En Passant

The choice for Labor is the Hugo Chavez route or oblivion. Goodbye Labor.

We need to organise now in our unions to beat Labor’s attacks and by doing that strengthen our muscles for the battles ahead.

Julia Gillard can have all the stunts she wants. It shows the contempt Labor has for working class people that they think a few days among the proles will change our votes. The more people in Western Sydney see of Gillard the less her vote and that of the Party’s will be. Fight back now.

To address the Gillard government possibly undermining Fringe Benefits Tax concessions for low paid female and male workers in the Not For Profit sector, maybe it’s time for a real industrial campaign to win massive pay increases and leave the tax fiddling to big business and the rich.

Labor’s crisis is about politics and policies, not people. It doesn’t make much difference if Labor is led by Gillard or Rudd or some other snake oil sales person – the pro-profit and pro-business policies of the party would be much the same.

Although one angry student sneaking into a meeting to harass the prime minister isn’t going to change the world, it’s important to show that wherever racists, homophobes and ruling class stooges like Gillard go, they will be challenged.

The way to fight Abbott is to strike against Gillard Labor and its rotten anti-working class policies.

Perhaps, just perhaps, it is Labor’s anti-worker policies that sees workers deserting it and some (though not that many) swinging to the Greens? Perhaps, just perhaps, it is Labor’s anti-worker policies that sees or will see many workers holding their noses and voting for the Liberal or National Parties or even Bob Katter’s Australian Party?

Far better to blame a bogey man party like the Greens than to actually analyse why Labor is on the nose with workers.

Industrial action to defend jobs and increase wages and protect vital programs is the way to beat the slashers and burners. We workers have been too quiet for too long and Labor and the Liberals have been able to ride roughshod over us and distribute more of our wealth to Gina and Twiggy and Clive. The time has come to say enough is enough. Make the bosses pay.

Just when you thought Labor couldn’t get any lower, you remember Bob Carr exists. He’s a worthy addition to the Gillard cabinet, where he’ll fit right in with all the other neoliberal scumbags.

The threat of contempt action against the nurses’ union is an assault not only on nurses but on every single worker in Australia, and our already very restricted right to strike. It is happening under Gillard Labor’s anti-worker ‘Fair Work’ Act. The trade union movement has the historic responsibility and opportunity to defend nurses and turn the tide in the one sided 30 year class war of the bosses against us by fighting back and defending the right to strike. When they jail a nurse for striking it’s a rich pig’s country still. Hands off our nurses, Baillieu and Gillard.