Above: A familiar sight in today’s Australia. Unemployed workers endure a huge queue outside a Centrelink office. Photo Credit: ABC News/RON EKKEL
FIGHT FOR SECURE JOBS FOR ALL WORKERS: FORCE COMPANIES TO INCREASE HIRING AT THE EXPENSE OF THEIR BLOATED PROFITS!
30 October 2020: Bosses are using the pandemic to cut their workforce and force those still employed to toil even harder… all for the same pay. That is why even as corporations are frantically throwing workers out of jobs, their own profits are skyrocketing. They soared by 15% in just three months! Sure, some businesses are doing it hard. But overall, even small business total profits have risen. Yet the Morrison government keeps on doling out public money to the rich capitalist business owners. True, Jobkeeper did help some workers keep their jobs. That is why we demand that it be extended to cover casuals, guest workers and international students. However, the scheme has not saved the jobs of even many workers covered by the program. Moreover, the scheme has helped business owners far, far more than it has helped workers. In the long term, the huge flow of public funds into the hands of rich capitalists will lead to working class people having to pay for the resulting debt. We will be made to cop cuts to public services and welfare. And now, the Liberals’ latest budget is giving still more handouts to its capitalist mates!
However, winning jobs for workers requires not boosting bosses’ profits but the very opposite: forcing business owners to retain a bigger workforce than the level that makes them the greatest profits. We need mass struggle, including industrial action, to stop bosses cutting jobs! Let’s unite employed and unemployed workers to demand:
A ban on job cuts by any firm making a profit, however small.
A ban on job cuts by any company whose CEO has an annual package in excess of $1 million.
A ban on job cuts by any business whose profit over the previous seven years exceeds any current losses.
The forcing of any company making a profit to increase its number of full-time employees by at least twenty-five workers for every one million dollars of quarterly (i.e. three monthly) profit.
A ban on all cuts to wages and shift penalties from pre-pandemic levels.
The granting of permanency to all currently casual workers.
Any business that violates any of these measures to be confiscated and transferred into public ownership.
Instead of such a program, the ALP and Greens “opposition” parties and the pro-ALP leadership of most of our unions have accepted Morrison’s deceitful mantra that workers and their bosses “are all in this together.” They only differ with the government on the details. Additionally, Greens and ALP politicians and Laborite union leaders have long called for promoting jobs through protecting businesses from imports, backing local manufacturing companies and keeping out guest workers. But over the last several months, importing goods has become harder, local businesses have been subsidised and guest workers can’t come in. And still local bosses are throwing workers out of their jobs left, right and centre as they choose to make workers pay for the pandemic! Protectionism fails to save anyone’s job. It only divides local workers from their true allies: all the other workers of the world. Meanwhile, it very mistakenly makes workers believe that they have a common “national interest” with their own local bosses.
That is why we need a new agenda to lead our unions and the broader working class. An agenda based on the understanding that jobs for all workers can only be won through struggle against the capitalist exploiters. Such a program would be guided by the truth that to wage this struggle against the powerful capitalists, the workers movement must unite with all those hurt by the capitalist-dominated “order” – Aboriginal people suffering intense racist oppression, women workers disproportionately copping insecure jobs, guest workers and international students denied the rights of citizenship and Chinese, other Asian, Muslim and African people hit with redneck attacks. And when the capitalist exploiters scream that forcing them to hire more workers than they want will cause economic collapse, we must respond: if your system cannot tolerate the obvious measures needed to ensure secure jobs for all workers then your system has simply got to go! We working class people and our allies will take over the economy and run it based on socialist collective ownership for the benefit of us all.
For those who want to print out this article to distribute to potentially interested work mates, fellow union members and friends, here is a PDF version of this article in leaflet form (one single-sided A4 page):
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Photo Above: Who is Really Calling the Shots! Australia’s richest person, mining billionaire Gina Rinehart flanked by Scott Morrison and Donald Trump at a White House state dinner during Morrison’s trip to the U.S. in September 2019. As in the U.S., in Australia, governments and state institution serve the capitalist exploiting class. That is why even during the pandemic, Australia’s tycoons have become even richer at the expense of working class people.
Corporate Bosses Use Pandemic to
Increase Their Exploitation of Workers
The Ever Increasing Share of National Income That Is Being Plundered By the Capitalists
Force Companies to Increase Hiring at the Expense of Their Ever More Bloated Profits!
12 September 2020: Over the last several months, business owners have thrown hundreds of thousands of workers out of their jobs. Even the ballooning unemployment rate hides the true extent of job losses. Many workers have given up the search for work and are thus not counted as unemployed. A huge number of casual workers simply are not getting shifts anymore or barely more than a few hours of work every month. They may be officially counted as “employed” but they know what they are actually going through!
Yet business owners – from
the bigwigs of large corporations to smaller business bosses hiring just a few
workers – have been crying poor too. And the right-wing federal Coalition
government, the Coalition and ALP state governments and the mainstream media keep
on telling us that “we are all in this together” in terms of the current
economic pain. However, the hard facts revealed a couple of weeks ago by the
Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) prove what many people already know: that
we are in fact not all in
this together. They show that while
total wages for the three months to the end of June plummeted by 3.3% [1], corporate profits have surged by a
staggering 15% in the very same period [2]. To give a sense of how big that
profit explosion is, consider this: if
corporate profits continue to skyrocket at the same compound rate every quarter
for the next three quarters as well, profits would have increased by 75% in
just one year!
Sure, the bosses of some sectors like tourism and
travel businesses are experiencing falling profits [2]. However, this is more
than made up for by the surge in profits in other sectors. For example, profits
in the construction sector surged by 54% in the June quarter [2]. And while some retail outlets are not doing
so well, others are making such a killing that total corporate retail profits
have skyrocketed by over 30% in just three months [2].
Yet, when the media report on the suffering caused by
the pandemic, they focus heavily on the challenges of business owners and very
little on the hardships of workers. The media and politicians especially like
to speak about the difficulties faced by small business owners. Yet while small
business owners of cafes, restaurants and motels have certainly been hard hit
by the economic crisis, the profit increases amongst small businesses in the
media, information and telecommunications sector, the construction industry,
mining and some parts of retail have been so
huge that the overall profits of unincorporated businesses – that is, overwhelmingly smaller businesses – have
risen by a solid 1.6% in just the months of April, May and June alone [3].
So how have business owners – especially those of bigger operations but to a lesser extent those of smaller ones too – managed to actually increase their profits when overall the economy is in the worst recession since the 1930s Great Depression? How are they able to reap in yet more spectacular profits when the overall income produced by the economy has crashed by 7% in just the three months to the end of June [4]? The capitalist business owners have achieved this by grabbing a still bigger share of national income at the expense of the wage workers who actually do the work. This is a proven by a very revealing figure detailed in the national accounts for the June 2020 quarter: the Unit Labour Cost. The Unit Labour Cost represents the average amount that bosses must outlay in wages and superannuation for each dollar of added value that workers produce [5]. In other words, the higher the Unit Labour Cost the less that workers are being exploited, while the lower the Unit Labour Cost, the more that workers are being ripped off. Well, that Unit Labour Cost crashed by nearly 10% in just the June quarter alone [6]! That means bosses have spectacularly increased their rate of exploitation of workers during the pandemic. One way they have done this is to use the cover of the pandemic to cut their workforce and force those still employed to toil even harder for the same pay. The greedy capitalist business owners know that many workers still in jobs are nervous about resisting bosses when they see so many of their colleagues being thrown out of work. In other cases, corporate bosses and smaller business owners alike have been slashing working conditions over the last few months. For example, they have been forcing workers to work shifts without paying them shift or weekend penalties. So much for “we are all in this together”!
Official Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that in the three months from March 2020 to June 2020, the Unit Labour Costs of business crashed by nearly ten percent. The Unit Labour Cost represents the average amount that bosses must outlay in wages and superannuation for each dollar of added value that workers produce. The plummeting of Unit Labour Costs for capitalists shows that they have used the pandemic to greatly increase their rate of exploitation of workers.
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Now, bosses want
to increase their rate of exploitation even more. They are demanding laws to
extend workplace “flexibility” arrangements that will enable them to more
broadly avoid paying shift rates. In the mouths of the capitalists, “workplace
flexibility” means the bosses forcing workers to work in whatever arrangement
that is most profitable for the capitalists and workers not organizing
collectively to resist. The Liberal/National government is pushing this agenda
aggressively. They have insisted that firms eligible for JobKeeper be able to
unilaterally impose changes on employees’ work hours,
duties or work location. With typical spinelessness, the ALP “opposition” is, for
the most part, going along with the “flexibility” push. Even the ALP-dominated
leadership of the ACTU trade union federation has said that it is in principle
willing to negotiate on issues of “flexibility.” The ranks of the workers
movement should revolt against their current leaders acquiescing to this
agenda! We must fight to stop the
rollbacks of workplace rights for workers! Stop any cuts to wage loadings for
shift work! For wage rises not wage cuts!
Let’s fight against unemployment by forcing the capitalist bosses to maintain
much larger workforces at the expense of their ever expanding profits!
The Ever Increasing Share of National Income That Is Being Plundered By the Capitalists
As the total output that the
economy is producing is plummeting during this recession and some smaller
businesses in certain sectors are indeed doing it hard, the capitalist
bigwigs have overall actually become richer because they are seizing a much
bigger proportion of the national income than they were previously. The pie
has become a lot smaller but the share of that pie that the capitalists have
grabbed for themselves is just getting so much larger. Therefore, there’s a lot
less pie – filled to the brim as it is with
the fruits of our working class labour –
left to be distributed among the millions of working class people.
That business profits have been rising at a much faster rate than wages is not something that started during the pandemic. It has been going on for several decades now. The ABS data for the June quarter gives us a sense of just how much workers are being denied the fruits of their own labour. They show that total profits for the period of all private sector businesses employing labour [7] – that is, excluding the genuinely self-employed sector – was a whopping $120.1 billion; of which $109.6 billion was extracted by corporations [8] and $10.5 billion from unincorporated businesses [9] (largely smaller businesses). In the same period, total wages across the private sector were $141.9 billion [10]. That means that on average in capitalist businesses – that is, those hiring labour – 54% of the value that has been added by the operation of the business goes to wages and salaries and 46% goes to the business owners as profits. That is despicably unfair! For one, workers far, far outnumber business owners. Moreover, it is workers who are doing the work that actually produces the output of an enterprise. After all, how much of the iron ore that makes multi-billion dollar profits for the likes of Andrew Forrest and Gina Rinehart has ever been dug up or transported or processed by any one of these tycoons? None at all! And how many of the cardboard boxes that makes Visy owner, Anthony Pratt, his fortune has he ever folded or contributed to their development, manufacture, storage or transport?
The breakdown in distribution of income in an average business of 54% to wages and salaries and 46% to profits does not tell the whole story. For the fat salaries and bonuses of CEOs, directors and other top executives are also classified in the ABS figures as “wages and salaries.” But these big bosses are invariably also part or full shareholders of the company or sometimes even the sole owners of an enterprise in the case of smaller businesses. Although these people are numerically few compared to workers, their salaries and bonuses are so bloated that they make up a significant portion of total wages and salaries. If we moved their salaries and bonuses into the profits side, we would find that the split in income distribution in an average business is pretty much 50% to the workers and 50% to the business owners (indeed, it may well be that the capitalist bosses are getting even more than 50%). That seems a lot for these already fat cats to sit on their lazy, exploiting behinds! Let’s ponder what this fact means for workers. Consider a worker, lucky to have a full-time job, who receives $50,000 per year in wages. On average that worker is actually adding $100,000 or more to the net revenue of the business – that is, to the enterprise’s revenue minus all the expenses including raw materials, stationary, electricity, transport etc. Yet of that $100,000 of value that the worker is adding to the business operation, she or he receives back just $50,000 in wages. The other $50,000 is stolen by the business owners! That is the level of capitalist exploitation going on every day in Australia right across the economy – from large corporations employing thousands of workers to smaller businesses hiring just a few.
Left: Official Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that in the three months from March 2020 to June 2020, total wages received by Australian workers fell by 3.3% (from $146.7 billion to $141.9 billion). Yet in the very same period (Right), the total profits of business – both big and small – using hired labour grew by a whopping 14% (from $105.7 billion to $120.1 billion). Taken together, these figures also show that amongst businesses using hired labour, i.e. capitalist businesses, only 54% of the value added income produced by the workers is going back to the workers as wages (i.e. $141.9 billion), while 46% is grabbed as profits (i.e. $120.1 billion) by the much tinier number of capitalist business owners. Given that business owners usually also extract part of their income through awarding themselves huge CEO and director salaries, which are officially classified as “wages”, then the reality in Australian capitalist businesses is that for every $100,000 of value added by workers about $50,000 is stolen by the capitalists through either profits or fat director “salaries”
The reality is that even before the pandemic hit, this rate of exploitation of workers had
been increasing remorselessly. Thus, for the
earliest date that ABS data is readily available, the March quarter of 2001,
the official breakdown – the real one as we have discussed is even less
favourable for workers – in average income
distribution in a business was 64% for wages and salaries and 36% for business
profits [7] [10]. Yet by just before the pandemic, at the end of the December
quarter of 2019, the average distribution in Australia’s private sector had
become just 58% for wages and salaries and 42% for profits. Now, in just six
months, the percentage of income going to wages and salaries has crashed by a
further 4%, while the proportion going to profits has surged by the same
amount.
It seems that the income of ultra-rich business owners
is set to rise even further at the expense of working class people. The
conservative Morrison government has flagged that it may accede to the demands
of business bigwigs and make yet another cut to company tax levels even as it
has disgustingly decreed that Jobseeker payments for unemployed people will be
slashed by $300 a fortnight from next month onwards. This must be resisted!
Yes, economic stimulus is needed but in a way that actually benefits the
masses. The working class and its allies should demand:
No income tax cuts for high income earners (that is, those on more than $250,000 per annum).
No corporate tax cuts. Greatly increase company tax rates instead to cover some of the ballooning debt.
No reduction in Jobseeker payments – increase them instead!
A massive increase in provision of low-rent public housing. With millions of working class people struggling to pay rent this is an urgently needed measure.
A huge increase in funding for aged care. For all this funding to go to publicly-owned aged care centres. Due to the greed of private aged care business owners, the profit-driven aged care sector has failed to ensure the safety of residents and aged care workers during the pandemic, leading to the horrific, unnecessary deaths of hundreds of people. The aged care sector must be nationalized. The present employment of aged care workers on insecure casual terms should be replaced by their employment on a permanent, secure basis. For the number of aged care workers to be greatly increased and for public resources to be devoted to the systematic training of all aged care workers.
Free 24 hour childcare and free pre-school education accessible to all infants. This is vitally necessary to enable women’s full participation in economic, political and community life. All the funding should go to publicly owned childcare centres and pre-schools – the childcare sector must be nationalized.
Force Companies to Increase Hiring at the Expense of Their Ever More Bloated Profits!
Other than through more intensively exploiting their
workers, there is another reason why capitalist business owners have overall
been able to greatly increase their profits during the pandemic. Though the government’s JobKeeper program, in the context of a social order where bosses
are able to retrench workers at will, has helped some workers remain in
employment, overwhelmingly the main beneficiaries of the program have been
business owners. And this was always the government’s intention! In our
leaflet, No Job Cuts! No Unpaid Stand
Downs! that was written more than 4 months ago, in the early days of JobKeeper, we warned of this massive problem with the
scheme:
“JobKeeper is financed not from wealthy company owners but from the public budget. And you can bet that it is working class people who are going to be made to cover most of the resulting public debt. We face cuts to public service jobs, the further sell-off of public housing, the return of the dole back to near starvation levels, more health and education services being made user pays and further privatisation. What makes this more terrible is that some of the capitalists receiving JobKeeper subsidies did not actually have plans to cut their workforce because they needed to keep exploiting their workers to protect profits or market share. Thus, many billionaire and multi-millionaire capitalists are now going to receive huge donations from the public budget that amount to a combined multi-billion dollars amount.”
With the ABS figures showing that corporate profits
have skyrocketed by 15% in the June quarter alone, the above prediction has now
been confirmed.
