The Red Wombat Hole: WorkChoices

Showing posts with label WorkChoices. Show all posts

Wednesday, 3 June 2009

Rights on Site - Ark Tribe Prosecuted

From Rights On Site

Ark Tribe is a construction worker from South Australia facing six months in jail. He has been charged with not attending an interview with the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC).

Ark was working on the Flinders University site in Adelaide. Conditions were so bad that workers drew up a petition calling for safety improvements, on a handtowel.

It took an intervention by the union and the state government safety regulator to get the most pressing problems fixed and finally, after several days, things began to get back on track.

One by one workers from the site were called before the ABCC.

The penalties for those who don't cooperate with ABCC investigations are frightening - fines of up to $22,000 for things like stopping work to make sure workers are safe and jail for up to 6 months if you don't answer their questions. Even the police don't have the powers the ABCC have.

In Ark's words, "If I've done something wrong, I'm prepared to cop it, but I won't be treated unfairly."

We need to get the Rudd Labor Government to get rid of these laws, before another construction worker faces jail.

Tuesday, 2 June 2009

Open letter to delegates to the 2009 ACTU Congress

Dear fellow unionists,

As delegates to this ACTU Congress you have piles of policy before you, but one basic decision to make.

Should you back the ACTU leadership’s support for Rudd’s Fair Work Act or oppose it?

The Congress papers say that “the Fair Work Act sees the end of the direct legislative assault on organised labour” and “represents a substantial, albeit imperfect, transition of the 2006 ACTU Congress policy into legislation.”

That’s just spin! Read the Congress’s own Industrial Relations Legislation Factsheet and the truth comes out (see the basic facts about the Fair Work Act over the page, mainly taken from this Factsheet). Workers are still losing.

The draft Congress Industrial Relation Policy says that the new legislation gives the union movement a chance to “grow unions, protect jobs and advance workers’ interests”.

If the economy were booming we could almost believe this, even though it would still be a recipe for a stagnant union movement. But we’re entering the biggest recession in 70 years, with thousands of jobs already lost and one-and-a-half hands tied behind our backs by Rudd’s law.

If more workers have joined unions since 2006, it’s because the Your Rights at Work campaign was seen as defending their interests. To keep growing we must keep campaigning for our rights, which remain crippled by the Fair Work Act.

It’s high time to drop business-as-usual-don’t-embarrass–Kevin-and-Julia-too-much unionism. This compromised approach gave the vast majority of workers lower wage increases during the resources boom than would otherwise have been the case, and meant that profits and CEO packages skyrocketed (check the Congress Wages and Collective Bargaining Factsheet for detail).

Instead of a vague, feel-good resolution about “campaigning” and waiting for Kevin 2010 to remove the bad bits of the Fair Work Bill, this Congress must adopt two basic positions:

1. For a full-scale, cross-union industrial and community campaign against the Australian Building and Construction Commission, one that will continue until it or any replacement scheme is abolished, and building workers have the same rights as all other workers.

2. For a campaign of industrial disobedience to the most crippling provisions of the Fair Work Act, including its ban on pattern-bargaining, restrictions on the right to take industrial action, restrictions on the rights of unions to organise and enter work sites and restrictions on the contents of industrial agreements.

The November 2008 suspension of charges against CFMEU official Noel Washington shows that workers and their unions can win if they organise to act against injustice. It’s the sort of unionism we´ll need just as much under the Rudd government as under Howard.

Let’s build a campaign now against all that is still anti-worker in the Fair Work Act—beginning with the anti-democratic Australian Building and Construction Commission.

Socialist Alliance National Trade Union Committee

Distributed by Tim Gooden, Secretary, Geelong Trades Hall Council (pictured), as a contribution to debate at the 2009 ACTU Congress

Yes, the Fair Work Act is WorkChoices Lite!

Check out the following powers of the Fair Work Act, detailed in the Congress’s own Industrial Relations Legislation Factsheet.

If Malcolm Turnbull introduced such anti-worker industrial laws - which violate International Labour Organisation standards - wouldn’t the union movement be fighting them?

1. The Fair Work Act cuts back unions’ right to organise

24 hours notice of right of workplace entry, restricted access to employee records
Bans pattern bargaining, allowing very restricted “multi-employer bargaining” only for low paid
No restriction on employers using pattern bargaining
Employer right to seek injunctions against unions using pattern bargaining
Employer right to challenge the conduct of ballots to frustrate protected industrial action
No positive rights for union delegates
No positive rights for workers to join unions and participate in their work
Almost no recognition of the role of delegates in representing workers in bargaining process
No requirement for employers to facilitate union access to workplaces

2. The Fair Work Act prevents workers from improving their living standards

Limits award content to 10 listed matters
Fails to enshrine in minimum standards: 11 public holidays per annum, a right for parents of pre-school children to part-time work, rights to information and consultation in the workplace, retrenchment pay for employees of smaller businesses, and any guarantee that workers entitlements will be paid first in the case of company failure
Restricts matters that can be covered in an agreement, banning enterprise-specific unfair dismissal and right of entry agreements.
Allows award modernisation that could result in reduced standards in some industries and occupations
Maintains existing AWAs, including ones that would not meet the government’s own standard for fair agreements
Allows an employer taking over a company to refuse to employ workers transferring from business being taken over

3. The Fair Work Act keeps penal powers, including those established by Work Choices

Requires secret ballots for protected industrial action
Preserves the Work Choices requirement that employers deduct strike pay even in circumstances where employees are at work
Allows the use of scab labour
Doesn´t give workers the right to conduct meetings to prepare for bargaining
Increases the penalties Fair Work Australia can apply to “ensure compliance” with its rulings
Bans industrial action in support of economic and social campaigns (like that against Work Choices)
Bans industrial action even where an employer proposes radical workplace restructuring
Keeps the anti-union provisions of the Trades Practices Act
Leaves a dispute with the boss to be settled in the normal court system unless the boss agrees to have it judged by Fair Work Australia

4. The Fair Work Act discriminates against different groups of workers

Removes “high income” earners from award coverage
Leaves contract workers with fewer rights than employees, including no rights to union representation or collective bargaining
Allows a longer qualifying period for employees in small business
Makes it easier for small business to sack workers

5. The Fair Work Act maintains unions in a weakened legal position

Does not actually define the rights of unions
Abolishes unions as parties to agreements, which are made between employers and their employees
Does not require unions to consent to changes to an agreement, even when the union is covered by the agreement.
Fails to enshrine a right for all employees and unions to be informed about the strategic designs of the employers
Provides no clarity about where federal or state laws apply, much less enable workers to opt into the federal or state system

Tuesday, 31 March 2009

Five reasons why the ABCC must go...

