Bill F.
The
Australian government is relentlessly rolling out austerity measures in line
with the demands of the global economic system allied to US imperialism.
Putting monopoly profits before people, it seeks to drive down wages, bring in
cheap labour and off-shore jobs.
Right
in the firing line are government public service workers, with the latest being
those employed in the Immigration and Customs departments and the Border
Protection department. On July 1st these are all to be merged into a Border
Force department with a new Enterprise Bargaining Agreement.
In
negotiations so far with the Commonwealth Public Service Union (CPSU) the
government has pushed to reduce wages and cut conditions as the different areas
are merged. Hanging over the negotiations is the threat that all 13,000 workers
will be forced onto the current Immigration department arrangement, which would
deny any wage increase and financially penalise Customs officers in particular.
CPSU
national secretary Nadine Flood said, “Customs and Immigration staff like other
Federal Government employees face the Government’s aggressive approach to
bargaining with proposals to strip workplace rights, cut allowances and
conditions and of course all of this for pay offers of zero to 1 per cent… It’s
not an overstatement to say that Customs officers are going ballistic… They are
absolutely furious that the combination of the government’s draconian
bargaining policy and the move to Border Force is being used to hang a threat
over their heads and their take home pay could be being cut.”
CPSU
members are already poised to implement work bans and take stop-work action in
the next few weeks across many government departments such as Employment,
Veterans’ Affairs and Defence.
Visa schemes guarantee cheap labour
The
Senate inquiry into the widespread exploitation of underpaid and abused migrant
workers only came about after public exposure by unions and ABC Four Corners
journalists. It is focused on 457 visa workers in the food industry, but
everyone knows that this vicious exploitation exists across the hospitality,
healthcare, retail, manufacturing and construction industries as well. With
over 100,000 working under the 457 and 417 visa schemes, there is plenty of
scope for ruthless employers to exploit and bully this source of cheap and
vulnerable labour and then sack them whenever the work tapers off.
No
wonder the bosses don’t want to re-settle asylum seekers and refugees, no
wonder immigration intake quotas are getting cut back! While racism is a
factor, the economic incentive is driving this.
And it
is not only the backyard sweatshops and shonky contractors doing the dirty
work. The large local construction company Theiss has been caught out signing
up workers in the Philippines under illegal contracts that threatened
deportation for “trade union activities”. Theiss is half-owned by multinational
Leightons Holding, now calling themselves CITIC. This has been going on for
three years, but never fear, the Fair Work Ombudsman will investigate!
As the
Electrical Trades Union Victorian Secretary Troy Grey pointed out, “In terms of
coercion against joining a union this is about as extreme as you can get… The
terrifying part is if these threats can be made in writing to migrant workers,
by an iconic Australian construction conglomerate, what’s happening everywhere
else?”
Manufacturing jobs shipped off-shore
Like the automobile industry, the local
defence industry is being wound down and manufacturing shifted to low-wage
countries. The motivation is not merely wages, but also on providing military
equipment that is ‘inter-operational” with the US military and can be readily
integrated under US command.
For
example the formerly government-owned Australian Submarine Corporation (now
ASC) in South Australia has been forbidden to tender for the major construction
of the next submarine fleet, while Japan is favoured to get the lion’s share of
the work in building long-range submarines that will be more suited to US plans
for war with China or Korea than to defence of Australia.
As the
work dries up at ASC, this is also happening at the other defence industry
shipyard at Williamstown in Victoria. This year alone BAE Systems has cut 150
sub-contractors and now 80 full-time employees from its workforce, with no new
contracts in sight. The viability of the whole shipyard is uncertain beyond the
next 9 months or so. So much for defence security!
No loyalty to workers
Another
industry already decimated by the off-shoring of jobs is local maritime
shipping which employs Australian ship crews for work in Australian coastal
waters. In the last 12 months three coastal oil tankers have ceased operating
as local refineries are closed and more fuel is being imported from Singapore.
The latest ship to go is the ironically named British Loyalty, operated by BP
to move fuel from the soon-to-be-closed Bulwer Island refinery in Queensland.
This is
another example of Australia’s domination by imperialism and the
de-industrialisation now taking place. It means that Australia, in spite of
large oil and gas reserves, will be importing 90% of its petrol and diesel
fuel, with half of the unleaded petrol coming from a single refinery in
Singapore. So much for fuel security!
Workers
from the Maritime Union of Australia protested outside the BP headquarters in
Melbourne, with assistant national secretary Ian Bray saying, “The crew of the
British Loyalty are decent, honest, hard-working Australians. They just want to
feed their kids, pay their mortgages, and work under Australian conditions.
Instead, BP wants to give them the sack and replace them with foreign crew on
as little as $2 an hour.”
The
union has called for a national boycott of BP petrol stations.
These
few examples show that Australia may be a developed country, but is still very
much dominated by the interests of foreign capital. The ruling monopoly
capitalist class and its agents in Canberra are partners and collaborators with
foreign imperialism, and the working class and working people generally are
more and more the victims.
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