Wage thieves don’t like new legislation

 Written by: (Contributed) on 27 August 2023

Plans by the Albanese government to introduce wage theft legislation have already met with opposition from employers' organisations. It is not difficult to establish the extent of the problem of wage theft and the urgent need for effective legislation to protect workers from unscrupulous employers. Many employers, however, continue to hide behind facile excuses: their chosen business model has served their financial interests well for many years, they see no reason to accept criticism or accept change.

A McKell Institute study based on International Monetary Fund (IMF) analysis examining the Fair Work Ombudsman business audits from 2009, has established Australian workers have been subject to massive wage theft. The report estimated workers were being underpaid by at least $847.25 million per annum. (1) It also noted that the total amount of wage theft was likely to be much higher, with other cases being well-hidden and difficult to calculate accurately. (2) Large numbers of 'zombie' agreements, long out-of-date, still exist, whereby employers merely pay their workforces small annual wage settlements without reference to other entitlements and obligations.

When taking the fact Australia only has a workforce of approximately 13 million, with about a 66 per cent participate rate, the active section of the workforce only amounts to about eight million workers.

Assessed on the state-by-state basis, the problem of wage theft has been calculated to amount to $306 million in NSW with more than 500,000 workers. Sydney, the capital of NSW, had 41,106 workers subject to $25 million wage theft. In Melbourne, 28,500 workers
missed out on $17.5 million. (3) When measured across the whole of Australia an estimated 269,728 businesses were, therefore, collectively robbing more than 1.3 million workers of $847.25 million. (4)

The analysis found an estimated forty per cent of businesses were not complying with the Fair Work Act, while more than a quarter were in breach of monetary obligations including award rates and agreements. Government departments, which are supposed to police the legislation, appear little other than toothless tigers, composed of faceless office-workers trained to turn a blind-eye to a major problem in fear of compromising their own career-pathways in the eyes of managers who form part of elite patronage systems.

Employers' organisations have continued to complain about 'the supposed complexity of the award system', although the legislation was written in standard, technical English and interpreted to the word. There are no 'grey areas' in industrial law. The facile excuses by the business-classes would tend to indicate the failure of business and management educators to provide adequate and suitable training for their students.

The report did, in fact, draw attention to the problem of what was recognised as 'ingrained negligence'. (5) The silence, on the part of the legal profession, has been duly noted, as has their 'professionalism'. A similar explanation could also be directed toward employers' organisations generally, which tend to specialise in the provision of 'help-lines' for their clientele for use to undermine existing legislation and regulations. There is a common tendency for them to parade 'legal' services on glitzy websites with free-phone facilities.

So much for the privileged education of the Australian middle- and upper-classes and the ethical standards to which they aspire and the facile nature of their hand-wringing excuses.

It should be noted as highly relevant that most Australian trade-union representatives and delegates have no difficulty reading and studying existing awards, agreements and legislation despite the fact many have failed to even finish secondary education or to have tertiary qualifications.

The findings of the McKell Institute study of wage theft highlight the urgent need to criminalise wage theft to destroy the chosen business model of the supporters of economic rationalism. Such legislation would be a major assault upon the Australian business-classes and their supporters in the corridors of power in Canberra and other provincial cities.

And, in conclusion, the opposition from the business-classes is evidence that the proposed government legislation has some positive features for workers,

The evidence is there, for all to see!

1.     Wage theft an $847 m-a-year hit, Australian, 22 August 2023.  
2.     Ibid.
3.     Ibid.
4.     Ibid.
5.     Ibid.

 

“Same Job, Same Pay” Bill Tinkers At The Edge Of Wage Swindles

(Above: Same Job, Same Pay campaign image from ACTU Facebook page)

 Written by: Ned K. on 13 June 2023

The mining and resources industry multinational corporations have threatened a multi-million-dollar campaign against the federal Labor Government's "Same Job, Same Pay " proposed legislation.

The proposed legislation would require labour hire workers to be paid the same as if they were directly employed by the employer where they are sent to work by their labour hire employer.

In response to the threat by the employers, the Minister for Industrial Relations started talking about "phasing in" the changes and tightening the definition of labour hire in any new legislation.

The "Same Job, Same Pay" legislation that passes through parliament is likely to apply to a very small percentage of workers in Australia. Currently the Australian Bureau of Statistics says that 2.3% (319,900) workers are labour hire workers out of a total employee workforce in Australia of 11.4 million.