Via Rights on Site:

Dear Wombo,

Did you know that you are one of nearly 10,000 activists who support Rights on Site?

Thousands of you responded to our survey with ideas for how to win the campaign

You told us you wanted to write blogs and send letters to politicians by email and snail mail, and take to the streets to demonstrate at big rallies all around the country.

But you also told us you need to know more about the Australian Building and Construction Commission.

So we've made a video about the five reasons why the ABCC must go. You can watch the video here.

You can arm yourself with the facts about the Australian Building and Construction Commission and tell your mates, write blogs and send letters to pollies.

It's going to be a big year for the Rights on Site campaign and we are going to have lots of ways for you to stay connected with the campaign and let the pollies know it's time to get rid of the Australian Building and Construction Commission.

Click here and start by hearing academics and construction workers giving 5 reasons why the ABCC must go.

As electrician Brett Walker says, "Five reasons, do you want to stop there?"

We're not going to stop there.

You can write to us as info@rightsonsite.org.au and tell us why you think the ABCC must go.

At the next Rights on Site rally we'll get up on stage and tell the crowd your reasons why the ABCC must go. Send me your reason to get rid of the ABCC at info@rightsonsite.org.au

Thanks

Dave Noonan and the Rights on Site Campaign Team.

P.S The Rights on Site campaign survey is still open. If you have 30 seconds in your day to help us, you can tell us your ideas about how we can campaign to get rid of the Australian Building and Construction Commission. Take the survey here for Rights on Site.

Wednesday, 25 February 2009

Lavington: Workers' picket after mass lay-off

The 'divide and conquer' method the bosses are using In Lavington is one that is leaving the workers in an extremely hard position over being able to effectively fight back. This is a major issue for the town on the border of NSW and Victoria, and is not the last we will see of similar.

Please distribute as best you can in solidarity with the workers, they are shattered over the position they are in, with no income they are are at the beck and call of the company, with Centrelink being used to stop them from effective protest. They need the money, and the company not telling them who will be employed possibly in the next few weeks (no timeline) has left them in the position they cannot refuse the work, or any benefits will suffer.

Why are the offshore banks being placed above the workers?
Why are suppliers etc being placed above the workers?
Why is management still on full wages?
Where has the workers entitlements gone between December and now?

The only thing the workers have left is for people to show solidarity in getting the message out there over how they have been shafted. They hope that we can raise the profile so that their struggle is heard in the capitals.

------------ --------- --------- --------- -
Three hundred and thirty eight workers at Drivetrain Systems in Lavington (Albury) have been sacked without pay or entitlements as management proceeds to strip the factory of an estimated $17 million in assets. Sacked: Workers and families gather at Drivetrain Internation on Kaitlers Rd in Lavington.

Workers are camped at the gates of the Kaitlers Road factory demanding the $5 million dollars in entitlements owed to the workforce. In December management and the AMWU assured employees that their entitlements were safe at the troubled business. On Friday workers were sacked without pay, and informed that there was simply no money.

"Between now and December they've been spent our entitlements" said one worker "we don't know what on".

Whilst all workers were sacked without pay, management and executive staff were retained on full wages. Management still occupies the factory.

Workers say that there are still $17 million dollars worth of gear boxes still at the Kaitlers Road factory, but they fear they wont see a cent. The administrator has announced that the payment of financial creditors comes before giving workers their due entitlements.

The Kaitlers Road factory used to employ 1024 workers, this is not the first time that mass sackings have occurred. The factory is the only manufacturer of gear boxes in Australia, and was until the recent sackings the largest AMWU shop in the state.

Management has embarked on a deliberate campaign to split workers at the Kaitlers Road factory. Management has said they will re-employ a third of the workforce for a period of eight weeks, but have not stated which third of the workforce will be re-employed.

Action by workers has been hamstrung by this move. Desperate workers struggling to support families have said they cannot afford to jeopardize the possibility of eight weeks pay. If workers refuse the eight weeks work, they jeopardize future claims to Centrelink payments. Workers find out who will be re-employed on Wednesday, and will vote on whether to return to work on Wednesday morning.

Support the picket line on Kaitlers Road, workers appreciate all supporters who drop in. In you're not in Albury-Wodonga, you can join the Facebook group, contact media outlets, and raise this issue with your local member.

Why will workers entitlements only be paid after debts owed to banks and suppliers? Surely the families of workers must have a higher priority than the profits of foreign banks, when a business like Drivetrain International collapses?

This report from the picket by:

Dave Fregon - 0434000234
Kieran Bennett - 0430509913

If you need information or contacts for the workers, please contact:
Dave Fregon
NetAxxs Workers Collective
Ph: +613 5721 7777
Mob: 0434 000 234 25A
Ely Street
Wangaratta 3677
Australia

Sunday, 15 February 2009

Manly Fast Ferry Protests

Dear Comrades and Friends,

Thanks to all who turned out this week to participate in the Manly Fast Ferry Protest. A number of different groups attended including many unions, politicians and community groups. Our turnout has been successful with commuters on Friday choosing not to travel with Manly Fast Ferry and indeed the company has seen had less than 100 passengers per trip. When the JetCats ran, they could expect nearly 260 passengers per trip!

The protest has been a success and we must continue until a result is achieved.

As you would be aware, the MUA has been involved in an ongoing dispute with Bass & Flinders (Manly Fast Ferry) and has established a community assembly protesting the move by that company to cut workers wages by 25% and lower safety standards. The company, after initially negotiating with the Union, pull out of those discussions and put in place a non-union greensfields agreement and gave the workers the ultimatum, “this is the agreement – take it or leave it”!

Until there is a proper result, we are going to soldier on with the protest and will be looking forward to having our biggest turnout on this Monday. Your support is appreciated and we ask that you spare the time to come down on Monday and participate.

WHAT: Manly Fast Ferry Protest

WHEN: TOMORROW – MONDAY, FEBRUARY 16
(and every weekday until there is a result)
3:30pm – 6:30pm

WHERE: Wharf 2 – Circular Quay

(MUA MEMBERS WORKING AT PORT BOTANY: A coach has been organised and for members working at Port Botany and will pick up from Patrick Port Botany at 2pm and 2.30pm at DP World on Monday and return to Port Botany from Circular Quay between 6pm – 6.30pm.)