Yet given that capitalists are, currently, completely
free to throw workers out of their jobs at any time if that is what it takes to
maximize these bosses’ bottom line, what should
then be our attitude to JobKeeper? Well, it means that while fighting to impose a program for jobs
that will consistently benefit working class people and that can truly get rid
of unemployment, we should in the
interim insist on the maintenance of JobKeeper,
demand its extension to cover the millions of workers not presently included in
the scheme – including all casual workers, visa workers and international
students – and oppose the Morrison government’s plan to reduce JobKeeper payments from the end of September
onwards. The ALP and ACTU oppose the Morrison government’s plan to slash the
level of JobKeeper payments and to
the extent that they are actually standing by that position that stance should
be supported. However, overwhelmingly,
the main game should not be about JobKeeper
but about fighting for a class struggle program to end unemployment. And
here the ALP and the current pro-ALP leadership of most of our unions have
nothing at all to offer. Indeed, the ALP is so intent on ensuring their own
acceptance by the powerful big end of town – and even more so under “left”
current ALP leader, Anthony Albanese, than under the openly
right faction former head, Bill Shorten – that
they cannot even moot a scheme that would reduce unemployment at the expense of
business profits.
When one realizes that for every $100,000 of value added by a worker, on average about $50,000 is extracted by Australia’s capitalists, then it is very obvious what we need to do to fight unemployment: we need to force those capitalists to divert some of that money that they are grabbing from their workers as profits – perhaps to use to buy their third Mercedes, their eighth holiday home or their second luxury yacht – and use it instead to hire more workers. Capitalist business owners seek not to maximize production but rather to operate at that certain level of production with a certain size workforce that will produce the maximum profits for them. The reason that they don’t want to have a still bigger workforce producing more goods or services is that once that “optimum” level (for them) is reached any further increase in workforce would actually lead to a drop in their profits; for one, because they would need to reduce the price too much to sell the extra goods or services that the additional workers are producing, secondly because they may need to pay higher wages when there is less unemployment and thirdly because they would need to spend more on training as they start to hire less trained workers. However, if we could compel the business bosses to hire more workers, they would be forced to increase production of goods or services to make use of those extra workers and then have to lower the cost of the produced items in order to sell them all. So we would end up with an economy with more workers employed, more goods and services produced and lower prices – all of which would be great for the working class masses but which would be achieved at the expense of capitalist profits. Consider, for example, how this would work with the supermarkets – and we know that the filthy rich owners of Coles and Woolworths have continued to rake in fabulous profits during the pandemic [11]. If these bosses of the supermarket giants were forced to hire more workers and prevented from cutting any workers’ wages or conditions they would end up increasing opening hours to make use of the extra workers and probably increase the time spent on job training. Furthermore, so that they would gain some benefit in terms of total sales from having the extra staff, they would need to slightly lower prices to sell more goods and, thus, utilize the extra labour that they have been compelled to take on board. Moreover, to make use of the extra workers they would probably have more customers served by check out staff rather than self-serve counters. Apart from this being beneficial to the working class because more workers get employed, working class customers would also benefit through lower prices, faster and more convenient service and longer supermarket opening hours.
Of course, the
capitalist supermarket bosses would absolutely hate this as would any capitalist
being forced to employ more workers than they want to. They will scream blue
murder at the loss of profits. Meanwhile, Liberal, ALP and ALP/Greens governments, who all ultimately serve the
capitalists, will also militantly oppose such demands. That is why the only way
that we can compel the bosses to hire more workers at the expense of their
profits is through determined mass struggle. We need such powerful working
class action that the capitalists and the governments that serve them will
realise that the cost of not acceding to our demands is potentially greater and
more threatening to their overall domination of society than the loss of
profits that would ensue from meeting our demands. Even during a pandemic,
powerful working class action is still possible. In July, five hundred workers organised
by the National Union of Workers at Woolworths’ warehouse in Wyong, NSW took
powerful strike action to demand decent pay. The striking workers, who also established
a picket line to enforce the strike, additionally demanded the conversion of
long-term casuals to permanency.
In order to unite workers across different workplaces into a common fight for jobs for all and in order to ensure that the rights of workers at smaller businesses – where industrial action is less effective – are also protected, we should fight for actual laws that force bosses to increase the number of workers that they employ. Among the demands that we should fight for are:
A ban on all job cuts or unpaid stand downs by any firm making a profit, however small.
A ban on all job cuts or unpaid stand downs by any company whose highest paid executive or director has an annual salary and bonus package in excess of $1 million.
A ban on job cuts or unpaid stand downs by any business whose total profit over the previous, say seven, years exceeds any current losses.
The forcing of any company still making a profit to increase its number of full-time paid employees by at least twenty-five workers for every one million dollars of quarterly (i.e. three monthly) profit. By the way, since total profits of private sector businesses utilizing hired labour was more than $120 billion in the last quarter, this measure alone would immediately lead to an extra three million full-time jobs.
A ban on all cuts to wages and workplace conditions from pre-pandemic levels.
The immediate conversion of all casual workers into permanent employees with all the rights of permanency.
Any business that violates any of these measures to be confiscated and transferred into public ownership.
To such a
program, the capitalist exploiters and all the ruling class politicians,
mainstream media commentators, “experts” and official economists who serve them
will scream that this is “totally impractical”, “will cause investment to
collapse”, “will lead to a plummeting of business confidence” etc etc etc. When they do, all socialists should use that
opportunity to explain to the working class masses that this is precisely why
we socialists insist that the means of production be stripped away from the
rich capitalists and brought into public ownership under a workers government.
For if the capitalists insist that plainly rational measures to ensure that every
worker gets a permanent, secure job is “not practical” and “will cause
investment to collapse” under their system, then this is the best proof one can get that their system needs to be swept away once and for all by the workers and all our allies and
replaced by a socialist system that we can truly call
our own.
Don’t Let Rich Business Owners Make Workers Pay for the Pandemic – Force Them to Keep Paying Wages from the Profits They’ve Leached From Workers Over the Years!
No Job Cuts! No Unpaid Stand Downs!
3 May 2020: Australian billionaire James Packer spent much of last year cruising around in a $200 million super yacht. He is now lazing about in his $20 million holiday mansion in a U.S. resort. Packer can afford all this. This main owner of hotel and casino operator Crown Resorts has made a fortune from leaching profits out of the hard work of Crown workers. In the last five years, Crown’s owners have extracted a total profit of $4.2 billion. Yet within hours of the March 22 announcement that clubs and casinos needed to close due to COVID-19, Packer and Co. stood down without pay thousands of workers. Around 95% of the 11,500 strong Crown workforce has been cut. This is outrageous! Consider this: assuming that the average annual wage of a Crown worker is $60,000, probably an overestimate given how badly hospitality workers are paid, then Packer and the other shareholders could pay all the stood down workers their full wages for six and a half years out of the profits that they have leached from these workers’ labour in just the last five years!
Packer is hardly alone in acting this way. Right across Australia, the owners of cafes, restaurants, gyms, airlines, tourism operations and factories are throwing onto the scrap heap the very same workers who made these capitalists their fortunes. We must not stand for this! Ultra-rich business owners should not be allowed to retrench workers or stand down workers without pay. We must force them to keep on paying us in full out of the profits that they have leached from our labour over the years.
Early June 2020: James Packer aboard his $200 million superyacht. Just six weeks earlier his Crown Resorts stood down without pay over 10,000 of the very workers whose toil made this greedy, lazy billionaire his fortune. Merely selling the superyacht that he bought last year (out of the profits extracted from these workers) could alone have covered the full pay of all of Packer’s stood-down workers for nearly four months!
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It is Workers Who Are Bearing the Economic Pain of the COVID-19 Pandemic
For years, Australian governments – Liberal, ALP and ALP-Greens coalitions alike – have kept the dole at cruelly low levels. The right-wing media have “justified” this by insulting unemployed workers as lazy. However, with so many workers now thrown onto Centrelink queues it is hard to sell that lie. So, now the new line that the regime is selling us is that “everyone needs to share the economic pain” caused by the pandemic. Except it is workers who are being made to bear all that pain! Sure, there are also some small businesses that are not making a profit right now. But let’s not buy the line that those small business owners using hired labour are simply, innocent “battlers.” Many of these small business owners axing jobs now are the ones most notorious for illegally under-paying their staff and otherwise bullying their workers. And how many workers employed in small businesses see their supposed “battler” boss turn up each day in a flashy Mercedes or BMW!
Let’s remember that when any business using hired labour, big or small, winds up, the owners still have all their personal wealth that they have extracted from exploiting their workers as well as all the money that they will get from selling the equipment and other business assets that they had bought from the profits sweated out from workers’ labour over the years. Just look at how little the high-profile failure of Clive Palmer’s Queensland Nickel affected his wealth. After Palmer sacked 237 workers in early 2016, he then infamously refused to pay even the entitlements of the further 800 workers who lost their jobs when the company was liquidated shortly after. Today, despite his company’s collapse and all the pain borne by the axed Queensland Nickel workers, Palmer still manages to be Australia’s eighth richest person with nearly $10 billion in wealth!
Far from “sharing the pain”, many bosses are using the current crisis to, instead, inflict pain on their workers. Knowing that the massive job losses have left those still employed feeling insecure about their jobs and, thus, less willing to challenge bosses, business owners are ramming through attacks on working conditions. The conservative government is right behind them. Last week, industrial relations minister Christian Porter slashed the notice period that bosses have to give before making cuts to pay, penalty rates and leave entitlements to just 24 hours. Meanwhile, some corporate bigwigs are using the cover of the pandemic to push through job cuts. In March, ANZ bosses slashed 230 jobs as part of a long-plotted “cost cutting” drive.
Typical of the bosses busy retrenching workers are the ones heading major pub operator, Redcape. Redcape’s biggest stake is held by American banker, Ken Moelis, but Australian tycoon, Rhonda Wyllie, also owns a multi-millionaire dollar stake. Wyllie, whose family’s wealth is $420 million, is a politically-connected property mogul who had then foreign minister Julie Bishop at her obscenely opulent 2018 wedding. Right: Whyllie (left) and Bishop (right) at this latter event. Whyllie, Moellis and co.’s company wasted no time in responding to the pandemic restrictions by axing casual staff and standing down, without pay, most of Redcape’s permanent workers. This despite Redcape’s owners having exploited $153 million from their workers in just the last four and a half years – enough to pay the 800 cut workers in full for around five years!
Bosses Putting Workers’ Lives at Risk
Driven by this same pursuit of “cutting costs,” many business owners are putting those workers lucky enough to still have a job at risk of contracting the coronavirus. Qantas has such lax safety systems that even the limp government regulator, Safework NSW, issued the company a mandatory notice on March 2 because Qantas did not ensure that PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) was provided to Sydney ground crew performing the crucial role of cleaning aircraft of wet wipes, used tissues, used face masks and sometimes even vomit and blood. Then the Transport Workers Union exposed how after a Qantas baggage handler at Adelaide Airport was found be infected with COVID-19, Qantas bosses did little to put any protections in place. As a result within 17 days, another 17 baggage handlers, three other Qantas workers and 11 close contacts became infected.
In many cases, bosses are not only putting their workers at risk but placing those they supposedly serve in danger too. At many hospitals and private aged care facilities, bosses have failed to provide workers with adequate PPE; and at best only after the virus has already spread. At a Western Sydney Anglicare nursing home, 14 residents have tragically died from COVID-19 after a worker was infected.
The higher paid strata of administrators of government-run facilities are often little better than their private sector counterparts. In Tasmania, the virus jumped from two infected North West Regional Hospital patients onto medical workers. The lack of adequate PPE, which medical workers have angrily exposed, enabled COVID-19 to then spread like wildfire amongst staff and patients at the hospital and a neighbouring private hospital. Three days ago, the twelfth person died from this particular outbreak that has infected at least 73 health workers.
Since we can’t rely on the bosses to ensure a safe workplace, the workers movement must fight for the following:
Union/worker safety committees at each workplace. These will struggle to ensure that each workplace is safe and has proper pandemic deterrence procedures. If any site is found to be dangerous, workers should walk off the job until the site is made safe. Workers to be fully paid during any such walk-offs.
Temperature testing of all workers and others entering work sites.
All workers at hospitals treating potential COVID-19 patients and at all aged care homes to be supplied with full head-to-toe PPE. The provision of such space-suit style PPE to nurses, janitors and doctors in China is part of why that country was so successful in responding to the COVID-19 threat.
All workers to be granted unlimited paid pandemic leave for COVID-19 treatment or quarantining or for caring for ill people. Instead of bosses blaming workers for outbreaks, they should pay sick leave so that workers don’t get hit with the choice between poverty and risking spreading the disease.
Similarly, all casual workers must be immediately granted permanency. These workers must have all the rights of permanent workers – including sick leave and guaranteed minimum work hours.
Not Bailouts of Capitalists but Jobs For All Workers At Full Pay
All of official society, business owners, media commentators, the ALP “Opposition” and even, to a significant degree, the current leaders of our trade unions – have been cheering the government’s JobKeeper scheme that pays the owners of certain businesses $1,500 per fortnight for each worker that they keep on their payrolls. However, JobKeeper does not apply to most casual workers. Yet it is precisely such workers who have suffered the biggest job cuts since they often work in the hardest hit sectors like hospitality and retail. Also, often working in these areas are international students and visa workers. Yet the scheme will not apply to them either. These people now face destitution as they are not even eligible for the dole. Despicably, Morrison’s response to their plight is to tell these people to “make your way home”! For many this is not even possible as they not only have no money to pay for airfares but often cannot do so due to travel restrictions. The workers movement must actively demand that, to the extent that JobKeeper actually helps workers keep their jobs, it should apply to all workers. Let’s stop our wages being undercut by the forcing of destitute people into illegally-low-paid jobs in the cash economy! Let’s demand:
Immediate permanency, with all the rights of permanent workers, for all casual employees!
Full citizenship rights for everyone here including international students, refugees and visa workers!
Other than those explicitly excluded from JobKeeper, there are many others that the scheme will not save the jobs of. Since it only applies to large companies that have lost more than 50% of their revenue and smaller businesses that have lost at least 30%, workers being axed by firms experiencing lesser downturns will not be helped. Moreover, since the subsidy is barely above minimum wage, many bosses are choosing not to utilise the scheme because they simply don’t want to top up any wages out of their own pockets. Other capitalists are refusing to re-hire cut workers because they wanted to “prune” staff anyway.
There is another huge problem. JobKeeper is financed not from wealthy company owners but from the public budget. And you can bet that it is working class people who are going to be made to cover most of the resulting public debt. We face cuts to public service jobs, the further sell-off of public housing, the return of the dole back to near starvation levels, more health and education services being made user pays and further privatisation. What makes this more terrible is that some of the capitalists receiving JobKeeper subsidies did not actually have plans to cut their workforce because they needed to keep exploiting their workers to protect profits or market share. Thus, many billionaire and multi-millionaire capitalists are now going to receive huge donations from the public budget that amount to a combined multi billion dollars amount. That’s why in counter-position to JobKeeper, we need to fight for jobs for all workers through forcing the bosses to retain more workers than they want to at the expense of their own profits. That requires militant, mass struggle.
Even at this time of pandemic restrictions, strike action is still possible. Last month, MUA-organised Hutchison workers walked off the job for ten days over the company’s callous indifference to the threat of a pandemic spread at its Port Botany terminal. Moreover, social distancing measures will inevitably ease, giving us more freedom to launch the mass actions so urgently needed. We should then fight to stop wealthy business owners planning to permanently shut down operations by holding mass protest occupations of their facilities (while maintaining safe social distancing) to prevent them from selling their assets. However, given that many workers being axed are at smaller sites with less industrial power, the workers movement must also unite behind common demands for laws to ensure jobs for all workers. Let us demand:
A ban on all job cuts or unpaid stand downs by any firm whose total profit over the previous, say seven, years exceeds any current losses.
A ban on all cuts to wages and conditions from pre-pandemic levels.
The forcing of any company still making a profit to increase its number of full-time paid employees by at least five workers for every hundred thousand dollars of monthly profit.
Any business that violates these measures to be confiscated and transferred into public ownership.
Workers are NOT “All in This Together” with the Greedy, Rich Bosses
To wage the desperately needed fightback, the workers movement must change the program that currently leads our unions. Right now, pro-ALP union leaders have completely bought into the “we are all in this together” mantra. They have been cheered on in this by the corporate bigwigs, the right-wing government and media commentators. The ACTU leadership has been so compliant that industrial relations minister Christian Porter called ACTU leader Sally McManus his new BFF! Even the more militant Victorian CFMEU head, John Setka, has cheered the “unprecedented co-operation” with bosses associations saying “For once, we are all in the same boat.”
But far from being “all in the same boat”, the greedy bosses are actually throwing workers off the very boats that these workers built as soon as these boats run into rough waters. It is this same “we are all in the same boat” nonsense that saw the 1980s Accord between unions, bosses and the then ALP government. The Accord was essentially a no-strike pledge by union leaders in exchange for promises of social programs. In reality, The Accord saw the then Hawke and Keating Labor governments preside over the biggest increase in inequality in Australian history. Since then a less overt, but still underlying, “all in the same boat” ideology has seen union leaders, for the most part, shy away from organising militant industrial action – a strategy that has weakened our unions and led to the undermining of working conditions and rampant casualisation of the workforce.
