Since the late 1970s, strike action and union membership have been declining steadily in most Western democracies. New research finds that one key reason is the working class’s increasing dependence on credit.
Tag: Unions
Unlike the USA
Today, the right to abortion is secure across Australia. It wasn’t won by parliamentary means, however, but by militant campaigning and union solidarity.
Fox News’ vocal support for the far-right trucker convoys in Canada, which began in opposition to vaccine mandates for operators crossing the U.S.-Canada border but has since expanded to oppose all public health measures, has revealed Fox’s hypocritical stances on vaccine and testing policies, as well as protesters who block roads.
But now another key angle has been exposed: While, in the past, Fox opposed advances by organized labor, demeaned unions, insulted striking workers, supported companies over unions, opposed higher wages for workers, and falsely blamed unions for supply chain troubles during the COVID-19 pandemic, the company is now egging on this labor shutdown — which not only sabotages other workers, but was not authorized by any union or democratic process in the first place.
Source: Fox News opposes unions, endorses wildcat industrial sabotage | Media Matters for America
Big corporations like Amazon and Starbucks will continue to do whatever possible to squelch worker power. And if any of these issues get to the Supreme Court you can expect its Republican majority to do the same. But America’s working people outnumber the billionaires and CEOs by a wide margin. If we stand in solidarity, it’s possible to reverse 40 years of stagnant wages, declining economic security, and widening inequality — and build a more prosperous middle class where the gains are shared by everyone. My strong advice to Democratic politicians: Stand up for unions. Fight to strengthen them. Join workers on picket lines. Don’t let Republicans pretend they’re the party of the working class when they’re a trojan horse for the moneyed interests. * * * PS: I thought you might find useful the following video that my colleagues and I at Inequality Media just made about the labor union movement.
Source: So You Don’t Think Labor Unions Have a Future? | The Smirking Chimp
Morrison gives with a promise and removes it as the same time. He’s grabbed the promised RATs from those he promised Pharmacists while reducing worker protections at the same time. Has he reduced the protections for the Liberal Party itself or made his MPs pay? Why has he spent $3.5Bn on tanks and at the same time increased the potential for spreading multiple infection? Is this PMs only chance of staying in power to try and do a Trump call off the election and declare a State of Emergency.
National cabinet’s plans to water down COVID-19 isolation rules for essential staff are “not a solution” to supply chain issues, according to unions, with leader Sally McManus blasting Scott Morrison over a “failure” to protect workers. An expanded list of workers in critical industries will be allowed to skip COVID-19 isolation if they test negative after being a close contact, under rules agreed by state and federal leaders on Thursday. But the Australian Council of Trade Unions said the plan would further increase risk to workers, without rapid antigen tests being made more widely available.
Source: Unions blast Morrison over rapid test ‘failure’ to protect workers
In October, Australia introduced a new visa for seasonal agricultural workers that is supposed to create pathways to permanent residency. But history shows that seasonal workers can only guarantee their rights if they’re organized into fighting unions.
Source: To End Hyperexploitation, Seasonal Workers Need Union Solidarity
Capitalism has created a world full of bad and brutal jobs, from meatpackers to drone operators. Capitalists created these jobs — only organized workers can get rid of them.
Source: Dirty Work Shows the Toll Bad Jobs Take on the People Who Do Them
In 1974, the Whitlam Labor government introduced Australia’s first universal health care system. Despite its flaws, Medibank was a huge step forward — and Australia’s unions organized a general strike to defend it against conservative attacks.
Source: How Australia Won Universal Health Care — And How Workers Saved It With a General Strike
In fact, Sally McManus, the national secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), has applied the blowtorch to the government – in the hottest of acetylene fashions, yet in her characteristic calm, measured delivery – in claiming that all of the hard work of the previous five months of industrial relations reform negotiations has been undone.
Unflappable unions remain focused versus IR reform bills – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Industrial relations law currently prevents one part of a registered organisation leaving five years after merging
Coalition targets CFMEU and says it will introduce laws to allow break-up of unions | Christian Porter | The Guardian
Donald Trump tries to portray himself as pro-worker. Nowhere is this absurdity better exposed than in the decisions of his National Labor Relations Board, which have over and over again favored bosses rather than workers.
Trump Claims He’s Pro-Worker. But His Labor Board Is Trying to Destroy Worker Organizing.
Amazon was recently busted hiring intelligence experts to spy on Amazon workers. The practice is unfortunately common — most major multinational corporations have surveillance divisions which overlap with government intelligence agencies, creating a single, powerful security apparatus at the disposal of both the federal government and private corporations to use against workers.
