Workers & unions

Washington pressed Greece on July 21 to cut public spending to the bone in return for the latest slice of bailout money, Morning Star Online said. After a meeting with Greek finance minister Euclid Tsakalotos, US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said Athens needed “to make headway on the next set of milestones due in October”.

Warehouses belonging to Kimberly-Clark Corporation — which recently had its factory seized and handed over to the workers — were found to be full of raw materials. This is despite the insistence from the factory's owners that they could not produce goods, Venezuelan industry minister Miguel Perez Abad said on July 15.

A march for jobs in Zimbabwe. A national shutdown or 'stay away' in Zimbabwe this month paralysed the country. For the first time in years the country's ruling party, ZANU-PF, and the tenure of 92 year old president Robert Mugabe, were seriously rattled. Young people, workers and traders – who survive by hawking food, cheap imported goods in cities and towns – engaged in pitch battles with the police and army, in many cases outnumbering the security forces.

General strike to protest mass layoffs under President Mauricio Macri. Buenos Aires, February 24. Photo: EFE.

Declaring "We have abolished the case for austerity", left-wing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn officially launched his campaign for re-election in London on July 21. He used the occasion to make a strong putting a case for a clearly anti-austerity Labour Party to oppose the Tories and a rise in racism.

The National Union of Workers announced on July 15 that 50 workers who were locked out of a Victorian milk processing plant by Longwarry Foods on July 5 will be able to return to work after they voted for a new agreement. Workers had been protesting outside Longwarry Foods, owned by Parmalat, one of the country's biggest milk producers, for 11 days, calling for better working conditions and to return to work.

This advertisement was booked to run in Melbourne newspaper the Herald Sun, to draw attention to the plight of 55 Carlton United Brewery workers who were unfairly sacked and offered their jobs back at 65% less pay. Being the darlings of the big end of town that it is, the Herald Sun has refused to run it. But we can all help to share it far and wide. As the dispute enters its seventh week, you can help to increase the pressure on the company.

Rail freight operator Aurizon has told workers that about 100 jobs will be cut in north Queensland next month, according to the Rail Tram and Bus Union (RBTU). The union says the cuts, which affect workers from Townsville to Gladstone, come on top of 200 jobs that the company has already shed over the past year. RTBU northern manager Les Moffitt said the move affected coal and wagon maintenance which could not afford to lose more staff. The company said it would be offering voluntary redundancies, while looking at retraining and relocating staff where possible.

The industrial action by Carlton & United Breweries (CUB) maintenance workers in Abbotsford has entered its seventh week. The company is refusing to back down from its decision to sack the workers and then offer to rehire them with a 65% pay cut.

Pauline Hanson came across a racist and incoherent cartoon character on the ABC's Q&A program on July 18. But it would be a mistake to think that Hanson, and the more than half a million people who voted for her in the July 2 federal election, can simply be laughed away. They represent, in a distorted way, the deepening contradictions in our society that have to be addressed at their root. The myth of the egalitarianism of Australia is cracking up after 50 years of Coalition and Labor Party governments helping the super rich get even richer at the expense of the rest.

Bill Gates was set to deliver the July 17 annual Mandela Lecture in Johannesburg, justifying his philosophy of market-oriented, technology-centric philanthropy. Last year, French economist Thomas Piketty’s speech on inequality attracted healthy debate — with even business notables endorsing his concerns — given South Africa’s intense social conflict. To illustrate, South Africa’s Gini Coefficient measuring inequality is the world’s highest (at 0.77 on a scale of 0 to 1, in terms of income inequality from employment). Since 2000, social protests have numbered on average 11 per day.

Jeremy Corbyn addresses supporters in London. “Jeremy Corbyn has touched parts of the electorate Labour hasn’t reached in a long time.” That is the judgement of Laura Kuenssberg, the Tory propagandist who delivers most of the BBC’s political coverage on Labour’s socialist leader.