"Same Job, Same Pay" promise by Labor before the federal election of May 2022 had many workers with high hopes that the concept of same job, same pay would extend far beyond employees hired by an employer defined as a labour hire employer. There are millions of workers in Australia employed by employers who provide workers to large corporations to perform work which used to be done by directly employed labour. However, these employers are not defined by the Australian Bureau of Statistics as labour hire employers.

For example, most public hospitals in Australia have contracted out workers who perform support services such as catering, cleaning, orderlies or security. Public transport has been privatized resulting in thousands of workers being employed by contractors. In most cases the wages and monetary related entitlements are less than if the workers were directly employed.

"Same job, same pay" legislation to have any real teeth should extend to these workers.

The growth of labour hire and contracting out has seen the growth of wage swindles where workers do not even get the measly minimum Award entitlements.

The fragmentation of the working class has contributed to the decline in union membership.

Since 1992-3 when the federal Labor Government introduced the none-union enterprise bargaining legislation and "blessed" neo-liberalism and economic rationalism, union membership has declined from 43% of the workforce to 12.5% of the workforce in August 2022.

Since that time, most unions have still funded the Labor Party and raised hopes of workers that "they are better than the other lot, the Liberals". If the mild "Same Job, Same Pay" Bill is watered down to appease big business, it is likely that the decline in union membership trend overall in Australia will continue. The statistics on union membership show that union membership density is highest in the highest paid occupations categorized as "professionals, machine operators and drivers, community public sector service workers, technicians and trades workers". 

Workers who voted Labor expect the Labor Government to champion secure work and to make wage swindles a crime. This is surely not too much to ask for. Unions need to push ahead with an independent working class agenda that appeals not just to the existing core of union membership but to the great mass of workers who are currently in lower paid work and supportive of real "same job, same pay" laws.

A canary sings with Probuild, CIMIC, Deloitte and Chevron

 

Above: "There is no money. Now seven months no salary," a former CIMIC worker tells Adele Ferguson (SMH)

Written by: Louisa L. on 1 April 2022

The day after the ABC reported a humanitarian crisis facing former employees and subcontractors of Australian-based construction company CIMIC in the Middle East, Spirit of Eureka commented, “Probuild collapses and now CIMIC is exposed for leaving hundreds of ex-workers unpaid in Dubai labour camps for a year. They can’t leave and can’t afford to eat. And CIMIC’s share price didn’t drop the day after journalist Adele Ferguson released the story.

“Meanwhile, a week back, for the first time the ABCC issued compulsory attendance notices to NSW workers for a strike they won in the courts during protected action. ARE THEY KIDDING?” 

The comment, now over a month old but still pertinent, introduced an article by a NSW construction worker, outlining two of the reasons for Probuild’s collapse – increasing monopoly and outsourcing of risk. 

He said, “Probuild went into administration mainly because developers had not paid them for work done. The company is owed hundreds of millions of dollars.
“The problem is the law allows the person taking the least risk but receiving the most profit – the developer – to dodge any responsibilities. 

“Covid lockdowns meant delays, but the developers basically said, ‘You have a contract and you haven’t met it. So what if you are nearly finished the buildings? We are not going to pay you.’ And it’s all legal.”

Specialist investor service, The Motley Fool said much the same about Probuild’s collapse, “Nicola Grayson, the CEO of the engineering industry lobby group, Consult Australia, says she fundamentally believes the system is broken. Cut-throat competition and poor risk distribution in the commercial building industry are making it increasingly difficult for construction companies to make money.” 

Hooking small fish for capitalism

Most construction workers are employed by subcontractors or labour hire companies. This pattern is repeated across numerous industries, most notably food delivery. 

Spirit of Eureka said subcontractors, many of them “Mum and Dad outfits”, carry the greatest risk in the building industry.

It also pointed out that the CFMEU, in NSW at least, used legal and illegal industrial action to protect most – but not all – entitlements of workers including those employed by subcontractors, because too many companies go broke leaving workers unpaid. This didn’t surface in capitalist media coverage. 

US company Motley Fool says, “Our purpose is to make the world smarter, happier, and richer.” 

It somewhat trivialised Adele Ferguson’s reporting, subtly questioning whether a “humanitarian crisis” existed after CIMIC’s departure from the Middle East.

The inverted commas in its headline inferred the crisis was not proven. It included CIMIC’s self-justifications.

The core business of the financial press is where to invest for profit.