Corporations Like Amazon Hire Union-Busting Labor Spies All the Time
COVID-19 is ravaging the country’s meatpacking plants, turning packinghouse workers into sacrificial lambs. But none of this was inevitable — it’s the result of companies’ decades-long assault on meatpacking unions, which destroyed workers’ ability to have a say over their working conditions.
via The Coronavirus Wouldn’t Be Decimating Meatpacking Plants If Company Bosses Hadn’t Busted the Unions
Some Unions are part of the problem (ODT)
Insecure, underpaid, and often dangerous work is not just a feature of the global health crisis — it’s built into Australian capitalism. Illegal underpayment of workers is a business model for many employers.
Retail and fast food workers face an additional challenge. Unlike the other workforces who can turn to their unions for protection, the largest union that purports to represent workers in these sectors is an active collaborator in their exploitation.
via Australia’s Youngest Union Is Organizing Retail and Fast-Food Workers
The Trump administration is doing everything in its power to ensure that America’s meatpackers, immigrant and native-born alike, continue to work during the coronavirus pandemic at considerable risk to themselves, their families, and the entire public. “It’s genocide against the working class,” the leader of Teamsters Local 238, which represents meatpackers in Iowa, told the Guardian. And while the unions that continue to represent these workers are pushing back, their actual power is a shadow of what it was fifty years ago.
So workers crowd in refrigerated facilities as a deadly virus makes its way down the disassembly line — all so the grocery store shelves will remain stocked for consumers and voters, and the Beef Trust will stay in the black. Modern meatpacking may not be the unsanitary industry of The Jungle, but in the absence of strong worker organization, the nauseating disregard for human well-being remains.
via Conditions in US Meatpacking Plants Today Aren’t Much Better Than They Were in The Jungle
The LNP focus on Unions as the greatest thieves in the country. They busted Craig Thompson for $13 mill to prove it. How can you be so conned Australia? (ODT)
The cost of misconduct for the major banks and AMP just keeps ticking up. It’s not over yet but at this stage of peak remediation provisioning, the number appears to be approaching the magic $10 billion mark on a pre-tax basis.
As the Post-Gazette reported:
The choice for thousands of union workers at Royal Dutch Shell’s petrochemical plant in Beaver County was clear Tuesday: Either stand in a giant hall waiting for President Donald Trump to speak or take the day off with no pay.
“Your attendance is not mandatory,” said the rules that one contractor relayed to employees, summarizing points from a memo that Shell sent to union leaders a day ahead of the visit to the $6 billion construction site. But only those who showed up at 7 am, scanned their ID cards, and prepared to stand for hours—through lunch but without lunch—would be paid.
“NO SCAN, NO PAY,” a supervisor for that contractor wrote.
In 2016 the realease of the Panama Papers resulted in the shining of a light on the participants in the very secret tax evasion and money laundering schemes of the world’s 1%. The Trump name appeared over 4000 times. What happened in Australia and it’s list of names. Moreover the LNP hasn’t increased regulation but continued it’s ambition to decrease it. In fact coupled with this measure this government intends to make tax evasion and money laundering easier.(ODT)
The Australian Taxation Office has said it is investigating about 800 Australians in relation to the Panama Papers. However, in 2014 the ATO also gave amnesty to a number of wealthy individuals with offshore income and assets.
http://List of people named in the Panama Papers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_named_in_the_Panama_Papers
Australia’s top companies and richlisters
https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/australias-top-companies-richlisters-revealed-in-panama-papers-20160510-goql2l.html
Unions have demanded the government come clean on which businesses lobbied it to drop plans to introduce a register to help stamp out multinational tax avoidance.
The government has previously made clear its commitment to introduce a beneficial ownership register, a simple and effective transparency measure that curbs profit-shifting and tax avoidance by showing the public who is really behind often-complex corporate structures.
The former assistant treasurer Kelly O’Dwyer and current assistant treasurer, Stuart Robert, both pledged to introduce a register.
Coalition abandons plan for register to help beat tax avoidance
Read moreBut Treasury is now saying no such commitment was made.
Union asks who lobbied Coalition to drop tax transparency measure | Australia news | The Guardian
But even this doesn’t have to be scary. Amazon’s recent decision to raise the wages of its US and UK employees demonstrates that, regardless of its size, it is still vulnerable to pressure from organised labour, activists and politicians in exactly the same way as other companies.
Amazon’s enormous global distribution network makes purchasing goods extremely convenient, a huge improvement on the stupid time-wasting practice of “going to the shops”. The bad stuff about it is it has some obvious remedies that go unapplied, not because the company is uniquely powerful or evil but because those remedies would affect all of its competitors as well. The relevant conflict here isn’t between Jeff Bezos and Gerry Harvey – it’s between both of them on one side and the large mass of the rest of us on the other. Give me my bendy rollers but also a fair economic system that works for everyone.
