Unionists for IWD
I'm writing to wish good luck to the members of the International Women's Day Collective 2001 in your march and rally.
The AMWU remains one of the most male-dominated unions in the country, with 86% of our members being male. I do not see this as an excuse for our union to not take the question of women's liberation seriously.
We've resourced the collective for a number of years now and were delighted when the collective returned our solidarity by making a donation and attending the Brownbuilt picket. The thank you letter sent to that collective was signed with the words "I hope to see you in your times of struggle" — and this leads me to why I am writing.
I was sorry to hear that a decision was made that our male union members would not be able to march in support of women's rights. International Women's Day is a traditional day of union struggle, the only day on the feminist calendar on which we have been able to turn our work in convincing men that women's rights are a key struggle for our union into something concrete.
With this you are also excluding a range of our women members who work with men inside the union. Many women work in political solidarity with men, the enemy is the boss and the capitalist class, not the worker on the line next to them. It makes no difference if that boss is a man or a woman, because they are still there to play the same role.
The reality is that when women go to work they face issues of child care, maternity leave, harassment, having no legal right to abortion and so many other things. If our union comrades are willing to fight with us to change this they should be welcomed.
A women's only collective has made all the political and logistics decisions over the rally. I cannot see how the inclusion of men on the day will threaten that leadership, but I can see how you will isolate yourselves from a layer of women who believe that men are their comrades.
I hope the positive relationship between the AMWU and the collective continues to prosper and that next year all of our members have a chance to express outrage at the continued oppression of women.
Renata Jastrzebski
Australian Manufacturing Workers Union
Hawthorn Vic
@letterhead =
Nick Soudakoff (GLW #439) seems to think Jo Ellis (GLW #438) wants no criticism of popular cultural products such as Charlie's Angels, whereas she merely pointed out that the ideological effects of such products are often contradictory.
Perhaps Jo's point is obscured by her use of the terminology of "cultural studies". Writers in this field often don't just point out the possibility of "resistant readings" of popular culture, but also see such activity as the epitome of radical politics.
Capitalists make money from sales of the Communist Manifesto and Rage Against the Machine CDs, so relations of ownership don't always directly determine ideology. They may do so in the long run, but you have to look at the specific social and political contexts.
For example, in my view the commercial interests of the film financiers, the liberal views of the petty-bourgeois filmmakers, and the widespread feminist consciousness of masses of film consumers combine to give Charlie's Angels a particular type of liberal feminist message.
This may advance some people's consciousness a bit (depending on how they read it), but doesn't challenge most aspects of bourgeois society. Popular culture is a battleground, but one in which the class enemy currently holds most of the key positions.
Nick Fredman
Lismore NSW
Stocklands claim
Re. your article, "Protest as development on Aboriginal land" (GLW #438). On behalf of the people trying to stop the development by Stocklands, thank you for including a report by Bronwyn Powell on this fight.
The article's heading is technically wrong in that the area under dispute has a variety of titled owners and the development application land voted on by the Wollongong City Council is owned by Stocklands. But all are subject to an unresolved Aboriginal land claim. It is a claim over private land (Stocklands) as well as Crown/public land.
Michael Crighton
Wollongong NSW
[Abridged]
Ignorance
The recent elections in Western Australia and Queensland show quite clearly that the federal government is ignorant of what the Australian people are thinking, and they have made their state colleagues pay the price for that ignorance.
To make Australia the only country to support the United States and the United Kingdom bombing of Baghdad, to make it the only country to indicate "understanding" for the US proposal for a National Missile Defence system, to say it is of no concern to us that plutonium is being shipped to Japan through the Tasman Sea close to Australian shores, seems to display a similar ignorance of international affairs.
Who next is going to pay the price for that ignorance?
Ron Gray
Australian Peace Committee
Adelaide
Fee for service
The problem with this proposal of fees for non-unionists (GLW #438) is that it's another decree from on-high.
How can non-unionised workers have an input into negotiations or actions?
Will non-unionised workers be able to sue unions for a bad outcome such as a trade-off for wage rises? I think not. Yet they will be levied for the pay rise.
How do non-union workers quantify what could have been achieved in lieu of a bad outcome or trade-offs?
Many unionised workers (let alone non-unionised workers) don't trust their union bureaucrats to do their bidding. Often it is pressure from the ranks that ensures any positivity of outcomes during negotiations, not union officials who are more inclined to take the easy path of caving in to the bosses' demands for inadequate pay rises (falls in real terms).
Charging for pay rises is a retrograde step for the trade union movement, as it will decrease workers' activities and resistance in the workplace. Many shop floor activists will be pushed out of the way leaving the "real negotiating" to the highly paid trade union officials who have only looked after their own interests primarily.
"Fee for service" trade unionism is already well entrenched and is a major cause of falling union membership. This move to charge fees to non-union members completes the transition of the union movement to a capitalist service industry.
These trade union leaders must be swept out of the way so that a democratic workers' organising model can be built from the ground up. A campaign calling for trade union democracy in the workplace with resistance to the Labor right's call for fees must begin immediately. After all isn't this the message about organising workers' democracy that we've been on about all this time?
Peter Perkins
delegate, Rail Tram and Bus Union
Sydney
[Abridged.]
Jackboots
Thank you for Tom Wilson's long needed article "Forestry Tasmania tries on its jackboots" (GLW #438).
It has been breaking my heart every time I go out into the Tasmanian countryside to see how much of our native forest is being destroyed and replaced with Radiata Pine.
The scare tactics that Forestry Tasmania are using with the Huon Valley residents planning their own Southwood tour is nearly beyond belief.
But this isn't the first time. When The Wilderness Society started their campaign against the logging of the tallest hardwood trees in the world in the Styx Valley, they released a self-drive tour map of the Styx Valley (as well as conducting their own tours).
Forestry Tasmania instantly tried to force them to stop releasing the pamphlet, and have been conducting a campaign of their own — telling tourists that they can't go down certain roads, locking gates so that people can't access freshly logged areas.
The most baffling thing is, Forestry Tasmania is part of our government, and all of this land is public land. We are being walked over, rights most of us don't know about are being taken away.
I encourage anyone down here in Tasmania to get involved in the campaigns against Southwood and the logging of the Styx Valley, we can make a difference.
Lilia Letsch
Sandy Bay Tas