Union elections - an opportunity for workers to have their say

 Written by: Ned K. on 27 February, 2026

 

(Above: Workers join unions for unity in struggle, not for division caused by factional rivalry.  Source: UWU)

On Friday 26 February the Australian Financial Review (AFR) ran a prominent page 4 article headed "Union split puts focus on ALP spend". The article was about the forthcoming United Workers Union (UWU) election for its governing body, the Delegates Convention. According to the AFR there are Convention delegate positions up for election for a four-year term.

The UWU is a 2019 amalgamation of the NUW which predominantly covered warehouse workers, food processing workers and pharmaceutical processing and United Voice which covered aged care, child care, disabilities sector, hospital workers (non-nursing), hospitality, animal care such as RSPCA , cleaners, security guards, prison officers and an assortment of manufacturing and even funeral directors. 

So, the amalgamated union UWU covers workers "from the cradle to the grave" as well as covering workers that enable Australians to have chicken on the table or a packet of chips with a beer at the local hotel!

The AFR reports that there is great rivalry playing out in the coming election essentially between the former NUW leadership and the former United Voice leadership.
As is usually the case, both sides strive to hold the high moral ground to win over enough members' votes to control the direction of the UWU for the next four years.

Both sides say they want to increase resources that benefit existing members and bring more workers in as union members with extensive social media campaigning.

Both accuse the other of poor use of members' money and about how much and under what conditions members' money should be given to the ALP.

The dark cloud hanging over Tim Kennedy and his alleged misuse of members’ money and sweetheart industrial deals with some big employers and the old NUW's smaller membership base within the UWU must be a worry for his ticket.

On the other hand, the United Voice ticket led by Jo Schofield may receive a backlash from members about the amount of members' money ($8 million according to the AFR) that the ALP received in 2024-25.

The good thing about a Union election is that members who vote have the final say.

Unlike parliamentary elections, voting in Union elections is voluntary. 

Indonesian women in struggle

 

Written by: Priscilla on 27 February, 2026

 

(Source: https://carnegieendowment.org/ )

Women from many countries are currently sending in reports for the ICOR United Front webinar on March 8, 2026.  As our close neighbour, Indonesia has recently been convulsed in struggles with women playing a major role.  We publish this report from Priscilla, an Indonesian woman, with a pledge to support our close neighbours in their struggles – eds.

Every day in this country, the oppressed are in a state of mourning over deaths. Of democracy, of integrity, and of the people.

The flood in Sumatra that had taken more than a thousand lives from November 2025 to December 2025 was not declared a national emergency. Women and children were starved of basic necessities because the fascist government denied international access to aid, personal arrogance clouding reason, thinking that our sovereignty will be “under attack” if we allow help when it already is under attack—by the hands of a war criminal, the bourgeoisie and elites elected as President.

Institutions became more and more mistrustful. Even more so for survivors of sexual violence. Despite existing protection laws, the survivors are still vilified, left and right. The government didn’t care that the laws weren’t working properly in society. They didn’t even care to perform; they didn’t even hide their lack of empathy anymore. They danced in the legislative house over salary raises, 10 times higher than the minimum wage applied in Indonesia’s capital city, Jakarta. And only scratched away the raise once the death toll over people’s protests rose significantly, killing an online driver passing by the street, Affan. 

Elected representatives were not for the people. And certainly not when the President’s singlehanded decision to join the “Board of Peace” was supported by the elites. The Board, consisting of actors of genocide in Palestine, the imperialist warmonger, the United States of America. The people rejected—but are we surprised that we are still not heard? A fascist establishment was never for the people.

It is a disgrace to Indonesian history, in which Palestine was one of the first countries to recognize Indonesian sovereignty, back in 1945, when we had only just declared our independence from the Dutch East Indies government.

I come here in grief to say that every day, there is new thing to mourn. But at the same time, every day, our spirit does not falter. The women in the rural areas of Sumatra are fearlessly fighting the military posts and landlords, the women in the urban areas are speaking out against sexual predators occupying safe spaces, the brave Indonesian queers are fighting for visibility and recognition, in every way we are capable.

