Bill F.
In a fantasy world, surrounded by sycophants and consumed by greed, Gina Rinehart has suggested that the mining companies could hire African workers for ‘as little as $2 a day. No doubt she would also be looking for ‘trade-offs’.
Coming from the richest woman in the world, worth $18 billion and increasing at $600 a second, this is enough to make a decent person puke!
In spite of their obscene profits and tax-dodging schemes, she reckons the mining companies are finding Australian workers “too expensive”. For their part, the big mining companies, BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, are silent; happy to let Gina bask in the media limelight and make the argument for slavery wages.
Australian workers, their unions and supporters have been appalled and outraged by her comments, seeing them as further cranking up the ‘guest worker’ scenario already being promoted by another loudmouth local mining boss, Clive Palmer.
Similarly, the Western Australian government proposal for ‘special economic zones’ seeks to carve out regions and enterprises that would be exempt from Australian industrial laws (weak as they are), free of trade unions, with imported workers on individual contracts, low wages and crap conditions.
Ask workers in the Philippines and what they think of ‘special economic zones’ and they will talk about company goons and spies, company police forces and military compounds – that’s where all this is heading!
For now, this is a tactic to threaten Australian workers, weaken their unions and create divisions within the working class. As the global capitalist economic crisis of overproduction continues and the rate of profits falls, ever more vicious attacks are made on the working class, the creators of surplus value and the wealth expropriated by capital.
Insulting Australia’s history
History Professor at La Trobe University, Marilyn Lake, has pointed out that Ironheart’s comments insult and undermines the proud achievements of the Australian working class over decades of struggle.
“Australia pioneered the practice of defining wages in terms of the sum required to afford people a decent standard of living, rather than as the least amount that employers might pay. The living wage was defined in opposition to starvation wages and slave labour. Human needs were given explicit priority over the maximising of profits. We decided in the late 19th century that decent wage levels should be enforced by governments through arbitration courts and wage boards.
“Talk of introducing restrictive economic zones to enable mining companies to employ coloured labour on lesser wages in inferior conditions is contrary to all that Australians have worked for over 100 years. Once in Australia, all workers should have access to good working conditions and decent wages, sufficient to sustain them as Australian citizens.
“Gina Rinehart and her political supporters must surely be ignorant of these distinctively Australian traditions, of our achievement in fashioning a social democracy that drew the eyes of the world to Australia. These national traditions symbolised our early commitment to the ideal of equality of opportunity, the refusal of hereditary privilege and gross inequalities in wealth and position.”
Africa offended
In Uganda, where foreign owned mining companies are digging up vast fortunes and many thousands of workers subsist on as little as $1 a day, there was anger over her implication that people were content with that.
The host of Uganda’s Who Wants To Be A Millionaire Alan Kasujja, described 'Ironheart’s' comments as “extremely offensive” and pointed out that the scarcity of jobs meant many workers in Africa had little choice but to accept $2-a-day working conditions. “It is true that in my country, it is not unusual that some workers earn as little as $1 a day, but the truth of the matter is that people are looking for jobs and are willing to do the most ridiculous things to earn a living,” said Kasujja.
“She is just removed from reality and we think: there’s another person who lives thousands of miles away and doesn’t give two tosses about Africa. She is welcome to visit and see that we have dreams and ambitions - we are an aspirational country. Those people who work for $2 a day look to a future where they can earn $10 a day.”
If Gina’s wishes come true, she might just get a lot more than she wants. African workers are not docile slaves, any more than Australian workers. As strikes and protests spread across South African mining towns following the police shootings at Marikana, there has been an upsurge of militant union activity in other mining communities in Africa.
For all the vast difference between the situation of Australian and African workers, they have more in common than with the likes of Ironhearted Gina.
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