Workers & unions

This episode features Beyond Zero Emissions' Terry McBride plus footage of the campaign for big solar in Port Augusta, South Australia.

Two recent events dramatised the state of economy and politics in the Spanish state: the Red Cross announced that this year the takings of its annual Flag Day would go to fight poverty and social exclusion in Spain, and education minister Jose Ignacio Wert told the national parliament that changes to the national education syllabus were aimed at “Spanishing” students in Catalonia. The Red Cross decision came as a shock across the country. People knew things were bad, but that bad?

At least 50,000 protesters rallied in Athens on October 9 to tell visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel she was not welcome. Thousands of police officers cordoned off whole sectors of the city to prevent demonstrators embarassing Merkel, though police still detained more than 50 people during the day. Even in unrestricted areas pedestrians were stopped and searched. But the crowds made their message clear, gathering outside parliament and chanting: “History is written by the disobedient.”

Buswell lies to attack wharfies The Maritime Union of Australia has slammed as false West Australian Transport Minister Troy Buswell's claims that maritime workers are striking for a 20% pay rise. On October 11, MUA national secretary Ian Bray said the dispute was about safety of workers, noting last month's workplace death of Newcastle waterfront worker Greg Fitzgibbon, who was crushed by a 20 tonne pallet. Bray said Buswell should "investigate the concerns of workers to avoid further fatalities on the Australian waterfront".

A half-day strike by NSW public servants on October 8 featured a mass meeting of workers at Sydney Town Hall. A vibrant crowd of about 2500 filled the lower deck of the Town Hall. A further 1000 people outside were able to observe the events taking place inside via a large video screen.

The Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) released the statement below on October 11. * * * West Australian Transport Minister Troy Buswell needs to take the time to learn the basic facts about the dispute between workers at Fremantle Port and their employer before making incorrect claims about the merits of workers’ claims. MUA assistant national secretary Ian Bray said lives have been lost on the waterfront in recent times, including a tragic fatality only days ago in Newcastle, and the safety of workers needs to be prioritised.

Uniting Church minister and prominent opponent of the NT intervention, Reverend Dr Djiniyini Gondarra, recently sent the letter below to the NSW Public Sector Association (PSA). Last month, PSA members in government Community Services Centres began union bans against implementing income management for welfare recipients in Bankstown. * * * To our courageous sisters and brothers in NSW,

Huge protests in Madrid, brutally repressed, are now matched by another Greek general strike. Three years of the European debt crisis are producing a social and political crisis on an immense scale, with the threat of the break-up of the Spanish state. Just as those in the global South – the great arc of less developed countries across the southern hemisphere, from South America to the Far East – have suffered years of debt crises and IMF-led structural adjustment programs, so now too is southern Europe.

Egypt is being hit by a strike wave as the government comes under pressure to push austerity measures. However, the protests getting the most international attention are the ones against The Innocence of Muslims film. Like countries across the world, Egypt Islamaphobic film. But the Egyptian protests, which targetted the US embassy, took on a different dynamic due to the revolution that toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak.

An election in the NSW Public Service Association (PSA) will be held in October to determine who leads the 42,000-strong union for the next four years. Membership of the PSA consists of public servants employed by the NSW government. The current ALP-aligned leadership team is being challenged by a group of rank-and-file members and delegates known as the Progressive PSA (PPSA).

One day after the huge stop work and rally of Australian Education Union (AEU) members on September 5, Mary Bluett, the Victorian AEU’s branch president, announced she was retiring. Her husband AEU branch secretary Brian Henderson, also announced his retirement. Bluett has been an education union official for 31 years. The Victorian AEU is a 51,000 member strong union. Teachers have come increasingly under attack in recent years, but they, like nurses, still have a lot of public support.

The murder of 34 miners by the South African police, most of them shot in the back, puts paid to the illusion of post-apartheid democracy and illuminates the new worldwide apartheid of which South Africa is both a historic and contemporary model. In 1894, long before the infamous Afrikaans word foretold “separate development” for the majority people of South Africa, an Englishman, Cecil John Rhodes, oversaw the Glen Grey Act in what was then the Cape Colony.