We are in a desperate time, but we are not giving up. And with this, I ask for the solidarity from my comrades overseas. Please include Indonesia in your spirit, action, and voice. We see what’s been happening in Europe, and we are with you in this fight for the liberation of the oppressed. The women, the queers, the working class, the farmers, and the small folks.

Long live Indonesian Women’s Liberation!

Down to imperialism, feudalism, and colonialism of the American government!

 

Balanced assessments and military bravado: Ratner at the Lowy Institute

 Written by: (Contributed) on 27 February, 2026

 

(Source: Screenshot, Lowy Institute)

Opinions from inside the corridors of power in Washington and elsewhere often provide useful insights to accompany other more reliable assessments.

The changing balance of forces across the Indo-Pacific region is now generally accepted; comments from a well-placed source, therefore, have revealed the extent of the development and its implications for the US and traditional allies, including Australia.

In mid-February, Ely Ratner, former assistant defence secretary for the Indo-Pacific region, addressed the Lowy Institute about the changing balance of forces taking place across the vast region, and US foreign policy. (1) Ratner was formerly a 'key architect of the US Indo-Pacific Strategy' (IPS), and used the address to draw attention to the level of increased competition from China. (2)

Traditionally regarded as a region closely under US-led tutelage, the rise of China has seriously affected traditional assessments. In fact, a US Congressional committee nearly a decade ago assessed that the US was no longer the dominant power in the Pacific region, and becoming more dependent upon allies, including Japan and Australia, to maintain traditional hegemonic positions. (3) The Pacific, as a sub-sector of the wider region, has many sensitive shipping-lanes.

The findings of the congressional committee, furthermore, were subsequently used to redefine US regional foreign policy toward an updated IPS, which included the elevation of Japan to that of a global alliance with the US. (4)

The upgraded IPS was based in the framework of the 'Quad', which included the US, Japan, India and Australia, being used to encircle and contain China's regional influence. (5) Other countries across the region were relegated to the status of lower-level partners, linked into the Quad. (6)  

The US diplomatic position, moreover, was consolidated into the 2026 National Defence Strategy, which included reference to a greater reliance upon allies. (7)

Ratner also drew attention to the traditional US-led diplomacy of 'accomodationist' positions toward China. It had been challenged during the first Trump presidential administration 'by identifying China as a strategic competitor seeking to displace the US as the pre-eminent Indo-Pacific power'. (8) Ratner used his address to draw attention to problems emerging during the second Trump administration, which, he maintained, 'lacked the policy focus or coherence to manage Beijing's hegemonic ambitions'. (9) He has not been alone in his criticisms of recent White House behaviour; a recent high-level diplomatic statement from a German Army General, Major-General Wolf-Jurgen Stahl, noted that Donald Trump was 'an egomaniac, narcissistic, erratic deal-maker with authoritarian leanings'. (10) Serious questions have arisen about his limited diplomatic ability and that of his advisors.    

The problem, identified by Ratner, included Washington's and the Pentagon's diplomatic positions as having alienated various strategic countries across the wider region. They were responsible for having 'created genuine uncertainty in the region, and uncertainty in the alliance context'. (11) Good diplomacy is based in creating positions of trust and reliability.

The implications for the US include a recent statement from Singapore prime minister Lawrence Wong, that there was a need to prepare from a 'post-America world', as a drift toward a multi-polar era marked by changing trade patterns and economic uncertainty was taking place. (12) For Singapore, traditionally part of the US-led sphere of influence and a strategic factor in sensitive regional defence and security provision, Wong identified the vulnerability of the small city-country, and the fact that, 'the stakes are high … and … not temporary'. (13)

Wong also used the interview to highlight the rising prominence of ASEAN as a 'more credible block, both politically and economically'. (14) It, therefore, should be no surprise to find that Wong also drew attention to strategic ASEAN members and associates who were increasingly shifting their diplomatic attention toward China: Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia and Malaysia were becoming more closely linked into China's orbit of influence, and South Korea was also normalising its diplomatic ties with Beijing. (15)

The US, during the recent period, has, therefore, become more reliant upon the Philippines and the puppet Marcos administration in Manila, to push Washington and Pentagon positions inside ASEAN. Manila, for example, has been developed by the US as an important regional financial hub for 'US interests'; over 24 per cent of the GDP of the Philippines originates from its financial sector. (16)

The moves have also been accompanied by Washington and the Pentagon upgrading military planning for greater access into the Philippines with advanced missile systems and other weapons for use potentially against China. (17)

The opinions expressed by Ratner in the Lowy Institute forum have provided a useful insight into the changing balance of forces taking place across the Indo-Pacific and the US response to its traditional hegemonic position; the threat of war is increasing.