Thanks for your support and the MUA appreciates your assistance and participation in this struggle.

We hope to see you this week.

Regards,
Paul Garrett

Monday, 9 February 2009

Demonstration: community assembly against non-union ferry

Dear Comrades,

There will be a peaceful demonstration tomorrow, Tuesday 10th February, at Circular Quay against the non-union ferry operator Bass and Flinders.

The company has rejected dealing with the union and put in place a Greenfield’s agreement which slashes wages by 25% and leave by 20%.

There are also serious safety concerns with the new operation servicing Manly.

These safety issues include:

* The supposedly new vessels were designed for whale watching which is a slow speed service and have not been designed for high–speed, high turn around commuter transit services.

* Bass & Flinders are yet to demonstrate that they have provided appropriate passenger and vessel security training to their employees.

* The Bass & Flinders Masters have not undertaken high-speed training on top of their base maritime qualifications as Sydney Ferries masters were required to do.

* The Bass & Flinders vessels are not compatible with the berths at Manly and Circular Quay and have a number of OH&S concerns yet to be addressed.

* Proper consideration of access and egress of passengers, especially disabled passengers from these single door vessels has not been given and appropriate risk assessments have not been finalised.

Let Bass and Flinders know that WorkChoices is dead and we will not tolerate attacks of this sort on workers.

Time and Place: Circular Quay 6am-10am | 2pm-6pm

Date: Tuesday 10th February

Actions to continue until a positive result is achieved.

Your solidarity and support is appreciated.

In Unity,

Warren Smith
Branch Secretary
Maritime Union of Australia
Sydney Branch

Level 2
365-375 Sussex Street
Sydney NSW 2000
02-9264-5024 (MUA-Sydney)
9265 8432 (Office Direct)
02-9261-4548 (fax)
0400 368 945 (mobile)
warrensmith@mua.org.au

Friday, 5 December 2008

Alliance Voices Volume 8, No 5

Alliance Voices
Socialist Alliance Discussion Bulletin & National Newsletter
alliancevoices.blogspot.com

Download pdf version for printing

Current Issue -- Volume 8, No 5, December 2008

Wednesday, 3 December 2008

Dean Mighell on the ALP's "Fair Work Bill"

In this video Dean Mighell, secretary of the Electrical Trades Union (ETU) southern states branch, gives a good short analysis of the new "Fair Work Bill", the much-vaunted "replacement" for WorkChoices. Mighell is currently under attack [ again!] by the ALP for his dedication to workers' rights over the frequently dodgy interests of the ALP, as this article explains.

Sunday, 30 November 2008

Socialist Alliance leaflet for Dec 2 rallies against the ABCC available for download

Download this Socialist Alliance leaflet for printing/distribution

Tuesday, 28 October 2008

Tim Gooden: What union response to job losses?

Tim Gooden

From Socialist Alliance

The global financial crisis isn’t just clipping the wings of grossly overpaid bank executives and speculators in shonky “financial instruments”. It’s going to hit ordinary working people hard.

Even if the trillions being injected into the bloodstream of the world financial system manage to restore its heartbeat, growth rates will fall and unemployment will rise. A whole generation of workers, who since 1991 have only known economic growth, will find out what it means to lose a job and not find another.

Areas where unemployment rates are higher than the national average will be worse hit. And it won’t be just blue collar workers in traditional manufacturing, like the several hundreds at Ford Geelong. Victoria University in Melbourne’s West recently announced the biggest job cuts in Australian university history: 250 staff (19% of teaching and general staff).

You can tell how serious the threat is by the speed with which the government dropped its May budget fight-inflation-first line and decided to inject $10.4 billion into economy via one-off payments to pensioners and parents.

But how much we will spend and save out of the pre-Christmas handout is just a guess by Treasury: what if most people use their payments to reduce debt instead of blowing them in Harvey Norman and Bunnings?

Then the economy will continue its nosedive into recession as consumption stagnates. What if — as seems probable — the capitalists become pessimistic and reduce their investments? Recession will come faster and be deeper.

The stakes for our living standards are so serious that the unions simply can’t afford to entrust everything to the Labor government and twiddle their thumbs on the sidelines, hoping that things don’t turn out as badly as everyone fears.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and treasurer Wayne Swan show no signs of wanting to tackle those responsible for the mess: the corporate (especially financial) elite. Rudd has unveiled a line of rhetoric against “extreme capitalism” and “excessive executive compensation”, but where is Labor’s action?

After just a couple of grumbles from senior bankers about Rudd’s idea of linking senior finance sector salaries to the security level of their financial institutions, the PM backed off. This was after the Reserve Bank had already sent billions the way of the financial institutions and the government accepted the banks keeping 20% of the last interest rate cut.

Some of Rudd’s emergency package is just plain counterproductive. Home buyers get a doubling or tripling of their grant, but building companies will no doubt use the extra rebate to temporarily keep up house prices that are already seriously inflated. The International Monetary Fund warned this year that Australia’s house prices are overvalued by at least 25%.

University of Western Sydney associate professor of economics and finance, Steve Keen, says Labor’s move will suck new home buyers into borrowing $70,000 more than their homes will soon be worth!

So what should the union movement be fighting for? A serious union policy against the crisis has four key points:

1. Give pensioners and the unemployed a living wage now, at the very least 35% of average weekly earnings. That’s the only way to ensure a sustained boost to consumption.

2. Speed up public spending on sorely needed infrastructure, particularly that which underpins the transition to environmental sustainability. Invest the Infrastructure Australia and Future Fund money, and the federal budget surplus, in rail, renewable energy, and decent public housing, health and education;

3. Nationalise the banks and run them in the community interest, beginning with the re-nationalisation of the Commonwealth Bank. This might seem an “extreme” policy to some, but let’s remember that the US and UK governments have already conducted crisis nationalisations and that the ALP has supported this policy in the past.

4. Really tear up Work Choices and all other anti-union laws. The coming recession will drive employers to sack workers and try to cut wages and conditions.

Under the present industrial regime the union movement is fighting with one-and-a-half arms tied behind its back. If working people and their communities — the vast majority of the Australian population — are to defeat the dragon of recession, they will need their unions to be as strong and as organised as possible.

Tim Gooden is the secretary of the Geelong and Region Trades and Labour Council.

Monday, 14 July 2008

What union response to Garnaut?