Central to the “we are all in this together” ideology is the myth that workers and bosses share a common “national interest” in promoting the profits of local companies. Thus, the union leadership’s long-term “strategy” to stop job cuts has been to call to protect Australian businesses from imported goods. However, the last couple of months have exposed how utterly bankrupt this protectionist strategy is. For all the recent huge job losses have absolutely nothing to do with overseas competition hurting local businesses. The job cuts have actually been concentrated in sectors – like restaurants, shops, personal care, tourism and gyms – that simply cannot by their very nature be replaced by imports or by overseas contracting. Meanwhile, not only are travel disruptions reducing imports to Australia, those cuts to imports are causing job losseshere as Australian businesses are deprived of needed supplies.
So we desperately need to exorcise our union movement of the we are all in this together or common national interest myth that currently haunts it. Our unions need to be re-oriented on a program based on a clear understanding that the interests of the capitalist business owners and those of the working class are at all times counter-posed. At times of crisis, like today, this conflict of interests actually becomes even sharper. Central to such a class struggle understanding is the truth that job losses are not ultimately caused by foreign threats to local business profits but by the greed of capitalists and the irrationality of their system. Thus the fight for jobs for all requires not helping local bosses to make more profit but actually, in a sense, the very opposite: mass struggle to force these bosses to hire more workers at the expense of their profits.
One positive development that lasted for a short period is that after years of focusing on demands to keep out guest workers, our union leaders, albeit not very energetically, did rightly call for JobKeeper to be extended to visa workers and international students. However, this emphasis did not last long at all. Today, Sally McManus and some other union leaders gave legitimacy to a newspaper opinion piece by one of their ALP parliamentary mates calling to cut migration and for local workers to get a “first go at jobs.” The divisive, nationalist article was written by senior federal shadow minister, Kristina Keneally, who sounded a good deal like a Peter Dutton, Pauline Hanson or Donald Trump. Such pitting of Australian workers against international and guest workers, far from saving the jobs of local workers, only divides workers from our true allies – the workers of the world – and, thus, makes the workers movement less able to mobilise effective action to stop job slashing attacks by capitalists. It is high time that our unions strongly reject all divisive, protectionist demands that call for putting local workers ahead of our international worker comrades whether they be calls to slash immigration, demands for more “local content”, demands for “Aussie crews on Aussie ships” or calls to keep out visa workers. Instead, our unions must demand that all those working here (including on ships servicing here), no matter what their nationality, get the highest local wages and conditions, must fight to win full citizenship rights for all visa workers and international students and must make persistent efforts to unite local and international workers against job slashing bosses everywhere in the fight for jobs for all. As the threat of job losses at British magnate Richard Branson’s Virgin shows and the fact that the most powerful Australian capitalists – like James Packer, the Murdochs and Anthony Pratt – have major operations abroad highlights, we need unity and solidarity with our worker sisters and brothers around the world today more than ever.
In waging a fight for jobs for all, the working class must unite in common struggle with all downtrodden layers especially hard hit in recent weeks. Standing by those sleeping the streets, couch-surfing or struggling to pay rent, the workers movement must demand a six-month freeze to all residential rent payments, an immediate end to all public housing sell-offs and the requisitioning of all unoccupied properties of people owning more than three homes and their immediate conversion into low-rent public housing or rent-free housing for the homeless. The workers movement must also stand by Australia’s brutally oppressed Aboriginal people who face extreme racist discrimination at the best of times but who are now, with police having greater powers arising from pandemic restrictions, copping even more racist repression. That means we must strongly stand by homeless Aboriginal people being especially bullied by police. And we must join in the recent, powerful call by the families and friends of Aboriginal victims of deaths in custody to release all of our Aboriginal sisters and brothers who are languishing – now more than ever given the dangerous and repressive covid-19 conditions – in Australia’s many brutal prisons and cruel detention centres.
Don’t Let the Capitalist Rulers Blame Others for the Suffering and Job Cuts since the Pandemic Hit
Any fightback that the workers movement tries to wage will be undermined if the ruling class succeeds in shifting the blame for the pandemic and job losses onto others. Hard right media shock jocks and coded messages from the government have despicably sought to blame Chinese people. This has led to an explosion in the already alarming number of racist attacks against people of colour in Australia. People of Chinese appearance, including medical workers, have especially been abused and violently attacked. The working class must stamp out such attacks. Workers of Asian background make up an important component of the Australian workers movement and we need to resolutely fight against racism if we are to preserve our own unity and focus the masses on who our enemy actually is. So, while workers rights activists should respect genuine social distancing regulations, when a racist attack is threatened, we should make an exception and take mass action to defend those targeted and to painfully rebuff the perpetrators.
The main way that the capitalist rulers are trying to shift blame for the deaths and economic pain caused by the pandemic is to make ridiculous smears against the People Republic of China (PRC). The fact is that China gave Australia and the world much warning about the COVID-19 threat. Indeed, Australia did not even have a single confirmed case of COVID-19 when China took the unprecedented step of shutting down a whole city of 11 million people to contain the virus. That the virus still spread so widely here is because the Liberal government, with ALP support, in order to underhandedly promote anti-China fears within the Australian population, maintained for a long period restrictions only on travellers from China (and later from South Korea too) while not taking measures then to screen and test the large number of people returning with the virus from Europe, from cruise ships and from the U.S. Furthermore, the capitalist system, in which those who control production only have things made if they can find a way to extract a profit out of it, meant that Australian manufacturers have only in a very limited way switched over to producing pandemic response items like protective suits, medical masks, infra-red thermometers and testing kits. The resulting scarcity of these items has greatly weakened Australia’ response. In the end, these shortages have only been eased after China came to the rescue in recent days with large shipments. So the attempts by Australia’s capitalist regime to blame the PRC are total rubbish. Indeed, the Liberal government’s China-bashing call for a supposed “independent inquiry” into the earliest phase of the pandemic are much like its 2014-2015 Royal Commission into the Trade Unions, a witch-hunt aimed at smearing their target and justifying attacks against it. If we allow the capitalist ruling class to deceive the population into blaming China for their current hardships then the masses will likely stay away from any attempt to resist the capitalist class’ attacks on workers’ jobs and conditions.
There is another reason why the Australian regime and their big brother allies in Washington are so hysterically attacking China over the pandemic. The PRC’s stunning success in responding to the COVID-19 threat, versus on the other hand the seriously flawed response in Australia and the catastrophically botched one in the U.S., has shown the superiority of the PRC’s socialistic system based on public ownership and working class rule. The capitalist rulers around the world are terrified that their own masses will see this and, thus, conclude that socialism is what is needed in their own countries too. Indeed, that is precisely the conclusion that we must draw! For although working class rule in China is bureaucratically deformed and threatened by the presence of a still significant capitalist class, recent events have proven that such a socialist system, even in a flawed form, is far better able to protect the interests of the masses than the chaotic capitalist system. Thus, because the key sectors of the Chinese economy are dominated by public ownership – including banking, construction, ports, airlines, heavy industry, communication and mining – China was able to switch over its economy to building brand new emergency hospitals and pandemic response items in a flash. Moreover, the fact that the Chinese working class, in as imperfect a way as it is, have control of the PRC economy through their state means that the rise in unemployment in China since the pandemic has been relatively miniscule compared to the massive wave of joblessness that we are seeing in the U.S., Europe and Australia. So, yes, we definitely do need to fight here for a system based on public ownership and working class rule. And when business owners respond to our demands for them to retain more employees than is most profitable for them by saying that “this is not practical” then the workers movement must respond: if you capitalists cannot run the economy in a way that provides jobs for all then the economy should not be in your hands, we working class people will take it off you and put it into our own, strong and able, collective hands.
The Western capitalist rulers are right, from their point of view, to fear that the existence of socialistic rule in the world’s most populous country is an existential threat, if only by example, to capitalist rule in their own countries. That is precisely why it is in the interests of working class people and all the oppressed here to stand by socialistic rule in China. For the existence of Red China strengthens our own struggle against capitalist exploitation. So let us oppose the Australian regime’s participation in the provocative U.S.-led naval forays through distant Chinese waters and let us oppose its fulsome political support to counterrevolutionary forces within China – like the yuppy, rich people’s opposition in Hong Kong.
May 1, U.S.A.: Workers at Amazon, Target and other retail giants stage protests and walkouts over poor pay and the companies’ failure to provide workers with adequate protective gear during the pandemic. Militant class struggle is needed here in Australia to both demand a safe working environment and to fight for jobs for all by forcing companies to retain more workers at the expense of their profits.
The Capitalists Have Waged Class War on Workers for Decades – It’s Time to Wage Class War on Them!
For the last several years, most workers have barely received a pay rise even while rents have been rising significantly, electricity costs are climbing steeply and out of pocket medical costs are increasing. In the meantime, company profits have skyrocketed. As a result, the wealth of Australia’s richest 200 people went from $197 billion in 2016 to $342 billion in 2019 – a staggering 74% increase in just three years! But now that some of them have run into choppy waters they are dumping overboard the very workers who produced their spectacular wealth. And then they tell us that “we are all in the same boat together.” How dare they! Workers who have just been axed by their bosses must feel nauseous when they encounter such rubbish as they queue up for hours before opening time outside Centrelink offices while wealthy business owners drive past in their flashy prestige cars.
So let’s completely reject the lie that we are being sold by the big end of town, with the complicity of the current ALP leaders of the workers movement, that “we are all in this together.” Let’s never lose sight of the fact that while it is the pandemic that necessitates social distancing restrictions it is a choice of business owners to lay off or stand down workers without pay rather than pay their workers out of the profits that they have sweated out of these self same workers over many years. Let’s build mass working class struggle against the bosses to force them to re-hire retrenched or stood down without pay workers as well as all longer-term unemployed workers. And if James Packer complains that he can’t afford this, we should demand that he sell the new super yacht that he bought eleven months ago. That alone would give him enough money to fully pay all his stood-down Crown workers for nearly four months. Let’s win jobs for all through waging class war on the very exploiting class that has been waging a one-sided class war on us for the last three and a half decades!
Corporate
Bosses Endanger Workers’ Lives
Even More During COVID-19 Epidemic
4 April 2020: The greed of capitalist bosses knows no bounds. They have always stolen the fruit of workers’ labour. And in their drive for still higher profits, they have always been willing to endanger workers’ lives by cutting corners on workplace safety. Now, since the COVID-19 outbreak, the cruelty of their drive for profits has reached new levels. On the one hand, many business owners, at the first sign of a decrease in revenue or the need to temporarily shut down for quarantine reasons, are throwing out of their jobs the very workers whose manual and mental labour made these bosses their fortunes. On the other hand, some of those workers still in work are being exposed to the COVID-19 virus due to the bosses’ callous disregard for workers’ well-being. The latter is what is taking place, for example, at the Hutchison port at Sydney’s Port Botany.
We received the following message tonight from a
waterfront worker at Hutchison who is also a Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) member:
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“COVID-19 outbreak at my work. Hutchison terminal in Sydney again stands still. This time due to COVID-19 where there is one confirmed case – not contracted in the terminal. Problem is the six shifts since March 24 prior to our [MUA] member being notified by NSW Health. The numbers exposed are greater than the company is revealing.
“Hutchison deliberately concealed a positive COVID-19 test from workers and the Union [MUA]. Then they had wharfies working ensuring the ship got away before revealing on April 3.
“Believe it or not Hutchison will still not reveal to the workforce or Union who was on shift and who crossed over the six shifts.
“The terminal remains shut down until workers are satisfied all safety concerns have been agreed and implemented.
“These people are beyond belief.
“It’s criminal behaviour that puts the whole community at risk.”
Victory to the stop-work action of Hutchison workers! Solidarity with
the endangered Hutchison workers!
Hutchison was started by British capitalists in the 19th century after Britain stole Hong Kong from China through the Opium War. In 1979, still during the period of British colonial rule, Hong Kong real estate tycoon Li Ka-shing took a decisive stake in Hutchison, then called Hutchison Whampoa. Today Li and his sons run Hutchison. Li has an estimated wealth of $A52 billion. Not surprisingly then, this capitalist has given tacit support to the pro-colonial, anticommunist opposition movement in Hong Kong. This movement expresses the interests of Hong Kong’s rich who know that their selfish interests will be harmed if socialistic China exerts more control over Hong Kong. A prominent leader of Hong Kong’s biggest trade union federation, the pro-Beijing Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, aptly referred to Li Ka-shing as the “king of cockroaches” (see: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-protests-tycoons-li-exclusiv/exclusive-in-face-of-criticism-hong-kong-tycoon-li-ka-shing-says-hes-getting-used-to-punches-idUSKBN1Y11KW). We say that Red China should confiscate Hutchison and the other holdings of this king of cockroaches as well as those of the other Hong Kong tycoons and bring them all into public ownership so that the benefits of the socialist system can be brought to the people of Hong Kong; and improvements can be made to the conditions of workers employed in Hutchison Port operations around the world.
Unfortunately, the disregard for workers’ health shown by the bosses at Sydney’s Hutchison Ports is just one example of the attitude of greedy capitalists throughout Australia to the dangers to workers posed by COVID-19. In this time of the COVID-19 pandemic, working class people and our union movement will need to fight extra hard to stop layoffs, to prevent the bosses eroding our working conditions and to protect our very lives.
Photo Above: The government’s planned attacks on unemployed workers and other welfare recipients will lead to still more homelessness in Australia.
STOP GREEDY BOSSES FROM SLASHING JOBS!
DEFEAT THE MORRISON REGIME’S WAR AGAINST WELFARE RECIPIENTS!
16 October 2019 – The right-wing Morrison government is waging a multi-pronged attack on Australia’s lowest income people. Having rejected widespread calls to boost the cruelly low, Newstart Allowance, the Liberal-National government is seeking to push through legislation that will extend beyond June 2020 the trials of the Cashless Debit Card. Under the harsh regime of this “cashless welfare” system, welfare recipients will only receive 20% of their income through their bank account. The remainder must be spent through a Cashless Debit Card which can only be used at shops with Eftpos machines and cannot be used to withdraw cash or for alcohol or gambling. The government’s legislation will not only extend the period of the cashless welfare trials in the existing four sites but expand the trials to two new areas: the Northern Territory and the Cape York Peninsula. Welfare recipients in those two areas were already under compulsory income management as a result of the racist Intervention into Aboriginal communities begun in 2007 under the Howard government and extended under the following Labor government. However, the new measure will see the system where 50% of people’s income was restricted under a Basics Card replaced by the even more severe Cashless Debit Card, where 80% of income is quarantined. Moreover, if the new legislation becomes law, a minister will have the power to arbitrarily increase people’s rate of quarantining to 100%!
It is pretty
clear that the government’s aim is to use the trials as a stepping
stone to impose cashless
welfare on most welfare recipients. Last month, the junior partner
in the governing Coalition, the Nationals, decided
to push for the Cashless
Debit Card to be imposed on
all people who are unemployed or receiving parenting payments and aged under
35. For his part, prime minister Scott Morrison openly stated that the cashless
welfare trials were “commending itself for wider application.”
In yet another scheme to subject economically vulnerable people to more indignities, the Coalition government wants to drug test people receiving either the Newstart Allowance or the Youth Allowance. The measure will be introduced first as a trial at three sites involving 5,000 people. The bill enshrining the scheme is now before the Senate. Those who refuse to be drug tested will have their payments cut off and those that fail a second test will have to pay for the test, which would amount to hundreds of dollars. The scheme is so draconian and punitive that almost all health and drug treatment experts have slammed the plan.
All these proposed measures are not about supposedly using “tough love” to help unemployed people as the government claims. Rather, they will make the lives of low-income people more miserable. For starters, with welfare recipients often having to sub-let from a better-off tenant in order to be able to get rental accommodation (since landlords are reluctant to let to the lowest income people), cashless welfare will mean that many will simply not be able to pay their rent. Moreover, by curbing a person’s use of cash, the Cashless Debit Card will restrict low-income people from buying items at markets or second-hand from other people. They will also no longer be able to get a tradie to do a job at reduced rates for cash. Yet it is precisely the economically poor who most need to be able to get good deals from cash payments and bargains from markets and second-hand purchases. In short, the imposition of cashless welfare amounts to a sizable cut to the income of unemployed workers. How are people going to afford that when the Newstart Allowance is already so meagre? Take a single person trying to live in the working class Sydney suburb of Auburn, about 35 minutes from the city. The cheapest shared accommodation, single bedroom advertised there is going for $200 a week – that is, $400 a fortnight. Yet Newstart for a single person is just $559 a fortnight and the maximum rental assistance is only $138 per fortnight. So that single, unemployed worker has just $297 per fortnight left after paying rent. How the hell can a person survive on just $148.50 per week? Already many on Newstart are forced to skip meals, avoid using the heater during even freezing winter days and pass over purchases of essential medicines. Now, being denied the discounts that are possible through cash transactions will drive them further into poverty. And low income people face a second blow. With Liberal and ALP state governments alike continuing to sell off public housing, private landlords will know that they can jack up rents since people will have nowhere else to go.