Ratner did not, however, question the dangerous nature of the US-Australia alliance:

                                         We need an independent foreign policy!    

*****
1.     Resist the urge 'to stick it with America', Australian, 18 February 2026.
2.     Ibid.
3.     Study: US no longer dominant power in the Pacific, Information Clearing House, 22 August 2019.
4.     See: The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
5.     Ibid.
6.     Ibid.
7.     See: Official US website – 2026 National Defence Strategy – Washington, pp. 18-19.
8.     Australian, op.cit., 18 February 2026.
9.     Ibid.
10.   NATO ally's view of US President: 'egomaniac, narcissistic, erratic', Australian, 20 February 2026.
11.   Australian, op.cit., 18 February 2026.
12.   Ibid., and, PM Wong: As the US steps back, Vulcanpost, 24 October 2025.
13.   Vulcanpost, ibid., 24 October 2025.
14.   Ibid.
15.   Australian, op.cit., 18 February 2026.
16.   Why is Manila considered a financial hub for traders,  Admin., 25 July 2025.
17.   US pokes Chinese bear with missiles in the Philippines, Australian, 19 February 2026.

Have I improved enough yet? Teaching and the labour process.

Written by: Louisa L. on 25 February 2026

 

Just before the 2025 school holidays a Public Education Workers Alliance (PEWA) meeting in western Sydney, heard a jaw dropping appraisal, Have I improved enough yet? Teaching and the labour process, about what students, teachers and NSW state schools face day to day, and why.

The teacher, researcher, activist began, ‘Today I want to make a simple argument: Public education is collapsing … not … because teachers have failed. It is collapsing because the work of teaching has been reorganised into a labour process under capitalism.

 

‘Over the past forty years, teaching has been rebuilt around measurement, data cycles, standards, audits, and now, AI. None of this is accidental. These reforms form a pattern, not a series of isolated initiatives. And that pattern only makes sense if we understand teaching as work – work that is increasingly managed, monitored, intensified and standardised in the same way other forms of labour have been reorganised during periods of capitalist crisis.

 

‘My aim today is to give us a way of seeing that pattern clearly.’

 

From the 1980s

 

When I began teaching in the NSW state system in the early 1980s, a huge wave of collective struggles led by the NSW Teachers Federation had transformed education and the lives of teachers. Higher wages, much smaller class sizes and, in high schools at least, free periods gave much more time for planning, marking and more democratic decision-making. 

 

Rigidly enforced top-down syllabuses were replaced by more progressive models designed by committees of teachers. The Junior High English syllabus was four foolscap pages, double-spaced. We were to teach reading, writing, speaking, listening, critical and creative thinking.

 

More importantly, we were told, ‘Start with the child’ (or in high school ‘the young person’). 

 

State governments, Liberal or Labor, began nibbling at the edges of collective unity with funding cuts and attacks on school staffing formulas. In 1988, Liberal Minister Terry Metherell laid out the whole neo-liberal agenda of cuts, closures and rewritings to every corner of public education. 80,000 teachers and supporters filled the Sydney Domain, impaling Metherell’s political career. His agenda remained. Rather than one fell swoop, it was implemented in a thousand smaller attacks.

 

The author traces the beginning particularly to a 1994 book, ‘Total Quality Management in the Public Sector’. That same year starting with the child was ditched in favour of ‘outcomes’ that students ‘should achieve’. ‘Should’ pretends morality, that someone or something is ‘failing’ if whatever the word is attached to isn’t done. It’s a nasty term, especially when dumped on teachers, or worse, on young people and children. 

