Workers' unity stamps out racism

Vanguard July 2012 p. 4
Nick G.

(Above:  CFMEU members in Perth united with and fought for the rights of these s457 visa workers from China)

The response by working people to Gina Reinhardt’s EMA (see accompanying article) has been characterised by some sections of the capitalist media as xenophobic and racist.

No doubt such backward views are held by some workers.

This is much less the case today than it has been in the past, thanks largely to Communists and other active members of the working class who have been in the front lines of the battle for Aboriginal rights and for international solidarity.

The current controversy centres on two visa classes introduced by the Howard government on the orders of the largest multinational and local monopoly corporations.

They are the Section 456 and 457 visas.

Section 456 visas

The former were intended for short term business visits of up to three months to enable visa holders to attend meetings, conduct site visits or participate in training.  Because they were not intended to be work visas they contained no regulation whatsoever of wages and conditions.

They did contain a loophole allowing very specialised work that could not be undertaken by Australians and it is this loophole that has been abused by corporate bosses.

Some notable abuses of 456 visa workers include the 2008 employment of 16 guest workers on an offshore gas project in WA who were performing 12 hour shifts on a 2-months-on-one-month-off roster and earning as little as $4.20 per hour.  They had been employed by a US labour hire company and “sold on” to the Angel gas project laying pipelines across the ocean floor. 

Australian unions took up the case of these workers - not the Business Council of Australia, not the Australian Industry Group, not the Australian Chamber of Business and Commerce.

At the time, the government promised to tighten Section 456 visa regulations, but the abuses continued, including the exploitation in 2011 by the Danish multinational Maersk of Filipino workers on the North West Gas Shelf off WA who were being paid less than $3 per hour alongside Australian workers on the same rigs doing the same jobs for average annual wages of $132,000. 

It was Australian workers on the rigs who passed the hat around for the Filipinos and called in their unions, the AWU and MUA, to ensure that the workers gained proper wages, including back pay. 

Again, the Federal government promised to stop these rorts, and again nothing was really achieved.

The latest scam unearthed during the middle of last month was the employment by Indian multinational Adani of half of its Carmichael coal project workers in central Queensland on 456 visas from India.

Such systematic and continuing abuses of this visa class are corrupt and criminal practices.  They are also inherently racist because they deprive guest workers on Australian projects of the same terms and conditions as those of local citizens.  They discriminate in order to facilitate exploitation, pure and simple.

Section 457 visas

The situation is no better with 457 visa workers.  This visa class is intended as a working visa, is intended to allow a relatively long term stay and grants certain rights to visa holders, such as having family members stay with them and able to access work and study.

Such a visa category is not much different to those under which many skilled Australian workers are allowed to work in overseas countries, including China and the Philippines.

However 457 visa holders are meant to be skilled in areas in which there are local skill shortages and they are meant to be employed on the same terms and conditions as Australian citizens.

Problems have arisen where middlemen have demanded exorbitant “agents fees” from people they have recruited under the 457 schemes.  Or they have forced them into crowded and substandard accommodation for which they have charged huge amounts.  Or they have simply not paid them the correct rates and intimidated and threatened them when complaints have arisen.

Although a worker on a 457 visa may have up to 28 days of unemployment between jobs, they must obtain a new visa and a new sponsor if their original sponsor is no longer willing to employ them.  Thus, the original sponsor has a substantial hold over them.

These sorts of issue are rife in the construction industry which is plagued with all sorts of sham contracting arrangements.  But it has not been the Master Builders Association or the Property Council of Australia which has embraced these workers, treated them respect and dignity and offered the hand of friendship and assistance.

That has been the role of the much-maligned construction unions, and particularly of the CFMEU.

Australia-wide there have been instances where Filipino or Chinese workers have been found on jobs unaware of their entitlements and of health and safety regulations.

There is little point pursuing these issues through the courts: that takes time and the 457 visa workers can be sent home well before any judgement in their favour.

The only effective remedy has been action on the job, bringing foreign 457 visa workers and Australian workers together in the greatest weapon that workers have – unity.

In defending the rights and conditions won by successive generations of Australian workers we do not condone racism or xenophobia.

As we have said, Australian workers have gone to other countries as guest workers, and guest workers from other countries are welcome here.

The great unity of the working class can only be destroyed from within, and the worst corrosive is racism.

Australian workers will stand by guest workers brought to this country and protect their rights and conditions from the racists and exploiters in the capitalist class.

 .......................
Further reading:

Humphrey McQueen: Foreign workers

The use of Racism by Imperialism

Vanguard September 2011 p. 6

In recent days we have heard a State minister of Aboriginal Affairs express distress at the level of racism Aboriginal people in Australia experience as part of their daily lives.

