Australia

It has become common practice for many bosses to tell potential employees they must have an Australian Business Number (ABN) to secure a job.

The Socialist Alliance has announced Sam Wainwright as its candidate for the May 16 Fremantle by-election. Wainwright, aged 38, is a wharfie, member of the Maritime Union of Australia and activist in the Fremantle Community Solidarity group.

A forum held by the University of Sydney environment collective and the Political Economy Students’ Society attracted 70 people on March 31.

Members of the Aboriginal community were joined by construction and manufacturing unionists at a 350-strong protest on April 3 to bring an end to deaths of Aboriginal people in custody.

According to a 2008 report by UN agencies UNAIDS and the World Health Organisation, an estimated 1.9 million people were newly infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa in 2007, bringing the number of people living with HIV in the region to 22 million.

Workers and the community will march on May Day this year under the banner “Put jobs before profits”.

A group of community activists marked Earth Hour with an occupation of the Hazelwood Power station in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley on March 28.

In the biggest shake-up of job centres since the Howard government’s replacement of the Commonwealth Employment Service (CES) with the privatised Job Network in 1998, the federal Labor government has created a new Job Services Australia (JSA) network. It halves the number of not-for-profit agencies involved and cuts thousands of jobs.

Qantas workers at Sydney Airport struck for four hours on March 30. Workers held a mass delegates’ meeting to respond to plans to outsource jobs at Sydney, Launceston and Hobart airports. Baggage handlers, ramp, fleet and catering staff at airports in Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth also took industrial action.

As capitalism sinks into a growing crisis of war and economic meltdown, people around the world are waking up to the fact that something is drastically wrong with the system that is throwing millions into poverty, wrecking our climate and turning entire countries into battlefields.

Omar Hassan is the Education (public affairs) officer for Monash University’s student union. He is also a member of Students for Palestine. On March 31, the Monash Student Council (MSC) sanctioned Hassan for his involvement in the group.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown proclaimed at the conclusion of the London G20 summit: “We have resolved that from today we will together manage the process of globalisation … We have agreed that in doing so we will build a more sustainable and more open and fairer global society.”