Tim Gooden

Green Left Weekly, 12 July 2008

Right at the beginning of his draft report on climate change, Professor Ross Garnaut points out that global warming can’t be beaten unless an international “prisoner’s dilemma” gets resolved.

What’s that? Simply, that each globally competing national economy, like Australia, gains most short-term benefit “if it does less of the mitigation itself, and others do more”.

But if all countries act in this way there will be no solution to the overall climate crisis — the total worldwide rate of investment in sustainable, carbon-free technologies will fall way short of what’s needed to stop global climate catastrophe.

Survival requires that all countries forgo short-term gain and find the ways to work together to keep lifeboat Earth afloat. Otherwise, it’s everyone for themselves, and survival of the richest, the most powerful and the most warlike (and maybe not even of them).

The idea that survival depends on cooperation is nothing new to working people and unionists. It has been the heart of unionism ever since workers found, through painful experience, that we have to unite to defeat those who wish to divide and defeat us.

Of course, that’s not the approach of the rich corporations and nations, especially the United States. While the US establishment now doffs its hat to the critical threat of global warming, a serious plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has never taken shape in Washington. Corporate America is determined not to concede any economic edge to rivals in Europe, Japan, China and India.

Now the federal parliamentary opposition has decided to run the same line. Against the advice of former Liberal environment minister Ian Campbell, opposition leader Brendan Nelson is calling for a delay in implementing carbon trading for fear of “damaging our economy”. Nelson has allies on the Labor side of politics, not only in a state treasurer like NSW’s Michael Costa, but in the Australian Workers Union national secretary, Paul Howes.

After the Garnaut report was released, Howes said: “The federal government should be prepared to drag out [its climate change] timetable, if necessary, to ensure that there aren’t any errors in the design of their emissions trading system”.

But even Garnaut, an economic conservative, says of this sort of call: “To delay is to deliberately choose to avoid effective steps to reduce the risks of climate change”.

As to the supposed threat to the export-oriented, energy-intensive sectors of the economy that concern Howes, Garnaut notes a glaring fact of economic life, to which the AWU leader seems blind: “Our trade-exposed emissions-intensive industries have valid concerns … But when assessments of the reasonableness of arrangements for trade-exposed industries are made, we should be mindful of the wider context. [Their] highest possible obligations under an emissions trading scheme … would represent a small fraction of the resource sector’s increased revenue from higher export prices in recent years.”

Howes’ idea of a trade union response to Garnaut is basically to argue for the commercial interests of the corporations in the industries where the AWU presently has members and union coverage. For Howes, defence of jobs means defence of existing jobs, no matter how carbon-intensive the industry that creates them.

This is the worst possible approach for the trade union movement to take to global warming. It ties us into downplaying the urgent nature of climate change and into abandoning serious thinking about, and planning for, how to achieve climate sustainability. It shifts responsibility to others — especially those whose idea is that the bulk of working people will have to bear the economic burden of the shift away from a carbon-intensive economy.

Climate sustainability can only come by replacing, as quickly as possible, jobs in polluting, carbon-intensive industries with “green jobs” based on renewable technologies — even if that brings reduced AWU membership!

Global warming is union business

How is it to be done? The release of the Garnaut report dramatises the fact that the trade union movement urgently needs to develop its own positions on how to fight global warming. Our movement has a very long way to go in working out the policies that would confront the threat while defending the living standards of working people.

The first job is to use unions’ organisational capacity to help get the message out about how serious the global warming crisis actually is. Unfortunately, with very few exceptions, union journals and web sites say nothing about climate change: global warming should be “union business” but even on the ACTU site, it doesn’t feature as a lead issue.

Yet, all workers need to be as informed about climate change as they were about John Howard’s Work Choices laws. That way, unions can begin an informed debate, among the whole membership and not just at the “peak” level, about a policy that both addresses the seriousness of climate change and guards the interests of workers.

For example, how can we answer the following vital questions?

•Is a maximum atmospheric concentration of 450 parts per million of greenhouse gases safe enough, as Garnaut says, or does it already risk runaway climate change, as NASA climate scientist James Hansen insists?

•What targets are adequate for meeting short- and medium- term greenhouse gas reduction goals? The 25-40% cut on 1990 levels by 2020 advocated by the new Southern Cross Climate Coalition (between the ACTU, the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Australian Council of Social Services and the Climate Institute)? Or should we be striving to stop greenhouse gas concentration increases as soon as possible, with the goal of reducing them to a long-term safe and sustainable level of around 300-325ppm of carbon dioxide (as argued by Hansen)?

•Can any carbon trading scheme, as proposed by Garnaut, reach such goals? To date, the price of carbon under all existing trading schemes has been set far too low to force carbon-intensive industry to abandon its polluting practices quickly enough to have anything like the impact on overall emissions that the environment needs.

•What are the alternatives? Why, for example, doesn’t the union movement insist on the “polluter pays” principle. It could be based on the present audit of industry greenhouse gas emissions being carried out by the Rudd government. Polluting firms could be given deadlines to convert to sustainable practices and, if they refused to upgrade to low emissions technology, closed down with the workers involved being retrained on full pay for work in new, sustainable industries.

•Can the transition be left to private industry? Many argue that the climate crisis is so great, and the transition needed so vast that something equivalent to a “war effort” against carbon pollution is required. As a statement from participants in the April Climate Change — Social Change conference in Sydney said: “Climate sustainability will never be achieved if basically entrusted to the profit motive and the market. At the core of any successful transition will be a public agency or agencies entrusted with guaranteeing that adequate targets are met.”

One thing is certain: it will not be “the market” rejigged, by even the most sophisticated carbon trading scheme, that will be the critical force in the shift to a carbon-free economy.

It will be working people who are aware of the issues and determined to play a role in avoiding climate catastrophe. We will be central to identifying and eliminating waste and pollution in the workplace, closing down the old industries and developing and building new ones.

The trade union movement needs to realise this and get serious now about becoming a force for progressive campaigning and policy around climate change.

[Tim Gooden is the secretary of Geelong Trades Hall Council. These are his personal views.]

From: Comment & Analysis, Green Left Weekly issue #758 16 July 2008.

Wednesday, 7 May 2008

Defend Dave Kerin! Union Solidarity Coordinator Faces 6 months jail.

Union Solidarity Coordinator Faces 6 months jail.

Union Solidarity Coordinator Dave Kerin is now facing up to 6 months jail for supporting striking workers at Boeing.

