Benutzereinstellungen

Neue Veranstaltungshinweise

Indonesia / Philippines / Australia

Es wurden keine neuen Veranstaltungshinweise in der letzten Woche veröffentlicht

As simple as ABCC

category indonesia / philippines / australia | workplace struggles | opinion / analysis author Monday January 17, 2011 13:37author by MACG - Anarkismoauthor email macg1984 at yahoo dot com dot au Report this post to the editors

Instead, we must emphasise that the defence of democratic rights is inseparable from the defence of the working class and its organisations. We have the right to organise, and no government can take it away. The Australian Building & Construction Commission must be defeated. It's as simple as ABCC.
Ark Tribe outseid of Court in Adelaide
Ark Tribe outseid of Court in Adelaide

The news that Ark Tribe of the CFMEU was acquitted in November of the charges the Australian Building & Construction Commission brought against him is very good. In the face of a mobilisation of building workers, the courts found a technicality on which to let him off. They did that when Noel Washington took a stand and building workers backed him, too. There's a lesson in there if you look.

Ark Tribe is a building worker in Adelaide who attended a meeting of his colleagues in 2008 called to discuss a safety issue at a Flinders University building site. The ABCC called him in to an interview to rat on his mates and issued its standard threat of imprisonment if he didn't. Ark, to his credit, declined to attend. The ABCC then pursued him through the courts for 18 months and Ark, to his great credit, stood firm. The CFMEU & other building unions backed him in an intense struggle, threatening national strikes if he was jailed, and came out victorious.

The ABCC is an example of the overwhelming priority the capitalists in Australia today place on smashing all traces of working class resistance and self- activity. The decline of the unions in Australia in the last 30 years has been uneven and the building industry is an area where the unions have been neither smashed nor tamed. Although not as militant as formerly, building workers have retained their tradition of on-site organisation and industry-wide solidarity, both of which are anathema to the capitalists today.

Officials of most unions have capitulated to "enterprise bargaining", which started with the ALP Government in the 1990s and intensified under the Liberal Government of John Howard. Resistance has been sporadic and mostly unsuccessful. In the building industry, however, union officials don't have the option of collaboration. The pattern of multi-layer sub-contracting and short-term site-based employment in the industry means enterprise bargaining would result in the destruction of the unions. Put simply, there would never be an occasion to exert economic pressure on an employer both legally and effectively. The building union officials have thus felt compelled to resist this, since it would destroy the institutions on which their social position depends.

Building workers themselves have also fought the strictures of enterprise bargaining, thus keeping alive the tradition of on-site organisation. The hazards endemic to the industry and the bosses' contemptuous attitude make unionism a matter of life and death to workers, not just a vehicle for negotiating an EBA every two or three years. Further, widespread criminality amongst the bosses means workers are frequently ripped off by various means - and union action is far prompter & more reliable in achieving justice than the capitalist courts are.

Given the recalcitrance of the building unions, the bosses hate them like poison. Frequently over the last 20 years, militant bosses or employer associations tried unsuccessfully to subdue them.

Enter John Howard, the most vigorous and intelligent conservative Prime Minister Australia has ever had, and whose entire political life has been devoted to smashing the unions. He understood clearly that extraordinary measures were necessary if the building workers were to be defeated. He set up a witch-hunting Royal Commission in 2001, to whip up public sentiment against the building unions.

Out of its recommendations, the Howard Government instituted the ABCC, with sweeping powers. In particular, it is able to conduct compulsory interviews, interviewees have no right to silence, and interviewees can't reveal what transpired. Effective unionism in the building industry is therefore a crime so dangerous to capitalism that the bosses are prepared to establish police state powers in order to crush it.

These powers are a threat to capitalist democracy. A government determined to stay in office despite massive unpopularity could use powers like these to suppress all opposition. Workers must reflect on this and learn the lesson. The capitalists give their rule as a class a higher priority than the maintenance of democracy and civil liberties. They would rather live under a tyrant than cut their profit margins. In the light of this, therefore, the building unions' slogan of "one law for all" is a dangerous one. It invites this or any future government to spread the powers of the ABCC to the entire workforce. In fact, there have already been some bosses musing in the press about this very thing. Instead, we must emphasise that the defence of democratic rights is inseparable from the defence of the working class and its organisations. We have the right to organise, and no government can take it away.

The Australian Building & Construction Commission must be defeated. It's as simple as ABCC.

