Workers & unions

Seattle voted for working-class politics by re-electing socialist incumbent Kshama Sawant to City Council with a five point lead over her challenger. As a result, Seattle residents can expect to see more campaigns in City Council and in the streets to fight inequality and build social justice. “We have accomplished something historic,” Sawant said to supporters on Capitol Hill on the night of November 3 as election results came in. “We have had an open socialist re-elected to City Council.”

Thousands of trade union activists mobilised outside Parliament on November 2 to protest the Conservative government's proposed ultra-right Trade Union bill. The turnout defied expectations of the event’s organisers, the Trade Union Congress. Speaking at the lobby’s Central Hall rally, the Fire Brigade Union's Matt Wrack channelled the anger of his union’s rank-and-file. Unite's Len McCluskey reiterated his union's commitment to extra-legal action should the bill be passed, invoking the movement’s proud historic tradition of overriding unjust laws.

The community assemblies at Port Botany in Sydney and Port of Brisbane continue to hold the line as the protracted process towards a settlement of the long-running dispute between Hutchison Ports and the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) continues. On November 6, the dispute over the controversial sacking of 97 Hutchison waterfront workers by text and email reached its 92nd day.

Melbourne-based author and community radio presenter Iain McIntyre has been documenting and celebrating Australian radical history since the 1990s. A series of zines he created entitled How To Make Trouble And Influence People were compiled into an expanded edition by Breakdown Press in 2009 with a second edition released in conjunction with US publisher PM Press in 2013.

Portugal's incoming government will most probably prove to be the briefest in modern Portuguese history. It is headed by conservative Social Democratic Party (PSD) leader Pedro Passos Coelho, whom Portuguese President Cavaco Silva appointed on October 22 to continue as prime minister. Passos Coelho has already overseen the 2011 “bail-out” memorandum applied to Portugal by the “Troika” (European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund).

Members of the Teachers and Education Support Staff Alliance (TESA) have been re-elected to the state-wide council of the Victorian branch of the Australian Education Union (AEU) in elections that took place in October. TESA also contested the four senior officer positions: branch president, branch deputy president, branch secretary and branch deputy secretary.

Wits students protest in Johannesburg against a proposed tuition fee hike tuition fees on October 15. A historic victory over neoliberalism in South Africa was won on October 23, after the most intense three-week burst of mobilisation in the country since liberation from apartheid in 1994.

Jeremy Corbyn's election as Labour Party leader has already had a dramatic effect on British politics. All of us on the left in Britain need to ask how we can support him — and consider what the long term implications of his success may be.

Under pressure from an industrial campaign by the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), the Turnbull government has announced it will lift its cap on wage rises for federal public sector workers from 1.5% to 2%. The government is maintaining its hard line on stripping existing workplace rights and conditions. Only a handful of government agencies have so far this year reached EBA settlements with their workers.

Faction Man: Bill Shorten's Path to Power David Marr Quarterly Essay No. 59 Black Inc., 2015 Even the usually perceptive journalist David Marr, in his latest political profile for Quarterly Essay, is defeated by the indistinct and bland Shorten who, in public opinion polls, trails behind “Someone Else” as preferred leader of the Labor Opposition.

The long-running dispute between the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) and Hutchison Ports is edging closer to settlement. An MUA member at the Port Botany community assembly told Green Left Weekly on October 30 that letters offering voluntary redundancies were being issued by the company that day. MUA members have a week to reply. They said that substantially improved redundancy entitlements, “roughly equivalent to 26 weeks' pay,” are being offered — a big gain on the previous offer of nine weeks' pay for three years of service.

BlueScope's October 26 announcement that the Port Kembla steelworks would be saved from closure came as an obvious relief for the workforce, who had agreed to 500 job losses to save 4500 jobs, together with a three-year pay freeze and foregone bonuses for the next 12 months. These union concessions are reportedly worth $40 million to BlueScope. The New South Wales government agreed to defer $60 million in payroll tax payments over the next three years, and the company will save a further $100 million through “worker flexibility”.