En Passant

The Abbott government will not reject the attacks on penalty rates, the minimum wage slow down, relaxing the unfair dismissal laws or condemn individual contracts that will undermine pay rates for all workers. It will say it is just a draft; it is really just fine tuning what is already there; in the national interest we should all work together to address significant challenges to the economy and jobs, etc etc etc. What this all boils down to is making the working class pay for the crisis of profitability gathering pace in Australia. If the ruling class get these changes through that will open the floodgates for the next set of attacks from the insatiable bosses.

United Voice is holding a protest action in Kingston in Canberra from 12 pm on Friday 10 April outside a penny pinching café in Kingston which allegedly owes one of their workers $20,000 in unpaid entitlements including penalty rates and payments under the minimum wage. This is an important public demonstration of the role unions play in protecting our community. Support United Vice by coming along to show your solidarity.

Alex McAuley in Red Flag discuses the attempts of the government and the bosses to further cut, or even abolish, penalty rates. This drive won’t go away despite the ongoing crises in the Abbott government seeing the Employment Minister, Senator Abetz, divorce the government from the Productivity Committee inquiry and from implementing any recommendations about either penalty rates or the minimum wage before or after the 2016 election. They know as well as anyone that embracing cuts to the minimum wage and penalty rates would destroy completely their very slim chances of re-election. If, god forbid, they were re-elected they could then change their minds and implement the recommendations to cut the minimum wage and get rid of penalty rates. A government saying one thing before an election and doing something different after. Hard to believe eh?

All of these government changes to the dole, as well as demonising the victims of capitalism and deflecting attention away from the system that creates unemployment by putting profit before people, are also aimed at driving wages down.

I wonder what Clive Palmer and all the other mining maggots think about the $26 a week increase for low paid workers.

Those nasty unionists have been arguing for a $27 a week increase in the minimum wage from its current ‘exorbitant’ $544 a week. The end is nigh. Or so the bosses tell us. There are about 1.4 million workers whose salary is dependent in some way on the minimum wage. Paying them a slight increase will […]

There are some eternal laws of capitalism.  The rich will always blame the rest of us for the problems of their system.  Wages are too high they will parrot. We are only trying to save jobs they will lie. The Fair Pay Commission decision to freeze Australia’s minimum wage at $14.31 an hour shows this […]