Critical Times

Bob Briton

Noel Washington, a Victorian official of the CFMEU’s Construction Division, will front a Geelong court on August 8 facing the prospect of a six month jail sentence for refusing to attend an interrogation ordered by the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC). The case has brought to a head major disagreements between the trade union movement and the Rudd Labor government over the Howard-era building site Gestapo. The ACTU Executive voted unanimously last week to support a campaign against the commission to be spearheaded by the CFMEU and other building unions.

Matthew Knott
POLICE arrested 37 activists who chained themselves to a train and rail tracks at Newcastle Port yesterday, shutting down the world’s largest coal port for seven hours.

Protest organisers said up to 1000 people marched to the Carrington coal terminal to demonstrate against government inaction on climate change.

About 100 people scaled or cut through fences to enter the rail corridor and tie themselves to a fully loaded coal train.

John Heywood

Around 9000 members and supporters of the Australian Education Union (AEU) took industrial action in South Australia last Tuesday. It was the first time schools have closed for a full day in twelve years and the first time in around two decades under a Labor government. AEU members in the Adelaide metro area descended on Rymill Park where they began a noisy march to the steps of Parliament House.

The combined impact of the state budget and the dreadful WorkCover laws marks June 5, 2008 as a dark day for SA, according to SA Unions Secretary, Janet Giles.

“Mike Rann proudly describes himself as being a “pro business Premier”, but he fort to add “anti worker” to the equation”, Ms Giles says.

“This budget reinforces the business windfall announced last year, and comes at a time when vulnerable injured workers are being stripped of entitlements.

Source: Serve The People
Wednesday, June 18, 2008

South Australian members of the Australian Education Union have vented their anger at the state’s Labor government by holding a 24-hour strike.

The AEU covers Technical and Further Education (TAFE) lecturers, pre-school and school teachers, principals, school services officers (SSOs), early childhood workers (ECWs) and Aboriginal education workers (AEWs) in the public education sector.

Frustrated by months of stubborn rejection of their wage claim (21% over three years) and faced with the loss of protection for class sizes and working conditions, members voted by 85 percent in Electoral Commission-conducted secret ballots, to strike.

By Max Oz

To paraphrase – from the title of a children’s story Run! Rabbit Run! – Rann! Labor Rann! is a fitting description of the current Labor Government’s efforts in regards to workers in South Australia. Although the Labor Party ‘Rann’ away along time ago (well before the appearance of Rann) from its working class heartland, Media Mike has contributed splendidly to its pretensions as “business-friendly” and “investment-friendly” rather being ‘champions of working people’. History inevitably catches up with pretenders and they’re a plenty in the Labor Party.

NOEL WASHINGTON FACES JAIL…HIS CRIME?

STICKING TO THE UNION!

Noel Washington has been in the Australian construction industry all his life…first as a crane driver, then as a building union official. He’s also a family man watching the future for his grandchildren. Noel wears his Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) jacket with pride and is the Senior Vice President of his union in Victoria.

The biggest crowd seen in the Moonta Town Hall in 50 years turned up last night to discuss a proposed desalination plant to water a new Greg Norman designed golf course in the Yorke Peninsula town of Port Hughes.

The meeting, attracting over 300 people, was organised by the local Community Action Group with support from Greens MLC and planning lawyer Mark Parnell.

“The Local Council has well and truly been put on notice: the people who elected them don’t want to be kept in the dark about major changes to their community,” Mr Parnell said.

Guerilla gardeners across the world say they are fighting a win-win war, writes Kate Kelland.

THEY work under the cover of night, armed with seed bombs, chemical weapons and pitchforks. Their tactics are anarchistic, their attitude revolutionary.

SA Unions congratulates all the Independents and minor party members in the Upper House for staunchly defending the rights of injured workers in the Legislative Council yesterday and over night.

In particular, Mark Parnell and Ann Bressington spoke for 8 hours and 5 hours respectively in well constructed, well researched and coherent speeches.