Fool ended in bold with “Should you invest $1000 in CIMIC now?” No, but follow the link from the free article to Fool’s more profitable suggestions.

This bait ties small investors like workers and their allies to capitalism. 

Same top-down relationship

Numerous financial articles state Hochtief, CIMIC’s controlling shareholder, is making a hostile bid for outright ownership. German-based Hochtief is majority owned by Spanish corporation ACS. 

Like the mining industry, the big end of construction is overwhelmingly foreign controlled. But the stability of ownership is easily upset by the second-by-second ease with which massive amounts of capital can be shifted by big shareholders.

In Probuild’s case other companies will pick over the carcass, with the administrator the first to be paid. 

Deloitte, one of the Big Four foreign-owned accounting giants regularly targeted by investigative journalist Michael West, is Probuild’s administrator. West exposes the dirty role these corporations in designing tax avoidance and a raft of other ways to increase company profits.

Deloitte was also the auditor when CIMIC was in a losing billion-dollar battle with resource giant US Chevron over its construction of a jetty for the Gorgon gas project off WA’s Pilbara coast. 

CIMIC’s is the same top-down relationship faced by Probuild. 

And what of Deloitte? The 2020 headline of the Financial Review’s Jenny Wiggins was spot on when she called CIMIC’s accounts “unreliable”, including Deloitte’s audit report. She stated Deloitte ‘green-lighted’ CIMIC’s dodgy accounts in 2018. She also pointed to the $1.8 billion write-off in the Middle East. 

Human misery not their job

Wiggins didn’t mention the human misery CIMIC’s failure was causing. Sadly, that isn’t the primary job of financial newspapers. Fairfax reporter Adele Ferguson appears to have been tipped off by an unpaid Australian contractor.  

It took till December 2021 for the Financial Review to publish Adele Ferguson’s first investigation. 

CIMIC is now facing a lawsuit from investors, alleging it misled them about its liabilities.

Meanwhile Chevron’s website still brags to investors and potential investors about Gorgon’s 700 Australian contractors as if this was good for them and Australia. “Everything about Gorgon is massive,” it says. 

Michael West states, “One of the world’s premier tax cheats, Chevron pays zero tax but still managed to siphon off a cool $920 million “return of capital” to its US parent – according to last year’s financial statements – besides ripping out $3 billion in finance charges to its associates offshore.” 

ExxonMobil and Shell are Chevron’s major partners in Gorgon.

According to by Financial Times’ journalists Jamie Smyth and David Sheppard in July 2021, Japanese companies are among the top ten shareholders in Gorgon. Though their holdings are very small, they help ensure the cheap gas heads their way, while Australian prices go through the roof.

Follow the money 

The London-based Financial Times is owned by a Japanese holding company, Nikkei. It also calculates the Nikkei 225 for the Tokyo Stock Exchange. (Wikipedia)

Most readers would know The Financial Review is now owned by Channel 9. By far the most profitable section of the former Fairfax stable is the Domain real estate sector. Honest reporting on construction as a whole becomes more and more difficult given this. 

On March 30, a Sydney Morning Herald article about a huge development, the “beating heart” of Sydney’s Central Station, read like a developer’s press release. It didn’t mention the 40 storey towers which will dwarf what it twice calls an “unloved” heritage precinct. Heritage is this writer’s word. It doesn’t appear in the article.  

Sydney’s former Herald architecture reporter was Elizabeth Farrelly. The title of her 2021 book ‘Killing Sydney’ says it all.

While most journalists aim to tell what they think is the truth, capitalist ideology stops them doing more than tinkering around its worst edges. Some spend their days in breakfast television infotainment. Others sell their souls to defend even the worst corporations. Most others are tightly constrained. Even an Adele

Ferguson would find herself out the door if she called capitalism out for what it is. 

There is a big gap between what the media tells the general public and the reporting of specialist financial services and newspapers, which aim to keep the capitalist juggernaut smashing toward profit.  

When the canary sings

As Lenin pointed out a century ago, crisis increases monopolisation. Giant corporations swallow even huge ones. Look to Probuild and CIMIC.

Right now, there are mind-boggling amounts of capital needing destinations where the highest possible profit can be made. Within seconds, even enormous corporations that fail in this fundamental capitalist compulsion can be shaken and even collapse as vast quantities of capital are removed. 

This will have big impacts in a construction industry which has traditionally been the canary in the mine for capitalist busts. If that industry falls, others follow. It employs one in five Australian workers. While this writer has been astounded at the capacity of the construction boom to continue despite her predictions of its bust, things are shifting.