The Australian Workplace Ombudsman has issued Dave with a "Notice to produce documents" [see attachment] in relation to the recent strike at Boeing. Dave is being asked to supply a government agency with all information and documents concerning Union Solidarity, the AMWU and rank & file members by May 8. Basically Dave is being asked to "rat", he wont.

Union Solidarity will not comply with laws and government agencies whose sole purpose is to prevent workers having the ability to strike and organise. In the last election the Australian people voted overwhelming to get rid of anti-union laws, Union Solidarity operates within the spirit of that intention!

We are asking you to indicate your public support for Dave Kerin and Union Solidarity.

Online:
Please go here and indicate your public support for Dave Kerin and Union Solidarity. At a later date we will publish the names (but not phone numbers) to show the Workplace Ombudsman how much support Dave Kerin has within the movement.

Download for printing:

Messages of support for Dave Kerin can be sent to Dave: defenddave@unionsolidarity.org

Yours in Solidarity

Union Solidarity.

Monday, 5 May 2008

Rachel Siewert - Where's the Intervention Train Going?

By Rachel Siewert

Read the article and discussion at NewMatilda.

Greens Senator Rachel Siewert has just been on the road with the Senate Inquiry into the NT Intervention. This is what she was told by the Territory's Indigenous Australians

I've just been on the road with the Senate Inquiry into the NT Emergency Response Consolidation Bill - the Government's proposed changes to Howard's original legislation.

It has been obvious for a while that there are some serious flaws with the NT Intervention and some alarming unintended consequences of the emergency response - but now it is becoming increasingly so.

It has become particularly apparent what a mistake the new Government made in Opposition, when they unreservedly and enthusiastically signed up to the Intervention without knowing the detail.

Despite a commitment, as part of the national apology to the Stolen Generations, to an evidence-based approach to Indigenous affairs - and assurances that never again would such an injustice be perpetrated on Aboriginal Australians - the Rudd Government has done little to date to moderate or curtail the Intervention juggernaut. Instead, everything still hangs on the promise of a 12 month review, to take place post June this year.

The NT Emergency Response Consolidation Bill makes limited changes to a couple of elements of the Intervention legislation (the permit system, licensing roadhouses as community stores and adult programs on satellite TV), when it is very clear that a major overhaul of the Intervention is what is really needed.

While the current Inquiry is meant to focus on these narrow terms of reference, it has been very clear that witnesses wanted to talk about the bigger picture.

We heard in Alice Springs that there are more people drinking in town (with some previously dry town camps now having problems with illegal drinking) and that there has been a large increase in ‘urban drift' from remote communities. The Alice Springs Town Council reported that their regular patrols were noticing increasing numbers of makeshift camps on the town fringe.

With the wet season approaching, we are concerned for the well-being of the children of these families living rough in the ‘long grass', and cannot see how this can be a good outcome for their health, their access to educational opportunities, or their protection and safety.

Not-for-profit community welfare organisations providing support services and emergency relief in the Territory have reported a massive increase in demand for services. At the Darwin hearings a witness reported a 300 per cent increase in demand for support services.

Witnesses to the Inquiry raised their concerns about the huge amount of money that was being wasted by people not understanding how to use store cards to access their quarantined funds - and were discarding cards which still had some money on them when they were told it wasn't enough for what they wanted to purchase.

There are also reports of a significant increase in legal aid and consumer advice being sought as a result of the income quarantining.

Legal advocates expressed a concern that the result of the strong focus of public and media concern on child sexual abuse had lead to an increase in the number of young men being charged with underage sex offences, rather than any increase in prosecutions of adult paedophiles preying on young children.

These age of consent issues are indeed a matter for concern, but a more appropriate response would be a greater focus on education and counselling - rather than exclusively focusing on a legal approach.

All of this is outside the scope of the current inquiry but shouldn't be unexpected, as these are the type of concerns that were raised at the time this legislation was introduced into the Parliament.

It is important to acknowledge that the proposed changes in the Rudd Government's NT Emergency Response Consolidation Bill do not seek exemption from the Racial Discrimination Act, which is a step in the right direction. However, at this stage the Government is doing nothing to remedy the existing exemptions from the Act in Howard's original Intervention legislation.

The evidence given by the Law Council of the information they obtained (a week after November's Federal election!) through a Freedom of Information request for the report used by former Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough to justify revoking the permit system is particularly interesting.

The Law Council revealed that 38 Indigenous organisations and individuals made written submissions to the review of the permit system and a further 42 field consultations were conducted by FaCSIA. Most importantly, all 80 consultations revealed unanimous support among Aboriginal communities, individuals and organisations for no change to the permit system;

In his second reading speech presenting the NT Intervention Bill, Brough stated that:

"The government has been considering changing the system since it announced a review in September 2006 and the changes follow the release of a discussion paper in October 2006 and the receipt of almost 100 submissions."

"Over 40 communities were visited during consultations following the release of the discussion paper. It was disturbing to hear from officials conducting the consultations that numerous people came up to them after the consultations, saying that the permit system should be removed. They were afraid to say this in the public meetings."

Put simply, the evidence the report compiled did not show community support for the abolition of the permit system, neither did the report recommend getting rid of it.

The most interesting stories we've heard as part of this Inquiry have been some of the things people want to tell you outside of the formal hearings.

We've heard a lot of anecdotal evidence of medical staff resigning and the high turnaround rate of Centrelink staff.

I heard a couple of stories of dedicated medical staff from the Territory who've become frustrated by the "parallel system" created by the Intervention and are chucking it in to work elsewhere.

We've heard stories from teachers fed up with bureaucracy quitting after years in remote communities - and the Territory is now embroiled in a teachers' dispute in which the NT Labor Government is hypocritically invoking the provisions of Howard's WorkChoices legislation and refusing to negotiate on anything but the rate of pay, while some of the teachers' biggest worries are with classroom conditions.

I have been told of Centrelink staff on secondment from the south were celebrating what they saw as an all-expenses-paid semi holiday - complete with travel allowance and a flash room in a hotel. One wonders how much of the $72.4 million spent on administration of the income quarantining component (between July 2006 and January 2007) has been spent on accommodation for staff. With the increased population strain as a result of the Intervention, it is hard to find accommodation in Darwin these days.

Two separate communities have told us about Government-appointed business managers who don't interact with the community, stay behind the barbed wire fence in their compound and only seem to want to listen to the white staff.