At the same time, NAIDOC week, meant to celebrate Aboriginal culture, was taken over by the mainstream press and business journals to celebrate the relations corporate Australia has established with Indigenous communities.

NAB, Chevron, BHP, Rio Tinto, they’re all into it, sporting headlines like, Making Progress with Indigenous Communities (NAB), Supporting Communities, with a photo of a happy healthy Aboriginal child (Chevron) or Woodside’s claim to creative energy against a background of Central Australian Aboriginal art. BHP brags of the job opportunities it is offering Aboriginal young people.

Rio Tinto, not to be left out, talks of ‘partnerships’ with the Aboriginal communities whose land they are exploiting, and have just completed an ‘historic agreement’ with the people of Gove for 42-year right to mine, for which the Yolngu people will receive seven million dollars over the forty-two year period of the contract for social services (services the Government should be providing anyway). No mention of course, of the forty-year struggle it has taken to get even this pittance of reparation for the extraction of finite resources, and no retrospective payment for the last four decades of mining.

What is happening here with all this talk of partnerships and caring for community? Surely Imperialism has not abandoned racism as a means of whipping the working class. The details of these agreements are interesting and can be found online, but what is more interesting is the theory that lies behind all this ‘partnership’ talk.

The Minister’s talk of racism as part of everyday contact on the streets or in workplaces individualises racism and presents it as a contradiction amongst the people. The reality is more complex.

Racism is not an add-on for capitalism. It is integral to capitalist expansion and accumulation. It is embedded in capitalist institutions, particularly the media and the legal systems; it structures historical recording and remembering, and it has an increasingly important role to play in a world market that, whilst offering ‘free space’ for capital to move to where the highest return on invested capital can be realised, also contains a threat to unfettered capital accumulation by offering ‘free space’ for workers to unite across national boundaries.

Constructing identities

‘Scientific Racism’ or biological determinism with its hierarchy of races constructed the identities of Europeans and adversarial others whose lands were becoming colonised. ‘Scientific Racism’ justified the invasion, occupation and exploitation of non-European countries, and the destruction of cultures that were unfamiliar to Europeans, and incorporated values that could undermine the aims and objectives of the occupying power.

Imperialism utilises biological determinism when needed, but it has its own form of racist ideology. Imperialism calls more on cultural difference to generate fear and hatred of the other. Emphasis on racial purity has been replaced with an emphasis on cultural conformity; adherence to the ‘norm’ with the norm being identified by the dominant power.

But some acceptance of difference is also in the interest of Imperial adventures, thus in Australia we give a nod to multi-culturalism and have Aboriginal dancers performing at special functions and Aboriginal art decorating boardrooms. This structuring of ‘normalcy’ and at the same time making sure cultural difference is up front and noticeable, serves a number of functions for Imperialism.

Imperialism, Racism and War

Violence, or the threat of violence (both domestic and global), is at the heart of Imperialism. War is a constant as we have seen over several centuries and into this one, and racism is integral to war as it was to colonial expansion.

Racism justifies death and destruction, the ravaged terrain of the adversary, the crippling of economies and the death of own citizens, and paves the way for the deeper penetration of the dominant and most aggressive capitals into the defeated or captured economies, and the imposition of parliamentary democracy, the system of governance most favoured by capital.

Racism and Class

Another function that racism performs for imperialism is to call into play cultural differences within the working class that can be utilised to undermine working class unity, especially in times of crisis.

A critical function of imperial racism is to disguise class differences within cultures and the commonality and work structured unity, always a threat to capital that exists between cultures especially within the working class.

These aspects of racism are particularly important to capital in a world market where new technologies enable working classes to communicate and act in their own interests across national boundaries.

Using images to disguise intent


The language and images used by capital are merely a ruse to disguise the exploitation of land and peoples here and around the world. The use of placatory imagery has had to be resorted to because of the militancy of Aboriginal communities and their supporters.

For forty years Rio ripped bauxite out of Gove without any consultation with the Yolngu people or adherence to government guidelines. They did exactly as they liked and would have continued to do so without widespread Aboriginal resistance to the rapacious exploitation of land.

The Yolgnu were central to land rights struggles, beginning with the 1963 Bark Petition to federal parliament. Now, mining companies of the same ilk as Rio Tinto, with their imagery of happy Aboriginal children and Aboriginal art backing their advertisements, claim ownership of the progress Aboriginal people have made against racism, cultural destruction and dispossession of lands.

People standing in front of bulldozers to prevent access to land and police present to protect exploiters’ ‘rights’ is not a good look for multinationals wanting to tighten their control over the Australian and global economy.

As workers’ struggles deepen so does imperial racism

Capitalism and Imperialism to a large extent construct the material conditions with which we all have to contend, but they also have to respond to the material conditions they have created, one of which is a militant working class and politicised Indigenous peoples.

