Nick Riemer, senior lecturer at the University of Sydney, addressed a Town Hall meeting on August 25 on the proposed deregulation of fees at Australian universities. Riemer is a member of the NTEU Sydney University branch committee.
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Fee deregulation means the entrenchment of educational disadvantage and the enclosure of knowledge in our society.
That’s not irresponsible exaggeration: it’s an accurate characterisation that follows from the careful modelling done by a number of authorities.
Workers & unions
About 30 international guests and 120 shop stewards from the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) met over August 7 to 10 in Johannesburg to discuss building a new, left alternative to the ruling African National Congress (ANC).
This challenge to the ANC by the country’s largest trade union, with more than 440,000 members, has caused shockwaves throughout the country. An August 6 Times Live article said the process was “likely to lead to the birth of a workers' party that will eventually challenge [the ANC] for power”.
The total number of jobs now advertised across Australia is about 133,000. This is the labour market for the 790,000 unemployed looking for work — and it will get a lot worse before it ever gets better.
In the financial year to June, private sector wages rose by just 2.4%, the lowest growth rate in 17 years. With consumer prices rising at 3% over the same period, the decline in real wages will continue as unemployment rises.
Recent months have seen repeated and unprecedented attacks on the unemployed and other income support recipients, with the federal budget and McLure and Forrest Reviews proposing cuts to payments for job-seekers, restricting access to the Disability Support Pension, and expanding Work for the Dole and income management.
But there are signs of resistance. Pas Forgione from the Anti-Poverty Network SA spoke to Owen Bennett, who set up the Australian Unemployment Union.
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What is the Australian Unemployment Union and what are its goals?
The recent media attention given to the case of “baby Gammy” — the child of an Australian couple born to a surrogate mother in Thailand, and left in her care by his parents allegedly because he was born with a disability — has led to suggestions that rules around surrogacy should be changed.
The rates of surrogacy in Australia are very low. In 2011, only 80 women volunteered for it, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on August 10.
The National Tertiary Education Union at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) took strike action on August 20 after negotiations with UTS management around an enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA) stalled.
Staff and students held a picket line at the city campus and asked students and staff to turn away and respect the picket. The action was held to coincide with the National Day of Action called by students against the federal government’s proposed education cuts.
San Francisco Bay Area activists have not allowed a vessel from Israel’s largest shipping company to unload in the Oakland Port for four consecutive mornings.
On August 19, at 6:45am, activists declared yet another victory against the Zim Line, which has been trying to make its way into Oakland since August 16.
Lara Kiswani, the executive director of the local Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), told The Electronic Intifada that they are now waiting to hear if the Zim Line will leave the Port of Oakland today with the cargo it brought.
One of the promises Prime Minister Tony Abbott made when he was elected last year was to create 1 million jobs over the next five years. This translates to a monthly increase of about 17,000 jobs. Yet in the 10 months since September last year, only 11,000 jobs a month have been created – and more than half of these were part-time jobs.
About 200 unionists rallied outside the Ausreo factory in Wetherill Park in western Sydney on August 7 in solidarity with 24 workers who were locked out by the company seven weeks ago. As the rally progressed, more Ausreo workers walked out to join the protest.
Under the unfortunately red-hot slogan: “Stand up for Peace — In Solidarity”, about 300 participants and many day guests from nearby Berlin and Brandenburg came together from July 23 to 27 for the Ninth Summer University of the European Left.
Constructive, concentrated, and communicative, people from at least 32 countries worked together during this unique annual event of the Party of the European Left and Transform! Europe.
The serious financial fraud that surfaced in the scandal-ridden Health Services Union (HSU) provided the federal government with a handy excuse to establish the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption.
Although the commission has powers wide enough to inquire into all unions, the HSU is one of five organisations specifically mentioned in its terms of reference alongside the Australian Workers Union, Communications Electrical Plumbing Union, Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union, and the Transport Workers Union.
Many commentators have written about the growing divide in the United States between capitalists and workers (and other producers) ― although they eschew the terms “capitalists” and “workers”.
They prefer to talk about levels of income and wealth abstracted from the role different classes play in the production process.
Nevertheless, their figures give an insight into the real growing disparity between the two main classes under the capitalist system, which was first brought to national attention by the Occupy movement in 2011.
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