What gets the goat of many of the people who provided evidence and others who spoke to us off the record, is the fact that so little resources have actually gone into what should be priority areas such as providing more child protection officers, family support and counselling.

Yes, the Intervention is going to supply some safe houses - but they still aren't in place nearly 10 months down the track. Instead, sea shipping containers are being used as temporary safe houses, in a mad rush to spend the money before the end of the financial year. Yes that's right - it's use it by end of June, or lose it. What a stupid approach to allocating limited resources to such a pressing problem, and what a terrible waste of opportunity this is.

After a decade of going cap-in-hand to the Federal Government begging for meagre resources to continue successful but chronically under-funded community projects, how can anyone look on at the stupid way resources are now being squandered without thinking, "Imagine what our community could have done with the $72.4 million they've wasted on administering the welfare quarantining"?

How many schools and teachers, doctors and clinics, safe houses and child protection workers we could have paid for? How many real jobs and enterprises we could have created? What kind of education program could we have created to promote good nutrition and sound financial management?

How can we look at this profligate spending after so many years of scarcity and think anything but: what a terrible, terrible waste?

Union Solidarity Coordinator facing up to 6 months jail

From LeftClickBlog, with original info at Union Solidarity:

Union Solidarity Coordinator Dave Kerin (speaking above right ) is now facing up to 6 months jail for supporting striking workers at Boeing.

The Australian Workplace Ombudsman has issued Dave with a “Notice to produce documents” order in relation to the recent strike at Boeing. Dave is being asked to supply a government agency with all information and documents concerning Union Solidarity, the AMWU and rank & file members by May 8. Failure to do so under the 1996 Workplace Relations Act could result in 6 months jail.

Quoting from the notice:

"A contravention, without resonable excuse, of the requirement to produce the documents identified in this notice is an offence under section 819 of the Act. Failure to comply with this notice could result in your being liable to imprisonment for up to 6 months."

Union Solidarity will not comply with laws and government agencies whose sole purpose is to prevent workers having the ability to strike and organise.

We are asking you to indicate your public support for Dave Kerin and Union Solidarity. Go to Defend Dave Kerin Sign Up form

Monday, 7 April 2008

The Waterfront - 10 Years On

Hanging in pride of place in the Wombat Hole is a framed piece of the Australian newspaper, dated May 8, 1998, with Jenny George, the CFMEU's Martin Kingham and others leading a beaming bunch of workers forward under the slogan "Back At Work". It seems appropriate, therefore, on the 10th anniversary of the 1998 Waterfront Dispute, to take a quick look at the "State of the Unions", after more than a decade of Howard, union-bashing, WorkChoices and the Your Rights At Work campaign.

On the Waterfront, workers downed tools at this morning and held a minute's silence to mark the occasion, and MUA secretary Paddy Crumlin dismissed any effect the dispute may have had on the union, and jobs. On the contrary, the chickens are beginning to come home to roost: #1, #2, #3, #4.

From the Waterfront Dispute, to the present day, and things continue to look interesting:
Over at Green Left Weekly, the latest news is that the NSW Teachers' Federation is leading its members out on a strike tomorrow, after the NSW Government refused to negotiate a state-wide staffing agreement.

The campaign against electricity privatisation in NSW continues, with the May Day Committee deciding to move the day of the May Day march this year in order to coincide with the NSW ALP emergency State Conference. This is no small bikkies, as even Bob Gould has pointed out.

Down in Victoria, 65 workers occupied the factory of SEP Print after the company sacked its workforce without notice and went into receivership on March 20. Union Solidarity is still chugging along too. Also in Victoria, the CFMEU is continuing on a wage campaign in the construction industry. This is despite the ongoing existence and persistence of the ABCC, a protest against which will be held this Thursday in Sydney.
In Adelaide, the fight is on to save Work Cover, currently under attack frm the state "Labor" government.

Of course, while they might have won the battle against WorkChoices, the unions (and all workers, in fact), are still up against Labor's WorkChoices-lite of "Forward With Fairness". And that won't go away without a fight.

Despite whatever good work they might be doing elsewhere, however, the unions are still a tad shoddy at dealing with Climate Change. Some of them will be at the Climate Change | Social Change Conference this weekend, however, along with others in the vanguard of the struggle to save the world. (Small things, we know..).

Tuesday, 1 April 2008

SAlt and the Socialist Party find a common cause in disunity.

The Australian satellite of the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI), the largely Melbourne-based Socialist Party (SP), held it's Socialism 2008 conference on March 14 and 15, in Melbourne's Trades Hall. By their own accounts it was a "great success", with just over 50 people over the course of the whole weekend!

Now, the wombats do not want to appear to niggle or snipe (the left in Australia can do without more of that, and the colour of the kettle often resembles that of the pot). Perhaps 50 (including international guests) is a laudable acheivement for the SP. But for an organisation with pretensions of being a vanguard for the working class, that continuously makes calls for a "New Workers' Party", and which is almost entirely limited in spread to Melbourne, fifty people is not a lot.

Of course, noone that is familiar with the SP would have expected a massive turnout, even in this post-WorkChoices climate. But, as scientific socialists (both the wombats and the SP, and, we presume, some of our readers) we must look at this closely, and in context.

The exact membership of the SP is not widely known, but it wouldn't be above the same number - 50 - if that, but probably not all members whould have been able to make it. By comparison, an organisation with a sectarian outlook on the world (and of course the rest of the left) - Socialist Alternative (SAlt) - has around 200 members, and got an estimated 250-300 to their Marxism 2008 conference, also held in Melbourne. So perhaps the ratio of members to conference turnout is the same. Or perhaps not.

What's more important, however, is what they do with their time (and members). Alone amongst the left, the SP has managed to get one their members elected - Steve Jolly on Yarra Council - and expends a fair bit of effort in that area alone, while also orienting fairly firmly towards workers. SAlt, on the other hand, doesn't run in elections, and has a rather bizarre approach to recruitment, preferring students to workers (they actually have a rationale for this, printed in their handbook, which fits nicely with their fixation on propaganda), a factor which no doubt explains a fair bit of their size, as well as the high turnover they experience.

Politically, however, they come from quite different strands of "Trotskyism", the SP of the more orthodox kind of the CWI, while SAlt's politics are of the IST "State Capitalist" flavour.

So, it might seem somewhat surprising to discover that the two organisations recently had a "debate" on the topic of "strategies for building revolutionary organsiations" - which also attracted 50 people. But the content of the SP report on the evening explains a lot more than it thinks.

