Tag Archives: exploitation

Anti-Capitalism, China, Unions

Support the Drivers
Standing Up to
the Bosses of
Couriers Please!

Above photo, 24 October 2023: Couriers Please drivers and supporters rally outside the company’s Western Sydney depot on the eve of the workers submitting a petition to the bosses demanding their rights. The workers are threatening industrial action if their demands are not met.

Brave Gig Workers Take a Stand

Support the Drivers Standing Up
to the Bosses of Couriers Please!

27 October 2023: Sydney drivers working for Couriers Please are taking a brave stand against their exploitation. Two days ago, nearly fifty drivers sent their bosses a petition demanding improved working conditions. Fed up that the company has been arrogantly dismissing their grievances, workers are now threatening industrial action. These drivers are amongst the increasing number of workers in Australia who are employed in gig-type arrangements in sectors like food delivery, taxi/ride-sharing, courier and cleaning. Although workers in these sectors toil away for bosses, they are often not classed as employees. Instead their bosses engage them as “contractors” or “franchisees”. This allows the corporate owners to avoid paying workers annual leave and sick pay while ensuring that those that work for them do not have even the modest protections available to employees. With no job security, business owners very often rip-off gig workers at an even more extreme rate than they exploit other workers.

Bosses play up to these “contractors” the – in truth very remote – possibility that they too could eventually build up enough financial resources to themselves hire and exploit other workers. This is in order to instill an individualistic outlook amongst workers. This helps the bosses separate workers from each other – a goal that is also facilitated by the bosses paying each “contractor” differently depending on output. The bosses’ goal is further advanced by the fact that in such “contractor” arrangements, workers are not even technically employees of the same firm. By dividing workers from each other, the capitalist bosses make it harder for workers to unite together to stand up for their rights. Thus it takes particular resolve for gig worker “contractors” or “franchisees” like the drivers at Couriers Please to indeed take a stand. They deserve and need the backing of all class conscious workers and all supporters of workers rights.

Intense Exploitation

Before even starting work, Couriers Please drivers have to “buy” a “franchise” from the company – that is the “right” to service an area for the company! Currently the company is advertising the sale of such “franchises” for $15,000 to $25,000. Yet while engaging their drivers as “franchisees”, the corporation imposes on them all the usual obligations of employees. Drivers have to wear the company’s uniform and brandish the company’s logo on their vehicles. Most tellingly, drivers are obliged to conduct deliveries for the company five days a week. If they do not, they are often effectively fined because they have to pay any amount that the replacement driver hired by the company delivers below a set amount. Yet while having all the obligations of employees, Couriers Please drivers have none of the protections available to employees and all the obligations of a franchisee. Thus drivers have to provide and service their own vehicle, pay for fuel use and pay for all the different insurances that they need. All this combined with the poor amount that Couriers Please pays drivers means that, after expenses, most of the drivers receive very low net hourly incomes. Meanwhile, the company imposes financial penalties on drivers if they fail to meet “On Time Performance” (OTP) delivery targets that are so unreasonable that two-thirds of drivers constantly struggle to meet them. A survey found that half the drivers were working more than 50 hours per week and beginning their shifts around 3 or 4am.

The pressure to meet delivery targets, low net pay, long hours and unnatural daily start times combine to cause high stress and a poor lifestyle for many drivers. Three years ago, a Courier’s Please driver died due to the extreme fatigue of his job. Since then life has become even harder for drivers. Fuel prices have surged, as has general inflation, thus greatly increasing drivers’ operating costs. In contrast, the company has increased its margins by lifting the price that it charges customers for delivery of non-standard-sized items – but the drivers’ payment has not been lifted.

Company Set to Slash Legally-Mandated “Safety Net”

There are some modest legal rights available to courier drivers formally employed as “contractors”. A NSW Industrial Relations Commission determination mandates a minimum “safety net” payment that a “contract” courier must receive over each two month period. It consists of the “safety net” hourly rate multiplied by the number of hours worked by the driver. If the driver receives less gross income than this “safety net” over a two month period, their boss must top up the drivers payment until the “safety net” is met. However, this “safety net” is so low that, even with it, one-third of Couriers Please drivers, after paying vehicle expenses, were receiving less net income than Australia’s minimum wage! When the “safety net” was finally raised in 2022 for the first time in 15 years (!), it gave just a 40% rise from the 2007 level to be phased in over three years. This is despite 2025 prices predicted to be nearly 60% higher than 2007 levels. In other words, the state has significantly cut the “safety net” in real terms since 2007.

