Imperialism is driving the attacks on CUB workers

Alice M.

Into the eighth week and the 55 sacked Carlton United Brewery (CUB) Melbourne, maintenance workers and their unions, the ETU and AMWU, are standing strong in their long fight to stop the multinational’s attacks on job security and hard won wages and conditions.

CUB workers, unions and supporters are fighting the effects of corporate imperialist globalisation – casualisation, crushing unions and workers’ rights, slashing jobs, wages and conditions and removing any obstacles that stand in its way of increasing the exploitation.

  

It’s no coincidence that the attacks on brewery workers come at a time of the imminent takeover of owners of CUB, multinational SABMiller, by Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s biggest beer (and some soft drinks) brewing monopoly. 

On 10 June CUB sacked its entire highly skilled and experienced maintenance workforce of 55 fitters and electricians, including 5 apprentices, at the multinational’s Abbotsford (Melbourne) brewery. A new labour contractor was hired and CUB told the sacked workers they could apply for their old jobs but this time on a new pay slashed down to 65% of their original wage.  And a non-union EBA.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoKgzhq0CFw

Multinationals’ corporate agenda attacks all workers

The use of labour hire agencies has been widely used across the world over the past 10-15 years by big business, including by multinational corporations in Australia. The tactic of hiring casual workers through external labour employment agencies is a device used to avoid even the few weak minimal employment laws that provide some job security and protection for workers won through long and hard struggle.  It is monopoly capital’s imperialist strategy to casualise most of the workforce, crush organised labour and slash the cost of labour – jobs, workers’ wages and conditions - in all countries.

Obviously, CUB anticipated the sacked workers and their unions would reject these outrageous conditions and made contingency plans with Programmed, the new labour hire agency, to bus in temporary workers into the brewery.  Not a minute sooner than the 55 unionised electricians and fitters were sacked, non-union casual workers were trucked into the factory.  Some are unemployed FIFO mining workers brought in from Western Australia.  

The Electrical Trades Union explains, “Programmed is using a previously dormant entity from WA called Catalyst Recruitment Systems Pty Ltd, who has an ‘Enterprise’ Agreement that is the minimum safety net Award, plus 50 cents. The effect of this for these 24 hour a day, 7 day a week maintenance workers amounts to a 65% reduction in real wages.

“That is 65% less than the wages of over 10,000 A Grade electricians employed in Victoria working 24 hour 7 day a week rosters.

“The tactics engaged in by CUB appear aimed to maximize the harmful impact on workers through their “contract renewal” process, to coerce them into returning to do exactly the same job, on massively reduced pay.

“This tactic has been used for decades in the UK to decimate the wages and job security of workers. UK tradies are now increasingly forced to front up to labour hire venues every morning, to find out if they have work that day, or not. Now it’s being rolled out here. Permanent, insecure work that can force down wages is the end game of these labour hire tactics. “

The fight of all working people

Unions and community support for the sacked workers is wide.  Working people clearly understand this is everyone’s fight to defend our hard won job security, wages and conditions against the attacks by international monopolies.  Sacked workers and their families are financially supported by many unionists across Australia.  A community picket outside the Abbotsford factory is supported by unionists and communities.  Local Yarra Council passed a motion supporting the sacked workers.

A community campaign to boycott CUB brewery products so far includes more than 20 hotels and pubs around Australia refusing to serve CUB beer. 

Corporate globalisation and monopolisation

In 2011 the Australian owned C.U.B. Foster’s Group, the then biggest beer brewing company in Australia, was taken over by multinational SABMiller, a joint South African, US and British brewing monopoly, and the world’s second biggest beer and soft drinks manufacturer.  Before the takeover by SABMiller, Foster’s sacked 50% of its maintenance workforce and outsourced all the remaining maintenance jobs to a labour hire contractor on lower wages and conditions.  The workers and their unions fought back hard and succeeded in protecting some of the hard won conditions for the 55 remaining workers.  However, they could not stop the outsourcing of jobs to labour hire contractors.

SABMiller multinational operates in more than 80 countries and exploits 70,000 workers who create billions in profits for the parent company.