Few people have the money to buy homes or even find places to rent. Purchasing power of wages has plummeted, interest rates will rise along with prices. Investors aren’t filling the gap.

The CBDs of the two major cities and their satellites like Sydney’s Parramatta are awash with empty office space, with more in the pipeline.

When the canary sings and booms bust, brutal attacks on workers’ collective power are on the cards. 

They must be educated for the bigger struggle to overcome capitalism, organised and mobilised for more than elections or bigger crumbs from the capitalist table. Make struggle a training ground. 

For communists, it’s time to be active. It’s time to be bold. 

 

Morrison budget and their business cronies: their values and ours!

 Written by: (Contributed) on 19 May 2021

Almost hidden in the small print of the recent Morrison coalition government budget lies an extra allocation over the next four years for the Registered Organisations Commission (ROC), a shadowy employer's organisation. The present Australian government, in addition, will also provide $10 million for reducing the costs of Award compliance for employers.

While the budget allocations were announced as designed to assist employers meeting their obligations, the opposite is a far more likely scenario.

It is unlikely to remove widespread wage theft: the penalising of workers at the hands of unscrupulous employers, which has become a standard business practice.

The allocation of an extra $8 million to the ROC in four annual allowances, was announced in the budget as a measure designed 'to ensure registered organisations acted responsibly, fairly and in compliance with their obligations under legislation … and … help employers meet their Award obligations'. (1) The ROC, for all intents and purposes, is used by governments as a trade union regulator. Widespread concern, however, has existed about wage-theft since revelations surfaced that under-payment for Australian workers amounted to an estimated $1.35 billion in 2019. (2)

Studies of wage-theft in the construction industries revealed the problem amounted to an annual $320 million, in healthcare $22 million, and retail $180 million. (3)

The matter has been made all the more obscene by the fact that many of those being deprived of correct wages and appropriate terms and conditions of employment remain in the category of the low-paid, existing on a national minimum wage of $19.84 per hour. While the full week of 38 hours amounts to $753.80, the move toward a part-time working week has enabled the business-classes to reduce terms and conditions correspondingly.

Behind the political spin of the Morrison coalition government line, however, the problem of wage-theft will not be dealt with by an extra allocation to the ROC. Established in 2017 with the primary function of ‘increasing financial transparency and accountability’, the government department is essentially an investigatory body possessing wide powers. (4)

Whether it is even suitable for dealing with wage-theft is open to dispute. 

While the extra budget financial allocation will be used to provide business software developers to integrate information about Awards, and terms and conditions of employment for the Australian workforce, the mechanisms used have been intentionally shrouded in bureaucratic secrecy and political chicanery. It is far more likely the budget allocation will be used to further erode terms and conditions of employment for millions of workers who already have difficulty challenging employers.  

While employers have continually cited complexity of Awards as the usual excuse for under-payment of wages and flouting terms and conditions of employment, trade-union members and shop stewards, often with a minimal education usually have no problem calculating their entitlements and informing their colleagues. It is, furthermore, important to note in usual legal circumstances, ignorance is regarded as no excuse for breaking laws, except, of course, when it comes to the Australian business-classes and their treatment of vulnerable workers.

The ROC budget allocation was also accompanied by a further $10 million government provision for reducing the Award compliance costs of employers; a bureaucratic system will be established to provide employers with information about obligations.

Recent political chicanery by the Morrison coalition government, however, has revealed how seriously they take unscrupulous exploitation of vulnerable workers by employers.

While the Morrison coalition government had previously promised to criminalise wage-theft, the sections of legislation were eventually withdrawn to appease their business-cronies, many of whom regard wage-theft as normal business practice, the natural outcome of race-to-the-bottom, cost-cutting mentalities. Present penalties for employers not conforming with Awards are clearly not a deterrent; in fact, many of those eventually identified have been shown to be serial offenders whose only punishment was a slap on the wrist.

The real reason for wage-theft lies in government and business attempts to undermine trade-unionism. The problem is further compounded by widespread casualisation which has seriously weakened workers’ ability to challenge employers, together with the development of business practices which include the re-introduction of master-and-servant type industrial relations. They have had their effect upon the trade-union movement. Casual workers are also vulnerable to instant dismissal with their only entitlement being four hours pay for arriving at their place of employment to start work, which amounts to a deterrent for joining a trade-union and standing up for their rights.

