Nick G.
When mining multimillionaire Twiggy Forrest first took up the cudgels against what was then the Kevin Rudd Resources Super Profits Tax, he warned that 30,000 jobs were at stake.
Similarly, the mining industry has used the prospect of job losses to oppose the very modest “carbon tax” put forward by the Gillard government.
You could be forgiven for thinking that these foreign and local monopolies were the workers’ friend!
The reality is that capitalism drives employers to reduce their wages bill so that the rate of profit is increased. (This follows from Marx’s formula s/(c+v) where s is the surplus value realised through the sale of commodities, c is constant capital invested in raw materials, plant and machinery and so on, and v is the variable or wage component for any given cycle of reproduction. Any reduction in v helps make s larger as is obvious from the two divisions of 6/3 = 2 and 6/2 = 3.)
So it should be no surprise then that the same Mr Twiggy Forrest who has wept crocodile tears about job losses because of one form or other of a resources tax since May 20 last year, is the same Mr Twiggy Forrest who announced on July 7, 2011 that he will be using 45 driverless trucks at the proposed Solomon iron ore mine in WA’s Pilbara region.
Twiggy joins giant multinational Rio Tinto in replacing human labour with automated operations. (The reduction here in v is a permanent reduction, while the temporary expenditure c on the trucks is depreciated over time and thus helps to increase the rate of profit.)
Rio Tinto already runs some of its Pilbara operations, including rail services, remotely from Perth. On June 8, 2011 the company announced that it would double its fleet of driverless trucks in the Pilbara, using them for both dumping of waste products and delivery of ore to storage piles.
Responses to these announcements have shown that the Australian people are getting sick and tired of billionaires weeping crocodile tears over job losses. A few sample comments from online responses:
“A mining tax will cost jobs,” cry the world’s richest people, as they sign up for a scheme that will make human beings redundant in the mining industry (Bob of Belmont)
I can see it happening - No more FIFO (or pilots/stewardesses). No more canteens/ chefs/ kitchen hands. No more bus drivers or cleaners. No more payroll staff or IR Personnel. No Union Officials on site….(Dirt Farmer of Pannawonica)
HAHAHA, so much for all these mining companies that preach about putting it back into the community, there just money hungry mongrels (barry bigshot of balga)
Good old Twiggy, he really cares for mining workers, he clearly thinks they’re all working too hard and should take a long rest – on the unemployment line! What a bloody hypocrite! He’ll reduce the wages of operators substantially as they’ll all be working in the city. He’ll reduce his costs down and increase his profits massively all at the expense of ordinary workers. Where are the 50,000 jobs he promised Aboriginal people? Not on his mines that’s for sure (Wake Up WA).
And it’s not just some driverless trucks and trains.
The next stage in the future of mining technology is a fully automated mine, according to Jim Walker, CEO of mining equipment suppliers Wes Trac, a part of the multinational Caterpillar Group from whom Twiggy will purchase his 45 autonomous trucks.
“Surveyors on mine sites are basically now non-existent,” Walker told the Adelaide Advertiser.
“We’re looking at an autonomous mine…that word autonomous means that there are no operators or drivers of equipment on the mine site at all.”
These huge corporations are not in the mining game to provide employment for Australians.
They should be immediately nationalised without compensation and the superprofits currently repatriated to overseas shareholders kept in this country for the benefit of the Australian people.
That task cannot be left to any other class than the working class and cannot be fully realised in any other than a socialist system.
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