Australia

Union leaders fail to challenge the rules by striking for the climate

Australian unions have not organised strike action for 20 September. The Australian Council of Trade Unions and its leaders, Sally McManus and Michele O’Neil have been deafeningly silent on climate action and the 20 September climate strike, up to at least the week before. Many uniona and peak bodies have voted to endorse the climate strike but have not authorised strike action by their members. These include the Australian Services Union, Electrical Trades Union Queensland, NSW Nurses and Midwives Association, NSW Public Service Association, NSW Teachers Federation, National Union of Workers...

The right to choose: the struggle continues

In August the NSW lower house passed legislation to remove abortion from the criminal code, making it the last State to do so in Australia. This is a victory for women’s reproductive rights and it is especially cheering given it comes at a time when we are facing renewed and pernicious attacks elsewhere, most notably the US. In late September the bill goes before the upper house. If it passes it will become law. The amendments pushed by the upper house, following those in the lower house, are nothing more than attempts to derail the legislation, whatever the movers of these amendments claim...

Extinction Rebellion Lismore and Blockchain video review

Around 300 people attended a meeting in Lismore organised by Extinction Rebellion in May this year. This by Lismore standards was a large meeting, seeing a cross section of people, professionals, trades people, retirees, alternate lifestylers. This was indicative of the interest and concern by those attending. Like many, disillusionment and cynicism of the mainstream institutions of politics and capitalism has brought out people looking at new ways to make positive change to combating climate change. Extinction Rebellion is the latest development on the NSW North Coast, reflecting the long and...

Cool air, hotter climate?

Air conditioning was a landmark invention of twentieth-century capitalism, and has shaped the world we live in. It gave rise to the summer blockbuster as movie theatres with air conditioning units were the main place people could go in the heat. It allowed capitalist modernisation to transform post-colonial Singapore. It even inspired H P Lovecraft’s short story Cool Air. One of the most attractive features of air conditioning units for American capital in the early twentieth century was that it consumed a lot of electricity. Utility companies had a strategy of selling electricity cheaply...

Neither Washington nor Beijing, but international socialism!

China is now the world's second power, economically though not yet militarily. It is striving for influence, hegemony, aggrandisement, in competition with the first power, the USA. The longstanding US policy was to use US military and diplomatic power chiefly to sustain world-market rules assumed beneficial in the long term to US capital. Donald Trump has shifted to a cruder "American First" policy, undermining the World Trade Organisation, pursuing trade conflicts with Mexico and Canada and above all with China. In the first cold war, between the USA and the USSR, the Trotskyists of our...

Chinese students organise solidarity with Hong Kong

Chinese students at the University of Queensland, in Brisbane, Australia, have set up a "Lennon Wall" in the student union precinct at the main campus. The wall, expressing solidarity with the protests in Hong Kong, has been ripped down twice by pro-Chinese-government students, but restored each time. Like the Lennon Walls in Hong Kong, it is named after a wall in Prague, in the Czech Republic, which has been a site for oppositional graffiti since the 1980s. In fact, UQ now has two Lennon Walls, the fixed one being supplemented by a mobile one moved around the campus. Students I talked with at...

Organising in schools to control carbon emissions

Corinda State High School, a secondary school with over 1800 students in a middling-income inner-west suburb of Brisbane, has declared itself the first "carbon-neutral" school in the Australian state of Queensland. It was certified as "carbon-neutral" by the Queensland government Department of Energy in April 2019. Corinda was not as much a flagship in Australia's student climate strikes, a few months ago, as Kenmore State High School, on the other side of the Brisbane river. But it has done the work to audit its carbon emissions, including from staff journeys to work. Disappointing is that...

Only one union fighting cuts to penalty rates: RAFFWU

The latest stage of Fair Work Commission cuts to minimum penalty rates came in on 1 July 2019. The union that is taking on employers and keeping penalty rates is the Retail And Fast Food Workers Union. We spoke to Hayden Walsh, a Sydney retail worker and member of the RAFFWU National Committee. Sydney RAFFWU ranks-and-file members organised a snap speakout in the CBD on 6 July to coincide with the 2019 cut to penalty rates. About 40-50 people came along. It was fun. We know it’s possible to retain penalty rates. Recently, we had a win at Readings bookshops in Victoria. Management had planned...

Single term radical union leaders: Bob Carnegie loses Queensland MUA election

When Bob Carnegie lost the election for Queensland Secretary of the MUA after one term in office, this matched a pattern for successful rank and file challengers to long term incumbents with ALP factional roots. Here are some other examples. In the NSW Nurses Association, the Nurses Reform held office from 1982 to 1987, with Jenny Haines as Secretary and Bronwyn Ridgway as Assistant Secretary. Irene Bolger was elected Secretary of the Victorian Branch of the Royal Australian Nursing Federation in from 1986 “on the basis of her commitment to forging union solidarity and encouraging industrial...

School students reach out to labour movement for climate action

The Global Climate Strike on 20 September, initiated by school students striking for climate action is hugely important. It is galvanising a large, energetic student movement, with strong links to the labour movement, for action on climate change that could force governments and corporations to take some positive measures on climate change. This won’t be enough to stop corporations from continuing to find new opportunities for profit regardless of climate or human impact. Governments at worst make it is easy for capital to do this, or at best fail to keep up with capital’s rapaciousness. The...

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