Doug *********************************
Right on, bro. I was at a meeting of some leftists yesterday in North Fremantle, Australia. Three of the speakers were militant unionists, one of whom was complaining about how the Western Australian Labor government was farming out former union jobs to Vietnam because of the cheaper labour costs. Yes, the Labor Party controlled, government business was undercutting union workers. Of course, the Labor Party is the left-wing of bourgeois governing structure in Australia. The solution for Australian unionists is to push organizing drives in the Asian region with financial support. What many Australian unions are doing is giving million dollar donations to the ALP.
As one and only one of the left audience participants pointed out, the workers have only one thing to sell, "their labour"--her words--and that rank and file workers should be constantly reminded of that. Agreed and that their labour power is a commodity, like baked beans, it's a commodity, to be sold on the market.
What was never said at that meeting or acknowledged, was the necessity of reminding workers that the wages system is inherently unfair and exploitative and that's because nobody at that meeting was probably consciously aware of that reality. Most were quite well aware that it was back in '96 when Labor held government that the labour laws against striking had been tightened.
I was pleased though to see that my favourite CFMEU guy, Joe MacDonald got up and told the group that he was tired of hearing about how the workers should have the right to strike. Lots of laws in Australia make striking illegal in situations, especially since '96 and since the Howard government imposed its "Work Choices" reforms, abolishing e.g. "unfair dismissal laws" which had been on the books. Joe is currently under scrutiny by the ALP leaders who are being pressured by the conservatives in and out of the Labor Party to expel him for doing his job as a union delegate and telling workers to strike over safety issues. Roughly, what Joe said was this, "I never thought I had a right to strike, ever. You strike when you need to; you don't ask the bosses or judges to give you your rights. If the workers had done that, they'd never been recognized."
So yeah, Doug's right-on...the way to beat the bosses is for workers to put their organizing muscle toward class solidarity (need I say, international), not in financially supporting bourgeois nationalist politicians. Bourgeois pollies will respond to "facts on the ground". When more and more workers are class consciously organized, the left bourgeois pollies will start shoveling out the health care, shorter work time, more pro-union labor laws.....
Mike B)
Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.
http://www.iww.org/culture/official/preamble.shtml
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