Now the world’s biggest beer brewing monopoly is gobbling up the world’s second biggest beer monopoly.  The destruction of jobs, wages and conditions is inherent in all corporate takeovers and monopolisation of capital, imperialism.

Anheuser-Busch InBev controls 25% of the world’s beer market and exploits 150,000 workers around the world.   AB-InBev’s headquarters are in Manhattan, US.  It has swallowed up countless small and medium breweries around the world and is the main beer company in the US, controlling 50% of the US market.

Like all mergers and takeovers by multinational corporations and global banks the Anheuser-Busch InBev takeover of SABMiller (C.U.B.) inevitably involves the sackings of workers, slashing wages and conditions. This is the compulsion of capitalist monopolisation driven by profit margins and comes with the territory of imperialist globalisation.

Anheuser-Busch InBev has a notorious reputation around the world for savaging jobs, workers' rights and conditions during and after mergers and takeovers of its competitors.

The merger of SABMiller and Anheuser-Busch InBev will bring $104.3 billion in revenue to the corporations, but at a huge cost to the exploited workers, jobs, wages and conditions in nearly 100 countries the new monopoly operates in.  The takeover of SABMiller by AB-InBev is the largest global merger in the food and drink industry so far, with 100 international beer brands under one beer monopoly.

“UnFair” Work Commission 

And where is the so-called “independent” Fair Work Commission, which bans industrial action by workers during the non-protected period, with threats of heavy fines and gaoling workers and their union officials?  Where is the Fair Work Commission to declare the sackings of 55 CUB workers during the non-protected period as illegal?   It hides behind its own crafted legislation which lets off big business, enabling them to evade the so-called “impartial” laws by using the labour hire contractors to sack workers.  

Australian workers need an independent Australia

The burden of imperialist globalisation is crushing down on people’s livelihoods, job security and hard won rights. 

Economic self-sufficiency and independence from the exploitative monopoly capital (which is mainly foreign) underpins all Australian workers’ struggles for job security, decent wages, working conditions and living standards and workers’ rights. 

Millions of Australians buy CUB beer and other of its products.  As one of the sacked workers said, “These multinational companies pay little if any tax in this country, and yet they send these profits overseas.  They destroy our hard won wages and conditions and every time we win or manage to push back their attacks they come back and try to take them away again.”  

That’s monopoly capitalism and why we need to put an end to it.

CUB workers are showing the way!

7-11: Exploitation and wage slavery

Bill F.

The on-going scandal over the under-payment and intimidation of 7-11 convenience store workers has highlighted the ruthless greed at the heart of the capitalist system.

A joint investigation by Fairfax Media and Four Corners showed that the 7-11 head office had evidence that nearly 70% of its 620 stores across Australia had been under-paying workers, falsifying records and rosters, and making illegal tax-free cash-in-hand payments.

In panic at the public revelations of its complicity in wage and tax fraud, the company has set up its own internal investigation headed by Professor Allan Fels, a long-time critic of the 7-11 franchise model. Its purpose is to deflect attention from its own greed.

7-11 in Australia, along with the Starbucks chain, is owned by Russell Withers, his sister Beverley and their families. Wealth is estimated at around $1.5 billion.

Franchise rorts
The franchise model for 7-11 convenience stores requires many of them to be open continuously, 24 hours, 7 days a week. As well as selling milk, bread, newspapers and overpriced groceries, many outlets also sell Mobil petrol.

Franchisees have to pay many tens of thousands of dollars to join the chain and manage an outlet. The franchisee then receives just 43% of the profits while 7-11 head office takes 57%. After paying off interest on the franchise fee loan, plus the wages of the workers, some franchisees can barely scrape by and many leave the business.

This actually suits the 7-11 bosses because they can sign up another sucker with a hefty franchise fee. In fact 68 franchisees have left over the last twelve months, raking in a total of $9.5 million for 7-11 from its “churning” of outlets. They even have a target figure of 79 ‘churnings” per year!

The most obvious way the struggling franchisee can keep going is to rip off the workers. Officially, minimum hourly award wages are $24.69 an hour, with $28.49 for Saturday and $37.98 for Sunday, but few workers receive this.