* This article is coming from the latest issue (No 7) of the newsletter of Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group (MACG) The Anvil. You can download from http://www.scribd.com/doc/46902029/The-Anvil-No7-Nov-de...-2010

This page can be viewed in
English Italiano Deutsch

Indonesia / Philippines / Australia | Workplace struggles | en

Fri 29 Mar, 06:28

browse text browse image

b8tytbaciaajreb.jpg imageSupport IFF workers in Melbourne 17:57 Thu 29 Jan by Dmitri 0 comments

About 25-30 workers at International Flavours and Fragrances (IFF) in Dandenong, Melbourne have initiated a factory occupation in january 25 2015 in response to the company trying to force a pay cut and indefinitely locking them out. SUPPORT IS NEEDED NOW! It's really significant that these workers have decided to take strong industrial action at a point when workers rights are under attack more than ever.

images2.jpg imageMay Day 2014 21:27 Thu 01 May by Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group 0 comments

No matter what gains we make in struggle, sooner or later employers and governments will try to roll them back. And no matter how much ground we give, employers and governments will only come back for more. The class war goes on, because whether we fight or we don’t, capital never stops fighting. The struggle will continue until we organise as a class, take the means of production into our own hands, and overthrow the entire capitalist system. Only workers’ revolution can end the class war and bring peace to the human race.

images_haymarket8_large.jpg imageMay Day 20:46 Wed 01 May by Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group 0 comments

As long as capitalism endures, the world will be wracked by economic crisis and war, but there is a solution. We can unite across national borders with a global movement against capitalism and all its ills. We can build our movement with federalism and direct democracy rather than authoritarianism and hierarchy. And we can make a revolution, forging a classless global society of libertarian communism, where a free federation of workplaces and communities replaces capitalism and the State. We can establish, at last, a world of liberty, equality and solidarity and it will be done by practicing the values of the society we wish to create.

308156_172149779538211_100002295701287_354743_40542090_n.jpg imageMelbourne Anarchist Communist Group: May Day 22:14 Tue 01 May by Dmitri 0 comments

The only way to end the crises of capitalism is to abolish capitalism itself. And the only way to abolish capitalism is for the working class to seize the means of production which are the foundation of the power of capital. In the immortal words of Lucy Parsons, widow of one of the Haymarket Martrys and a labour activist in her own right, "Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth". In short, we must make a revolution. We will abolish the capitalist State and replace it with the free federation of workplaces and communities worldwide. We will establish libertarian communism, a classless society where the freedom and equality of each is the condition of the freedom and equality of all.

nuwbaiadastrike.jpg imageBaiada poultry workers win agreement 16:44 Thu 24 Nov by Dmitri (republishing) 0 comments

After two weeks on strike from 9 – 22 November, poultry workers at the Baiada poultry factory in Laverton have won a 4% annual pay increase and a reduction in the exploitation of casual and contract labour.

picket2.jpg imageSupport the striking poultry workers at Baiada! 18:53 Sat 12 Nov by Dimitri (MACG) 0 comments

On Wednesday 9th of November, workers at Baiada Poultry began indefinite protected industrial action in their campaign for secure and permanent jobs. The campaign under the umbrella of the NUW began when every single worker in the largely migrant workforce at the plant has voted to strike.

swift.jpg imageCold store workers emerge victorious 10:32 Thu 13 Jan by Dmitri (editing) 0 comments

The striking cold store workers at Swift Australia have held onto the eight-hour working day and their penalty rates, after a long battle with belligerent and at times sinister management tactics.

anfswift1024x768.jpg imageCommunity assembly underway at Swift Australia 18:49 Tue 11 Jan by Dmitri (editing) 0 comments

It is crucial that all supporters go now and stand on the picket line alongside their friends in Brooklyn.

textAustralian Building and Construction Commission 19:59 Tue 27 Apr by Dmitri 0 comments

Since the introduction of the Australian Building and Construction Commission in 2005, we have witnessed a massive increase in deaths and serious injuries in the construction industry.

textPat Mackie, 1914-2009 20:18 Sun 06 Dec by Malcolm Brown 0 comments

When in 1964 the Queensland government of Sir Francis Nicklin decided to call on all its powers to crush a strike by Mt Isa's miners, one man stood in their way - the union radical Pat Mackie. He led the strike, inspiring the miners to keep going, in a period when police were given carte blanche to suppress them.