Current trends in Australia reveal how the business-classes have systematically undermined traditional Award wages and terms and conditions.

Full-time employment for the Australian national workforce has recently decreased to 8,874,200 while part-time work has increased to 4,203,400. (5)

When relating the figures to payment of wages, it is possible to establish why employers have pushed casualisation and part-time employment. An Australian full-time average weekly wage is calculated at $1,463, while part-time work is calculated at $577. (6)

A further breakdown of relevant statistics has shown a growth of individual workplace 'agreements'; those employed on Award-only conditions account for 21 per cent of the workforce, those on Enterprise Bargaining Agreements (EBAs) total 37.9 per cent while individual arrangements have risen to 41.1 per cent. (7)

While the latter category is still covered by Award provision for wages and terms and conditions of employment, other factors come into play: systematic wage-theft is most likely in this category, as employers deliberately flout their responsibilities by allowing workers to have 'flexible' working arrangements. Part-time students and parents with child-care considerations are among the most vulnerable. Many of the so-called 'flexible' working arrangements also include outside-of-usual working hours provisions which have tended, historically, to be difficult to police by trade-unions and regulatory bodies.

A typical example of the problem is in the manufacturing industries with overtime terms and conditions and meal allowances. An employee working more than 1.5 hours overtime at the end of their usual shift is allowed a twenty-minute break before they begin their overtime. If they are asked to do so the same day, they are also allowed a $14.70 meal allowance for the inconvenience caused. (8)

Many employers flout such entitlements for members of their workforces and then benignly excuse their behaviour with comments such as 'why didn't you tell me?'.

An Award provision, furthermore, which is frequently eroded by employers takes place when they ask employees to begin their usual shift early; an afternoon shift worker whose usual starting time is 2 pm can be asked to start at 12 noon. Overtime, however, is strictly calculated from the end of a standard 7.6-hour shift. Technically, therefore, an employee starting two hours early is allowed a twenty-minute break at 8 pm, together with their usual meal breaks. It is comparatively rare for employers to honour these Award provisions. Workers, likewise, are often frightened to complain for fear of not being asked to work overtime again.

The failure of employers and their cronies in government departments to implement the appropriate competency standards to ensure the correct pay-grade for workers in relation to the skills and expertise they use in their workplaces, is yet, another example of wage-theft.

In conclusion, the recent Morrison coalition government budget allocation of $18 million to deal with employers not honouring legal obligations with Awards is highly unlikely to deal with the problem. It is far more likely to be a bean-feast for lawyers employed by government bureaucracies to create mechanisms and procedures favouring their own, at the expense of millions of Australian working people.

But then, such behaviour is strictly in keeping with their values; they have little respect for ordinary working people although they take great care to state otherwise.

1.     Unions watchdog get teeth sharpened, Australian, 12 May 2021.
2.     Labour puts wage theft, sex discrimination on IR agenda, Australian, 14 May 2021.
3.     Ibid.
4.     Australian Government website: Registered Organisations Commission.
5.     Australian Bureau of Statistics, March 2021.
6.     Australian Bureau of Statistics, January 2019.
7.     Ibid.
8.     Manufacturing Award, Sections: 32.11d, 30.3c.ii.

Chinatown Community Rallies Against Wage Theft

 Written by: Ned K. on 7 February 2021

A violent attack by a manager at a Chinese cafe/restaurant in Chinatown Adelaide against a worker exposing wage theft sparked two Chinatown community rallies in the first week of February. The Chinese worker was hit in the face, knocked to the ground and kicked by the manager for demanding she be paid the Award wage instead of the $12 per hour casual rate she received!

This incident was filmed by another worker and went on social media. Not only did it spark the arrest and charge of assault against the manager, it sparked an outpouring of support for the woman worker and two rallies against wage theft.

The rallies were organised by two migrant groups, Fair Go SA and SA Labour Info Hub, with support from the Working Women's Center, SA Unions and affiliates and progressive Upper House Labor MP Irene Pnevmatikos.

The most important aspect of the rallies was the boldness, bravery and determination of the Chinese migrant workers who told their stories to the press and rally participants. Some were bold enough to identify themselves by name and their status as temporary overseas students from mainland China. One young overseas student said that research showed wage theft or wage swindle as it is sometimes also called was not just a problem in Adelaide's Chinatown. There are an estimated 170,000 migrant workers in Australia being paid as little as $12 per hour. In fact, one case involved an overseas student being paid $1 per hour!