What these planned new welfare measures aim to do is to stigmatise unemployed workers and all the poor – portraying them as lazy, drug or alcohol-addicted people who need a firm hand to bring them into line and make them job ready. This is a disgusting slander! The reason that so many people do not have jobs and many, many more have less work hours than they want is because of the greed of the corporate bigwigs who are forever trying to boost profits by slashing their workforces and driving those left behind harder for the same pay. Greedy business owners are, meanwhile, reluctant to spend any resources on training new workers unless there is big money to be made out of it. It is because of this capitalist system, where every economic decision is determined by the drive for profits for rich bosses, that there are nearly five unemployed people for every available job. Even if those small percentage of unemployed workers who have become, understandably, despondent at their prospects of finding work are pushed into becoming more active in job hunting this will only mean that instead of 19 people on average applying for each job vacancy, as is currently the case, there maybe say 23 people on average competing for each vacancy (even whether this will occur is questionable since the unbearably low level of the Newstart payment and greater costs inherent with cashless welfare will mean that people often cannot afford to buy clothes for interviews, travel to job opportunities or print their own CVs). Thus, at most, government “tough love” measures will mean that different people will end up getting the same scarce jobs. The same overall number of people will still be unemployed!
What the government’s schemes to stigmatise welfare recipients will do is to severely demoralise unemployed workers and lower their self esteem. When a worker gets retrenched by a boss or a young person struggles to get their first, secure job they feel demoralised because humans by nature want to be able to utilise their skills and as social animals we long to contribute to society’s development. Part of the egalitarian culture of so-called hunter-gatherer societies of the past came from the fact that everyone was able to contribute to satisfying their clan’s needs and those contributions were valued by and, indeed, essential to all. Yet in the profit-obsessed, capitalist system so many people are cruelly denied the basic human need to be able to utilise one’s labour and contribute to social production. These victims of capitalist greed then have to also put up with being vilified by the tabloid press, right-wing TV commentators and radio shock jocks and being looked down upon by a society whose values are shaped by the corporate ruling class. And ever more and more, these people are being stigmatised by punitive government policies like cashless welfare and mandatory drug testing. Meanwhile, the economic hardships imposed on welfare recipients through below poverty-level payments – increasingly compounded by restrictions on their access to cash – lead to social isolation as people can’t afford to travel to social events, pay entry fees to shows or nightspots or even go out for a coffee. So, unemployed workers are pushed into depression. Quite understandably, some in this predicament will seek solace in various forms of escape from reality – whether that be in the illusory salvation of religion or other cults or the “alternate reality” of a drug high.
But any suggestion that it is the lowest income people
who are especially prone to drug use or
alcoholism is repugnant. Welfare recipients
simply don’t have the money to be buying large amounts of drugs or alcohol. It
is the cocaine snorting, chardonnay swilling corporate high fliers, managers,
barristers, yuppies, rich kids and the like living in places like Bellevue
Hill, Mosman and Vaucluse who get to
indulge and spend far more on drugs and alcohol.
Of course, the government is not
suggesting compulsory drug testing of these social classes – after all, these
are the very people whom their regime serves!
In this soulless, dog-eat-dog capitalist society, many people from all classes seek
various forms of escape from reality. And as with plunging into religion or
cults, using drugs to escape – especially when it results in actual addiction –
can often make reality even worse than it currently is. Yet for some of those being isolated and stigmatised at the bottom of this ruthless, class-divided society,
having a means of “escape” is what stands between
them and deep depression or even suicide. What these people need is not
punitive drug testing – and being made to pay for the exorbitant costs of these
tests – but an end to the stigmatisation, a system that provides guaranteed
jobs for all and something else that definitely does not exist now: widely
available and free addiction treatment, counselling and mental health services.
Ironically, contrary to its claimed goals, the government’s policies, by
further stigmatising welfare recipients will drive more people into seeking to
escape reality through drugs, alcohol or religion (the bible-thumping members
in the regime like Morrison, Eric Abetz and Christian fundamentalist Andrew
Hastie would, of course, love the latter).
In their policies to punish the poor, the right-wing
government also imparts their own racial prejudice into the process. The
existing cashless welfare trial areas as well as the two new proposed sites
have a disproportionately high percentage of Aboriginal residents. Indeed, nearly
80% of people affected by the cashless
welfare trials are Aboriginal people. Notably too, one of the three
sites selected for the mandatory drug testing of welfare recipients is
southwest Sydney’s Canterbury-
Bankstown area, a region with a very high proportion of residents from various
Asian and Middle Eastern backgrounds. For a regime that oversees racist police
brutality against Aboriginal people and the stealing of Aboriginal children
from their families; and which regularly incites racist fears against one
minority community after another,
from Muslims, to African youth to Chinese
students, such discriminatory behaviour
is not surprisingly overtly racist.
Moreover, the racist,
rich people’s regime knows that racism is widespread in their society
and so think that trialling punitive measures in heavily Aboriginal or heavily
Asian/Middle Eastern regions will meet less resistance. Yet all working class people should know that repressive schemes
first unleashed against Aboriginal people are often later rolled out more
broadly. For example, compulsory work for the dole was first unfurled against Aboriginal people and then subsequently
rolled out against most long-term unemployed workers. And, of course, cashless
welfare itself began with the racist Intervention into NT Aboriginal communities.
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RIGHT-WING GOVERNMENT: BASHES THE POOR, BASHES THE WORKERS MOVEMENT
So why are Scott Morrison and Co. on this crusade against welfare recipients apart from, of course, the fact that they are heartless, upper class snobs with contempt for the poor! For one, they want to cut spending on welfare. They hope that by punishing welfare recipients and increasing the number of reasons why a recipient will get their payments suspended, they can drive down budget outlays. That will allow them more funds to lower tax rates for their big end of town mates, give negative-gearing tax concessions to wealthy investors buying multiple properties and support the government’s increasingly large budget for spy agencies and for their military build up against socialistic China. Last year, Australia, a country with a relatively small population, was the second biggest arms importer in the world, spending more on weapons imports than China, a country with sixty times our population (see: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-30/australia-worlds- second-biggest-weapons-importer-behind-saudi/11558762)! The rich people’s regime’s annual defence budget is now $38.7 billion which, spread out and spent on welfare instead of war, would amount to about $52,000 per year for every person on the Newstart Allowance!
However, cutting costs
is not the government’s only motive. After all, the Cashless
Debit Card itself initially cost $10,000 per person per year to administer and
even the lowest estimates of this operating cost now stand at $2,000 per person
which amounts to about $40 per week that could, instead, be used to boost the
income of each welfare recipient!
A big part of the motive for the government’s war on welfare
recipients is to blame
unemployed workers for their own plight so that people will not focus on those
really responsible for joblessness – the corporate bigwigs who, after sweating
out millions and billions in profits from their employees, don’t hesitate to
throw some of these same workers out of their livelihoods whenever pruning
their workforce is what it takes to further boost profits. Thus, despite
extracting a whopping $1.2 billion profit out of its workers in just the first six months of this year, Telstra
bosses have thrown 3,200 workers out of a job since June last year as
part of a plan by this rich Australians-owned company to axe 18,000 workers by
the end of 2022. For its part, David Jones bosses are in the process of axing
120 jobs, including 28 jobs at its Wollongong store.
This despite the company’s rich shareholders making a $37 million profit last year and
over $200 million over the last three years. With
more than half of young adults without a permanent job and as the
capitalist world lurches into another economic downturn, the capitalists’ government is determined to ensure that
the masses don’t identify the greed of the owners of Telstra, David Jones, NAB and the other corporations as the reason
for rising unemployment.
And when the parties that uphold the capitalist order
aren’t blaming unemployed people for their
own plight they use nationalist and racist scapegoating instead. The
Liberal/Nationals specialise in blaming migrants and refugees for unemployment,
the ALP and Greens are focussed on blaming imported
products and guest workers
and the far-right outfits, like One Nation, rabidly do both.
Perhaps the main reason that the Morrison government wants to make life more miserable for welfare recipients is to help their rich business-owning mates by driving down the wages and conditions of employed workers. By keeping welfare payments so small and imposing such cruel restrictions on recipients, Morrison and Co. know that unemployed workers will become more willing to accept jobs with terrible wage rates and working conditions. Already there are hundreds of thousands of workers in Australia – disproportionately young or female or migrant toiling away for below award wages in sectors like retail, hospitality, aged care, warehousing and restaurants. Moreover, by making the conditions of life so terrible for those who lose their jobs, the anti-working class government hopes to intimidate existing workers into putting up with poor conditions and shying away from risking involvement in trade union struggles for rights at work. That is why the entire workers movement – and in particular our trade unions must champion the struggle to smash the Morrison government’s attacks on welfare recipients.
RELY ON WORKING CLASS POWER & OPPOSE THE AUSTRALIAN RICH PEOPLE’S REGIME’S ENTIRE AGENDA
No one should
be under the illusion that we can rely on parliamentary machinations to stop the current
offensive against welfare
recipients. The cross-bench politicians are anti-working class. Tasmanian senator Jacqui
Lambie, who may have the deciding vote in the Senate on the various government
bills, broadly supports cashless welfare. Under pressure from their working
class base, the ALP is now opposing the government’s legislation in its current
form. Yet working class activists
should not have faith that the ALP will spearhead a movement against the
government’s measures. Remember this is the same ALP that previously voted for cashless welfare trials and when
last in government implemented perhaps the cruellest of all welfare cuts: the
throwing of low-income single parents (mainly single mothers) and their
families off the parenting payment and onto the much lower paying Newstart
Allowance. Even today, the ALP’s opposition to cashless welfare is
hardly staunch. They plan to amend the government’s cashless welfare
legislation so that the scheme becomes voluntary. That is, of course, better
than being compulsory but that still means that they will be promoting the
despicable stigmatisation of unemployed people inherent in cashless welfare.
And that stigmatisation is, indeed, half of the government’s agenda!
Now the Greens have been stronger in their opposition to cashless welfare than the ALP. The problem, however, is that the Greens accept the current social order, reject the idea of workers organising as a class against it and, themselves, receive big donations from rich capitalist high-fliers. Yet it is only mass action of the working class against the capitalist class that can force the capitalist politicians to retreat from their current course. When we see such militant, mass action – backed by the power of the union movement – then suddenly some cross-benchers or even government politicians, realising the need for the class that they serve to make concessions, will miraculously “discover” the injustice of their war on welfare recipients. So let’s have mass working class struggle to demand a complete end to cashless welfare, a total rejection of drug testing of welfare recipients, a massive increase in public housing and a big increase in the Newstart Allowance. However, we should not stop there. We need to fight for the basic human right of all people, who are able to do so, to use their labour and talents to contribute to social production. That means launching industrial action struggles to stop all job slashing plans by business owners. It also means demanding laws stopping all profitable companies from cutting jobs and laws which force profitable businesses to increase hiring at the expense of their profits. And to truly enable working class mothers to fully participate in work life we need to fight for free around-the-clock childcare, free pre-school education and free school lunches at all schools. To all these measures, especially ones that force business owners to retain more staff than is optimal for their profits, the capitalists will scream that this is unaffordable and impractical. To this we must reply: if your system cannot even provide jobs for all and, thereby, also utilise every person’s skills and energy for society’s benefit then it is so cruel and so irrational that it has got to go. We working class people will take the banks, factories, mines, transport and communication systems, utilities and agricultural land into our own able collective hands and run a socialist system that will serve all working class people and all the poor.
To realise this perspective we need to turn around the program that currently dominates our unions. Most of our unions remain led by a pro-ALP agenda that, while critical of companies when they cut jobs, rarely takes any action against this except occasionally in the small minority of cases where job losses are related to companies moving operations offshore. Instead, the only “strategy” that pro-ALP union leaders have to win more jobs for workers is to make economic nationalist appeals to restrict imports, curb the entry of guest workers or favour local businesses. Yet, such protectionism never helps save any workers’ jobs as overseas countries will inevitably retaliate with their own measures against Australian producers. All such schemes end up doing is dividing Australian workers from our true allies – the workers of all countries – while bringing us into a bloc with the very people that we need to be struggling against: the job-slashing local bosses. So we need to replace this Laborite perspective
with one based on irreconcilable opposition to the local capitalist exploiting
class. We
need a union movement and a workers party that do not restrict
themselves to demands that are tolerated by the capitalists but which, instead,
unite the working
class to fight for what we and all
the downtrodden need. That means waging all out class struggle
– including in defiance of
anti-strike laws – to oppose job cuts by business owners, to smash the Morrison
government’s entire war on welfare recipients, to defeat its planned laws
making it easier to deregister militant unions and to force profitable companies
to increase hiring at the expense of their profits. Such a program is part
of a far-sighted perspective to win a future socialist society where it will be
the working class and poor – and not the cruel capitalist exploiters – who
will be the new ruling class of a fair and kind society and who, one day, will even abolish the very notion of a
society divided by classes and the systematic, unequal distribution of wealth.
7 October 2019, Sydney: The “Stand With Red China” demonstration held on the NSW Labour Day public holiday hailed the 70th Anniversary of the 1949 Chinese Revolution and condemned the pro-colonial, anti-communist protests in Hong Kong.
Migrant Workers and Other Leftists March in Sydney for Socialistic China
7 October 2019: Left-wing supporters of socialistic China marched through the centre of Sydney today to “Stand With Red China.” The demonstration held on the Labour Day holiday hailed the 70th anniversary of the founding of the socialistic Peoples Republic of China (PRC). Noting that, “A Strong Socialistic China is Good for Working Class People in Australia and the World” the call-out for the action urged to “Condemn Hong Kong’s Pro-Colonial Rich Kid Rioters.”
Today’s rally pushed back in the face of an intense Cold War anti-communist, China-bashing drive by the Australian ruling class and their media. Australia’s entire ruling class media – from that owned by the right-wing Murdoch family tycoons to that owned by billionaire Channel 7 owner, Kerry Stokes, to the ABC and SBS – owned and controlled as they are by the Australian rich people’s regime – have been running daily news articles attacking Red China whether it be via insinuations about computer hacking, lying claims of human rights abuses or even blaming the Belt and Road Initiative promoted by China for declining tiger populations! Australia’s big business and government-owned media have, of course, also strongly backed the anti-communist, anti-PRC riots in Hong Kong. So has right wing prime minister Scott Morrison along with the rest of his government, with the ALP and the Greens taking the same stance. Today, Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, again spoke out fervently on the side of the right wing opposition in Hong Kong, saying that she is “very concerned” by the methods used by the Hong Kong authorities to protect the city from the most violent anti-PRC forces and demanding that the Hong Kong government approved by Beijing “address the genuine concerns” of the rioters. Yesterday, hard right Liberal MP, Tim Wilson, even marched with the anti-PRC forces in Hong Kong itself. Previously a director of the extreme conservative, Institute of Public Affairs, which later spoke out for the “rights” of vile racist media commentator, Andrew Bolt, Wilson had during the Occupy Melbourne protests called for water cannon to be used against protesters:
“Walked past Occupy Melbourne protest, all people who think freedom of speech = freedom 2 b heard, time wasters … send in the water cannons.”
But of course, pro-colonial, anti-communist protests are the type of “freedom of speech” that people like Tim Wilson and the Australian government really love!
Members of the Hong Kong, anti-China opposition carry American flags and call for Donald Trump’s re-election at a protest rally in Hong Kong. The anti-PRC opposition are a right-wing, procolonial, movement.
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Yet in the face of this anti-Red China tide, around 60 people participated in today’s pro-PRC march and others joined in on the spot at the final rallying point. The majority of demonstrators were mobilised to the action by the Australian Chinese Workers Association and by Trotskyist Platform. However, there were many leftists participating today from a range of backgrounds, including several people who are not part of any particular left-wing group.
The “Stand With Red China” demonstration in Sydney held today on the Labour Day public holiday.