more >>

imageAustralia: State of the union movement Jan 27 by MACG 3 comments

The union movement must be rebuilt and as soon as possible. It will only be harder the more the movement declines. Rebuilding can only be done through a rank and file insurgency. There may be times and places where it is appropriate to organise new unions (for example in entirely unorganised parts of the workforce, or where the existing union is wholly on the side of the bosses and cannot be recaptured by its members). Most workers, though, will not break with the officials until they are already mobilised and a practical decision is in front of them, so the insurgency must operate largely within existing unions.

imageCFMEU Victoria fails its Covid test Nov 01 by MACG 1 comments

It should go without saying that Anarchist Communists defend the CFMEU against bosses and the State, even when its officials haven’t done the right thing. It’s up to the labour movement to clean its own house, so neither the CFMEU’s failure over COVID19 nor the personal misbehaviour of the Victorian Secretary justify State intervention against the union. Instead, the Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group calls on construction workers to learn the correct lessons from the COVID19 debacle, clean out the ranks of the officials and bring the union under the direct control of the members. The CFMEU is in danger. Only class struggle will save it.

imageThe need for a rank and file movement Feb 03 by Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group 0 comments

The Campaign for a General Strike to Stop Tony Abbott is developing, but needs to go a lot further and a lot faster. Each day that goes by without an organised working class response is a day that Liberals harm working class people and democratic rights in Australia further, a day to destroy the environment, torture refugees, wage imperialist war in West Asia, stoke reactionary social forces and stack public offices with Right wing zealots. To wait till the next election is to concede Tony Abbott the right to commit any crimes, no matter how appalling. [Italiano]

imageAudit Commission Myths Aug 01 by Dmitri (republishing) 0 comments

The Workers’ Audit A document by angry workers, for angry workers to debunk some audit commission myths.

textOur rights at work Oct 04 by MACG 0 comments

Our rights at work will be defended by grassroots workers’ struggle, or they won’t be defended at all. And in that struggle, we will build the democracy and the solidarity that embody the values of a different kind of society.

more >>

imageMay Day 2014 May 01 Anarkismo 0 comments

No matter what gains we make in struggle, sooner or later employers and governments will try to roll them back. And no matter how much ground we give, employers and governments will only come back for more. The class war goes on, because whether we fight or we don’t, capital never stops fighting. The struggle will continue until we organise as a class, take the means of production into our own hands, and overthrow the entire capitalist system. Only workers’ revolution can end the class war and bring peace to the human race.

imageMay Day May 01 Anarkismo 0 comments

As long as capitalism endures, the world will be wracked by economic crisis and war, but there is a solution. We can unite across national borders with a global movement against capitalism and all its ills. We can build our movement with federalism and direct democracy rather than authoritarianism and hierarchy. And we can make a revolution, forging a classless global society of libertarian communism, where a free federation of workplaces and communities replaces capitalism and the State. We can establish, at last, a world of liberty, equality and solidarity and it will be done by practicing the values of the society we wish to create.

imageMelbourne Anarchist Communist Group: May Day May 01 1 of Anarkismo Editorial Group 0 comments

The only way to end the crises of capitalism is to abolish capitalism itself. And the only way to abolish capitalism is for the working class to seize the means of production which are the foundation of the power of capital. In the immortal words of Lucy Parsons, widow of one of the Haymarket Martrys and a labour activist in her own right, "Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth". In short, we must make a revolution. We will abolish the capitalist State and replace it with the free federation of workplaces and communities worldwide. We will establish libertarian communism, a classless society where the freedom and equality of each is the condition of the freedom and equality of all.

textMay Day May 01 Anarkismo 0 comments

Today, on May Day, we dedicate ourselves to this revolution, and the establishment of libertarian communism, a State-less society where each contributes according to their ability and receives according to their need.

textNoel Washington charges dropped Nov 27 Anarkismo 1 comments

The Director of Public Persecutions has dropped the charges against Noel Washinton, the CFMEU Organiser who refused to attend an interview with the ABCC. As a result, the protest rally has been cancelled, but another rally has been called to celebrate the victory.

more >>
© 2005-2024 Anarkismo.net. Unless otherwise stated by the author, all content is free for non-commercial reuse, reprint, and rebroadcast, on the net and elsewhere. Opinions are those of the contributors and are not necessarily endorsed by Anarkismo.net. [ Disclaimer | Privacy ]