Yet, the amount that Couriers Please pays drivers for deliveries is so low that more than half the drivers surveyed relied on the “safety net” to top up their incomes. Now, Couriers Please is suspending paying the “safety net” for the November-to-December period. They dishonestly claim that drivers don’t need it, because they will make in excess of it in a peak period. If this were actually true they would have no need to axe it! It is the company’s announced axing of the “safety net” that is the biggest cause of drivers’ moves to fight for their rights. Aside from demanding the restoration of the “safety net”, the drivers’ other key demand is for an increase in the payments that drivers receive for deliveries – accounting for the increased prices that Couriers Please are charging their customers for some deliveries. The drivers also demand an end to the punitive OTP system of financial penalties and demand an increase in their oil subsidy. They point out that Couriers Please has actually reduced this oil subsidy even as fuel prices have surged.

Above: Couriers Please notify drivers that they are suspending the top up payments (which they call a “subsidy program”) that they are required to make in order to comply with the legally-mandated safety net that they must pay drivers. They dishonestly claim that because “we will have a significant increase in volume” drivers don’t need it. If this were actually true they would have no need to suspend the payments!

Australian Chinese Workers Association Steps Up
to Help Courier Drivers Organise Their Resistance

The existence of a “safety net” for “contract” couriers is the result of the efforts of the Transport Workers Union (TWU). However, the TWU leadership has thus far failed to mobilise the union’s immense industrial muscle to win courier drivers truly decent conditions or to compel companies to employ drivers in secure, wage-paying jobs (as opposed to as “contractors” or “franchisees”). Moreover, at Couriers Please in Sydney in particular, TWU officials have thus far done little to stand by the drivers in recent years. As a result, several of the drivers taking a stand had earlier quit the union after having previously been members. Many of the other rebel drivers never joined the TWU upon hearing from their co-workers of its failure to stand up to the bosses. Recently, when the drivers standing up to the company – now unfortunately mostly non-union members – shared their intention to resist with the TWU delegate at Couriers Please, the latter sought to discourage any struggle by claiming that it would be futile and result in the rebels copping heavy financial penalties. Dismayed, the drivers turned to a community group, the Australian Chinese Workers Association (ACWA) for support. Although the company’s drivers are of various ethnicity, thus far the overwhelming majority of the drivers standing up to the company are immigrants from China. The ACWA is an organisation that links ethnic Chinese workers with the broader Australian workers movement. It also helps Chinese workers defend their legal and social rights against discrimination, while supporting broader progressive causes. Thus the ACWA is an ally of Australian unions and not a competitor. However, on this occasion, it was compelled to step into the void created by the TWU’s indifference to the Couriers Please drivers’ plight and carry out the work that the TWU ought to have been doing.

After receiving an appeal from the drivers, the ACWA carried out surveys of drivers to accurately determine their actual working conditions. They organised drivers to elect an Industrial Action Guidance Group to direct their struggle. The ACWA then helped drivers to assemble a petition of their demands to submit to Couriers Please management.

Protest Stands with the Drivers Fighting for Their Rights

After being contacted by the drivers, the ACWA in turn appealed to ourselves in Trotskyist Platform to organise support for the drivers to coincide with their petition submission and their threat of strike action. So, in the afternoon before the petition was submitted on Wednesday morning, a spirited demonstration was held at very short notice outside Couriers Please’s Western Sydney depot in solidarity with the drivers’ demands. Drivers’ representatives were joined by supporters of Trotskyist Platform, the ACWA and other supporters of workers rights. Chanting, “Support the Drivers, Fighting for Their Rights” and “The Workers United Will Never Be Defeated”, demonstrators carried banners and signs like, “Couriers Please Profits and Oil Prices Are Soaring. Raise Payments and Fuel Subsidies for Drivers!” Tuesday’s action met with overwhelming sympathy from drivers going in and out of the depot. Many either tooted their horns in approval of the rally or waved and gave a thumbs up to the protestors.

This drivers struggle has great significance. Since this is a rare case of gig workers being able to organise resistance to their own exploitation, a victory could inspire resistance from other workers hired on bogus “contractor” arrangements. Trotskyist Platform fights to not only improve the rights of gig workers but stands for the conversion of all gig jobs into secure jobs where workers will be engaged as employees rather than “contractors”. As signs carried by drivers at Tuesday’s rally indicated, it is the aspiration of many Couriers Please drivers themselves to have their jobs converted into secure, wage paying jobs. This is essential to reducing the level of exploitation of those currently engaged in the gig economy and to protecting these workers from the great insecurity of gig work. It is also crucial for another reason. By separating workers and promoting the self-centred, small business-person outlook, the hiring of workers as “contractors” undermines workers unity. It therefore undercuts the struggle to build working-class resistance to capitalist exploitation. The fight to convert gig “contract” jobs into secure, employee jobs is thus an essential part of today’s struggle to build a militant workers movement. The workers movement must demand laws forcing companies who hire any particular individual “contractor” for more than, say, fifteen gigs in a month, or more than fifty jobs in a year, to offer these “contractors” secure, wage-paying jobs as employees of the company.

