Critical Times

A number of left-wing unions is considering to lodge a complaint to the International Labour Organisation against the Rudd Government for
maintaining many features of the previous Howard Government’s “Workchoices”.

A coalition of Victorian unions has sought legal advice for a complaint to the International Labour Organisation, arguing that the Government’s new ‘Fair Work’ legislation still curtails freedom of association and collective bargaining rights.

The Electrical Trades Union leader Dean Mighell, Victoria’s Trades Hall and left-wing unions in manufacturing, construction and education have proposed the challenge that Labor’s Fair Work bill, introduced into parliament by Acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard last month, does not go far enough in demolishing John Howard’s pro-employer Work Choices laws.

Source: ABC News

Calls for an an Indigenous bill of rights have been supported by the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement (ALRM).

Kaurna elders used Sunday’s Proclamation Day anniversary in South Australia to call on government to honour a promise made in 1836 to establish a treaty.

Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard says there is no need for a bill of rights because the Federal Government is committed to closing the gap in health and educational outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

Source: Monthly Review
by Rick Wolff

In Marxian terms, the current crisis emerged from the workings of the capitalist class structure. Capitalism’s history displays repeated booms and busts punctuated by bubbles. Capitalism’s cycles range unpredictably from local, shallow, and short to global, deep, and long.

The Broken Hill Proprietary Company (BHP) was established in 1885 at the silver, lead and zinc mine at Broken Hill in western New South Wales.

It became one of Australia’s largest monopolies; indeed, it was known as “the big Australian”.
It was also known as a ruthless blood-sucking mongrel of an employer, Bloody Hungry for Profits and rabidly anti-worker.

Source: Progressive Educators
Date: 2008-12-02

(Please note there is a website video link on Rann at the end of this article: too good to miss!)

Our beloved Premier really blew it after reading Stephen Orr’s article in the Advertiser calling on him to “intervene, find common ground, reassure all parties and stop creating an atmosphere of conflict and mistrust. He must create a vision for the future of our schools that is lacking.”

Major Marty picked up on Orr’s call to the Premier, leading to this remarkable outburst in Parliament later that day, and given front page prominence in the Advertiser the next day:

TEACHERS DISPUTE

Mr HAMILTON-SMITH (Waite—Leader of the Opposition) (14:43): Is the Premier’s media unit being used to conduct a deliberate campaign around its teachers dispute position designed to diminish the public standing and status of the teaching profession in order to create an atmosphere of conflict and public mistrust?

The Hon.

Written by Doug Norberg
Wednesday, 26 November 2008

On November 4, 2008, millions of new voters stepped into political life with the hope that the traditional (as many put it) rich-white-male-Christian cultural monopoly on political power would no longer determine the conditions of life in the United States. These millions who stepped forward to be counted—young, poor, women, people of color, the wronged and abused, the falsely accused, sick and disabled, atheists, Muslims, Buddhists, and progressive Christians, displaced, evicted, and laid-off, and other “outcasts” and have-nots—were repelled by that de facto oligarchy, which had, they felt, excluded them. The Bush regime had arrogantly and unsuccessfully led that traditional elite for 8 years of widening wars and monstrous economic crises, which drew widespread domestic and global anger and condemnation.