Many of the workers are impoverished young people on refugee or study visas which officially limit them to only 40 hours work per fortnight. Some 4000 students work in 7-11 stores. Franchisees take advantage of this by demanding them to work many hours in excess of the legal restriction and then threaten to expose them to authorities (Border Farce?) for breaching conditions. This would result in deportation and destroy their hopes of building a better life or completing their studies.

The wages paid are also manipulated by unscrupulous franchisees, often with the full knowledge of the 7-11 bosses, so that many workers receive between $10-12 per hour, half the normal rate, while the franchisee pockets the rest. The payslips are falsified, both hours worked and wages paid, with false names covering the actual spread of hours.           

When this rip-off was exposed by the Fairfax Media-Four Corners team, another rort quickly emerged. Workers might have received the correct award pay rate in their bank accounts, but then were pressured into secretly handing back a good part of it in cash.

This whole nasty business model is based on intimidation, taking advantage of vulnerable young workers unsure of their rights, often isolated and desperate to survive in a new country. While the threat of deportation is held over them, other measures taken include taking passports and drivers licences to prevent workers leaving. They are truly wage slaves.

Nothing fair about capitalism
Officially, the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) is supposed to monitor and enforce labour laws and conditions. In practice much more money and resources is spent in hounding and obstructing honest unionists than calling the bosses to account.

FWO raided twenty 7-11 outlets last year and found 60% were under-paying workers. Only a couple were taken to court, the remainder had their wrist slapped by agreeing to repay thousands of dollars in stolen wages and completing an online ‘education’ course on the Fair Work website!

That’s class justice for you. Just see what you get if you shop-lift a bag of chips, let alone steal $100 from the till!

7-11 is only one of any number of franchise chains, restaurants, cafés and small businesses that illegally exploit young workers, whether on visas or not. There have been calls for a government amnesty for visa workers who come forward to expose these and similar rorts and harassment.  

Speaking of the union…
The other body who should be responsible for the welfare of 7-11 workers is the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association (SDA). This right-wing dominated union is notorious for its lazy and passive representation of workers, and for doing deals with the management of big companies to sign up the workforce into the union and then sell them out in negotiations. It is more interested in delivering a large block of votes to the Labor Party right faction than fighting for workers’ rights and conditions.

The union’s response to the 7-11 scandal was to set up a hotline for workers to call in. This was after SDA national secretary Gerard Dwyer had already said workers were not coming forward because of fear that they could breach their visa conditions. Perhaps if the SDA had actually shown some interest in the plight of these workers and had actually gone out and spoken with them, informed them of their rights and done some basic organising, the union would have some credibility in the eyes of the working class.

What it shows is that the capitalist system will grind down and savagely exploit workers who are isolated and weak, that legal protections for workers are half-hearted and ignored until someone kicks up a fuss, and that the concept of “fair work” is only window-dressing for exploitation.

We should remember that Karl Marx’s great work Capital showed that human labour creates new wealth in the form of ‘surplus value’ which arises in the course of production and is realised at the point of sale. Even if workers are paid the ‘correct’ and ‘legal’ wages, this is only a reflection of the necessary cost of upkeep for the workers and their families’ and not a true reflection of the additional wealth their labour has created. Capitalism and its social democrat apologists foster the myth of a “fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay”, but never live up to it.

Class Struggle Steps Up

Vanguard October 2012 p. 1
Alice M.

The military style attacks on construction workers and their union, the CFMEU, in Melbourne in early September, has shown the true nature of Australian capitalist state as an apparatus for the suppression of the the working class and the people.

The big developers, property owners and peak big business outfits colluded and mobilised all branches of their state apparatus  to attack construction workers and their unions. The bourgeois media, the legal apparatus (employers’ lawyers and the courts), parliament and the police were wheeled out in a synchronised attack. 

In one voice the media widely and loudly spread outright lies viciously demonising construction workers, their unions and leaders. Construction workers and unions were linked to so-called “criminal underground” activities of motor cycle clubs.

Liberal and Labor governments joined the anti-worker and anti-union chorus. Labor less aggressively, mealy-mouthing condemnation of Grocon’s provocative actions and the violence of the police against the workers.