Representatives of Couriers Please drivers are joined by supporters of Trotskyist Platform, the Australian Chinese Workers Association and other supporters of workers rights in a rally in support of drivers’ demands.

Turn Our Unions Into Organisations of
Militant Working-Class Resistance!

Tuesday’s rally boosted the morale of the rebelling workers, flung at the bosses a sample of the wider support that the workers struggle will inspire and popularised the struggle amongst other Couriers Please drivers. Another key purpose of Tuesday’s protest was to try and shame the leadership of the TWU into doing what they ought to be doing: standing resolutely with courier drivers against the attacks of the greedy corporate owners.

Although we understand why the drivers standing up to Couriers Please are not part of the TWU, we are nevertheless strongly encouraging them to join the union immediately. Being in the union gives them an opportunity to appeal for support from the union’s ranks – that is from other transport and courier sector workers. This will be especially crucial if the drivers go ahead with strike action. Union truck drivers and other workers are much more likely to respect a picket line of striking courier drivers if they know that the picketers have shown – by paying to join the union – that they are not only willing to stand up for their own rights but to stand in solidarity with other workers in the industry.

However, joining the TWU does not mean that the drivers should submit to the agenda of its pro-ALP, leadership. Drivers should maintain their elected Industrial Action Guidance Group and ensure that this body retains ultimate control over the struggle. Should they join the TWU, the rebel drivers should be ready to regularly send large delegations into the union office in order to pressure TWU officials to mobilise the union’s industrial muscle behind their struggle. To help with such efforts and to win solidarity action in support of their fight, the drivers will need to appeal to the ranks of the TWU (and other unions) that are employed in other companies – especially those working in the highly profitable FHM group of companies (including efm Logistics, BagTrans, Niche Logistics, GKR Transport and Spectrum Transport) that is owned by the same Singapore Post corporation that owns Couriers Please. Given that Couriers Please and FHM form the most lucrative part of Singapore Post’s operations, joint action by workers employed by these companies can put immense pressure on their bosses to accede to workers demands.

However, the pro-ALP union bureaucrats are highly adept at corralling union ranks away from militant struggle strategies. If the militant Couriers Please drivers join the TWU, as we hope, then in the face of the arguments that TWU officials would inevitably throw out to discourage intransigent industrial action, it will be a challenge for the militants to maintain the allegiance of the more wavering drivers who signed the petition, let alone win over broader union ranks. To prevail, the leaders of the struggle will need to be armed with both a very clear understanding of what is wrong with the program of our current union leaders and what is the alternative program that the union movement needs.

The main reason that our current union officials discourage militant industrial action is because they think that while particular practices and bosses need to be resisted, in the “big picture”, workers interests are best served by accepting the overall domination of society by rich capitalists and the regime that serves them. They either argue that this is actually desirable – in the case of more right-wing bureaucrats – or claim that the capitalists are too powerful to challenge. Thus the current union heads seek to limit union struggle to that which is compliant with the restrictive anti-strike laws and industrial courts of the capitalist state. Their main strategy is to elect Labor and then encourage these ALP governments to make as much pro-worker reform as possible without decisively upsetting the powerful capitalists – which isn’t much! Thus, when Labor is in office, like right now in both NSW and federally, union officials are especially reluctant to unleash industrial action. This entire “strategy” of collaboration with the capitalists has been a disastrous failure! Following it, the pro-ALP union tops have allowed business bosses, over the last four decades, to both greatly increase their exploitation of workers and drive a big chunk of the workforce into insecure gig jobs. Still, these officials delude themselves that their strategy is in their ranks’ best interests. This is in good part because by subordinating the workers to the capitalist order, the pro-ALP union tops gain a respected social position within elite circles as loyal-to-the-system “rebels”. Moreover, many union heads are careful to ensure that their actions remain within limits tolerable to the ruling class because they want to leave the door open to future lucrative careers as corporate executives or mainstream politicians (as in the case of long-time TWU secretary and now Labor federal senator Tony Sheldon). 