While the SP's Anthony Main was right in criticising the isolationist propagandising of SAlt (as captured in the recently-published and pretty theoretically distorted book by leading SAlt member Mick Armstrong, From Little Things, Big Things Grow), the impression you get (both from up here in Sydney, as well as from reports that the wombats have had from people who were at the meeting) is that the whole thing was an excercise in rhetoricising.

Both groups took comfort from the fact that neither was really challenging the other - SAlt don't run in elections (although I don't know how many of them hang out in Yarra) and have no pretensions to any "new workers' party" bar themselves - one day; and the SP (while they do try to recruit some students) is too small to really worry SAlt, so they can carry on recruiting students until the cows come home.

Amazingly they found that they agreed on most things! Socialists. Agreeing.

Unfortunately, however, one of the things that united them was a common enemy - the Socialist Alliance. Nothing like sectarianism to bring some groups together. The SP - the supposed "champion" of a new workers' party, continues to ignore anyone who takes the first steps towards building it. In his address, Main criticised the Socialist Alliance because it began (and in his mind still is) merely an alliance of left groups. Aside from being a mischaracterisation, one wonders how Main imagines convincing the unions, community groups and perhaps the left of the ALP to split and join with socialists in the struggle for a "new workers' party" unless you've already got some credibility, and political weight, under your belt. And how you're going to get that unless you start building the kernel of that new party.

At the Socialist Alliance-initiated Trade Union Fightback conference in Melbourne in 2005, the SP's Steve Jolly got up and repeated the call for a "new workers' party". Craig Johnston, Socialist Alliance member, and former Victorian AMWU state secretary, responded that he agreed with the idea, and "that's why I joined the Socialist Alliance".

Of course, noone but the most delusional thinks that the Socialist Alliance is a new mass workers' party, however. Around a thousand members isn't a "mass" anything. But it's a start, and a start which doesn't fit the SP's schema. And they've put so much energy into deriding it and attacking it, that they couldn't possibly think it mught be a good idea. Could they?

As for Socialist Alternative, well, Socialist Alliance does threaten them. One affiliate of the Socialist Alliance, Resistance, the socialist youth organisation closely linked to the Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP), recruits, as you might tell from the name, young people, especially on campuses. The DSP itself, a revolutionary marxist affiliate of the Socialist Alliance, is bigger than SAlt, and produces Australia's main left-wing newspaper, Green Left Weekly.

Add to this several hundred non-alligned members, in various campaigns, and unions, with branches in places many SAlt has never even been, and Socialist Alliance looks like a pretty viable option, if the rest of the already organised left wanted to get (back) involved.

The problem is that they apparently don't. Even the sudden burst of unity amongst the other 3 IST groups in Australia, fusing in February to form Solidarity (website still under construction), doesn't appear to extend to the idea of a broader left (no matter how excited they get over Die Linke or other, successful, broad left projects).

Compared to the votes that the Greens get (over a million), and the members they have (around 8,000), this all seems like small bikkies, but socialists have an ability to punch well above our weight, whereas the Greens are a bit all over the place most of the time, not to mention the lack of anything resembling a proper analysis of both society, or the causes of the problems facing the planet. Could (would?) the Greens pull off something like this, for example?

It is because of what socialists can acheive - even when we are so ridiculously disunited - that we need to honestly, and very, very, quickly, return to the table of unity. There are more opportunities for socialist ideas now than there have been for a very long time (in some ways, more than in the anti-capitalist globalisation struggle, if of a different tone), and the need for a coherent alternative that can prevent runaway global warming demands that those who claim to see the long view of history through a clear window pane, turn their gaze to the future with a similar urgency.

"No ideologically pure propaganda groups on a dead planet!" is one tongue-in-cheek slogan that springs to mind.

Labor’s new IR bill: another fat slice for big business

By Margarita Windisch
From Green Left Weekly, 29 March 2008

Federal parliament passed the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness Bill) on March 19. The bill — which the corporate media falsely claims has brought an end to Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) — became law on March 28.

On February 13, the day the bill was introduced into parliament, Australian Mines and Metals Association chief executive Steve Knott praised PM Kevin Rudd’s government for not succumbing to "the demands of some unions to make more radical changes".

The resource industry, one of the biggest users of AWAs, along with the hospitality sector, is especially pleased with a key new amendment to the bill that broadened employers’ scope to use Interim Transitional Employment Agreements (ITEAs). In a major concession, mining bosses won the right to offer ITEAs to rehired workers who had previously worked for the same employer on an AWA.

Before the new amendment, the proposed bill stipulated that only workers who were currently employed under an AWA could be moved onto an ITEA.

Since Labor’s November election victory, the IR bill was hailed as the beginning of the end of former PM John Howard’s Work Choices legislation and the hated AWAs, allegedly sending Howard’s regressive anti-worker laws into the dustbin of history.

However Labor’s intention was never to change Australian industrial relations in favour of workers, but to reshape Howard’s notorious Work Choices into a new system that maintains the spirit of deregulation of the labour market and provides the utmost flexibility for bosses.

Contrary to government rhetoric and popular belief, the new bill always contained provisions that allowed statutory individual contracts (AWAs) to continue indefinitely under Labor’s new industrial relations regime.

According to Adelaide University law professor Andrew Stewart, quoted in Workplace Express on March 20, amendments to the bill also failed to close a loophole that may mean workers could lose their long-service leave entitlements without getting compensation. He said, "if the workplace agreement does deal with long service leave, regardless of what it says about it, a state or territory long service leave statute cannot count as a reference instrument. It will thus be disregarded for the purpose of the no disadvantage test. In such a case, a new agreement could validly take away long service leave rights without any need for some compensating benefit."

The current bill also fails to restore unfair dismissal provisions, leaving workers without protection. Under Work Choices, a business with more than 100 employees can lawfully use "genuine operational reasons" to sack workers and rehire new staff for less money and worse conditions. Work Choices also took away workers’ rights to challenge unfair dismissal if their workplace employed less than 100 people.

The federal government has ruled out reintroducing unfair dismissal laws until January 2010.

On a more positive note, two amendments were passed regarding outworkers (home-based textile workers), taking into account a very strong submission to the Senate committee by the Textile Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia. Michele O’Neil, Victorian TCFUA secretary, told Green left Weekly that the amended bill now provides for outworkers’ award conditions to be protected even if the workers are on a workplace agreement with less favourable terms. She said the bill also enshrines outworker provisions protection under Labor’s proposed award modernisation process.