Janet Giles, Secretary SA Unions said, “the voice of workers in this debate has been ignored and then silenced as the Premier tries to ram the WorkCover Bill through Parliament.

Peter Montague

The coal industry is planning to replace oil by turning coal into liquid fuels and into feedstocks for the chemical industry. Of course they are also planning to burn ever-more coal to produce electricity. If these plans materialise, green chemistry and renewable solar energy will both be sidelined for the rest of this century.

The Camp for Climate Action, beginning on July 10, will be an inspiring convergence of people from all over Australia who are serious about taking action on climate change. It will take place in Newcastle, NSW, which already has the world’s biggest coal port and is set for a massive expansion.

Coal is destroying the climate and threatening our future.

A Japanese crew were discovered selling salted whale meat from their ship on return from Antarctica which violates Japan’s ’scientific research’ permit. The Nisshin Maru crew members were interviewed, informing Greenpeace that dozens of workers resold salted meat not included in the official whaling statistics. The ship’s operator Kyodo Sempaku insisted that giving crew members ’souvenir’ meat was a decade-old custom.

In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes how the New Labour government is destroying one of the the venerable features of “communal decency” in Britain – the local post office. Economies need to be made, though not in the pursuit of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

When I first came to live in Britain, much of ordinary life was premised on a sense of community.

Compared to the euro, the value of the US dollar has fallen 76 per cent in the last five years. So who would want to be paid in a currency that’s losing its grunt? Not Iran. It’s hedging its bets by selling its oil in a basketful of currencies brimming with euros and Chinese yuan.

A speech by ARUNDHATI ROY

This article was delivered as a lecture in Istanbul on January 18, 2008, to commemorate the first anniversary of the assassination of Hrant Dink, editor of the Turkish-Armenian paper Agos.

I NEVER met Hrant Dink, a misfortune that will be mine for time to come. From what I know of him, of what he wrote, what he said and did, how he lived his life, I know that had I been here in Istanbul a year ago, I would have been among the one hundred thousand people who walked with his coffin in dead silence through the wintry streets of this city, with banners saying “We are all Armenians,” “We are all Hrant Dink.

Since it was set up in 2005, the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) has operated as an all-powerful secret police in the building industry, attacking unions, unionists and the right to organise. The ABCC has been handed dictatorial power to secretly interrogate and intimidate workers, to jail and levy huge fines, all in the interest of defending profits in the building industry. The new Rudd government must honour its commitment to abolish the ABCC, not in 2010 but now! Any proposal to introduce a new “tough cop on the beat”, as proposed by deputy PM Julia Gillard in the lead-up to the 2007 federal election, must also be dropped.

Anna Pha

Neo-liberal policies have failed dismally. The policies of deregulation and corporate welfare have impacted on most areas of the economy to the detriment of ordinary people.

The financial sector is in crisis; water usage has been mismanaged; river systems are drying up; housing is becoming unaffordable for many; ships are queuing to load the tonnes of resources being thoughtlessly ripped out of the ground; private health and educations systems propped up to the neglect of the superior public systems; vital rail services slashed; privatised electricity prices sky-rocketing with blackouts more common; public transport systems underfunded, short of stock and unreliable; climate change neglected; and so the list goes.

HUMAN-generated climate change is making flowers bloom sooner and autumn leaves fall later and is turning polar bears into cannibals and birds into early breeders, a global study has found.

Hundreds of previous studies had noted specific changes and most suggested a link to so-called anthropogenic (human-generated) global warming, but a new analysis published in the journal Nature correlated earlier studies with changes in temperature, the study’s lead author said.

The study found the early arrival of migratory birds in Australia, declining water levels in western Victoria and a 50 per cent decline in Antarctica’s Emperor Penguin population were linked to rising temperatures.

The following was a leaflet distributed to the May Day Rally in Adelaide, on May 3rd.

The Oath of Eureka
We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other, and fight to defend our rights and liberties.

The rights and liberties of working people continue to be under attack in this country.