The Australian Chinese Workers Association contingent – mostly working class women – carried the red, five star flag of the PRC and had placards in Chinese reading: “Australian Chinese Workers Association Congratulates the Peoples Republic of China on the Celebrations of the 70th Anniversary of its Founding.” Trotskyist Platform supporters carried many placards including ones that stated: “Defend Socialistic China Against Intimidation by Capitalist Powers. Down with the Capitalist Australian State’s Military Build Up That Targets Red China! U.S., Australian Militaries: Stay Out of the South China Sea!” and “Defend Socialistic China Against Imperialism! Resist Meddling in Hong Kong By Colonial Powers!” Our banner, which headed the march, read: “WORKING CLASS PEOPLE IN AUSTRALIA & THE WORLD: STAND WITH SOCIALISTIC CHINA!”, while calling to, “DEFEAT HONG KONG’S PRO-COLONIAL, ANTI-COMMUNIST MOVEMENT!”
At a couple of points during the demonstration, a few anti-communists, riding in an expensive looking black van decked in “Hong Kong independence” slogans, made a pre-planned attempt to use a sound system to suppress the voice of the pro-Red China demonstrators. However, prompt action by alert, pro-PRC socialist activists forced them to retreat.
Throughout the march, demonstrators
enthusiastically chanted, “P-R-C, Is Fighting Poverty!” (see: https://youtu.be/7RxhU2ZhPDQ), “Public
Housing for You and Me, Just Like in the PRC” and “One RED China” (see: https://youtu.be/erNt9jIjZd8). We also
chanted and sung, “One, Two, Three, Four, Socialism is What We’re For; Five,
Six, Seven, Eight, Defend the Chinese Workers State.”
Pro-PRC activists listen intently as Trotskyist Platform chairwoman Sarah Fitzenmeyer delivers her speech at today’s action commemorating the 70th anniversary of the founding of socialistic China.
One of the main speakers at the event
was Trotskyist Platform chairwoman, Sarah Fitzenmeyer. Here are some of the
points that she made in her speech:
“Seventy years ago a massive revolution by the toiling masses of China won them a momentous victory. The 1949 Revolution created a workers state, the Peoples Republic of China, a workers state that has achieved a miracle in the alleviation of poverty, a feat unmatched in size and speed in all of known human history….
Yet this inspirational socialistic rule in China is under grave threat. Ever since the 1949 Revolution, some of the overthrown landlords and capitalists and all the imperialist powers have worked together to try and destroy this workers state. Under this pressure, in the late 1970s, the Chinese government began market reforms that allowed a degree of capitalist intrusion. Although this was in some cases beneficial, the reforms have led to an increase in inequality. Dangerously, there are now capitalists in China who demand more and more rights to exploit. However, the Chinese working class masses are resisting them.
The masses worked so hard to achieve liberation in 1949 and to build a socialistic society and they certainly are not about to give any of this up now. Through the peoples’ efforts, China remains a socialistic state where public ownership continues to be the backbone of her economy. Today all of China’s major banks, her major infrastructure developers, her oil and gas sectors, the bulk of her steel and cement industry, her aircraft, ship and train manufacturers, her ports, shipping lines and airlines, most of her mines and even key consumer manufacturing sectors are publicly owned.
But the capitalist powers’ Cold War against socialistic China is getting more intense every day. The U.S. and Australian militaries are sending warships thousands of kilometres from their shores to the South China Sea in a desperate attempt to provoke China. Then there is Trump’s trade war. And let’s not forget the propaganda war. Every day brings a new hyped up anti-China story in Australia’s mainstream media. This is not simply a case of Australia’s rulers following their U.S. counterparts as the capitalist ruling classes in both countries share precisely the same goal of undermining, in every way they can, socialistic rule. Let’s not forget that the Australian regime banned Huawei even before the U.S. did. Recently, a high-level Chinese embassy delegation correctly identified Australia’s rulers as pioneers of the global anti-China campaign.
It was through combined military, economic and political pressure that the imperialist powers destroyed the former Soviet workers states. Let us make sure they are never able to do this to the inspirational workers state of socialistic China. If capitalist restoration were to take place in China it would reverse most of the huge strides made in poverty alleviation. Over the last 15 years, China has had by far the world’s fastest growing wages. They have been rising by on average some 10 to 15% per year. But if capitalist counterrevolution were to occur, China would be turned into one giant sweatshop for the mass exploitation of workers. That would allow greedy bosses to then drive down the conditions of workers here too. In contrast, if socialistic rule in China is able to grow stronger and stronger that will be good for the working class and leftists here. We can point to China’s drive to build public housing to motivate the struggle for a massive increase in public housing here. We can point to the public ownership of banks in China to strengthen our own campaign for the nationalisation of the banks where profits would be used for all rather than for the filthy coffers of the very few. We will be able to point to the successes of socialistic rule in China to motivate the struggle for socialist revolution here. That is why Trotskyist Platform calls for the working class and oppressed of Australia and the world to mobilise now so we can defend the Chinese workers state.
We say: U.S. and Australian militaries get out of the South China Sea! Stop the Australian regime’s military build-up against China! We also stand by those Chinese international students who are being so vilified by the Australian media and government alike for bravely speaking out in support of the PRC. We say the “right to free speech” must include the right to support socialistic countries like the Peoples Republic of China.
The imperialists’ latest favourite anti-Red China force is the anti-communist movement in China’s Hong Kong. The whole Australian mainstream media is backing this violent movement. So is Donald Trump and Scott Morrison. So you know this is not a progressive movement! The pro-colonial rioters in Hong Kong carry the old colonial flag of Britain. They say they are for democracy. Yet in 1967, the British colonial regime that they hail massacred and killed around 30 Hong Kong trade unionists and leftists when they rebelled against the horrors of colonial rule. And then today’s pro-colonial rioters have the hide to complain about supposed police brutality in today’s Hong Kong….
So who are these rioters in Hong Kong? They represent the interests of the upper class and upper middle class who fear that if socialistic influence from China is brought into Hong Kong they will be forced to share their wealth with the working class. Hong Kong is one of the world’s most unequal societies. And these rich kid rioters want to keep it that way! They are being backed and funded by billionaire tycoons like Jimmy Lai, a right-wing media mogul who is very much like Rupert Murdoch and his media company is helping fuel the riots….
Unfortunately, however, some people from the not so rich sections of the middle class also back the opposition movement. That’s because China and the Hong Kong government have agreed to keep Hong Kong capitalist and that capitalism is only leading to unaffordable housing and high prices for everything. That’s why Beijing must move to confiscate the wealth of the Jimmy Lais and other greedy tycoons and bring the means of production in Hong Kong into public ownership. That would take away the key source of backing for the rioters. Moreover, when the economy is in public hands and property speculators are brought to heel, housing can finally be made affordable, decent public housing can finally be provided for the hundreds of thousands of people living in the terrible so-called coffin homes and the long working hours of Hong Kong workers can be reduced with no loss in pay. If socialism is brought into Hong Kong it would be very popular with the masses. And even some of the middle class youth now in opposition will start to change their minds. For one China, under one socialist system!
Knowing all of this let’s now focus on what we need to do here. And what we can do here, matters a lot. The right-wing, pro-colonial rioters in Hong Kong draw a lot of their strength from the West, including lots of funding from governments, backing from the media and support on the streets from anti-communists. We need to counteract this! We must mobilise on the streets to demand: U.S., Australia and Britain stop your support and funding for anti-China groups in Hong Kong! Stop your anti-communist interference! By mobilising on the streets to oppose the anti-communist movement in Hong Kong we will give encouragement to the pro-Peoples Republic of China masses there.
Sisters and brothers, every day the anti-communist Cold War against China is getting more and more intense. The last Cold War against the Soviet Union was won by the imperialists. Let us make sure that they do not win this war as well!
… So, my comrades, my sisters and brothers, let’s work hard to defend the Chinese workers state as part of our fight for a socialist Australia and, one fine day, a beautiful kind communist world.”
Against the Right-Wing, Western-backed Protests in Hong Kong
Socialistic PRC Should Extradite Even More Tycoons to Face Justice on the Mainland and Have Their Ill-Gotten Assets Nationalised!
10 June 2019 – Australia’s big
business and government-owned media have been lionising the recent, often
violent, right-wing protests in Hong Kong. They report that driving the
protests are businessmen, shopkeepers, lawyers and university students. This is
a protest pushed by large sections of Hong Kong’s capitalist class, the upper
middle-class and younger wannabe capitalists. They fear that the socialistic state
ruling mainland China will gradually undermine their privileged position (see also
this letter by a comrade written some five years ago which dissected similar
anti-communist protests at the time: https://www.trotskyistplatform.com/greetings-for-the-october-1-anniversary-of-chinas-great-1949-revolution/).
The groups opposed to the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) within Hong Kong are not only being encouraged by the mainstream Western media but are being funded by the U.S. government’s National Endowment for Democracy (here the National Endowment for Democracy’s own website lists some of the anti-PRC programs that they openly fund in Hong Kong – one of which they deviously portray as being for workers rights – https://www.ned.org/region/asia/hong-kong-china-2018/ , however their covert funding is many times larger). They are also being filled with cash by Hong Kong’s own capitalist class and by capitalists in mainland China. A particular reason that capitalists are up in arms over Hong Kong’s proposed new extradition law – the object of yesterday’s protests – is that it will make it easier for the PRC to continue cracking down on mainland capitalists hiding out in Hong Kong. Although, unfortunately, the compromising Beijing leadership has allowed some people to become capitalist tycoons within China, the great thing is that the PRC often comes down hard upon these capitalists. While in Australia, the likes of James Packer, Gina Rinehart and Andrew Forest are above the law, the biggest tycoons in China are often nabbed for corruption. Moreover, if their rate of exploitation has become excessive, especially in a way that puts the broader economy at risk, the PRC authorities sometimes bow to public pressure and crackdown on these hated corporate bigwigs. Sometimes they even laudably confiscate the assets of these billionaires and bring them into public ownership – i.e. carry out the socialist program.
1 July 2019: Violent, pro-colonial protesters smash into Hong Kong’s legislative building and hoist the flag of the former British colonial regime that brutally occupied Hong Kong.
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The particular incident that is driving Hong Kong’s capitalist elite and upper-middle class yuppies to oppose the planned new extradition law is the kidnapping two years ago of greedy Chinese billionaire Xiao Jianhua from a Hong Kong hotel by PRC authorities. That is why many of those involved in yesterday’s anti-PRC protests were carrying signs like: “no kidnapping to China.” PRC authorities ended up taking Xiao Jianhua to the mainland for questioning and detention. Xiao is now awaiting trial for corrupt activities. The PRC workers state has also taken over a bank that he owned, Baoshang Bank – one of the rare privately-owned banks in China – and given it over to state-owned banks to run. In other words, the bank has been effectively nationalised. This is fantastic! For more details on this nationalisation and the bringing down of Xiao Jianhua and other greedy billionaires in Hong Kong by Red China see the following mainstream media articles:
More Chinese capitalists hiding out in Hong Kong should be extradited and have their assets nationalised. Any real socialist would want this!
Moreover the PRC should abandon its deal with the British imperialists who stole Hong Kong in 1842. Britain seized Hong Kong after winning the Opium War against China. In winning that predatory war Britain’s capitalist rulers not only stole Hong Kong but won the “right” to turn half of China into drug addicts for the sake of their profits, the “right” to “concessions” granting them and other imperialist powers control of key parts of China and the right to control and plunder China’s markets. In the 1997 deal between China and Britain that finally returned Hong Kong to China, the PRC (wrongly) agreed to maintain Hong Kong’s capitalist system for at least 50 years. The deal meant “one country – two systems.”The PRC should renege on this deal – imperialist powers should have no right to dictate what system exists in any part of China or any other country for that matter. No more one country – two systems! It should be one country – one socialist system! That means that the assets of the Hong Kong capitalists should be confiscated and brought into public ownership. In particular, Hong Kong’s huge and vital port should be confiscated from notorious billionaire Li Ka-shing and his son, Victor Li. Li Ka-shing and Victor Li control Hutchison Port Holdings, which as well as owning Hong Kong’s ports also controls a port terminal at Sydney’s Port Botany, where they are notorious for union-busting attacks on workers jobs and working conditions (see: http://www.mua.org.au/mua_takes_hutchison_to_court_over_wharfie_sackings_hutch).
If the PRC puts Hong Kong’s capitalist bigwigs out of business, the social base for the right-wing anti-PRC movement will be greatly weakened. More importantly, nationalising the businesses owned by the Hong Kong tycoons will allow the wages and working conditions of workers in Hong Kong’s ports and service sectors to be greatly improved and will provide the resources to finally improve the atrocious living conditions of the hundreds of thousands of working-class Hong Kong residents either living in cage-like “homes” or tiny slum-like apartments. In other words a move to bring the socialistic system to Hong Kong would be popular amongst the working class and poor of Hong Kong. It would also illuminate – for all to see – the clear class question involved in the issue of support or opposition of PRC influence. It would become clearer to the working class masses of Hong Kong that their interests lie in being ever more closely a part of Red China. Moreover, a blow against the capitalists of Hong Kong would give confidence to those within the mainland seeking to preserve socialistic rule there. That struggle is a difficult and fraught struggle as the PRC workers state is facing aggressive pro-capitalist demands from Chinese private business owners, Western-backed “dissidents,” the imperialist rulers of Australia and the U.S. (the latter with its fervent demands during the trade disputes that China stop supporting the socialistic, state-owned enterprises that dominate her economy) and soft-on-capitalist elements within the Chinese leadership and bureaucracy itself.
Therefore anyone who supports working class people’s interests and
socialism should support increased PRC influence in Hong Kong, should unequivocally
oppose all anti-PRC movements there and should call for the PRC to bring Hong
Kong’s economy under socialist, public ownership.
17 August 2019: A spirited, 3000 strong pro-PRC demonstration gathers outside the Sydney Town Hall. The rally opposed the anti-PRC rioters in Hong Kong.
One of the Trotskyist Platform (TP) placards at the 17th August 2019 demonstration where over 3,000 people marched through the streets of Sydney in opposition to the pro-colonial rioters in Hong Kong who have been seeking to undermine the region’s incorporation into the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). The march was several times larger than even the biggest of the rallies held in Sydney supporting the right-wing, pro-colonial opposition in Hong Kong. This is despite those anti-PRC actions in Australia being massively supported and built up by the entire capitalist media.
Nearly all those participating in the 17th August march were international students from China or people from the local Chinese community. However, a multi-racial group of TP supporters also joined the pro-Red China march. As well as standing in solidarity with the action, our contingent opposed the Australian ruling class’ escalating Cold War repression of supporters of socialistic China as well as other socialistic states (such as the brave pro-North Korea political prisoner in Australia, Chan Han Choi) and emphasised that defending the PRC workers state is in the very interests of the working class and oppressed of this country. We also distributed a leaflet at the demonstration that not only opposed the anti-communist opposition in Hong Kong but called for socialistic rule to be brought to Hong Kong so that all of China can be in one country under one socialistic system.
2019年4月13日，Chan Han Choi，这位在澳大利亚的社会主义者政治犯的支持者举行了第二次抗议行动，要求政府给他自由。 Choi是一名澳大利亚公民，从韩国移民过来差不多已经有31年了。过去16个月一直被澳大利亚政府监禁。由于他对朝鲜的同情，澳大利亚当局拒绝让他保释。
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Choi被指控违反联合国经济制裁，帮助朝鲜出口物资。尽管当局在严酷的条件下拘禁他，但他仍然蔑视并要做“无罪”辩护。即使这些针对Choi的指控证实属实，但从工人阶级的角度来看，他当然不是罪犯。恰恰相反！如果Choi确实试图通过交易来帮助朝鲜，这只会证明他冒着巨大的个人风险来帮助朝鲜人民，他们正经受着没有任何其他国家经受过的最严厉的摧残式制裁。 Choi反对制裁不仅基于他的人道主义，而且基于他对朝鲜社会的平等主义和社区精神的热爱。无论人们如何看待朝鲜的某个特别领导人，朝鲜都是一个以所有主要银行，工业，农业用地和矿山的集体所有制为基础的工人国家。在支持这种基于公有制的社会主义国家的过程中，Choi和所有遭受以资本主义私有制为主的经济而带来的痛苦的澳大利亚人的利益是一致的。他和遭受资本主义社会造成的种族主义暴力和虐待的澳大利亚原住民以及亚洲，穆斯林和非洲少数民族社区是站在一起的。所以澳大利亚和世界的工人阶级有必要支持Chan Han Choi。我们现在必须要求清除对他所有指控。
4月13日的抗议行动参加人数几乎是去年9月Choi的第一次集会的人数的两倍，而且更加活跃。但还有很多事情需要做。世界各地的所有人都反对帝国主义的欺凌行为，那些代表基于社会主义公有制的制度的人和反对冷战式政治迫害左翼的人有必要参加竞选活动，以要求释放Chan Han Choi。我们还有必要与Choi一起反对资本主义大国，利用制裁来对朝鲜人民进行经济恐吓，使他们默许资本主义征服，以及亿万富翁，西方银行家，房地产投机商和血汗工厂老板的收购。帝国主义对朝鲜的压力最终也是为了破坏其邻国和盟国中国的社会主义政权。
Stop the Sell-Off of Public Housing – Massively Increase It Instead!