The hole capital has dug for itself only deepens, as events around the world indicate. Placatory imagery is a measure of capital’s weakening state.

That Rio Tinto has had to be dragged to the negotiating table to negotiate directly with Indigenous people, as opposed to their preferred option of negotiating a pliant Government, is indicative of the strength of the people.

The struggle against racism will not be led by mining capital. It will be led by workers, as have all other struggles for justice, and human and workers’ rights. But racism will not be extinguished within capitalism. Capital needs racism. Imperialism, even more.

Woodside residents are not racists

Vanguard December 2010 p. 4

If there was an equivalent of the Tidy Town Awards for boring normality, the little town of Woodside in the Adelaide Hills would be an easy winner.
Sipping a latte al fresco in the main street, I can see nothing that seems out of place.

At a nearby table a man stops a stranger walking past and they chat about her dog. It’s that sort of place.

But last night the cockroaches were scurrying about in the dark.

I don’t know who they were, but these bravehearts had sneaked into the grounds of the local primary school and put anti-refugee leaflets around where the kid would find them in the morning.

Luckily the teachers found them first and binned the lot.

At least two other local primary schools were targeted.

The reason? Woodside was identified on October 18 as the host town for a Detention Centre at nearby Inverbrackie and it is intended that detainees’ children will attend the local schools.

A public meeting was held not long after the announcement and attended by some 400 people where resentment over the lack of consultation with the community over the announcement was hijacked by a small redneck element that put through a motion against asylum seekers coming to Inverbrackie.

The lack of consultation meant that issues that could have been addressed in a sensible way were raised in a hostile environment and used to inflame community anger. One of those related to the local school where enrolments are growing and existing classrooms are full.

Those issues have since been clarified. The principal of the primary school, with the support of parents on the school’s governing council has issued a statement to all parents saying that “We would welcome having detainee children at our school.” He thought the school could accommodate 15-20 students and added “My main concern at the moment is that, for whatever reason we may miss out.”

He may have been alluding to the fact that other nearby public schools are under capacity and just as keen to take in students from the detention centre.

The Woodside community has been unfairly demonized as racist by the bourgeois media.

In fact, as the issues that were raised at the public meeting have been dealt with one by one, passions have subsided and most residents want it to be known that they will welcome the asylum seekers into the community.

Trade Unions speak out against racism

Vanguard May 2010 p. 9
Alice M.

Racism is one of the weapons in the arsenal of capitalism and imperialism to control, divide and intimidate the people. It is used to divert attention from class exploitation and oppression as the real source of people’s main problems and difficulties.

In Australia, racism has been regularly used by the ruling class against the Aboriginal people and against every new wave of immigrants from the beginning of British colonisation.

On Friday 9th May, over 500 people gathered on the steps of Melbourne’s Flinders Street Station to stop a racist, anti-migrant, anti-Muslim rally called by a tiny handful of misguided misfits. The presence of a large number of supporters for migrants, refugees and the Muslim community kept the racists away, and scuttled their plans to march through the streets of the city.

Speakers at the anti-racism rally included an Anglican Bishop, a Jewish Rabbi, unionists, artists, comedian Rod Quantock and other comedians performing at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, plus representatives from refugees support groups.

Brian Boyd, Victorian Trades Hall Council Secretary received a rousing reception when he declared the union movement condemned racism and the use of the Eureka flag by racists. He said in part: “The message from the Victorian Trade Union movement is straight forward. We oppose racism. We oppose fascism. Unions have many immigrants and refugees as members. Unions have suffered at the hands of ultra right-wing forces over the decades in many countries. Countless people linked to unions have been victimised and killed by such groups. So it is important to stand up and protest when they try to cause confusion and conflict in the wider community. The claim by ultra-right wing groups over the Eureka flag is also a specific issue the union movement rejects. This flag belongs to the Australian people, with a number of unions identifying with it because it stands for rebelling against tyranny and for a fair go for all. The racists have no right to mis-use this important national symbol as it actually represents the opposite to what they stand for”.

That racism and neo-nazism is raising its ugly head again in the developed capitalist world is no coincidence. The so-called anti-terrorism laws and campaign against Muslim people fuels fear and distrust. It enables the ruling class to tear down democratic rights and give itself unrestricted powers to suppress the people. The capitalist class is hiding behind and manipulating the extreme-right wing disaffected elements for their own ends.

In Australia both main parliamentary parties fuel the hysteria of “border protection”, “illegal” refugees, over-population and the constant rhetoric of anti-terrorism laws. It should not be forgotten that Pauline Hanson’s tilt for a Senate seat in the 1996 Federal elections was bankrolled by giant mining corporations to the tune of $5 million. The main target of that move was the grab for Aboriginal lands rich in minerals. The union movement and the whole of the working class always deal blows against racism through unity in workers’ struggles.