The anti-worker and anti-union laws of WorkChoices/FairWork and the ABCC were created in parliament by both Liberal and Labor governments. The courts breathed life into these laws and the police implemented them against the workers, sending strong messages of threats and intimidation to all unions and working people gearing up for struggle. 

More than 500 police with guns and capsicum spray,  nearly a hundred riot police, armed to the teeth in riot gear, more than dozen riot-equipped mounted police and a large dog squad, set upon peacefully protesting construction workers. The construction workers  and their union, the CFMEU, were simply demanding the right to elect their union OH&S delegates, and the right to wear union signage on the job. 

Construction and mining are dangerous industries with a high number of industrial accidents, injuries and fatalities. Improvement to health and safety has been one of the outstanding achievements by construction and mining unions and constantly has to be defended. Given the slightest chance, the bosses will take short cuts in health and safety issues.

The big business attacks on building workers and their unions in Melbourne target the entire working class in Australia. They have to be seen as part of a bigger national picture. The ruling class is making preparations to stop outbreaks of working class struggle.

The people are under growing pressures from the rising cost of living. Utilities, transport, housing, rents, child care, education, health are increasing. Almost 50% of workers have no job security, and youth unemployment is growing. Cuts to social and welfare services are throwing more on the brink of poverty. There’s frustration with parliament, parliamentary parties and politicians not looking after the interests of ordinary people, but instead looking after big corporations.

Workers are growing frustrated with industrial laws of WorkChoices/FairWork, Right of Entry,  the ABCC and its state versions, restrictions on union representation and laws that paralyse workers from taking industrial action for decent wages and conditions. There’s impatience with limitations on effectiveness of unions, failure to dismantle WorkChoices and FairWork, and the costly swamp of legal maneouverings.

These growing frustrations in the working class are leading more frequently to “illegal” actions in defiance of FairWork and the courts orders. Nurses, teachers, mining and warehouse workers are just some who have recently defied FairWork and court orders. The ruling class is aware of the growing discontent and makes preparations to crack down on wider outbreaks of struggle.

There’s only one course of action workers and unions need to take in preparation for future attacks. The real strength lies in uniting, educating, organising and mobilising the whole of the working class and its allies. It is the only way to hold back these attacks and win some breathing space before the bigger battles ahead.

Nothing Fair about Fair Work Australia

Vanguard  September 2012 p. 3

After more than six months of an “independent” review of the Fair Work Act, it comes as no surprise that the recommendations endorse this anti-worker and anti-unions outfit.

In fact the most significant recommendations of the review will extend restrictions on workers’ rights to take industrial action and union rights to organise.

Overhanging all is the recommendation to give Fair Work the powers “to actively encourage more productive workplaces”. In the real world of work, “increased productivity” means workers have to work harder and faster, take less time off when sick; fewer workers, longer hours, less rights, no industrial action to protect your rights and conditions, all to make bigger profits for the bosses. In the real world, “increased productivity” simply means that the bosses have more rights and freedoms to increase the exploitation of workers. It’s an attack on the working class, camouflaged behind the fig leaf of “productivity”.

The Fair Work review recommends that injured workers should no longer accrue annual leave while  absent on workers’ compensation; and an opening has been created for public holiday entitlements to be undermined. Individual flexibility clauses have been expanded and could be used as back door to AWAs.

Right to take industrial action

FWA’s new recommendations impose even tighter restrictions on workers’ and union rights to take industrial action. Unions and workers will not be able to take industrial action unless and until the bosses agree to bargain. It means the bosses can delay or refuse to bargain with the union for a long period. Australian workers never had the right to strike, even though the mild ILO’s Charter declares the right of workers to withdraw their labour.

Right to Organise

The FWA review recommendations give the FWA (the bourgeois state) more power to restrict even the few small rights remaining for union organisers to enter workplaces and organise the workers. 

