Sam Wainwright

  • France: Sarkozy's assault and the reshaping of the left

    The election of Nicolas Sarkozy as France’s president in April and the landslide to the conservatives in the first round of the parliamentary elections on June 10, described in France as the “blue wave”, were widely presented in the Australian capitalist media as a dramatic shift to the right in French political life. They are all too keen to wipe out last year’s images of French workers and students successfully resisting anti-worker laws, something they only grudgingly reported on in the first place.

  • Rudd's union bashing hits a McDonald rock

    West Australian union official Joe McDonald has rejected calls by Labor leader Kevin Rudd for him to leave the ALP. He insists he will fight moves by the party’s national executive to have him expelled, setting the stage for an important showdown.

  • Waterfront death provokes national stop work

    If the Howard government thought that it’s battery of anti-unions laws had completely intimidated workers not to take so-called “illegal” industrial action then they must be disappointed. For the first time in more than a decade all work on the nation’s waterfront came to a halt on March 23 when more than 11,000 wharfies walked off the job. The stop work coincided with the Melbourne funeral of Bobby Cumberlidge, who died in an industrial accident at Toll’s Westernport wharf on March 16.

  • US seeks to increase naval visits

    PERTH — On July 30, 70 people crowded into the Fremantle Hotel for a quiz night fundraiser organised by the Fremantle Anti-Nuclear Group (FANG). FANG is committed to stopping the Seaswap program, under which US Navy vessels

  • MUA forces Adsteam back down

    PERTH — The Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) has won a dispute with Adsteam Marine at a gas pipe-laying project off the north-west coast of Western Australia. The workers walked off the job because of serious safety concerns.

  • Class-struggle unions: we can beat Howard

    PERTH — In the June Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) election, two of the three positions in the Western Australian branch were won by the Rank and File ticket, which called for a return to democratic and militant unionism.

  • 'Illegals' and Australian unionism

    On September 9, five suspected illegal-immigrant workers at the De Lorenzo ceramics factory in Sydney's west were detained following a raid by immigration department officials. The NSW branch of the construction & general division

  • Commission attacks NSW CFMEU

    SYDNEY — The Royal Commission into the Building and Construction Industry, although based in Melbourne, has also been holding sessions in other cities, including Sydney. The most recent Sydney session finished on August

  • 'No justice on the seventh floor!'

    SYDNEY — On August 28, 5000 workers, chanting "Stop the bias, stop the lies, hands off the union!", marched down George Street before rallying outside the Family Court in Goulburn Street. High above the spirited rally, on the

  • Civilising the building industry

    BY SUE BOLTON & SAM WAINWRIGHT On July 24, the day after the Australian Industrial Relations Commission rejected the Australian Council of Trade Unions' petition to compensate workers for excessive overtime, Construction, Forestry, Mining and

  • Royal commission ignores employers' abuses

    SYDNEY — “The proceedings have been more like a prosecution of the union than a genuine investigation of the building industry” — This was how Andrew Ferguson, secretary of the NSW Construction, Forestry, Mining and

  • Workers locked out

    SYDNEY — Seventy-five workers employed by Nonferral Pty Ltd in Wetherill Park have been locked out for two weeks after refusing to work in unsafe conditions. The workers were concerned about the dangers of transporting molten