To ensure that the maximum force is mobilised behind their struggle, the leaders of the Couriers Please drivers struggle and their supporters will need to convince other drivers and sections of the broader working-class that everything significant that the working-class has ever won has been through resolute industrial action and other mass actions. That all bureaucratic organs in capitalist societies – from the police to the courts to the industrial relations commissions – are subordinate to the interests of the capitalist class. This is the case whether the regime is administered by conservative governments or social-democratic Labor Party-type ones. Therefore, contrary to the strategy of pro-ALP union tops, the working-class cannot expect to win significant gains through the benevolence of the capitalist state or its courts no matter which party is in office – the more so in this era of frequent capitalist economic crises. To those who say that workers must limit demands in order to ensure that companies remain highly profitable so that they will not layoff workers, we must say that we must instead fight to improve workers rights across industry so that companies with the worst working conditions cannot undercut other operations. We must explain that the way to fight for jobs is by forcing companies to maintain a greater number of workers than is most profitable for them. And to those who say that such an agenda, in the “big picture”, would cause economic collapse, we must reply that if the ultra-rich corporate bigwigs cannot run their companies in a way that ensures both decent working conditions and jobs for all without collapsing, this only proves the need to eventually rip the economy out of their hands. In short, the fight to mobilise the maximum force behind the Couriers Please drivers struggle must be accompanied by a struggle to promote a new agenda for our workers movement: one that insists that the working-class must not restrict its struggle to what is tolerable by the capitalists but must fight unyieldingly for what it actually needs, on the way to an ultimate “big picture” goal of the collective ownership of the economy by all the people under workers rule.

Immigrants from Mainland China
Energise Australia’s Workers Movement

The Couriers Please drivers struggle is not the first time that immigrants from mainland Peoples Republic of China (PRC) have been at the forefront of workers struggle. In February 2021, largely Chinese immigrant drivers working for British-owned food delivery company Hungry Panda unleashed Australia’s first ever strike by gig workers. Organised in the TWU, their weeks of stopworks and protests won them modest but important gains. In November 2012, 180 bus drivers who were “guest” workers from China waged Singapore’s first strike in 27 years! So why do migrant workers from China, even when on precarious employment arrangements, have a great propensity to struggle? The reason is that in 1949 China had a massive revolution that brought workers to power. To be sure, the complete victory of the working class over the capitalists is still far from complete in China, or even certain, and there remains capitalists of some influence there. Nevertheless, people growing up in the Chinese workers state are immersed with the sense that workers ought to be treated with respect. This is reinforced by the fact that, very opposite to capitalist Australia, PRC courts – and sometimes even police – are known to usually favour workers in disputes with private business owners. So when Chinese workers migrate abroad they bring that workers don’t have to put up with crap spirit with them.

A particular reason that Chinese immigrant gig workers are unwilling to cop extreme exploitation is that they may be aware of the measures that the PRC has taken to defend gig workers’ rights back in China. In July 2021, the PRC decreed new rules compelling food delivery companies to ensure that delivery workers receive at least the local minimum wage, provide their workers social insurance and considerably relax the times that workers have to make a delivery (the latter being equivalent to forcing Couriers Please to greatly weaken its hated OTP system). The measures had such an impact that they caused the rich owners of China’s biggest food delivery platform, Meituan to immediately lose $A56 billion in share value! However, unlike here, where opposition from wealthy corporate owners is able to weaken or postpone any mooted pro-worker measures that would harm their interests, the PRC state went ahead with the new measures and is extending them to other sectors. Therefore, the workers movement must force Australia’s regime to retreat from its role in the Western capitalists’ drive to destroy the PRC workers state and must instead compel it to implement PRC-style anti-poverty measures here – like decreeing guaranteed minimum wages and social insurance for all gig workers.

Above: One of the protests held in Sydney in early 2021 by delivery riders working for British-owned food delivery platform Hungry Panda. The mainly Chinese migrant workers conducted the first strike by gig workers in Australian history. After weeks of industrial action and protests, the delivery workers won some modest but important gains. They achieved the first ever victory by gig economy workers in Australia. Below: Chinese bus drivers outside their dormitories in Singapore during their November 2012 strike. These Chinese guest workers defied Singapore’s extremely harsh anti-strike laws to wage the country’s first ever strike against a locally-owned boss since the country’s 1965 independence! Five strike leaders ended up being jailed by the Singapore capitalist regime and 29 other strikers were sacked and deported back to China. The struggle did, however, force the bosses to make a few improvements to the housing conditions of the bus drivers. In a country with an extremely repressive capitalist regime, the daring strike by the Chinese workers had the political effect of an earthquake.
Imbued with the healthy sense of entitlement that comes from having been raised in a workers state, Chinese migrant workers in Australia and abroad are energising workers movements.