 

A fully managed labour process

 

The PEWA presenter used Marx’s analysis of the labour process to explain ‘why crises push workplaces toward standardisation, surveillance and automation’; how the 1970s’ profitability crisis led to the rise of managerial reform based on Frederick Taylor’s stopwatches and managerial control, Henry Ford’s assembly line methods, plus W. Edwards Deming’s Statistical Process Control (developed in the US military) and the Toyota Production Systems from post-war Japan via the Chicago School, ‘to transform teaching from a high-trust profession to a fully managed labour process’.

 

All this leads ‘to the role of AI in schools, and to the contradiction between what teachers are required to do for the system and what teachers actually do to keep classrooms functioning.’ 

 

‘My thesis is this: teaching has been progressively transformed into a managed labour process as part of a decades-long attempt to stabilise a capitalist system in crisis. The pressures we feel every day … are not educational reforms. They are tools of labour control.’ 

 

The presenter also pinpointed cracks from which collective resistance can grow, as pressure builds in classrooms and schools.

 

Stripping knowledge from workers

 

Some readers will be familiar with how capital extracts more absolute or relative surplus value through extending the working day or by making production more efficient through simpler repetitive tasks and/or replacing human labour by machinery.

 

Teachers are subject now to both methods of extraction. Their workloads demand endless hours beyond the classroom.  

 

But more decisively, ‘If education is framed as the main driver of economic growth, two policy consequences follow immediately: 

 

1. Teachers must be measurable. If you are an investment, you require metrics.

2. Teaching must be standardised. If outcomes matter, variation must be reduced.’

 

It means, the presenter continued, ‘The teacher’s work is not judged through human relationships or pedagogical judgement, but through the data they produce.’

 

‘Knowledge is stripped from workers and embedded in systems,’ he says, as all teaching resources are appropriated by online reporting systems. Creative work is stolen by Google classroom and numerous other online platforms.

 

The author continues, ‘Because of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall as constant capital rises, capitalism reorganises labour, bringing in more control, more measurement, more machinery, less autonomy.’

 

Taylor, who in 1900 wrote, ‘All possible brain work should be removed from the shop floor and placed in the planning department’, would be cheering from the sidelines.

 

Death by a thousand acronyms

The zoo of ever more educational acronyms has long been a stock staffroom joke. Here’s just a few: Total Quality Management (TQM), Human Capital Theory (though it’s not usually an acronym, because this high-minded poison reduces young people to bundles of capital to be exploited and ‘value-added to’), School Excellence Framework (SEF), New Public Management described by the author as ‘the administrative arm of neoliberalism, of which TQM is just one example’), Department of Education (DoE), Director, Educational Leadership (DEL) plural (DELs) the enforcers of the latest mandatory acronym on principals, School Excellence Plan (SEP), Employee  Performance Management Improvement (EPMI) teams within Professional and Ethical Standards (PES) who sack teachers who ‘fail’ arbitrary three month TIPs (Teacher Improvement Plans) in just three months. 

 

TIPs are the cruellest of jokes. Not about education. Not about improvement. About scaring everyone into submission. Union reps have been just the latest targets.  

 

While every other aspect of education is cut to the bone, CESE – the Centre for Educational Statistics and Evaluation – staffed by non-teachers, has grown exponentially. 

 

Meanwhile, the school is reduced to ‘an input-output machine’.

 

All of this groundwork means, he continues, ‘You plug AI into a process that’s been made machine-readable.’

 

‘Following Marx’s logic, this is management’s endgame: the mind of the worker extracted, recomposed, and returned externally as dead labour.’

 

Students need our living labour

 

Our students are the heart of what we do. Our working conditions are their learning conditions. 

 

They need our living labour. This is the key, placing students’ needs at the centre of any fightback.

 

Australia under US imperialist control no longer needs the working class or the underclass to be educated. It cares nothing for our young people. But the children of the rich and powerful, or those brilliant ‘underlings’ they try to coopt through their scholarships, are not subjected to this criminal crushing of our youth.

 

Massive government funding and private fees ensure the richest and most nourishing programs of art, music, science, sport are provided to the upcoming managers. But tainted by ruling class ideology to justify their privilege.

 

This monstrous injustice is a contradiction waiting to be tapped for change. It can be one clarion call for wider action. Despite brainwashing and lies, even some from the elitist system will reject injustice because that richer education makes them open their eyes.

 

Every education worker, every progressive will gain strength from this short, groundbreaking article. 

