Alice M.
(Above: Pt. Kembla workers)
Tens of thousands of jobs have disappeared from Australia this year alone, and the numbers keep growing every day.
Thousands of these jobs are being shipped overseas to poor developing countries where wages are dirt cheap, working conditions are rotten and workers have no rights. At the same time the wealth from Australia’s vast mineral resources, agricultural land, nationally important public infrastructure and the labour of workers is plundered by big multinational corporations and giant foreign investment banks, mainly US.
Manufacturing industries are being wiped out in Australia and public assets are auctioned off to giant overseas corporations and banks faster than a speeding train. Australia’s value-added and food processing companies are killed off or bought out by overseas banks and corporations, only to be closed down and jobs sent overseas.
In a speech to Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce in February 2012, Prime Minister Gillard declared Australia as, “A new economy which is prosperous and fair, creative and skilled; where mining and manufacturing flourish and services grow; where the government manages the economy for working people, for the future”.
Gillard should try and sell her spin to Telstra workers and their families who’ve just been told 651 of their jobs have been axed nationwide. Tell this to communities in Lismore in NSW and Townsville in North Queensland where Telstra will shut down its call centres, leaving more than 240 workers and their families without work and devastating the local communities.
Telstra announced the sackings less than two weeks after revealing a full year profit of $3.42 billion, an increase of 5.4% on previous year. More than half of the most recently slashed Telstra jobs are being sent overseas. Customer services, already understaffed, will deteriorate even more. And more jobs will go. This year alone Telstra wiped out more than 1,000 jobs from Australia, many sent off shore.
And it’s not only Australian jobs being shipped off. Along with thousands of jobs that Telstra and other corporations and big banks ship overseas are the technical skills and expertise, mostly funded by people’s taxes, and lost from Australia.
The gutting of 651 Telstra jobs follows the US multinational’s Ford’s announcement in July that more than 440 jobs in its Victorian Broadmeadows and Geelong car manufacturing plants will be gone by the end of the year. This is in spite of heavy government subsidies over more than 30 years, the latest $103 million handed out in January 2012.
Lib/Lab does their bidding
The Lib/Lab side-show does nothing to protect jobs and job security for Australia’s working people. They both dance to the same tune of the most decisive plunderers and exploiters of Australia, the multinational corporations and international finance capital. The Business Council of Australia and the Minerals Council, the powerful peak bodies of monopoly capital class rulers in Australia, dictate the economic, political and industrial policies that profit their investments and clash with the interests of the Australian working class and people.
The destruction of Australia’s manufacturing and processing industries is reducing Australia into a massive quarry with little else going on for the people in the economy. Australia’s heavy dependency on foreign capital puts the country at the mercy of international capital and corporations. Capital seeks most profitable areas of investment for itself, and in the present international capitalist economic crisis of overproduction, foreign capital has deserted manufacturing and moved into the lucrative natural resources sought by China. The Australian people have no control over our country’s industrial development and economy. The multinationals, the big foreign banks, together with the local monopoly capitalist class, vigorously promote the lie that Australian economy can only be dependent on foreign capital investments for its development.
Australia is rich in natural resources, and has a hard working and skilled workforce that creates enormous wealth and profits in this country. Instead of this socially created wealth being pocketed by a handful of multinational corporations, big banks and a few super rich individuals, it should be put into the service of the people and the national interests of this country.
A truly independent and democratic Australia run by the working people will build a self-reliant economy that develops natural resources and food production in a planned way, builds value-adding processing and manufacturing industries that provide jobs and job security, and releases the enormous scientific, technological and creative potential of the people.
Nationalise Australia’s key industries! National Independence!
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