Workers & unions

There was a sea of red when public sector nurses filled Melbourne’s Festival Hall on November 11 to decide on further industrial action. About 50 buses brought nurses from across the state. A swing version of “Danny Boy” played in the background to set a sombre but defiant tone. Messages of support came from Australian Council of Trade Unions president Ged Kearney and the California Nurses Association.

Despite Fair Work Australia putting in place an injunction banning National Union of Workers (NUW) officials from taking part in the Baiada poultry workers’ picket line, workers and community supporters were able to hold off an attempt by riot police to break the picket late on November 11.

The strengthening links between unions and the US Occupy movement will be expressed in mobilisations across the US on November 17.

Over October 19-20 there was a general strike in Greece. The overwhelming majority of Greek workers took part in the strike with dynamic demonstrations and other forms of action. In that way, Greek people expressed their anger and despair over the devastating measures carried out in Greece in the past year and a half. The relentless, vicious austerity measures have been imposed by the PASOK (Panhellenic Socialist Movement) government and the “troika” of the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Union.

It was “shameful” of the Victorian Liberal government, the Victorian Hospitals Industrial Association (VHIA) and the state's hospitals to consider locking out nurses or using a strikebreaking workforce to end the enterprise bargaining campaign of public sector nurses, Australian Nursing Federation (ANF) state secretary Lisa Fitzpatrick said on November 9.

Let me start by introducing you to the Palestinian people and give you a brief background to the conflict.

Occupy has gone viral. First we had flash trading, then flash mobs, and now a flash movement. But this is no flash in the pan.

On September 30, 2001, in the midst of one of the worst economic crises in Argentine history, the owners of the Zanon ceramic factory announced plans to switch off the furnaces. In response, union delegates occupied the plant in the southern province of Neuquen. The next day, workers arrived to join the occupation ― frustrating plans to sell off the machinery.

The streets of Oakland, California, echoed with the voices of tens of thousands of people determined to take a stand on November 2. Workers, students, activists and people from all walks of life responded to the call for a general strike by Occupy Oakland. The last general strike in the United States was in 1946 (also in Oakland).

From November 9 to 15 Australian Taxation Office staff will vote on management's proposed enterprise agreement. This is the second time a staff ballot has been held. The first version of management’s proposal was rejected in June by a majority of 59% to 41%. The Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) is recommending that staff vote “no”, because the pay offer of 9% over three years is less than the expected rate of inflation. A ballot of CPSU members endorsed this position following a recommendation by union’s Tax Section Council.

Thousands of New South Wales high school and primary school teachers stopped work for two hours on November 2. They voted overwhelmingly to reject the Coalition O’Farrell state government’s salary offer. Ninety-nine percent of teachers at the stopwork meetings also voted to hold a 24-hour stopwork action on November 29 if the government refused to make a reasonable salary offer. Teachers will consider further industrial action at the start of 2012 if a reasonable offer is not made by then.

If you speak out against the widening gap between wages and CEOs’ salaries, the corporate media will accuse you of stoking the “politics of envy”. Workers who dare take industrial action to get a few more crumbs from the bosses’ table are cast as class war dinosaurs.