Another spokesperson from Fair Go SA said that many migrant workers in Chinatown were reluctant to speak out because the employers blacklisted workers who they called "trouble makers" just for demanding their minimum rights under bosses’ laws!

However, the tide was turning and the very existence of the rallies in support of the young worker was a warning to employers and governments that wage theft and associated violence or threats of violence against migrant women workers would no longer be tolerated.

Migrant workers and migrant women workers in particular are a leading force within the working class in Australia in the fight for an independent and socialist Australia.

Farm Workers Getting Organised Against Big Wage Swindle

 Written by: Ned K. on 19 December 2020

Wage swindles with farm workers being paid piece rates less than even the minimum legal Award wage have been occurring for years. 

However, as Bob Dylan would say, "the times they are a-changing". Even now in 2020 there are reports of farm workers being paid piece work equivalent to $3 an hour (Australian Financial Review 16 December 2020).

Farm workers have traditionally been covered by the Australian Workers Union but they fell into the trap of focusing organising resources on bigger industrial worksites where there were large concentrations of workers in full-time employment and with a long tradition of unionism. Steel works, aluminium smelters and foundries were the priority and farm workers, whether picking mushrooms, tomatoes, potatoes or cherries for the Xmas dinner tables were put in the too hard basket. 

The majority of farm workers do not have continuous employment in the one place all the year round but follow the harvest times of many different crops. Many are new migrant workers but there is a significant percentage of farm workers who have worked in the industry for years.

Some of them started to look elsewhere for support to get organised and to put an end to the wage swindles and poor working conditions they had endured for years. 

The former National Union of Workers (NUW now UWU) had a more strategic approach and realised that farm workers are the first stage of the supply chain while at the other end of the supply chain, giant retailers like Coles and Woolworths  and large food exporting corporations have been the beneficiaries of the farm worker wage swindles. 

Progressive leader elements in the NUW, especially in Victoria, decided to answer farm workers' call for help, and to extend their organising resources from food processing factories and warehouse distribution of food products to farm workers.

Migrant communities in Victoria had seen that the NUW Organisers supported the migrant workers in the Baiada poultry processing strike in Victoria several years ago and this gave them hope that if they stuck together, these Union Organisers would support them too.

Farm workers across Victoria and South Australia started joining the NUW and won concessions from labor hire companies through collective action and media exposure of their poor working conditions. 

Workers won the right to become regular seasonal workers, with better accommodation and wages instead of piece work, including overtime. Most important of all though was that farm workers in their Union built enough collective strength to prevent the employers from paying them far below the minimum wage. Employers were utilising a provision in the Horticultural Award which enabled them to determine what "the average competent employee" meant for purposes of a farm worker being paid the Award requirement of piece work rate at least 15% above the Award minimum.  
Even a farm worker who an employer did deem to be an "average competent" employee would still not have to be paid overtime and there was no limit under the Award as to how many hours a farm worker could be made to work in a day or week.

As more and more farm workers organised, and the Australian Workers Union lost more and more members through plant closures and the decline of metal manufacturing industries, the Australian Workers Union, too, are focusing more on farm workers as potential union members.

This December the Australian Workers Union lodged an application with the Fair Work Commission to vary the Horticultural Award so that every farm worker, whether on piece work or an hourly wage, has to receive the minimum casual rate of $24.80 per hour.

Shame of the Gillard Government

When reporting on the Union's application to vary the Award, the Australian Financial Review revealed that when the Gillard Government was in office, it intervened in a Fair Work Commission case in support of there being no minimum rate for piecework farm workers in the Award!

Success in the Australian Workers Union application for all farm workers to receive a minimum wage will be a result of years of struggle by farm workers themselves and the support they have received from progressive leaders within migrant communities and the rival union, United Workers Union.

The more far-sighted corporations benefiting from the wage theft and resulting higher profits that have prevailed for years in the fresh food supply chains may be hoping that the Australian Workers Union's application to vary the Award minimum rate for piece workers will put the brakes on rising farm worker militancy.

Hopefully both Unions' leaderships work together in the interests of tens of thousands of farm workers to lift their wages and conditions above just the minimum Award standards, With over 100,000 farm workers in Australia and total union membership in the sector well below the 50% mark, there is plenty of room for both Unions to play a progressive role.

 

Young people shake up capital’s strategy to undermine communal strength

Written by: John G. and Louisa L. on 1 March 2020

Young people have inspired tens of millions into urgent climate action worldwide. In Australia the bushfire crisis seems certain to mobilise older people who have never taken collective action before.