 

It concentrates and explains the personal experience of all teachers as they and their students are mortally wounded. 

 

If we understand our opponent, if we understand its strategy and tactics, we can step by step fight back, putting young people front and centre.

 

Read: Have I improved enough yet? Teaching and the labour process. 

 

First published 4 February 2026 by Spirit of Eureka)  

 

 

Global Days of Action to #CloseBases - Adelaide Action

 Written by: Max O. on 23 February 2026

 

(Supplied)

(Supplied)

(Supplied)

February 21 to 23 is designated as the Global Days of Action to #CloseBases. On February 23, 1903, the United States took over Guantánamo from Cuba. It has never been returned. People across Latin America have used this date to organize events opposing bases, militarism, and the Monroe Doctrine. World Beyond War expanded it into a global day of action.

On 21 February, protestors from Adelaide/Kaurna Yerta converged on the Royal Australian Air Force base at Edinburgh, north of Adelaide. Like the rest of the Australian Defence Force (ADF), this base has become interoperable and interchangeable with the U.S. military. The groups involved in this protest action were Disrupt Arms Traders and IPAN-SA.

Global arms dealers have established themselves inside this base, under the protection of the Australian Defence Force. Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, Raytheon, Airbus, and others operate weapons programs there.

One example is the Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton UAV, a massive, high-altitude spy drone. Australia has a fleet of these drones based at Tindal Air Base in the Northern Territory, and has spent over $166 million to build the facility there.

The drones are remotely controlled from Edinburgh base and fly 24-hour-long spy missions over a vast area of East Asia. It is highly likely that this surveillance data is distributed via Pine Gap. Last year, in 2025, RAAF Edinburgh and Boeing Defence Australia were announced as the winners of a $160 million contract to maintain, repair, and overhaul the United States and Australian Tritons.

Roughly the size of a Boeing 737, the high-altitude (up to 50,000 feet), long-endurance (up to 15,000 kilometres), high-speed (up to 600 kilometres per hour) Tritons can deploy the most advanced maritime intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting capability available. The Triton’s endurance means it can stay airborne for longer than a traditional aircraft with a pilot on board.

The Assistant Minister for Defence, Peter Khalil, has stated about the Triton UAV: “The project also deepens Australia’s Cooperative Program with the US Navy, by ensuring our forces can operate seamlessly together in support of regional stability.” In truth, this means Australia is the United States’ lapdog; it will go anywhere and commit any aggression that the U.S. Empire commands.

Since 2022, the Albanese Government has invested over $2.8 billion in militarising Northern Australia, with 43 projects either completed or underway. This is for the sole benefit of U.S. war machine assets in the NT. These include housing 2,500 rotating marines at the Robertson Barracks in Darwin; hosting B-52 bombers—which have the potential to carry nuclear weapons—in special facilities at Tindal RAAF Base; and setting up storage depots for fuel, spare parts, bombs, and other munitions in the NT, such as the huge U.S. fuel storage facilities at East Arm, Darwin, to power the B-52 bombers.

Since Federation, the Australian Defence Force has been no more than an extra battalion for the British Empire and now for U.S. imperialism. It would be more honest to call the ADF the “American Deputy Force.”

The protest congregated at the main gate of the base, displaying anti-U.S. war banners, and included speeches and chants against U.S. imperialism and Australia’s military war crimes. From beginning to end, the South Australian Police tailed the car convoy to the air force base and kept the protestors under close surveillance.

There is growing opposition to military bases in Australia and their interlocking relationship with major weapons manufacturers, which are primarily U.S.-based.

More actions against U.S. and Australian military bases throughout Australia will no doubt intensify in the future.

Support HungryPanda delivery riders’ campaign for wages and conditions.

 Written by: Nick G. on 23 February 2026

 

(Photo source: ABC News)

HungryPanda delivery riders who organised a strike for better wages and conditions on Chinese Lunar New Year allege that Chinese police have intimidated and targeted family members of organisers in China, and even threatened to arrest organisers on their return to China.

There is no evidence that the company organised the police actions in China, but it is evidence of the close monitoring of Chinese students in Australia by Chinese security.

