFMEU building union and safety on site. http://www.afr.com/p/opinion/safety_the_top_priority_for_unions_Yk2q2HAF0tkhZYO1J7nH7L

Capitalism is a system built on the blood of its soldiers, indigenous people, refugees and workers. Only overthrowing this system of death can bring peace and safety to the world.

One task for the Australian left is to link the fight for lives and against the bosses’ killing machine on building sites to the fight in Australia against the Australian ruling class’s killing machine in Afghanistan. That ruling class killing machine is in Afghanistan repressing Afghans to protect the system that produces Grocon’s safety practices and profits.

The only protection we have from the Daniel Grollos of the world, and their contempt for our safety and our rights, is a strong union that is independent from multi-millionaires and their goons – the issue at the heart of the Grocon dispute. And we’ve shown in spades that, if we’re given a fighting lead, we’re prepared to do what it takes to defend it.

And of course, there’s the most basic fact. The fact that infuriates the rich and the powerful, and that drives their bought and sold apologists in the media into a frenzy. That is, as we demonstrated in the streets of Melbourne on Tuesday, we have the power to fight and win.

Having Grocon in charge of safety is like putting John Howard in charge of refugees. Only union reps on site can really help enforce safety. Only the ability to walk off the job without loss of pay over safety issues can really force the bosses to take the issue seriously. It has been a long long time since workers as workers have fought the bosses and their police so successfully and drawn in other workers in their own city and elsewhere. A long long time. What a great day.

These are Julia Gillard’s laws which allow, encourage and enforce this state brutality – court orders, police, capsicum spray, horses, and now possibly fines and jail.

These are Julia Gillard’s laws which allow, encourage and enforce this state brutality – court orders, police, pepper spray, horses, and now possibly fines and jail.
The task at the moment is to support the Grocon Workers. If you are in Melbourne and you can, get down to the picket. Victory to the Grocon workers.

Given the overwhelming rejection of WorkChoices in 2007 and the fear it still engenders, Tony Abbott cannot come out publicly in support of a return to this industrial relations ‘Golden Age’. So he hides behind weasel words about limiting union control and militancy – militancy when strike days are at historic lows! – and restoring industrial relations ‘balance’.

This is code for giving even more power to the bosses.

This is not a reason for defending Labor’s WorkChoices Lite. The alternative is to take industrial action to defend and extend jobs, wages and conditions. No to a return to WorkChoices. No to Fair Work which is WorkChoices Lite. Yes to the right to strike. Victory to the building union in its fight against Grocon.