The Connection between Political Donations and the Sell-Off of Public Housing in Inner City Sydney
1 May 2019 – A look at the registry of political donations to the NSW Liberal Party shows that the governing party in NSW accepted donations from real estate companies just when government decisions related to these companies’ participation in the government’s sell-off of public housing in inner city Sydney were being made. In each case the rich businesses making the donations ended up getting favourable government decisions. Those decisions have resulted in their wealthy owners making or standing to make mega bucks. This information provides hard data that helps confirm what people seriously looking at the public housing sell-off already know: that the NSW government’s sell off of public housing in the Millers Point, Rocks and Dawes Point area was not motivated by any concern for the interests of the working class majority of NSW but instead was driven by the wish to satisfy the interests of rich business owners.
It is now over five years since the NSW state government announced that it was selling off nearly 300 public housing dwellings in the Millers Point, Rocks and Dawes Point area. Sadly they have already completed their sell-offs of public housing in Millers Point – except for 24 properties that they reluctantly agreed to maintain as public housing in a minor concession to the demands of the tenants movement. They are yet to sell-off the Sirius Building which formerly had 79 public housing units there. However, the government has already driven off all the former public housing tenants from that building – many of whom were elderly women. The real estate agents that the Coalition government have contracted to sell-off Sirius is Savills (NSW) Pty Ltd. On 7 December 2017, the NSW government and Savills first publicly announced that Savills had been awarded the contract to sell Sirius and opened registrations of interest for the building to developers and investors [1]. A filed Major Political Donor form shows that just over nine months earlier, on 27 February 2017 – that is, right in the period when one would expect the government to have been considering which real estate company should be given the contract to sell Sirius – Savills donated nearly $4,000 to the NSW Division of the Liberal Party [2]. The $3,960 donation was made at an “Alan Jones Luncheon” – yikes!
Savills and the NSW Liberal government would, no doubt, have liked to be able to respond that Savills are a regular donor and the timing of that nearly $4,000 donation is just pure coincidence. Except that Savills are not a regular donor to the NSW Liberal Party! Not at all! A search done on the NSW Electoral Commission registry of political donations [3] shows that in the almost ten year period from August 2008 – when political donations were first recorded in detail – until the end of June 2018 (i.e. the end of the last reporting period before this article was written), Savills never made any other donation to the NSW Liberal Party at all. In other words, over at least a ten year period, Savills never donated a solitary cent to the NSW Liberal Party, except around the time when the Liberal government was considering whether to grant them the lucrative contract to sell Sirius. That makes that nearly $4,000 donation highly questionable!
However, if the above referred donation did indeed facilitate Savills winning the contract to sell Sirius, it was a “good” “investment” from the greedy point of view of capitalist bosses. After all, with average commissions in Sydney at around roughly 2.2% and an expected sale price for the building of around $150 million, Savills would stand to make about $3.3 million from the sale. So, if a $3,960 donation helps to make $3.3 million in revenue … that’s some hefty rate of return! There is, additionally, an interesting side point to this donation concerning a possible attempt to conceal the timing of the donation – see Note [4] at the end of this article for a discussion of this possible issue.
Savills bosses are not the only people that stand to profit from the sell-off of public housing in the Millers Point and Rocks area and who made donations to the NSW Liberal Party. While Savills have the contract to sell the Sirius building, more than 85% of the $608 million worth of public housing in Millers Point was sold off by McGrath Real Estate [5]. And just like Savills, McGrath Real Estate also made big donations to the NSW Liberal Party just around the time when they were awarded lucrative contracts to auction the public housing units that the state government was putting up for sale. In particular, within the space of 10 days between 26 January 2015 and 6 February 2015, McGrath Real Estate entities made two separate donations to the NSW Liberal Party totalling $2,210 [6]. These donations were just around the time when the auction of public housing dwellings in Millers Point was being ramped up and the government was about to determine which estate agents received the bountiful contracts for further auctions (see for example [7]). Telling, too, are the results of a search done on the Electoral Commission registry for any McGrath Real Estate donations to the Liberal Party in the almost ten year period up until the June 2018 end of the latest reported disclosure period. This search revealed that McGrath entities made no other donations whatsoever to the NSW Liberal Party during those ten years. In other words, just as with Savills, the NSW Liberal Party only received donations from McGrath Real Estate around the time when they awarded the latter lucrative government contracts to be agents for the sell-off of inner city public housing. And again, this fact only makes the receipt of those particular donations even more questionable. Of course, from the point of view of the profit-hungry McGrath Real Estate bosses, donating to the governing party would make sense if that would help “facilitate” the winning of contracts to sell off the public housing. Assuming a typical commission rate of 2.2%, the contracts they were awarded to auction off Millers Point public housing would have netted them over $11 million in revenue.
Public Housing Sell-Off: A Boon for Real Estate Bosses, Developers and Speculators, A Disaster for Working Class People
It is not only real estate agent bosses that have profited handsomely from the sell-off of public housing in the Millers Point and Rocks areas of Sydney. The main direct beneficiaries of this anti-working class privatisation were the wealthy investors and speculators who bought up the sold off properties. One of these is Shane Moran, the owner of ultra-high-end aged care operator, Provectus Care. Shane Moran is one of the heirs to the Moran family fortune and lives in a 60-room mansion in Darling Point called Swifts which is valued at between $50 million to $100 million! In late February 2016, Moran bought one of the largest sold off public properties in Millers Point, Darling House, for $7.7 million. Darling House had been a retirement home for low income elderly people. However, soon after the government announced its intention to sell-off all public housing in Millers Point, it scrapped a 20 year agreement that enabled the community-run facility to have lower rents, forcing the facility to close. After buying the property, Shane Moran made no secret of his intention to turn the building into a high-end aged care facility for the rich [8]. A similar facility he runs at Rose Bay charges an upfront fee of more than $2 million for each resident and then a “service fee” of $104 per day! So what happened to Darling House actually typifies exactly what the sell-off of public housing in Millers Point is all about. Here, a community-run aged care home for low income people was closed and has been replaced by an aged care facility affordable only to the very wealthy and where its filthy rich owner will stand to make huge profits (by the way, there are questions to be asked about donations to the NSW Liberal Party made by an elder brother and possibly other relatives of Shane Moran – and possibly, again, by Shane Moran himself – in the five month period after he first publicly announced in September 2016 that he was applying for planning approval to turn Darling House into a high-end aged care facility – see [9]).
Left: Filthy rich businessman Shane Moran outside the 60-room mansion in Darling Point where he lives, which is valued at between $50 million to $100 million! Moran is set to get even richer after, as part of the public housing sell-off in inner city Sydney, he bought up a community-run aged care facility for low-income elderly people in order to convert it into a boutique facility for the very wealthy. Right: One of the growing number of elderly people forced to sleep rough in the streets of Sydney. Photo credit (photo on Left): Richard Dobson
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The sell-off of public housing in inner city Sydney has been bad news for working class people full stop. Firstly, the forced relocation out of the area of the former public housing tenants has dispersed and destroyed a once close-knit and vibrant community. Many of the former tenants became despondent and some have died prematurely and even committed suicide (for a detailed scientific study of the effects of the sell-off on the former tenants refer to the recently published book by Professor at the UTS Institute for Public Policy and Governance, Alan Morris [10]).
Secondly, contrary to the NSW government’s devious claim that the inner city public housing sell-off was aimed at raising funds for the construction of more public housing elsewhere, the truth is that the sell-off of public housing in Millers Points and the Rocks was actually simplypart of a broader government agenda to slash the amount of public housing throughout the state. This is proven by official government figures (see Note [11]). They show that in the three year, 2014-2017 period [12] from when the removal of public housing tenants from Millers Point and the Rocks commenced to when the forced relocation of tenants from the area was basically completed, the number of public housing dwellings in NSW was cut by 584 dwellings! In other words, in addition to the 189 properties that were eventually sold off in Millers Point, a net further 395 public housing dwellings were sold off elsewhere in the state in just that three year period! So much for the government’s claim that for every public housing dwelling sold off in the inner city, it would finance the construction of four to five new public housing dwellings elsewhere! Indeed, as well as in Millers Point and the Rocks, the right-wing NSW state government has been privatising public housing in Parramatta, Hurstville, Greenacre, Panania, Campsie, Fairfield, Wentworthville, Lalor Park and Canley Vale.
The effect of this gouging of public housing is even worse when one takes population increase into account. In that case we see that relative to the population size, the NSW Liberal government has slashed the number of public housing places by an equivalent of 5,164 properties in just three years! This is despite the truth that higher immigration actually makes it easier for the government to not only increase the amount of public housing available but makes it easier for them to actually increase the proportion of public housing. This is because not only do immigrants, by paying taxes, increase the public funds available to finance public housing construction and increase the labour resources available to build public housing but by increasing population numbers they allow economies of scale to kick in and, thereby, make housing construction more efficient. The plummeting in the proportion of people with public housing has absolutely nothing to do with immigration but is, rather, a political decision by a wealthy ruling class that is driven by a desire to further increase its own fortunes at the expense of working class people.
With less and less low-rent housing available, no wonder more and more people are being forced to sleep out on the streets of Sydney. Among those finding it hardest to afford rents are low-income, single parent families with young children. Driven into poverty by the combined measures of the Howard Liberal and the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd Labor governments that threw low-income sole parents off the Parenting Payment and into the much lower paying Newstart Allowance and with childcare unaffordable, many of these parents are forced to seek work in insecure jobs in the gig economy or as casuals in order to have the flexible work hours needed to look after their children. This means that the number of work hours they get fluctuates from week to week and they are often not able to generate enough income to both pay rent and to properly feed and clothe themselves and their children. And the fact that wages are not keeping up with prices makes the housing situation of low income workers even more precarious. Meanwhile, one of the combined effects of the gutting of the sole parenting payment and the slashing of public housing is to increase domestic violence against women. For these measures mean that low-income women relying financially on a male partner who is abusive are confronted with the unbearable choice of either going out on their own and living an impoverished life without a guaranteed roof over their heads and those of their children or staying with their partner and trying to endure the attacks.
The drastic slashing in the proportion of public housing available, in the end, hurts all those renting in the lower and even middle range of the rental market. For with so little low-rent public housing available, landlords are able to jack up rents knowing that lower income people have nowhere else to go. Anglicare Australia’s annual Rental Affordability Snapshot released a few days ago showed that in a survey of 69,485 properties listed for rent across Australia, there was not one single available property that would be affordable to rent for a single person on Newstart or Youth Allowance in any major city or regional centre [13]! The survey also found that only 2 per cent of rentals Australia-wide were affordable for a single person on the minimum wage working full time. Rental accommodation is extremely unaffordable for low wage workers even if they live in working class neighbourhoods half an hour to 45 minutes by train from Sydney city. One such region is the Cumberland local government area which includes suburbs like Auburn, Berala, Guildford and Greystanes and parts of Granville, Merrylands and Fairfield. There, even according to the government’s own figures, the median rent for a one bedroom apartment was $345 per week in the December 2018 quarter [14]. This compares with an, after tax, minimum wage for those lucky enough to have a full-time job of $642 per week. In other words, one of the hundreds of thousands of workers on the minimum wage, but lucky enough to have a full-time job, who rents a one bedroom unit in a relatively cheap suburb some half to three quarters of an hour by train from Sydney city, has to pay much more than half their income on rent! Yet such a worker does not even qualify to get on the NSW social housing waiting list! The maximum income a single person can earn before being deemed too “well off” to qualify for social housing in NSW is currently only $625 per week [15]. The reality is that there is such a dearth of public housing that the government has made the eligibility criteria to even get on the social housing waiting list incredibly tough. Of course, if such a low paid worker does not have a full-time job they could get on the social housing waiting list. Yet they will then be totally stuffed as they end up having to pay around three quarters of their income on rent while they wait the average ten years or so to finally get into social housing!
Mobilise the Working Class Movement and All the Poor to Fight for Public Housing
Governments of all stripes in Australia have been selling off public housing for several related reasons. For one they want to help their rich developer, speculator and real estate boss mates. Secondly, they want to spend less and less of the public budget on the services that working class people need the most – like public housing, public health care, TAFE and public schools. These ruling class politicians would rather save the money to finance tax cuts for the very rich or spend the money on corporate welfare – like when the NSW Liberal state government granted $60 million to the job-slashing Bluescope Steel owners. Thirdly, the slashing of public housing is part of a push by the capitalist rulers to make life more and more miserable for unemployed and underemployed workers. They do this by not only reducing access to public housing but also by keeping the Newstart Allowance at cruelly low levels, introducing punitive schemes forcing unemployed people to do unpaid work and rolling out “income management” schemes that prevent unemployed people from determining how they will spend the meagre payments that they receive. The aims of all these draconian measures are two-fold. For one, by making life so hard for job seekers, they force the latter to accept jobs that have terrible working conditions and very low – often illegally low – wages. Additionally, by making the prospect of life after losing one’s job so unbearably miserable, the ruling class hope that they can intimidate workers – fearful of being sacked by the boss or being identified as one of the staunch unionists who will always be top of the bosses’ list to be axed in the event of retrenchments – from participating in the union fight for rights at work. That is why government attacks on public housing – like other measures which target the poor and unemployed – are very much assaults on our trade unions. And that is why the union movement must take up the struggle for public housing as a key part of the struggle to defend workers rights.
Current and former Millers Point public housing tenants and the many trade unionists and other supporters of public housing that stood by them did wage a determined struggle against the sell-off of public housing in the area. Their efforts did much to boost the broader on the streets movement in defence of public housing that had begun several years earlier when activists demanding a massive increase in public housing held a November 2009 protest rally outside the Sydney office of the then federal housing minister (in the then Rudd ALP government), Tanya Plibersek. From 2014 onwards, those supporting the Millers Point public housing struggle and those involved in already established campaigns for public housing based in the Illawara, Auburn and elsewhere started attending each other’s protest actions. And although the campaign did not end up being powerful enough to prevent the destruction of public housing in Millers Point it did invigorate budding pro-public housing campaigns elsewhere like the movement to stop the slashing of public housing in Waterloo.
11 October 2014: Public housing tenants from Millers Point join with activists organising campaigns to oppose the privatisation of public housing in the Illawarra and in Western Sydney (including Trotskyist Platform supporters) at a protest against the auction of a public housing home in Bulli near Wollongong. Photo credit: Adam McLean
With the situation increasingly desperate and with submissions to government bodies and other forms of “official” protest being ignored, the campaign turned militant in 2017. First, in May 2017, dozens of trade unionists, public housing tenants and other supporters of public housing blockaded 32 High Street in Millers Point to try and prevent the sheriff from evicting the then public housing tenant living there, staunch public housing activist, Peter Muller. The movement was able to hold the sheriff at bay for the first day but before dawn the next morning the sheriffs and police raided the home to enforce the eviction. Then on 6 August 2017, scores of trade unionists, current and former public housing tenants and other supporters of public housing carried out a powerful occupation of vacant public housing dwellings at 78 to 80 High St, Millers Point. Activists adorned the occupied homes with banners emphasising the struggle against the sell-off of public housing as well as with the flags of the unions supporting the Millers Point tenants’ struggle – the MUA and the CFMEU. Those houses had been slated for sell-off to wealthy speculators, landlords and capitalist developers after the government had driven off the public housing tenants who once lived there. The occupation demanded that the occupied houses and all unoccupied public housing dwellings in the area be given to the homeless or to those on public housing waiting lists. Later in the evening of the August 6 occupation, after numbers had dwindled somewhat five hours into the action, a heavy contingent of riot cops raided the occupation site. They also arrested four activists participating in the struggle.
Although heavy-handed state repression crushed this protest occupation and the earlier anti-eviction struggle at 32 High Street, both these actions – and the 6 August 2017 protest occupation in particular – really did scare the government. And although they are never going to admit it, these struggles almost certainly did compel the government to somewhat slow down their plans to slash public housing throughout the state compared to what they had been previously planning. We need more staunch struggles to stop the sell-off of public housing. We need new and more powerful versions of the May 2017 anti-eviction blockade and the August 2017 protest occupation. We must locate the fight against the privatisation of public housing as part of the wider struggle against the ruling class’ attacks on all public services and a struggle against their attacks on our trade unions.