 

The gig economy is notorious for its exploitative conditions, low pay and insecurity. The dispute reveals Chinese state interference in Australian labour relations which must be condemned.

 

What is HungryPanda?

 

HungryPanda is the brainchild of Liu Kelu, then a young student from China studying in Britain. Apparently dissatisfied by the availability of authentic Chinese restaurant food, he opened a food delivery service in the United Kingdom in 2017 and expanded it to Australia and the United States in 2019.

 

The company now operates in nine countries and more than 100 cities, with 6.5 million registered users, 100,000 partner merchants and around $US1 billion in annual transaction volume.

 

What separates HungryPanda from other delivery services like Uber Eats and DoorDash is that it is aimed at only one demographic – the Chinese language diaspora. Consequently, it employs young people within that demographic who often have no clear idea of their rights in a foreign country. 

 

Grievances over wage reductions, opaque algorithmic management and worsening conditions have festered within HungryPanda for some time.

 

Wang Zhuoying is one of the few to have taken HungryPanda to court over payment and welfare issues. 

 

HungryPanda’s abysmal record includes the case of a HungryPanda delivery driver who was killed in a road accident while working in 2020. The company failed to report the rider's death to SafeWork NSW promptly and refused his wife’s claims for compensation, saying that he was not an employee, but an independent contractor. A court awarded an $830,000 payout against the company, ruling that the worker was indeed an employee.

 

The previous year, the company reinstated two riders who had taken it to court for unfair dismissal.

 

HungryPanda remains a private company, and because it is not listed on the stock exchange, many key details are obscure. No-one knows Liu Kelu’s personal wealth, but it is reasonable to assume that it is greater than the delivery riders that he employs.

 

The company itself has raised significant venture capital — reportedly hundreds of millions of dollars across multiple funding rounds — but no public document from those rounds has disclosed Liu’s ownership stake or personal wealth. 

 

International finance and venture capital has bought into the company, a fact presumably known to Chinese state security services when they have interfered to warn delivery riders from organising against the company.

 

Its major sources of capital are Mars Growth Capital, a joint venture between Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) and Liquidity Group, which stumped up $55 million in 2024; UK and French-based private equity firm Perwyn that led HungryPanda’s $130 million Series D round in 2021; Swedish investment firm Kinnevik; 83North (formerly Greylock Israel Partners), an Israeli-headquartered venture capital firm that invests at all stages of a startup fundraising cycle; Australian venture capitalist Felix Capital and various other private investors. 

 

Marx wrote that one capitalist kills many, meaning that free market competition resulted in competing firms being driven into bankruptcy or taken over.

 

HungryPanda is becoming very hungry, and in our region has taken over EASI (Australia), a Melbourne-based food delivery service, and BUY@HOME (New Zealand), an Asia-focused delivery platform based in New Zealand.

 

In addition to acquisitions, HungryPanda has expanded its own product offerings using investment capital, including:

 

• PandaFresh – a fresh-food and grocery e-commerce platform.

• VouchersPanda – lifestyle deals and discounts platform connected to delivery services.

 

Capital compels its owners to find new sources of surplus value for the purposes of capital accumulation. Along with expansion goes intensified exploitation and the growth of precarious employment.

 

China buys into the dispute

 

Allegations of Chinese interference in the dispute have come from protest organisers.

 

Former HungryPanda delivery driver Wang Zhuoying has launched a legal claim against the company and accused it of slashing her orders after she organised protests against it.

 

She told the ABC she had recently received three separate phone calls from police from her home province in China which made her feel "targeted" and "intimidated". She said on the same day she got another call from a different police officer who was not aware of the first call and threatened to get her arrested upon her return to China if she chose to protest in Australia.

 

Another delivery driver in the group, Wang Caifa, verified the claims, saying that earlier this month he received a "panicked" phone call from his father in China who had just been taken to the local police station.

 

He told the ABC that the police warned his father that his son was involved in "dangerous activities" overseas.

 

Chinese police confirmed that they had monitored communications between protest participants on the Chinese WeChat platform. It is almost mandatory for Chinese citizens to use WeChat (or its Chinese parent Weixin), meaning authorities can monitor all of a person’s communications, personal, legal, financial and political. You can't really function in society in China without a WeChat account.