Many ask why it has taken young people to lead, what happened to the mass collective action of the past?

For many, last century is a world away. But, in terms of individual lives, capitalism is long-lived. Those who seek to overthrow it need to understand where we’ve been and how we got where we are.

The post World War Two economic boom bred the relative industrial quiet of the 1950s. But in 1961, a short-lived credit squeeze put ten per cent of Australians out of a job. For many the Australian Dream of job security and  home ownership evaporated overnight.

Then, as now, capitalism’s failure came into sharp focus. Suddenly a much wider base existed for the growth of militant collectivism. Militant trade union leaders, many of them communist, inspired the working class to break the shackles on trade unions in 1969 and, with a phalanx of young people, lead wide political rebellion for quite a few years.

Naturally the U.S. - which had taken over as the dominant imperialist power from Britain after the latter’s abandonment of Australia in World War Two - step by step reinforced its position.

The CIA and a bit of history

Many progressive Australians see the first big blow to collective spirit and action as Whitlam’s overthrow in 1975, engineered by the CIA. ACTU President Bob Hawke nipped industrial action in the bud.

Hawke’s ascendancy had been supported by the U.S. embassy’s ‘Labour Attaches’ (code for CIA operatives) who in 1969 saw his then militancy and credibility as a way to head off mass worker struggles unleashed by the Penal Powers dispute the same year, led by our Vice Chairperson Clarrie O’Shea. (Humphrey McQueen speech ‘The O’Shea Struggle: 50 Years On’ 17/5/19 Spirit of Eureka) 

U.S. control of Pine Gap, plus CIA operations, went on undisturbed by the two questions Whitlam was due to answer about them in parliament the day after his sacking.

From then on, U.S. imperialist domination of Australia’s economy and culture and its reflection in actions by the state apparatus and parliamentary administrations - state and federal, Coalition and Labor - continued relatively unhindered.

Five years later Hawke entered parliament and in 1983 overthrew Bill Hayden, a former minister in Whitlam’s administration, as Opposition leader. Hayden famously said a drover’s dog could have won the 1983 election for Labor. More the CIA dog…

The Hawke-Keating administration lasted till 1996. It smashed a path through peoples’ collective strength – most notably the unions. Many union leaderships organised their memberships’ own disorganisation and disempowerment under the so-called Accord between workers and capital.

But a long economic boom provided the framework for mass acceptance of capitalism. Reformism thrived on this objective foundation.

Non-compliant and militant workers, unions, and political formations were systematically targeted by the Labor administration and the state apparatus of laws, courts, police and gaols as well as the cultural organs of media and educational institutions. The military threat was not needed, as former national solidarity won in the Penal Powers’ dispute was pushed aside by most union leaderships.

Unions were picked off one at a time.

The road to capitalism

On Christmas Day, 1991, the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites finally reached the inevitable decline to open restoration of capitalism. Begun in 1956 with Kruschev’s not so secret denunciation of Stalin, Communism’s image was further tarnished.

Alongside it, China’s advance along the path to capitalism flared up in the events of May 1989, though its origins are clearly earlier.

While our party, since its formation in 1964, condemned the former Soviet Union as a revisionist and then social-imperialist, we did not make the same analysis of China until far more facts accumulated. Ongoing criticisms and concerns crystallised at our 13th Congress in 2012. A resolution stated that the capitalist “restorationists in China have the upper hand” and that a trend towards imperialism, most notably the export of capital, was clearly developing.

In the minds of the Australian people, socialism and communism had failed. We - like all other avowedly left parties - demonstrated a lack of ability to lead at this time. Yet we continued to learn from and serve the people by involvement in mass struggles and to present communist analysis and guidance where there were openings.

The highway to war

In 2003, John Howard drove tanks down the highway Hawke and Keating’s administrations had prepared, strengthened by this so-called failure of communism.

A million people marched against Australian involvement in the invasion of Iraq. Well over 90 per cent of our people opposed this war without UN support. Our members worked in the coalitions that led the protests.

As in every war, Australia sent troops because our imperialist masters demanded it.  In Iraq, only the UK and Poland also marched to the U.S. war drums.
It showed capitalist democracy is a farce.

But such brazen rejection of an expressed majority demand and other similar government actions at various levels shoves down peoples’ throats an impotence, powerlessness, an inability to affect government action. The ruling class capacity to do this, to an extent, reflected the shallowness of the anti-war coalitions’ organisers connection with the masses.

