Workers' rights! Secure jobs!

Vanguard May 2012 p. 1
Alice M.

No austerity for the people:  Make the multinationals pay!

The sacking of 350 Toyota workers by one of the world’s giant multinational car monopolies exposes the brutality of capitalism and the rule of imperialism over Australia. 

In one single day, the multinational Toyota car manufacturer sacked 10% of the 3500 workforce at its Altona plant in the western suburbs of Melbourne. The Altona workforce makes up 75% of Toyota’s workforce in Australia. In one swift stroke, 350 Toyota Altona workers were thrown on the capitalist unemployment scrap heap, with little hope of finding another job. And there’s more to come.

For more than 40 years, the multinational Toyota has mined billions of dollars in profits from the hard labour of workers in Australia.For more than 40 years, over 90% of these profits have been syphoned off to the head office of the multinational corporation in Japan. Yet, for all the exploitation and immense profits created by workers at Toyota, hundreds are now unemployed, facing economic hardship for their families.

The remaining workers, lucky to have escaped the falling axe this time, are under constant threat of losing their jobs, along with savage attacks on their wages, working conditions and hard won rights. Many other workers in the motor parts industries are facing the same future. This story is repeated many times in manufacturing industries around Australia.

Taxpayers robbed again

Previous threats to sack workers and close down the manufacturing plant ensured that Toyota was handed more than $100 million in government subsidies in just 4 years. The federal government did not attach any conditions to the tax-funded subsidy, not even job security for the workers. Toyota pocketed the subsidies (people’s taxes), sacked the workers anyway, and sent the loot to its head office in Japan. Australia’s working people have been robbed three times over; the multinational stole all the profits created by workers, pocketed the government subsidies, and kicked out hundreds of workers anyway.

Plans to crush resistance

A large proportion of Shop Stewards, Health and Safety delegates and injured workers were sacked by the multinational. Toyota wants to crush unions and the militant and defiant tradition of Australia’s working class. It wants to remove the few remaining regulations on penalties, health and safety standards, and to abolish union collective workplace agreements. Toyota’s “performance” criteria of targeting the sacked workers is a text book manual of all big business  to get rid of “unproductive” and injured workers and workers who dare to stand up to the boss for their workplace rights and conditions.

The global capitalist economic crisis is the main reason for the drop in car sales and the falling rate of profit for the car monopolies, who want workers to pay for the crisis by slashing jobs, wages and conditions.

And what about the political“friends” of sacked Toyota workers who bumped them into parliament? Wayne Swan’s “Toyota sackings are unpleasant” did nothing for the sacked workers. And Bill Shorten, the self-proclaimed champion of the working people and Labor Minister for Industrial Relations, could only offer “a government appointment employment co-ordinator to provide special assistance for workers to find jobs.” Not even a murmur of criticism of the multinational abuse of government subsidies.

Attacks by the multinational Toyota on its workers are part and parcel of a wider assault and harsh austerity measures inflicted on the people by the system of capitalism and imperialism. It shows why the working class will eventually have to take over the running of the country to benefit all Australia’s working people, not a tiny handful of multinational corporations and banks.

Nationalise the car industry!

Build clean electric cars and modern public transport!