 

The Chinese Communist Party may have decided to intervene, not because HungryPanda has la-ed some guanxi (pulled strings and made use of personal connections), but because it has always required overseas Chinese to obey the laws of the countries in which they were residing.  From the early 1950s on, the policy of Party leaders was that overseas Chinese should not participate in local political movements and should respect and abide by the laws and regulations of their countries of residence.

 

There was nothing illegal under Australian law in what the organisers of the HungryPanda protest had done.  Therefore, there was no excuse even under the policies of the Chinese Communist Party for the Chinese police to intimidate and harass the organisers and their families. By discouraging lawful industrial protest by Chinese workers in Australia, the CCP has confirmed that it stands for the stability of capitalist relations of production and is opposed to working class struggle against exploitation.

 

The fight of migrant and diaspora workers deserves visibility and solidarity. The struggles of Chinese workers abroad are part of the common struggle of the international working class and should not be marginalised or silenced.

 

Last November, the Transport Workers Union (TWU) reached an agreement with Uber Eats and DoorDash for minimum safety net pay rates and other conditions for delivery drivers and riders. This followed years of campaigning by workers and the union.

 

The TWU must take up the case of HungryPanda emloyees and force the company to agree to minimum wage rates, improved safety measures, accident insurance paid by the company, an agreed dispute resolution procedure, and the right to union membership. 

 

We demand that the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Australia issue a statement confirming the legal right of Chinese citizens in Australia on visas to organise, to speak up, and to demand fair pay and conditions.

 

BOOK REVIEW-: The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want

Written by: Alex M and Duncan B on 21 February 2026

 

We are part of a group of comrades who have been studying AI, trying to understand it and its likely effects on the working class. We have been reading various books about AI, discussing them, and writing reviews for Vanguard. We have also read many articles about AI in the daily press and on-line. It is easy to get sucked in by all the hype surrounding AI coming from both the promoters of AI, the “Boosters,” and those concerned with the catastrophic potential of artificial general intelligence (AGI), the “Doomers.” 

The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want by Emily M Bender and Alex Hanna is an excellent antidote to all the hype around AI. Dr. Bender is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington. Dr. Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute and a former senior research scientist on Google’s Ethical AI Team.

The aim of the book is to help people become resistant to the hype surrounding AI. The authors have this to say about AI. “Artificial Intelligence, if we are being frank, is a con: a bill of goods you are being sold to line someone’s pockets.” They see “Artificial Intelligence” as a marketing term that doesn’t relate to a coherent set of technologies. The people selling technology labelled as “Artificial Intelligence” are trying to convince us that their technology is similar to humans, able to do things that require human judgement, perception or creativity. The authors want to educate people how “AI” systems work, dispel the notion that they are thinking machines with a semblance of human understanding, and to provide a model of how to think about them instead.

Technologies sold as AI can perform various functions such as decision making, classification of inputs, making recommendations, transcription or translation of text or speech and text and image generation.

The authors recognize that there are beneficial applications of machine learning and give some examples of these. However, for every beneficial application, there are dozens of applications of AI that are harming people.

These include people who have suffered harm due to bad decisions by automated decision-making systems, (think Robodebt), people (mainly black), wrongly identified as criminals by police facial recognition systems and women who are the victims of deep fake pornography. Then there are the workers whose jobs are under threat in movie making, journalism, social services, the arts and science and many more occupations.

Ever since the Industrial Revolution began, capitalists have used automation to get rid of jobs. Today’s capitalists are pinning their hopes on AI to get rid of jobs in the same way as the 19th century mill owners did. The authors say, “While executives suggest that AI is going to be a labour-saving device, in reality it is meant to be a labour-breaking one. It is intended to devalue labour by threatening workers with technology that can supposedly do their jobs at a fraction of the cost.” In volume 1 of Capital, Marx described how the capitalists of his day used the new technology of machinery to threaten workers and break their militancy. How little has changed!

The authors criticize both the “Boosters” and the “Doomers” and show that they are two sides of the same coin, both camps seeing AI as inevitable and desirable. The “Boosters” make incredible claims for the alleged benefits of AI.