Some courier drivers are non-citizens. They would be able to struggle even more resolutely if they were not shackled by the restriction of rights that non-citizens face. Moreover, anti-Chinese and other racism intimidates migrant workers and can make them reluctant to stick their heads up. Just four days ago, a Sydney University Chinese student was bashed by an unknown white man screaming racist insults. To unleash the full fighting energy of migrant workers, our workers movement must take action to oppose racist attacks and to demand the rights of citizenship for all migrants.

An Important Struggle to Win

There are literally millions of workers in this country who are hired on a gig basis, on sham “contracts” or on other forms of casual and insecure employment. These intensely exploited workers could be inspired to fight for their rights if they see the Couriers Please drivers struggle succeeding. Therefore, if these courier drivers end up going ahead with industrial action, it is crucial that those who joined Tuesday’s rally – and the many more who could not attend the snap rally but gave it moral support – go into overdrive to build support for the action. Let us build mass picket lines outside the company’s depots to help enforce any strike! Most crucially, we must fight to build secondary solidarity strikes amongst the less vulnerable sections of the working class. This is possible to do. For since the especially severe exploitation of gig workers is used to drive down the wages and conditions of all workers, it is in the interests of the entire working-class to actively support the struggle to improve the rights of gig workers. Let’s make the Couriers Please drivers’ struggle a springboard to launch a broad struggle to convert all gig jobs into secure, wage-paying jobs!

Anti-Capitalism, Unions

Corporate Bosses Use Pandemic to Increase Their Exploitation of Workers

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.

References

[1] Australian Bureau of Statistics, 5676.0 – Business Indicators, Australia, Jun 2020, TABLE 18. WAGES AND SALARIES, Current prices, Percentage change from the previous quarter, Released 31 August 2020, https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/5676.0Jun%202020?OpenDocument            

[2] Australian Bureau of Statistics, 5676.0 – Business Indicators, Australia, Jun 2020, TABLE 12. COMPANY GROSS OPERATING PROFITS, Current prices, Percentage change from previous quarter, Released 31 August 2020, https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/5676.0Jun%202020?OpenDocument            

[3] Australian Bureau of Statistics, 5676.0 – Business Indicators, Australia, Jun 2020, TABLE 14. UNINCORPORATED GROSS OPERATING PROFITS, Current prices, Percentage change from previous quarter, Released 31 August 2020, https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/5676.0Jun%202020?OpenDocument            

[4] Australian Bureau of Statistics, 5206.0 – Australian National Accounts: National Income, Expenditure and Product, Jun 2020, Released 2 September 2020, https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs%40.nsf/mediareleasesbyCatalogue/C9973AC780DDFD3FCA257F690011045C?OpenDocument

[5] Australian Bureau of Statistics, 5206.0 – Australian National Accounts: National Income, Expenditure and Product, Jun 2020, > Explanatory Notes > Glossary, Released 2 September 2020, https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/5206.0Glossary1Jun%202020?opendocument&tabname=Notes&prodno=5206.0&issue=Jun%202020&num=&view=

[6] Australian Bureau of Statistics, 5206.0 – Australian National Accounts: National Income, Expenditure and Product, Jun 2020, Table 42. Unit Labour Costs, Released 2 September 2020, https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/5206.0Jun%202020?OpenDocument 

[7] Australian Bureau of Statistics, 5676.0 – Business Indicators, Australia, Jun 2020, TABLE 15. BUSINESS GROSS OPERATING PROFITS, Current prices, Released 31 August 2020,
https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/5676.0Jun%202020?OpenDocument

[8] Australian Bureau of Statistics, 5676.0 – Business Indicators, Australia, Jun 2020, TABLE 11. COMPANY GROSS OPERATING PROFITS, Current prices, Released 31 August 2020,
https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/5676.0Jun%202020?OpenDocument

[9] Australian Bureau of Statistics, 5676.0 – Business Indicators, Australia, Jun 2020, TABLE 13. UNINCORPORATED GROSS OPERATING PROFITS, Current prices, Released 31 August 2020,
https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/5676.0Jun%202020?OpenDocument

[10] Australian Bureau of Statistics, 5676.0 – Business Indicators, Australia, Jun 2020, TABLE 17. WAGES AND SALARIES, Current prices, Released 31 August 2020,
https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/5676.0Jun%202020?OpenDocument

[11] The New Daily, Coles rides virus-induced boom to record profit, 18 August 2020,
https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/consumer/2020/08/18/coles-profit-2020-virus/

Anti-Capitalism, Unions, Women

Mobilise a Mighty Mass Struggle to Win Decent Conditions for All Casual, Youth & Women Workers

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
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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.