6 August 2017, Millers Point, Sydney: Houses in High St occupied by trade unionists, current and former public housing tenants and other supporters of public housing. The powerful action demanded that these vacant public housing dwellings be made available to those on the public housing waiting list or the homeless. We need more and more powerful actions like this to reverse the sell-off of public housing and smash all the attacks on services that working class people need the most.
We need to not only put a stop to the sell-off of public housing but need to fight for a massive increase in the amount of public housing. There is a huge shortfall in the amount of public housing places. In the ten year period from 2007 to 2017, the former NSW ALP government and the current conservative NSW government slashed the amount of public housing in the state by 10% even as the population grew [16]. There are well over fifty thousand households on the official waiting list for public housing in NSW. There are even more who are eligible for public housing but have not gotten on the list because the wait times are so ridiculous. Meanwhile, there are literally hundreds of thousands of other households who need low-rent public housing but can’t even get on the waiting list because the entry criteria to the waiting list is so strict.
What’s Most Harmful about these Political Donations?
We should not let anyone downplay the seriousness of the issue of the governing party in NSW accepting donations from real estate companies just when this government is making decisions related to these companies’ participation in the sell-off of public housing. From the standpoint of the interests of working class people, the most harmful thing about these donations is that they acted to place pressure upon the government to maintain its course to sell off the public housing. Put another way, accepting donations from those who had very direct vested interests in seeing the public housing privatisations go through made the Liberal Party less willing to back down and offer concessions in the face of the determined movement opposing the sell-off.
Secondly, the dodgy donations add to the stench of corruption that has surrounded NSW and its mainstream politicians. Let’s not forget that several ministers in this NSW Liberal government have already been forced to resign because of corruption-related actions, like improper receipt of “gifts” – not the least being former premier, Barry O’Farrell. And we all know about the corrupt activities of several influential members of the former ALP state government. Meanwhile, it is precisely in the property sector where corruption is most rife. The industry at its top is ridden with not only dubious links to politicians but is plagued with violent rivalries and connections to organised crime.
Thirdly, and most obviously, the donations were meant to influence government decisions on which real estate firms would be granted the lucrative contracts to auction/sell off the public housing properties. Notwithstanding that the entire sell-off was terribly harmful to the former tenants and to all working class people, the fact is that any improperly influenced government decision on who should conduct the property sales could mean a big loss to what is supposedly “public funds.” Say, for example that these donations to the Liberal Party enticed the government to accept a bid to conduct the sales from real estate companies that charged, say, a 0.3% higher commission than a rival bid that the government may have gone with. Given that the total sell-off is going to amount to around $750 million then that would mean that over $22 million ends up being lost from public funds; or, rather, transferred from the public budget to the bank accounts (and eventually the glitzy prestige cars and swank holiday mansions) of high-flying real estate bosses. With that $22 million how many badly needed extra public hospital beds could be provided? Or how many extra public housing dwellings could be made available?
This then leads to a still more crucial question? That is, aside from the fact that the entire sell-off was unjust and the donations by the real estate companies arranging the sales highly questionable, why should private businesses have been engaged in the sell-off at all? More fundamentally, why are private business owners allowed to profit from the government provision – and in this case sell-off – of public housing? The answer is that there is such a tiny public sector in this country – and much of the little that once did exist has been privatised by Liberal and ALP governments alike over the last three and a half decades – that there are few publicly owned operations set up to perform the required tasks. That is why from most levels of the construction work, to the provision of maintenance and repair of public housing, to, in this case, the sell-off of public housing, private businesses are getting contracts for work related to public housing. That means that public funds are flowing into the pockets of big corporate shareholders and other wealthy business owners. Herein is a key reason why the provision of public housing is so inadequate in Australia. In addition to anti-working class governments being unwilling to provide sufficient funds for public housing, the funds that are actually dispensed produce an inadequate number of dwellings because so much of the money ends up being skimmed off by private business contractors at every level.
For an Economy Based on Public Ownership of All Key Industries, Finance and Infrastructure
To highlight the problem here of so much of the funds allocated for public housing being siphoned off to wealthy private businesses, it is worth contrasting this reality in capitalist Australia with a socio-economic system based on public ownership and seeing how the latter delivers public housing. Such a system exists in the world’s most populous country – and Australia’s largest trading partner – the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). Although pro-market reforms over the last 40 years have created a sizable private sector in China as well as a class of capitalist exploiters, the public sector still plays the dominant role in the PRC. Some 90% of the PRC’s biggest 100 companies are stated owned, including all her biggest banks, her main oil/gas companies, biggest construction companies, ports, shipping, power producers, main airlines, biggest steel producers etc (and even many of her biggest real estate firms). As a result, every stage of public housing provision in China – from the banks providing finance if needed, to the construction companies building the housing to the steel, cement and plate glass manufacturers providing building supplies – is dominated by publicly owned enterprises. This means that, unlike in Australia, little of the public funds allocated for public housing ends up in the bank accounts of wealthy private business owners. Even if one of the state-owned banks providing credit for public housing construction were to charge too high an interest rate or a state-owned building materials supplier were to set too high prices, all this ends up as higher profits for state-owned firms and these profits then get recycled back into the public budget … to be available for more public housing construction. This is why the PRC has been so spectacularly able to increase the amount of public housing in the country over the last decade or so. From 2008 to 2017, the PRC provided 64 million additional public housing dwellings in urban areas! As a result, while the proportion of people with access to public housing in Australia’s urban areas has fallen to just one in every thirty households, in the PRC’s urban areas around one in four people now are living in one of its various forms of public housing.
Of course, since a system based on public ownership of key sectors of the economy – that is a socialist system – favours working class people, the capitalist rulers are not going to allow such a system to arise without putting up tenacious resistance. Indeed, such a socio-economic system can only be secured if the working class sweep away the capitalists from power and erect their own workers state. In China, the toiling classes had to make a massive revolution in 1949 to enable her to build a system in which public ownership plays the backbone role. Not only does this socialistic system mean that funds allocated for public housing are actually used for this purpose rather than partially for enriching private capitalists, the fact that working class people – in a tenuous and fragile way to be sure – have control over the PRC state means that there is actually a political will to provide public housing in China. The main slogan of the PRC’s housing policy is: “Houses are for living in and not for speculation.” As a result, while public housing continues to be sold off here in Australia, in the PRC the campaign to provide public housing continues to surge forward. Last year, China’s southern metropolis of Shenzhen decreed that from then onwards at least 60% of all new housing in the city must be public housing [17]. The PRC authorities went further when setting the housing policy for the Xiongan New Area – the new city of 5 million people being built 100 km from Beijing. There the PRC has decreed thatevery single house in what they have deemed to be a model city for the future must be public housing [18].
Another reason why the PRC’s socialistic state has been able to successfully undertake its drive to increase public housing is because it and the PRC public sector enterprises’ Communist Party of China committees – that have decisive oversight power over such companies – compel the leaders of state-owned enterprises to meet such social goals. In other words, the bonuses and future promotion opportunities of the directors and CEOs of China’s public sector enterprises depend on how well they have met declared socially important targets – like increasing the amount of public housing and like the main goal that has been dominating PRC political life over the last few years, the drive to ensure that no person in that country is living in extreme poverty by 2020. As a result, while the bosses of Australian banks will use any means necessary to satisfy their big shareholders’ demands for ever high profits, in the PRC the banks are falling over themselves to lend to public housing projects. Figures show that in China’s capital city, Beijing, in the first half of last year, two out of every three yuan of bank loans for real estate went into public housing development [19]. The same imperatives are also pushing the PRC’s big state-owned developers. Thus, for example, Beijing Investment Group, the state-owned builder and operator of Beijing’s Olympic village for the 2022 Winter Olympics has declared that the entire village will be turned into public rental housing at the completion of the 2022 Winter Olympics [20]. All this is why the struggle for public housing in Australia is intertwined with the broader fight here for a system based on public ownership under workers’ rule.
The design for the Olympic village for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. The village is being built and operated by Beijing Investment Group – one of China’s big publicly-owned developers. The socialistic, stateowned enterprise has announced that after the completion of the Olympics the entire village will become public rental housing.
What the Donations Made to the NSW Liberal Party Say about “Democracy” in Capitalist Australia
The fact that the NSW Liberal Party only received donations from the two real estate companies around the time when they awarded these companies lucrative government contracts and never received donations from them at any other time over at least the last ten years highlights the reality of who is really running this country: it is not actually the politicians themselves but the rich business owners. When you see who are the biggest political donors to the major political parties you see how much influence these capitalist business owners have. Among the biggest donations to the Australian Liberal Party for 2017-2018 (the last year that donations have been publicised) [22] include $250,000 from the ANZ Bank, $110,000 from oil and gas giant Woodside and $150,000 from the trust account of Australia’s richest family, the Pratt family, owners of Visy cardboard. During the same period, the ANZ Bank and Woodside also made donations of identical size to the ALP and Macquarie Telecom donated over $105,000 to the ALP [23].
It is not only through donations to political parties that rich capitalists control the direction of Australia. They also use direct political advertising to push their agenda when they need to. Most infamously, in 2010 mining billionaires Gina Rinehart and Andrew Forrest as well as other wealthy corporate bosses ran a massive advertising campaign on commercial TV and major newspapers that successfully gutted a proposed tax on mining super-profits and helped bring down the then prime minister who promoted the tax, Kevin Rudd. More subtly but just as insidiously, capitalist tycoons donate a fraction of the massive profits that they exploit out of workers’ labour to various arts, entertainment and sporting causes to ensure that popular culture is in accord with their interests and to curry favour with the public.
Notoriously, corporations also hire expensive lobbyists to influence political decision making. They especially seek out former politicians to ensure that their lobbyists have close contacts with the political administrators of the state. Moreover, because the corporate elite control the economy they are able to ensure that politicians eager for lucrative post-politics jobs in the corporate world dutifully serve the corporate bigwigs whilst they are still in parliament. All these different means of control and manipulation of politics was used, for example, by billionaire James Packer’s Crown Corporation to ensure that laws and regulations that could have curbed its plan to build an exclusive hotel/casino resort at Sydney’s Barangaroo melted away [24]. Amongst the board of directors of Crown at the time was former Minister of Communications in the Howard government, Helen Coonan. Packer also employed former ALP heavies Mark Arbib and Karl Bitar as lobbyists for his casino project. Meanwhile on 12 November 2013, the very eve of the day that the NSW parliament rammed through special amendments to the Casino Control Act specifically to support Crown’s Barangaroo project, Packer ostentatiously announced a $60 million donation to various Sydney arts, theatre, opera and orchestra institutions by both his Crown Group and himself personally. All this has much relevance to the sell-off of public housing in the Millers Point area. As was strongly implied by a statement in October 2012 by the then NSW Finance Minister himself, part of what was driving the government’s (then proposed) sell-off was the need to not have working class people in the area “in the context” of ensuring that the wealthy clientele who will frequent the resort that Packer expects to make billions from do not have a “bad view” [25].
Then there is of course the reality that, from Rupert Murdoch to billionaire Channel Seven owner Kerry Stokes, the media is owned and thus controlled by capitalist moguls. Thus, media reporting is heavily biased towards the interests of the big end of town. Any political party that stands uncompromisingly for the interests of working class people would face massive attacks from the mainstream media not to mention from direct advertising from big business and from the numerous cultural organisations and NGOs directly and indirectly financed by the capitalists. That is why the mythical “one person one vote” that supposedly exists in Australia is in reality more like “one million dollars, one million votes”! And it is not that “democracy in Australia has flaws” or even that “it is broken.” Thus far real “democracy” has never existed in the post-1788 history of this country. Ever since Aboriginal people were murderously dispossessed by the new colonial ruling class, the system the latter established was never meant to give everyone an equal say: the figment of “democracy” was always only ever intended to enable the wealthy rural and urban business owners to hold real power while tricking the masses into believing that they are really in control.
Even if a party that genuinely stood for the interests of working class people were able to overcome all the bias and disadvantage it would face and get elected to office, that in itself would not bring about decisive change. This is because the state machinery and its personnel that such a government would then formally administer are itself tied by a thousand threads to the big end of town capitalists. We have seen this throughout the sell-off of public housing in inner city Sydney itself. Bureaucrats from Family and Community Services showed a high-handed attitude to the tenants that they were putting pressure on to relocate. The judges in the rental tribunals hearing cases of tenants objecting to the particular places they were being pushed to move into were unsympathetic. Meanwhile, when police raided the 6 August 2017 protest occupation in Millers Point they were not only “following orders” but seemed to enjoy repressing the pro-working class, pro-public housing action. The police inspector in charge threatened violence against protesters shortly before the raid:
“… if these police have to go in, it’s a contact sport. They will be looking to protect themselves and if someone is injured as a result of them ensuring their safety – unfortunately it does happen.”
When police then forcibly dragged the evicted public housing tenant, Peter Muller, from the front of the occupied building, they used unnecessary force and caused permanent injury to his left wrist which now hampers his work as an electrician. Furthermore, after seizing another activist that they arrested (who happens to be a Trotskyist Platform supporter) and dragging him around the corner away from the view of other protesters (other than for a previous arrestee who witnessed the events from inside the back of a police paddy wagon), policed proceeded to bend his wrist back painfully for extended periods, on at least two occasions, even though he was offering zero resistance at the time. Indeed this violent police operation had such little legal basis that these two activists after pleading Not Guilty to charges had their charges quashed by a magistrate after she found that the entire police raid was unlawful.
The fact is that the enforcement personnel of Australian state institutions have been recruited, trained, nurtured and shaped to serve the interests of the wealthy big property owning class over those of the working class masses. That is why any elected political party that in any meaningful way intends to serve working class interests would immediately face sabotage and non-compliance from the state organs that it has been elected to nominally head. Such a party would then face two options: to either back down on its agenda (which is what usually happens) or to try and continue in which case it would be overthrown by the state organs in a coup as happened to the elected leftist government of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973. That is why the road to winning improvements in the lives of working class people lies not through changes enacted by Australia’s “democratic institutions” but through mass struggle – union strikes, picket lines, street marches, blockades, protest occupations – the methods that have won us the gains that we have won here in the past. We, of course, do need a political party of the working class. But not one that, like the ALP, seeks to administer the “democratic system” but rather one that seeks to mobilise the masses in grass-roots struggle independently of all the capitalists and their state institutions with the aim of winning concessions from the capitalist enemy today and seizing state power tomorrow.
Working Class People Need a Party That No Capitalist Would Want to Donate to
Although the ALP, just like the Liberals, receives donations from corporations and their capitalist owners, the ALP is not identical to the Coalition parties. The ALP also receives big donations from our trade unions – that is, from working class organisations representing millions of workers. And while the membership of the Liberal Party is dominated by small and big-time capitalist exploiters of labour as well as yuppy wanna-be capitalist business owners, the ALP’s rank and file are largely working class people. The problem, however, is that the ALP’s program to “serve” its working class base is to try and make only small reforms that will not overly upset the capitalists. Although the ALP is prepared to irritate some big end of town high fliers, they still crave the latter’s overall acceptance. Intimidated by and refusing to challenge the capitalist power that thoroughly dominates Australian society, the ALP is determined to ensure that they do not face excessive opposition from the big end of town so that they will be able to administer the capitalist state in an orderly fashion when in government. We see this in the lead up to the upcoming federal elections. The ALP has promised some small worthwhile measures to improve dental care for pensioners financed in part by cracking down somewhat on negative gearing tax concessions for wealthy property speculators. But they refuse to support any increase whatsoever in public housing. Instead, they have an “affordable housing for renters” platform that will only provide a drop in the ocean of the amount of lower rent accommodation that is needed, will only guarantee a rent level that is just 20% below the exorbitant market rents and which is centred on a Liberal Party-like plan to give subsidies to private housing operators [26]. Indeed, this shabby “affordable housing” program is very similar to that of the NSW Liberal Berejiklian government!