For example, Amazon Web Services recently ran full page advertisements in the daily press (Melbourne Age 11/1 and 12/1/26) promoting “Generative AI”. The use of this technology in medical research will shorten by 15 years the time for people with epilepsy to become seizure-free, according to the Australian Epilepsy Project.

 Businesses will be able to use new “frontier agents”, described as “AI technology designed not just to assist, but to autonomously manage complex tasks for hours or even days at a time, freeing up workers to focus on more strategic, impactful-or just more fun-work.” Other applications include chatbots that can hold proper conversations with customers in over 30 languages.

The “Doomers” try to scare us with dystopian visions of a world where humans are exterminated by superintelligent AI systems. (Eliezer Yudkowsky, one of the authors of If Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies, is a “Doomer.”)

Both “Boosters” and “Doomers” divert attention from the real and present dangers posed by AI as it exists now, and try to get us worrying about an AI future that may never happen. They ignore the damage being done to the environment by the rapid development of data centres and their massive use of electricity and clean water.

The authors advance some strategies to help ordinary people deal with the onslaught of AI hype. We need to become more informed about AI and question the alleged benefits of AI and protest about the misuse of AI applications.

The authors urge that existing regulations about AI should be enforced and that further appropriate regulations should be enacted. As we have said before, we hold out little hope of this when AI is controlled by Musk, Altman and co. in a US ruled by Trump.

There have been hundreds of books written about AI and millions of words. The AI Con will help us cut through the hype to understand the benefits and dangers of AI.

                                                    **************************

As Duncan B has made abundantly clear above, it is important for us to see through the piles of hype associated with AI, and Emily Bender and Alex Hanna have done a wonderful job in helping us to do so. Their book is thus highly recommended.

I would like to just tease out some more on one area in particular that Duncan’s review has touched upon namely the role that “Boosters” and “Doomers” play in diverting attention away from the major problems facing the world right now, rather than some possible dystopian future. Bender and Hanna succinctly summarise what they call the two sides of one coin, that is, the characteristics of the “Boosters” and “Doomers”. On one side of the coin, the “Boosters” promote the benefits to humanity that supposedly flow from the application of AI in various fields of work. On the other side are the “Doomers” who believe that at some point in the not too distant future, AGI will become sentient and have interests and preferences at odds with humanity and will seek to supplant humanity, possibly leading to our extinction as a species. The substance of the coin, the common element that binds the “Boosters” and “Doomers” together Bender and Hanna state: “… is the belief that the development of AI is inevitable and that the resulting technology will be both autonomous and powerful, and ultimately beneficial if we play our cards right.” (Bender and Hanna, p. 138)

Furthermore both “Boosters” and “Doomers” overlook or downplay “… the real harms of actually existing automation, at best dismissing them as less important than the imaginary existential threats.” (Bender and Hanna, p.139) For Bender and Hanna the “totality of systems sold as AI” has led to financial speculation, “the degradation of informational trust and environments, the normalization of data theft and exploitation, and the data harmonization systems that punish the people who have the least power in our society by tracking them through pervasive policing systems.” (Bender and Hanna, p.152) Added here should be the insidious application of AI into US and Israeli military software systems that have contributed to the thousands of deaths of Palestinian civilians. (In fairness to Bender and Hanna they do mention the IDF’s use of an AI enhanced targeting system in Gaza on p.4 of their book but that is in passing. The increasing use made of AI by the militaries of the Zionist state and US imperialism is outside the scope of their book)

Another part of the hype surrounding AI is the myth that workers will be both more productive and be freed from the more onerous parts of their work. A win-win for employers and employees. Such big promises have been a feature of technological innovation for a long time:

From the start of the Industrial Revolution, workers have had to contend with displacement via automation and have resisted it for just as long. One of the hallmarks of the beginning of this age was the concomitant rise of innovative technologies advertised to make work easier and simpler, and to increase productivity. Like modern AI boosters, those selling new technologies promised that they would usher in a rising tide that lifted workers and business owners alike. But that is just a fiction whose function is to sell the technology. Automation has always been part of a larger strategy of shifting costs onto workers and accruing wealth for those in control of the machines. (Bender and Hanna, p. 43)

More could be said about this important hype busting book, but for now, this will suffice.

If you want to read one critical AI book that cuts through the hype then read this book.