Friday, 28 March 2008

WorkChoices and Neoliberalism by any other name...

Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard donned the dark frocks for a funeral today - the (hopefully) final laying to rest of the Bad Boy of WorkChoices: Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs). The Governor-General gave the things their lethal injection la night, and they were put to sleep, and then - on the second anniversary of WorkChoices - they were finally relegated to the dustbin of history.

Well, new ones, that is. There are still apparently upward of 1 million of the little bastards floating around, and many may not end until 2013. Worse yet, the ALP's "Forward With Fairness" policy replacement isn't really so different to WorkChoices itself, leading many unionists and those on the left to call it "WorkChoices Lite" - and with good reason. The wombats are waiting for many a bubble to burst on that front. Hopefully it won't take too long (although it could be helped along in a couple of ways).

The ALP is making no immediately obvious moves to get rid of the ABCC either - the star-chamber empowered secret police for the building industry, which has already been responsible for gross violations of civil liberties, not to mention being a centrepiece in the ongoing attacks on workers' rights in general. It won't be scrapped until 2010. And even if they remove it, they are likely to replace it with something not too dissimilar (if a little cuddlier).

You might be forgiven for thinking that, what with the ALP in power in all states and federally, we might be set for some meaningful changes. Well, maybe there'll be some changes, but it depends what kind of changes you are looking for. And with NSW Labor's heart set on privatising the state's energy supply (soon to be followed by the ferries, the lottery, perhaps the oxygen?) the true stripes of Labor can be seen.

Against around 80 percent public opposition to the sell-off, against their own party platform, and against the rebellion of the unions and over a dozen of the Government's own MPs, Iemma and Costa insist that come hell or high-water (and let's not get started with the idiocy of a desalination plant, and all the back-room deals involved in that one) they will follow through with the sell-off.

Fortunately, we have a new federal Labor government, which can remind the state government what the "party of labour" should be all about. Right? Well, apparently not. Rudd has also come out in support of Iemma and Co, which must feel relieved to get some kind of support after all the sex-scandals and exposure of dodgy developer deals in Wollongong, and pedophile ministers, and collapsible tunnels, and so on and so forth, which have plagued Premier Iemma since he was handed the poisoned chalice by Bob Carr as the latter trundled off to his retirement job of running NSW from Macquarie Bank proper (instead of just its political wing - the NSW ALP).

So ok. Maybe Rudd isn't the white knight some might have hoped for (even if he is going to inject money into the Murray). But Labor got in on the back of a genuine tidal wave of support, not a small part of which was around the opposition to WorkChoices, organised by the ACTU and others in the form of the "Your Rights At Work" campaign. So surely the hero of the labour movement, the real "people's champion" of the election - former ACTU Secretary Greg Combet - can be relied upon to see what's right and what's not, and stick up for the people, for common sense and for the planet (given the likely need for government control of energy production in order to prevent runaway Climate Change).

Ummm. No, actually. As even Bob Gould points out, Combet has counted his cards, and is relying - along with the rest of the Labor Left - upon a friendly deal from Poker-face Rudd to land the right bums on seats in cabinet. So, not a lot has changed in the "bump-me-into-parliament" world of the ALP's stranglehold on the unions and labour bureacracy. And not even the fact that his own electorate will be hard-hit by the sell-off can make him budge. "Angry voters" about as non-metaphysical as it gets for politicians, yet even that apparently wasn't enough of a carrot.

The shining light - if it can be called that - is the staunch opposition of the Unions NSW leadership to the coming privatisation, to the point of taking it to the floor of the NSW ALP state conference in early May, where they are planning to win. What is less clear, however, is what they plan to do if they win on the conference floor, and Costa then goes ahead with the sale. Gould has been railing of late against the demons he sees lurking in every left-wing critique of the ALP of calls for the expulsion of Iemma and Costa from the ALP.

Now, the wombats have no illusion that that will happen, but we wonder, then, what will happen when (if?) the vote goes against the government, and they still go ahead. It certainly challenges the logic of those (such as Gould, who certainly sees this fight as important, vital even, in the fight for the ALP) on the left in the ALP - and who see it as a vehicle for socialists - if even when the party conference, the party platform, AND the unions are on your side, you can't make the bastards budge.

Over a hundred years ago, the Australian Socialist League (ASL), and other socialists, put their hopes in elected representatives of the labour movement to bring about socialism in short order. Time and again they were disappointed by their elected Labor MPs, who took any and every opportunity to sell out - fast. Against all reason, however, they maintained a faith that it was a matter of individuals, not of the larger socialist strategy of the day, that was at fault, and that if only the "right people" were elected, all would be fine. And it got worse once the ALP-proper was set up.

Little appears to have changed in the interim, and socialists in Australia are faced with an unpleasant choice of working within the ALP - the perceived "real party of labour" - and having your efforts marginalised and your representatives bought off, or working outside Labor, in a party or a manner that doesn't mean apologism for neoliberal governments, but with the popular, and well-funded, monolith of the ALP to contend with.

And for those of us outside Labor - in the Socialist Alliance, in other socialist groups, in the Greens, the unions and elsewhere - we are faced with the equally daunting task. The task of overcoming a neoliberal ALP's hegemony over the Australian working class, of acheiving the kind of political and organisational unity necessary to create a viable alternative political vehicle of the working class in Australia. A vehicle which will be capable of bringing about something which has seldom - in the century since the ASL, SDF, ASB, VSP and other early socialists thought it so inevitable - seemed so far away as it does today: "socialism in our time".

This challenge is one which requires us all to rise above sectarianism and personal spite, and honestly appraise the situations before us when searching for answers - the right-wing nature of the new federal ALP government, the very real success of the Your Rights At Work campaign (and the expectations this has sown in many people), the limited but still tangible success of the Socialist Alliance, and the rise and rise (and worrying contradictions) of the Greens coupled with the importance and surging vitality of the struggle to prevent runaway climate change.

One good place for us all to start would be the Climate Change | Social Change Conference in Sydney on April 11-13, which will feature many of the key players in the various struggles mentioned above - both from Australia and from around the world. But the question of revolutionary strategy, of how to go beyond the limitations of the current juncture, is an ongong one. It is one which the Socialist Alliance was formed to help answer, but we certainly can't (and certainly don't intend to) answer it alone. We need your assistance in that, dear reader.