Fair Work is a legal instrument of the capitalist state set up simply to contain (and when necessary suppress) workers’ organisations and collective struggle. Predictably, the more reactionary sections of the monopoly capital ruling class in the Business Council and Minerals Councils are not satisfied and want an open attack on the few limited bourgeois democratic rights wiped out altogether. Their hatred of unions and the organised working class has no bounds because they understand the collective power of workers that sets limits on capital’s capacity for rapacious exploitation of workers and the environment. They want the capitalist state to wipe out unions and collective organisations of workers, or at the very least, make them subservient puppets of capital.

Organise and struggle for job security and workers’ rights

Under Fair Work laws it is illegal for unions and workers to take industrial action to protect their job security during the ‘unprotected’ period. For the organised working class there’s only one response to Fair Work, the Business Council and Minerals Council. Organise and mobilise for jobs and job security, workers’ rights, decent working conditions and living standards for the community of working people!

Building the capacity of working class struggle

Vanguard August 2012 p. 3

Recently, some groups of workers have been in intense battles defending their conditions in various EBA negotiations.

Workers from Swift Cold Storage, Baiada Chicken Processing, Schweppes, Victorian Nurses and most recently the Toll/Coles warehouse workers have succeeded, through hard and long struggles, to defend their existing conditions against the unprecedented assault on the Australian working class by multinational monopoly capital. 

The Baiada Chicken and Toll/Coles workers’ victories went even further, to win some improvements on their inferior conditions.  Social and community sector workers won equal pay for equal work, after their protracted struggles.

In all of these struggles, workers and their fighting union leaderships drew wide support from the community and other unions, and found ways to overcome or get round the oppressive, anti-democratic Fair Work laws, designed by big business and aimed at crushing workers and unions to maximise corporate profits.

This has been achieved through the discipline, determination and courage of many workers and their unions. Workers are crying out for fighting union leadership, dedicated to protecting and upholding working people’s interests, above all else.

A number of newly emerging union leaders and activists are dedicated to building an independent union movement that fights for the rights of workers and working people first and foremost. This is an encouraging sign for the working class movement in Australia. Workers know well that the decisive battles are not won in the bourgeois courts, but on the ground, by mobilising and organising the rank and file and their supporters.  Experience has shown time and again that leaving workers’ livelihoods in the hands of big business, Fair Work or the bourgeois courts and lawyers, is a recipe for defeat.

Building the organised capacity of united and independent working class struggle and people’s mass movement is critical to defending the working people in the present period

International Women’s Day: Struggles for Equality and Conditions, Struggles against Austerity

Vanguard March 2012 p. 8
Alice M.

March 8^th marks 101st anniversary of the International Women’s Day.  On this day women around the world and their supporters celebrate the struggles and achievements of women’s long and hard struggles for equality and a better life for the people.

Today many of the hard won gains made by women over past 100 years for economic and social equality are being swept away by the deep capitalist economic crisis.  Working people’s livelihoods are sacrificed on the altar of the mega profits of a tiny handful of the super rich global monopoly corporations and banks.

  

In the developing semi-colonial and semi-feudal countries conditions for women are getting harsher.  Unemployment, poverty, exploitation, imperialist wars and oppression are deepening. 

Resistance to imperialist offensive and the burden of the capitalist crisis is gathering strength. Women make up half of that mass resistance and the fight for their own economic and social equality is an integral part of the struggle against semi-colonialism and imperialism in the developing countries.  Women of the developing countries are in the forefront of struggles to liberate their countries from the oppression of imperialism. 

In most of the developed capitalist countries, previous gains made by women are under sustained attack.  The global capitalist economic crisis is wiping out many improvements in social, economic and material conditions for women. 

Capitalist governments’ austerity measures are shifting public funds from the people to the big banks and multinational corporations to protect their mega profits.  Publicly funded and affordable child care, public health, community support and education services deteriorate or disappear altogether. 

As primary carers in family, communities and health services women suffer most from governments’ austerity cuts to services.  Women are the first to lose jobs, job security, and full-time work and endure deteriorating working conditions.  Many are thrown into precarious casual employment.

Legislation promoting equal opportunity and prohibiting gender discrimination in the workplace are important gains achieved by women on paper during the 100 years of hard struggle. But these are now more than ever hard to enforce as profit hungry big business mounts an offensive against workers’ rights and working conditions.  