Since it has no program to challenge capitalist power, large sections of the corporate elite including the banks, telecommunications firms and resource companies continue to accept the ALP (even as some hard right-wing sections of the ruling class like the Murdoch family are at the moment against Labor) to the point that they even make large donations to the ALP. Such a party should not be supported by working class people in any way. We need, instead, a workers party that will not limit its program to what is tolerated by the capitalists. Such a party not only fights today for a massive increase in public housing and for forcing bosses to, at the expense of their profits, increase their hiring of permanent workers but has a vision for a future socialist society that will guarantee not only secure jobs for all but will ensure that all the basic services that working class people need the most – public housing, aged care, 24 hour child care, public health and dental care, public schools, TAFE and universities and public transport – are available to all for free. Such a party seeks not to win the acceptance of the capitalists but, instead, seeks to mobilise the working class masses in struggle against the exploiting class with a view to preparing a fight to challenge capitalist power. Such a party would not only refuse to accept donations from corporate bigwigs, it would also be a party that no capitalist exploiter in their right mind would want to donate to.
[4] Although the Major Political Donor form filed by Savills lists the donation as being made on 27 February 2018 (see: http://searchdecs.elections.nsw.gov.au/Documents/FD2018-158.pdf), the donation is listed in the earlier 1/07/2016 to 30/06/2017 disclosure period (http://searchdecs.elections.nsw.gov.au/Details.aspx?EFID=a0S6F00000mIUUsUAO&ID1=0016F000028XgSbQAK&RPID=2017H1). That 1/07/2016 to 30/06/2017 disclosure shows that the Savills donation was actually made in February 2017 and not February 2018. This seems correct as the declaration was made on 21 September 2017, i.e. well before the February 2018 date that the Savills major political donor form lists the donation as being made. Moreover, the Receipt Number of the donation tallies with a donation made in February 2017 and not February 2018. So an “error” has been made by either a Savills officer or a Liberal Party official by detailing in the Major Political Donor form the donation as being made a year later than it actually was. In of itself this is not a huge deal. From the aspect of our key point that Savills made a big donation to the NSW Liberal Party around the time period when the latter party in government was awarding it the lucrative contract to sell Sirius, it matters little whether the donation was actually made in late February 2017 or late February 2018 – i.e. either eight and a bit months before the announcement that Savills had been awarded the contract or two and a bit months after the announcement. What does matter is if there has been a conscious attempt to conceal the timing of the donation. In particular, what if either Savills or the Liberal Party deliberately made a “clerical error” and put the date of the donation as February 2018 rather than February 2017 to ensure that the donation appears to have been made after the government announced that Savills had been awarded the Sirius sale contract rather than being made in the period when the government decision about the Sirius contract was being considered. Now we do not have any concrete evidence to say that this is what actually happened. However, given all the corruption that has taken place in NSW, the deviant processes that have surrounded the inner city public housing sell-off and the associated regulatory approvals of James Packer’s luxury casino-hotel resort at Barangaroo and the dodgy context of the Savills donation itself, we would not be surprised if the apparent incorrect dating of the Savills donation is more than just an innocent clerical error. Of course, regardless of whether or not there has been a conscious attempt to conceal the donation’s timing, the key broader overall point stands: that the NSW Liberal Party accepted a nearly $4,000 donation from Savills around the time when it would have been considering whether to grant that real estate business the multi-million dollars’ worth contract to sell the Sirius building.
[9] There were donations made by an elder brother and possibly other relatives of Shane Moran – and possibly Shane Moran himself – to the NSW Liberal Party in the five month period after he first publicly announced in September 2016 that he was applying for planning approval to turn the Darling House that he bought as part of the Millers Point privatisations into a high-end aged care facility. Firstly, in two donations made on 5 September 2016 and 25 September 2016, Moran Australia (Residential Aged Care) Pty Ltd run by Shane Moran’s brother, Peter Moran, donated a total of $2,000 to the NSW Liberal Party (http://searchdecs.elections.nsw.gov.au/Documents/FD2017-3968.pdf). Then on 22 November 2016, a further $2,000 was donated by a Shane Moran (http://searchdecs.elections.nsw.gov.au/Details.aspx?EFID=a0S6F00000qI37YUAS&ID1=0019000000twe3RAAQ&RPID=2017H1). However, we are unable to be sure whether this Shane Moran who is listed as “Shane Michael Moran” is the same Shane Moran as the one who bought Darling House given that the address listed with the donation is different to the address of the Swifts mansion that the Shane Moran who bought Darling House is known to live in (although he may well have multiple addresses that he uses). If it is not the same Shane Moran, it could however be a cousin, nephew or uncle. Then on 24 February 2017, one Matthew John Moran donated $5,500 to the NSW Liberal Party in the single biggest donation to the party by an individual that financial year (http://searchdecs.elections.nsw.gov.au/Details.aspx?EFID=a0S6F00000qI37YUAS&ID1=0019000000twe3RAAQ&RPID=2017H1). This may possibly be a donation by a cousin, nephew or uncle of Shane Moran but we can’t be sure. What is striking is that each of these “Moran” entities who made donations to the NSW Liberal Party in late 2016-early 2017 – Moran Australia (Residential Aged Care) Pty Ltd, Shane Michael and Mathew John Moran – made no other donations to the NSW Liberal Party in the last ten years except during this brief period soon after Shane Moran happened to start seeking approval to convert Darling House into a high-end aged care facility. And there were no other donations made by any other person with a Moran surname to the NSW Liberal Party in this ten-year period either. It is, however, possible that the donation made by Shane Moran’s brother’s company, Moran Australia (Residential Aged Care) Pty Ltd, and donations by others who were possibly in the same family/extended family was more about protecting one or more of the several sets of aged care businesses owned by Moran siblings from scrutiny in the light of the emerging scandal in Australia over the quality and price of aged care residences and of elder abuse in aged care homes. Given this uncertainty over the purpose of the donations and uncertainty over the exact identities of all the donors with a Moran surname we chose not to include this material in the main body of the article but detail it here for other activists, researchers and journalists to follow through on in the future.
[12] The year 2018 was not included in the comparison because in that year the statistical method used by the NSW government was changed and public housing figures from that year onwards included dwellings identified for disposal or leased to community organisations. Note d in Table 18A.3 in the above reference states that: “PH [Public Housing] and SOMIH [State Owned and Managed Indigenous Housing] data from 2017-18 include dwellings identified for disposal and dwellings leased to a community organisation. These dwellings are excluded from data for previous years ….” This change in statistical method artificially inflated 2018 public housing numbers respective to those in previous years.
[18] Elizabeth Winkelman (translated Amber Yang), Australia China Business Circle, China’s Xiongan New Area to Receive 2 trillion yuan ($385 billion) Investment over the next 15 years, http://www.business-circle.com.au/en/?p=3545 (retrieved 25 April 2019)
[22] Australian Electoral Commission website, Summary of Donations reported by Donors – By Party – 2017-18, Registered Party, Liberal Party of Australia, https://periodicdisclosures.aec.gov.au/SummaryDonor.aspx (retrieved 25 April 2019)
[23] Australian Electoral Commission website, Summary of Donations reported by Donors – By Party – 2017-18, Registered Party, Australian Labor Party (ALP), https://periodicdisclosures.aec.gov.au/SummaryDonor.aspx (retrieved 25 April 2019)
No Parliamentary Party Is Offering Any Major Gains for the Most Exploited & Downtrodden Workers
8 March 2019 – Siva worked for ruthless bosses. The business owners at the warehouse where she was employed simply stole her wages. They insultingly paid her $11 an hour less than she was legally entitled to! Her story, which Siva told to a Queensland parliamentary inquiry, is far from unique. In some sectors like restaurants, cafes and beauty salons, bosses are more likely to pay workers below the legal minimum than they are to actually pay award wages.
Siva was a casual worker. Since bosses can sack casuals on the spot or simply not give them shifts if they complain, casual workers are often underpaid. Moreover, Siva is a woman in a society where, even as we mark International Women’s Day (IWD) in 2019, women continue to suffer gender oppression and much lower pay than men. Also, she is of Asian descent. Either because they are themselves prejudiced or because they know that racism and nationalism is so widespread – and thus that people of colour will be more isolated – bosses think that they can rip off workers of Aboriginal, Asian, African or Middle Eastern origin.
And then there is the all too legal mistreatment of casual workers. Many casuals have no certainty about the number of hours of work that they will get in any given week and can be called in to work at any time. A disproportionately high percentage of casual workers are women and young people. When one adds those employed through labour hire, the gig economy or short-term contracts and the still more who have not even been lucky enough to obtain any work, it’s clear that a large majority of young working class people in Australia do not have secure jobs! It’s not surprising that anxiety, depression and, most tragically, suicide amongst young people are so widespread!
The super-exploitation of casual workers and so many young and women workers hurts all of us workers! When workers are forced into jobs with poor conditions in some industries it allows bosses elsewhere to also chop away at working conditions. Under a capitalist, so-called democracy, no matter who wins an election, little will improve for working class people – and for working class women in particular. The Liberal-Nationals and the right-wing minor parties are, as always, trying to slash workers’ rights. The Labor Party does oppose the push of the conservatives to introduce a new category of “flexi-permanent” worker in order to expand casualisation. Yet the ALP’s agenda will largely maintain the status quo where workers’ wages are not keeping up with ever increasing prices even as the 200 richest people in Australia bolstered their wealth by a staggering $50 billion over the last year. The recent ALP conference refused to commit to an increase to the paltry Newstart Allowance for unemployed workers. The ALP has no policy to prevent bosses from hiring new workers as casuals. Indeed, the continued oppression of casuals and the expansion of short-term work have all occurred under the Fair Work Act regime brought in by the last ALP government and it was the earlier Hawke-Keating ALP administration that had overseen the near doubling of the rate of casualisation in the 1980s and early 1990s.
There is a time-honoured way that we can use to fight back against the undermining of workers’ rights. That is through industrial action and mass mobilisations. This is how workers, women and all oppressed groups have won whatever rights we still enjoy today. Earlier this decade, a union campaign of strikes and rallies by community sector workers won decent pay rises. This was a victory for gender equality too as the low pay of these workers was partly based on discrimination arising from these workers being mainly women. In the middle of last year, strike action by workers at an infrastructure firm, Downer, culminated in the unionised workers defeating the bosses’ attempts to impose yet another wage freeze. This proves that only determined and militant class struggle can bring about positive change!
Sydney, 1 May 2019: Thousands of construction and maritime workers down tools to join a workers rights march on May Day. The united working class have the power to smash the attacks of the capitalist bosses. However, for this power to be realised, the workers movement needs to be freed from the illusion that change can come through parliament and from the divisive poison of economic nationalism. Photo credit: NTEU If you notice any side effects or complications caused by the medication, you should stop using it you will find that cialis samples your hair loss needs. In addition you may also want viagra no prescription uk to consider looking into SnoreSling. According to the European Commission, custom seizures of cialis generic tadalafil counterfeit goods in the EU rose by 17% last year and China was the source of almost 60% of dodgy goods. That is why; any company can produce it levitra uk without any permission.
Unfortunately, many workers don’t work at larger sites with lots of fellow workers where it is easier to organise unions. Small businesses owners are often even more vicious than corporate bigwigs and are more likely to hire workers on an unpermanent basis. That is why we need to fight for laws to protect workers with an insecure employment status. We must demand laws that mandate that all workers be hired with the rights of permanent workers. All workers must also be granted a certain minimum number of hours of work per week. We must say no to gig economy-style employment! Those employed in the gig economy must immediately be transferred from being contractors to being permanent employees. They must start getting paid for the time they are on call and when they aren’t receiving “gigs”. Laws decreeing such measures would be a step forward but we would then still have to work out ways to enforce them. That is why we need to expand union membership. When our unions start taking militant action in workplaces where we workers are well organised then our fellow workers in smaller sites will be inspired to join our unions.
CLASS STRUGGLE & PROMOTING SALVATION THROUGH VOTING FOR THE ALP & THE GREENS ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE STRATEGIES
Though most groups on the Left would say that they agree with industrial action and mass struggle, nevertheless at the same time they promote support for the ALP and Greens – either through openly pushing for a vote for these parties or through calling to “put the Liberals last” at the upcoming elections. These left groups like Solidarity, Socialist Alliance, the Communist Party of Australia and Socialist Alternative would argue that they are simply employing a “diversity of tactics” in the struggle for workers’ rights. However, the more that workers believe that their salvation lies with an ALP or ALP/Greens government, the less they will be willing to take the risk of waging class struggle action. This is especially the case because laws restricting strike action have become so draconian that workers who think there is another easier sounding path will be reluctant to dare to engage in militant industrial action.
All this has been evident in the course of the ACTU leadership’s Change the Rules campaign. Now we certainly do need to “change the rules” which are stacked against our unions and severely restrict our right to strike. The ACTU’s campaign was meant to employ a “diversity of tactics” including stop-works, rallies and electioneering for the ALP. However, since it is a lot easier for the ACTU to electioneer than to wage industrial action, the campaign, especially as the elections have neared has become almost entirely a “Vote ALP/Greens” operation. In this light, it is evident too that the focus on “Changing the Rules” became an excuse to avoid unleashing the necessary struggles in defiance of the unjust anti-strike laws. This was dramatically seen in January last year when the leadership of the RTBU union, with the evident acceptance by ACTU leader Sally McManus, bowed to a Fair Work Commission ruling and called off a planned rail strike in Sydney. To be sure, a year earlier, McManus caused a stir when she rightly said that there is no problem with workers breaking laws when the laws are unjust. Yet, as we saw with the aborted Sydney rail strike, these have remained largely empty words. Industrial action is at an all-time low. That is why workers’ wages are so stagnant. And as the elections approach, even the ACTU tops’ talk of breaking unjust laws has evaporated along with the stop-work action component of the Change the Rules campaign.
The bankruptcy of this elections-based strategy is highlighted by the simple fact that the ALP does not even promise to get rid of the anti-strike laws. They even sanctified these very laws in their 2009 Fair Work Act. The left groups that are campaigning for the ALP and/or The Greens contend that they want to get these parties into government and then “hold them to account.” However, the problem is not mainly that the leaders of these parties need to be “held to account.” The issue is the very essence of their politics. In the face of a powerful, capitalist class with its massive wealth that it can use to fund political parties, its ownership of the media and its control of all state institutions, the ALP doesn’t seek to challenge the power of this ruling class but, instead, to get the little they can for workers that these capitalists will find tolerable to give. And this is not very much at all! In the wake of the late noughties’ Global Recession, what the insecure capitalists are willing to give is actually almost nothing! That is why the ALP has promised to maintain the Coalition’s tax cuts for companies with revenues up to $50 million a year. In other words, the ALP has agreed to give multi-millionaire business owners a huge bonus while taking away funds that could have been used for public hospitals or for restoring the parenting payment for low-income single mothers which the former ALP-Greens government so cruelly took away in 2012 (the same year that the then PM Julia Gillard gave her famous anti-misogynist speech!) The Greens do have some social policies that are more progressive than the ALP’s. Yet they do not believe that the working class ought to challenge capitalist power or even organise separately to the capitalists. That means that, ultimately, they must bend to the capitalists’ agenda on nearly all major issues. That is why when The Greens were in government in a coalition with the ALP in Tasmania from 2010 to 2014, they actually pushed for retail electricity privatisation.
Workers must refuse to support any of the pro-capitalist parties. Having been convinced that class struggle is the only road, the working class movement will be better prepared to fight against the attacks of whichever party is elected to administer a state that’s designed to always work in the interests of the big end of town. The struggle to bring this clarity to the working masses is part of the fight to bring a class struggle program to the ascendancy within the working class. Such a program understands that building class struggle resistance requires bringing the working class together in the tightest possible unity. That means rejecting our current, pro-ALP union leaders’ divisive economic nationalist calls which set local workers in competition against our international and guest worker sisters and brothers. We must actively oppose nationalist and racist divisions. We must mobilise the union movement to fight to free the refugees, to demand the rights of citizenship for all visiting and guest workers and to build genuine unity with trade unions right across the world. Unlike the ALP’s strategy, the class struggle program that we must fight for is based not on what the capitalists can tolerate but what we and our fellow working class sisters and brothers need. That means demanding permanency for all workers who are currently employed as casuals or as pseudo-contractors in the gig economy. It means fighting to force profitable companies to, at the expense of their profits, increase hiring. It means fighting for free, around the clock, childcare! For equal pay for equal work! Of course, in the face of a powerful movement making such demands, the capitalist exploiters will yell, “we can’t afford this, the economy will collapse.” To this a class struggle leadership of the working class, that is a revolutionary socialist party, would respond: If you can’t run the economy in a way that gives secure jobs to all and enables women to have the complete economic independence they need to maximise their participation in society and enable them to more easily dump violent and abusive men, then you do not deserve to have ownership over the economy. We will take it from your greedy, miserly and clumsy hands. Under the watchful eye of our sovereign Aboriginal sisters and brothers, the workplaces and industries of this country will thrive under the public ownership and the collective control of a socialist workers government.
