Australia

Workers' Liberty Australia conference, Sydney 26/08/07

Minutes. AUSIRAQ Lynn reported. We have our task as raising money to support the trade unions and secular movements in Iraq. We have run a fundraiser netting about $600 each year for the last few years, and sent money to the three union federations in Iraq. We need to discuss how to raise more money, but also how to build on the fact that this campaign is a main way of raising the banner of Third Camp politics, for working-class interests against both US imperialism and political Islam. The work that AusIraq has done in leafleting all major political events with its message is also important...

ALP to ban union organisers from workplaces

According to ABC news, 28 August, Blair-clone Kevin Rudd's ALP leadership now says it will keep the Howard government's ban on union organisers entering workplaces, and continue AWAs under another name for workers above a certain wage level. "Labor says it will keep the Howard Government's current bans on unions entering workplaces when it releases the second chapter of its industrial relations policy later today. Labor told the ABC's AM program that it would keep the current national laws which restrict union organisers' rights to enter workplaces. Unions will only be allowed on to a work...

Australia's secret industrial inquisition exposed

A new film exposes the special police force for the construction industry set up in October 2005 by the conservative Australian government as part of its recent slew of anti-union laws. Joe Loh's "Constructing Fear" comprehensively indicts the Australian Building and Construction Commission. The ABCC can haul any building worker before it. Workers have no right to silence. If they refuse to give evidence they can be jailed for six months. It is illegal for them to tell anyone - even family members - about the questions they are asked in ABCC interrogations. If a number of workers are called up...

FORUM: WOMEN'S RIGHTS IN IRAQ: occupation, militias and the left

"WOMEN'S RIGHTS IN IRAQ: occupation, militias and the left". Sydney Workers Liberty is convening a public forum at 3pm on Saturday August 25 at the Gaelic Club on the theme: "WOMEN'S RIGHTS IN IRAQ: occupation, militias and the left". Speakers: * Leyla Mohammad, Australian spokesperson, Organisation for Women's Freedom in Iraq * Martin Thomas, editorial board, "Solidarity", UK * Other speakers to be confirmed Chair: Janet Burstall Hope you can join us. Contributions from the floor welcome. For more information call Lynn 0439 640 118.

The story of Guido Baracchi

Jeff Sparrow’s biography of Australian communist Guido Baracchi - "Communism, a love story", published by Melbourne University Press - is an allegory for twentieth century radicals and anti authoritarians. Australia has produced a number of prominent communists and radicals over the pass hundred years, including journalist and author Frank Hardy, author Katherine Susannah Pritchard and feminist writer Germaine Greer. So Sparrow’s choice of subject is an interesting one, Baracchi is little known outside of the small Australian Trotskyist circles but his story is an interesting one, engagingly...

Suspended for defying post-modernism

"If we are to take meaningful political action, if we are to act morally... then we need to be able to determine what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false". For these defiantly anti-post-modernist sentiments, lecturers Gary McLennan and John Hookham have been suspended for six months without pay, and QUT is considering closing down its whole humanities school. The row broke with an article in The Australian by McLennan and Hookham criticising a PhD submission accepted by QUT which was entitled "Laughing at the disabled", and was about exactly that. The thesis abstract...

Dean Mighell is right - and Joe McDonald is even more right

Dean Mighell, leader of the ETU (Electrical Trades Union) in Victoria, is right: ""What we've seen [from the ALP leadership] is an incremental backing away of some fundamental union rights, and now we're going into something resembling 'WorkChoices lite'..." Kevin Rudd is becoming a "pale imitation" of John Howard. Joe McDonald, assistant secretary of the CFMEU in Western Australia, is even more right. When Kevin Rudd demanded his resignation from the Australian Labor Party on laughable charges of rude language about an employer, McDonald, unlike Mighell, refused, and challenged Rudd and his...

Labor, the unions and AWAs

In the lead up to this year’s Federal election it is clear that pressure on the Australian Labor Party leadership to cave in further on industrial relations policy will be unrelenting. Two of the top bosses’ organisations the Business Council of Australia and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry are riding to the rescue of a faltering conservative coalition government. There will be a joint Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Business Council of Australia advertising blitz worth millions to counter a very effective union campaign against Prime Minister Howard’s Work...

April 2007 ALP policy compared with the ACTU's demands

The general heading "IR policy" covers two distinct areas. One, protection for workers' conditions which they can claim or enforce by resort to public enforcement agencies or tribunals. Two, rights (embodied in law) for workers to organise, to be represented, and to take industrial action so that they can themselves claim or enforce better conditions at work. Both are desirable. Even where a trade-union movement is extremely strong, some workers at the fringes of the economy will be unorganised, and it is advantageous to have laws which extend to them the conditions won by stronger groups of...

QANTAS and the spivs

Bryan Sketchley A consortium of investors (APA) wanted 100% Qantas so they could take it private. If they manage to acquire 90% of shares, they can compulsorily acquire the rest of the shares. If the buy out is successful then the assets directly secure the lenders money and they can do their asset stripping away from public scrutiny. APA has only been able to raise 70% of the necessary funds and subsequently two large shareholders (with over 10% between them) decided not to sell. APA hope that the two big hold outs will not want to be locked in as minorities, and thus, ironically, lowering...

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