These results should end the simplistic tales in which education alone challenges the dominance of the 1 percent. If we want to change whom our economy works for, we must change who gets to exercise power. And this paper makes it clear: There is power in a union.
These born-to-rule conservatives think nothing of using taxpayer millions to set up a supposedly independent watchdog and then immediately sicking it on their political enemies.
The matter the Registered Organisations Commission (ROC) is so hellbent on pursuing is a decade-old donation from the Australian Workers’ Union to GetUp!, which was never a secret in the first place.
The investigation revolves around whether the correct paperwork was created and kept. It is not remotely close to a criminal matter. In fact, even if the ROC’s very darkest theories are correct, it will mean the AWU will be liable of a maximum possible fine of $11,000.
However, the government thought this was deemed worthy of politicising the Australian Federal Police with a reality TV raid.
When outrage started to pour in about the use of police force to pursue such an obviously political target, Turnbull’s response was pure arrogance. Rather than provide a proper explanation he simply, accused Bill Shorten of having “questions to answer.”
Now, as we now know, the plot is even thicker.
via Lest We Forget The System Propped Up By Elites, Stacked Against Workers – New Matilda
As with all things associated with disclosure and transparency in Australia, the ‘process’ is as clear as mud. It does seem, however, that the AEC is being used by politicians to pursue an agenda. This is now a common theme in Australia, the politicization of government agencies.And, right on cue, the Australian Federal Police have conducted raids on Australian Workers Union offices in Melbourne and Sydney. The investigation relates to whether donations made to activist group GetUp were authorised under union rules. The AFP issued a statement confirming they were carrying out the raids on behalf of the Registered Organisations Commission (ROC), the independent regulator of unions and employer associations. Instead they’ve gone for the circus of involving the AFP — who are just doing their jobs — and executing a search warrant for documents that had they asked for, requested, or served the notice to produce, we would have willingly provided them.
Source: GetUp vs the IPA – » The Australian Independent Media Network
New technologies will entrench inequality rather than solve it, unless the power between workers and employers is equalised
Source: The best way to prepare for the future of work? Join a union | Tim Dunlop | Opinion | The Guardian
Ian the Climate Denialist Potato has invited Bethany the intern to speak to his new coffee shop franchisees. But does he know she’s in the union?
Company claims to be world’s fastest builder after assembling Mini Sky City at a pace of three floors a day
Source: Chinese construction firm erects 57-storey skyscraper in 19 days | World news | The Guardian
Two of Tony Abbott’s long-promised industrial relations crackdowns appear headed for Senate defeat with the Palmer United party and crossbench senator Ricky Muir set to join Labor and the Greens in rejecting them.
The prime minister promised before the election to re-establish the Australian Building and Construction Commission as a “tough cop on the beat” for the building industry and to set up a new registered organisations commission to monitor the conduct of unions and business groups.
Labor and the Greens oppose both bills and now a spokesman for the Palmer United party has confirmed both PUP senators intend to vote against them. A spokesman for Motoring Enthusiast senator Muir said he was also “very likely” to vote against them.
Both bills were set to be debated this week but have now been deferred by the government as it seeks more time to lobby and win the crossbench votes.
The looming Senate defeat comes as the government is seeking to recover from Monday’s damaging leadership spill motion and as Abbott said Senate obstructionism had been the only mistake in last year’s budget.
He said the only thing the government got wrong with its 2014 budget was that it had “failed to get legislation through … a Senate controlled by our political enemies” and that the only promises he had actually broken were spending cuts to foreign aid and the ABC.
The government has given mixed messages about whether it remains committed to key budget measures stalled in the Senate, including higher education reforms and the Medicare co-payment, which has already been twice revised.
The tougher industrial laws were part of the government’s election pitch, and are often touted as the answer to scandals such as the wrongdoing at the Health Services Union.
The building and construction industry (improving productivity) bill was introduced almost as soon as the government won office in 2013, and the fair work (registered organisations) amendment bill – described by Abbott as “very significant legislation” – was introduced in the middle of last year.
Labor argues legislative changes it made in government already strengthened the Fair Work Commission’s investigative powers and penalties were increased.
In a submission to a Senate committee early last year, the workplace relations minister, Eric Abetz, said: “The government considers the fair work (registered organisations) amendment bill 2013 as a high priority piece of legislation … This policy has been well ventilated for some time and the government has a very clear mandate to implement it as a matter of extreme urgency.”
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