In Australia, the Business Council of Australia has said as much when it bleats about too many legal restrictions on their ability to maximise the exploitation of workers.

The women are resisting the erosion of their gains.  They are defending the achievements and advancing their struggles for equality and the protection of hard won conditions of women workers and for the community.

Tax the corporations and banks, fund decent services for the people

On this International Women’s Day we pay special tribute to courageous nurses in Victoria in their struggles defending hard won working conditions, and the social and community sector workers in their protracted national equal pay struggle and victory. 

Women workers dominate these two industries.

The nurses and community sector workers are battling for decent pay increases, defending and improving working conditions and the provision of decent health and community services for the public. 

There is plenty of wealth around created by workers in Australia. Instead of these profits used to benefit Australian workers and the people, most are being syphoned off overseas by the multinational corporations. 

A super profits tax on mining corporations and the big four banks would provide sufficient funds to pay decent wages and conditions for nurses, public sector workers, equal pay for social and community workers, public health, community services, education and more.

Victorian nurses defiant

Victorian Nurses are in the midst of a prolonged and powerful battle with the State Liberal government defending their working conditions and the health and safety of patients in the public hospitals system.  The present nurse-patient ratio of 1 nurse to 4 patients in public hospitals has been achieved by nurses over more than 20 years of constant battles with intransigent Liberal and Labor state governments.   

Successive state governments and top hospital administrators never give up on their dream to abolish the 1 to 4 ratio and take every opportunity to wind back the decent and safe working conditions for the hard working and dedicated nurses.  The nurse-patient ration is a critical health and safety issue for the public hospital patients.

The nurse-patient ratios in public hospitals are now again under sustained attack from the Baillieu Liberal government and its lackeys in top hospital administrators who demand cutting back the ratio and replacing trained nurses with untrained assistants.

Leading up to the start of Enterprise Bargaining negotiations with public sector unions in 2011, the newly elected Baillieu Liberal government announced austerity measures that would wipe out 3500 or 10% of public sector jobs and services to the community.  It refused to give more than 2.5% yearly wage increases to public sector workers. 

Police of course are the exception and were immediately offered 4.7% annual increase, more than their union’s wage claim!

With their history of standing up for their rights as workers and women, for decent working conditions and their selfless dedication to proper patient care, the nurses refused to bow to threats and intimidation by the state government.  For past 8 months, under the leadership of the Australian Nurses Federation (ANF), the nurses have been running a disciplined, organised and a widely supported industrial and public campaign for decent wage increases and the protection of the hard won nurse patient ratio. 

Thousands of nurses have joined the battle, with hundreds campaigning non-stop in workplaces and communities, in city and country hospitals across all parts of Victoria.  Rallies outside city and regional hospitals, in shopping and community centres, have drawn hundreds of supporters to the nurses’ cause. Petitions have been signed by tens of thousands of people.

The state government is refusing to budge, relentlessly treading the bosses’ well worn path to Fair Work Australia, demanding it to do its job and terminate all industrial action, make legal threats of fines, penalties against nurses and intimidate nurses to give up their widely supported fight.  The Baillieu government has FairWork Australia working overtime issuing order after order directing nurses to cease unprotected industrial action, go back to courts and give up.  But this only spurs more nurses to join the struggle and gathers wider support from the public.  The arrogant state government and its lackeys in hospital administration were confident the prolonged dispute would tire out and demoralise nurses and force them to give up.

A state mass meeting of 3,000 nurses unanimously resolved to take further industrial action starting on Friday 24 February, if the government refused to an “independent umpire” to resolve the dispute. 

The government refused and instead raced to Fair Work demanding it terminates any further industrial action. In the meantime the nurses carried out their mass meeting resolution and took industrial action of reducing nurse staffing to night shift levels in three major hospitals. 

This represented the staffing levels of one nurse to 8 patients that the government wanted nurses to agree to.  More than 700 nurses walked out defying FWA orders.

Fair Work again directed nurses to terminate illegal industrial action but nurses vowed to defy Fair Work orders and continue with their planned rolling stoppages.

Nurses’ courageous stand and defiance of the state’s legal threats and intimidation is an inspiration to the rest of the union movement and the public.