At some level frustration, anger and a sense of passivity, depression, arise amongst those raising demands when they are unable to effect change. Their lack of agency in getting things done can become a feature of their understanding of their place in society.

Again and again, people have used the Iraq War as a reason for inaction. Who can blame them? It’s one reason unions eventually became so tied to parliamentary solutions focused on the election of Labor administrations. After all, the ALP was born after the ‘failed’ 1890s’ shearers strike.

Yet the people’s struggle against the Iraq invasion cemented Muslim peoples here as part of the Australian community. For decades it largely protected us from the ravages of terrorism. Ordinary Australians were not seen as the enemy. U.S. imperialism and its parliamentary puppets, Howard and co, were clearly exposed, for a time at least.

Systematic disempowerment

Australian capitalism is facing multiple crises. Young people face a future of insecure jobs, exclusion from the housing market, a rapidly deteriorating climate with harsh conditions, nature

(Above: Fair Work Ombudsman protest 2018)

That strategy cuts unions and NGOs, community organisations, out of the path to solving the problem. It takes opportunity to build communal power away and isolates the oppressed from power. 

It is designed to disempower community and build individual isolation. It also leaves the framing, the character, the range and lines of solutions, in the hands of government regulators, with all the inadequacies, narrowness and designed restrictions of that.

The strategy is being applied to many areas of social concern. The government’s privatisation of aged care services, in home care, social welfare, and disability services, defunding of the feminist movement’s established women’s shelters, all display similar approaches. Removing these from community control, initially favouring religious and institutional service providers, and increasingly corporate ones, again closes down fields of community organisation.

After the bushfires, the Business Council of Australia and its member corporations took matters into their own hands. On January 26, the CFMMEU opened a house it built for a member in Cobargo. A few weeks later and with much fanfare, the BCA trucked a whole demountable village to nearby Brogo.

The world’s big four tax-dodge-organising accounting firms particularly pepper boards of what would have once been Australian community organisations.

And – against the very spirit the Eureka flag represents – Lend Lease is taking the Australian

Building and Construction Commission to court to defend its workers’ rights to fly the flag. It sends a deceptive message that the flag and its history is no threat to the ruling class. Nothing could be further from the truth.

It’s got to go!

The lack of agency in resolving problems tends to leave community organisations’ views of injustices quite restricted in scope and depth. They may see some instances, but being excluded from deep investigation and from seeing all who come forward with cases of injustice, the scope and depth are somewhat hidden.

It means there is effectively some community influence and maybe consultation but little mobilisation and organisation. So, there is little room for community control and community development.

There is a need to adjust activists’ demands to incorporate building communal power, community control, as a priority in mobilising people. This means rethinking calls such as the one to criminalise wage theft.

Unions have thousands of field organisers across the country, with wage theft as one of their responsibilities. Government regulation restricts their right to see wages records, requires them to give notice of a site visit, restricts them to sites where they have members, and requires members to be identified, which hugely limits their access to fight wage theft. Campaigns against wage theft should highlight the opportunity empowered union organisations could make to stamping out wage theft, and contrast it with the Fair Work Ombudsman’s inability to attack it even if they were serious about it.

Similar things arise in many campaigns. Community control and action should be our watchwords. Appeal to government to establish agencies to solve problems should be anathema.

Young people have shown no fear in taking on the giant corporations that underpin U.S. imperialist rule in Australia. Rank and file activism is rising in unions, training new generations in how to fight and organise.

And a mood for revolution is growing. Capitalism has failed the people and the planet. It’s got to go!

under threat, industries collapsing, a declining education system and many other critical problems. Wages are forced down under the weight of declining rates of profit. Small business is squeezed by monopolies. Exploitation of the workers is ramped up. Many older women face retirement poverty. Capitalism is in crisis on many fronts.

The Morrison administration responds, building on the past disempowerment and cynicism of the people, and on anti-collective attacks launched by the intervening Rudd and Gillard administrations, to undermine demonstrated community organisation around demands.

This is no accident. Morrison has expressed it as one strategy to respond to various social demands. He is determined to head off rising demands by embracing them to a degree. For example, in response to wage theft outrage and union and community NGO action to hunt down the thieves, force payment and seek penalties, the government has created a pathway to seek redress through the Fair Work Ombudsman, as a government authority to investigate and prosecute wage theft.