En Passant

The racist ad is part of Labor’s well worked out and deliberate Trump strategy. The Liberal Party has disguised racism in its turn to ‘Australian’ values; the Labor Party has disguised racism in its lies about Australian jobs.

  In the latest edition of Solidarity James Supple rebuts the argument that under the China Free Trade Agreement Chinese workers will ‘steal’ Australian jobs.  He says in part: ‘The problem is not with migrant workers coming here but the potential for exploitation as a result of the new agreements. Instead of a xenophobic campaign, […]

The problem is not foreign workers, argues Paddy Gibson in Solidarity. It is the bosses. Paddy rebuts the idea that foreign workers cause unemployment. He says, among other things:

‘Abbott government cuts and corporate profiteering are to blame for job losses, not foreign workers. But sadly, unions have done little to fight these very real attacks. Union-wide mobilisations against Abbott’s budget have been abandoned. There has also been no industrial campaign against the mass sackings at Holden, BP or Australia Post. Grandstanding against “foreign workers” is a far easier option, but it only sets back the fight for jobs.’

To read the whole article click this link.

Mr Passant believes the university will rein in pay rises, opt not to renew contracts and employ fewer casuals to meet the target.

[And that is before redundancies.]

To read the whole story click Jobs at risk as UOW eyes spending cuts.

Fortescue Metals Group hasn’t paid income tax in Australia for 18 years and given accumulated losses will celebrate a twenty year anniversary of not making a revenue contribution to Commonwealth coffers in a few years time.

Andrew Forrest is just so right for being given $45 million of workers’ money to do nothing about Aboriginal employment.

Land rights and sovereignty and negotiating a treaty with indigenous Australians – in other words empowerment – would help address the issue of unemployment, rather than putting the head of a non-tax paying entity in charge of a do nothing scheme.

The blame for unemployment lies with the 1 percent–and certainly not with environmentalists opposing pipelines that will carry tar sands oil, any more than with immigrants or al-Qaeda, or any other scapegoat the media or the right wing offer as a distraction.

Faced with twin economic and environmental crises, both caused by the free market, working people have to stand together to confront both. Instead, union leaders are siding with those who have spread the misery of unemployment, and who view the health and well-being of living things as an obstacle to higher returns on their investments.

Most politics, ‘debate’ and commentary today is about discerning the difference between the shit sandwiches on offer. It doesn’t deal with the obvious. It’s still a shit sandwich, whether it is Gillard or Abbott selling it.

The “No job cuts” campaign at the University of Sydney has seen the biggest mobilisation of staff in years writes Alma Torlakovic, the chair of the campaign committee and one of the general staff of the university. The experience we’ve had at Sydney University shows how quickly the mood among workers can shift. From a place that’s often been respectable and quiet, we’ve seen a serious and defiant campaign emerge within a few short weeks. Union membership grew as the campaign spread and new layers of members were involved in activity. In a period where workers across the world are facing austerity and attacks on their living standards, strong unions will need to be rebuilt everywhere to face the coming challenges. The campaign at Sydney University has been a step in the right direction.

The time to fight back against the cutters and destroyers of quality education is now. For students that means mass meetings and rallies and whatever may come out of that. For staff it means strikes. Stop work to save jobs. Stop work for quality education. Stop work to stop Vice- Chancellor Young.

My blog is a small contribution to the wider attempt to keep alive the ideas of genuine socialism, of democracy and revolution. Even though it is more or less unrewarded labour in the monetary sense, it is rewarded in another sense. It is my own, my free labour in a world of alienated labour. I will never stop writing.