The awesome foursome banks parasitic profits continue to rise

Vanguard June 2013 p. 9
Max O.

AUSTRALIA'S big four banks pocketed a record high half-year profit of more than $13.4 billion, after not passing on past interest-rate cuts in full, therefore collecting fatter margins from mortgages and through sacking thousands of employees. This is an overall 7.4 per cent increase on last year's interim profit levels, making the big 4 banks some of the most profitable in the world!

The profit results for each bank are as follows:

ANZ - $3.18 billion six-month cash profit, March 2013

Commonwealth - $3.8 billion six month cash profit for the half year ended 31 December 2012

NAB  - $2.9 billion six-month cash profit, March 2013

Westpac - $3.5 billion six-month cash profit, March 2013

Banks increase their capital power

Consequently this has pushed up the big 4s asset share values, with the largest increase going to the National Australia Bank whose shares rose 31 per cent higher since the start of the year, followed next by Westpac up 26 per cent, with ANZ up 19 per cent and the Commonwealth growing 14 per cent.

Money capital and the finance industry have grown enormously over the last 40 years. Finance capital is now so powerful it repeatedly obliterates industrial capital and workers' livelihoods as witnessed in the Eurozone with the Troika's -European Central Bank (ECB), the European Commission (EC), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) - implementation of austerity programs.

Marx on money capital

Marx methodically examined the operation of money and credit under capitalism in volume 3 of Capital way back in the 19th century: "The credit system, which has its focus in the so-called national banks and the big money-lenders and usurers surrounding them, constitutes enormous centralisation, and gives to this class of parasites the fabulous power, not only to periodically despoil industrial capitalists, but also to interfere in actual production in a most dangerous manner - and this gang knows nothing about production and has nothing to do with it. The Acts of 1844 and 1845 (The Bank Charter Act 1844 was an Act of the British Parliament which restricted the powers of the British banks to issue their own bank notes and gave exclusive note-issuing powers to the central Bank of England) are proof of the growing power of these bandits, who are augmented by financiers and stock-jobbers."

Banks in Australia have been notorious in raising their profit margins through the ruthless implementation of more than 7000 job cuts from 2012 to 2013, by the increase in bank fees of some 362% from 1997 (households paid $1.16 billion in bank fees) to 2010 (bank fees risen to $4.2 billion) and after refusing to pass on the full interest-rate cuts to customers. The big 4 held back about 27 basis points of the 150 basis point fall in the official RBA cuts in the past 12 months.

Competing for profits in a economic slump

However the good times for banks are coming to an end. Those in the finance industry who are in the 'know' are now starting to acknowledge that Australia is heading for what they euphemistically call "soft economic conditions", in other words an economic slump. 

Gail Kelly, the CEO of Westpac, stated: "I'm not negative on growth in our economy, I simply think we are going to have lower levels of credit growth,"...... "We need to be smarter in how we go about it and that will help support our earnings prospects".

Ratings agency Fitch reported that banks needed to keep increasing deposits and reduce their dependence on funding from global wholesale markets to meet the new international banking rules. The need to meet the Basel III accord has encouraged intense competition for deposits, pushing up rates for savers but lowering banks' margins.

So the race is on between the big 4 banks to increase the number of depositors and mortgages. Competition amongst the awesome foursome oligopoly has now seen them give the full RBA interest-rate cut of 25 basis points, with the ANZ going further giving 27 basis points cut in their interest-rates.

Making profits or meeting people's needs

As Nomura analyst Victor German stated, with a weak credit growth, pressures in institutional banking and high profits in mortgages, it "makes sense for banks to give up a little bit of margin and grow a little bit faster in mortgages. If we continue to see a situation where other parts of the business are just not growing, banks in my view will compete more and more aggressively for mortgages, which is still a very high and attractive earning business."

The Australian economy has been bottoming for some time and in particular the housing industry has been in decline with layoffs in both construction firms and building supply firms. Figures show that building approvals fell 5.5 percent in March this year.

Banking and finance capital profits should initially be subject to a super profit tax and then eventually nationalised. This is the only solution to capitalism's ongoing economic crisis and to meet working people's needs. But don't hold your breath waiting for the Labor or Coalition governments to carry out this solution. The Chiefly Labor government planned to do just this in 1947 and it was viciously opposed and defeated by the banksters, via the High Court on the basis of states' rights.

 It will only come when Australia achieves an independent socialist society.

Queensland laws spearhead national attack on unions

Vanguard June 2013 p. 9
(Contributed)

The Queensland Government is currently developing laws to further hobble and restrict the organised power of the working class in Queensland.

Court controlled ballots for industrial action, requiring more than 50% of members to respond, have been a huge burden imposed on trade unions.  They force unions to spend massive time, effort and funds in ensuring that members vote, in order for the outcome of the vote to be "acceptable".  First introduced in Howard's industrial relations laws, the  system has been kept in place by the Federal ALP government and introduced into some State systems as well, including Qld.

The Newman Qld Government is now taking this fetter on the working class one step further.  They have introduced a bill into the parliament entitled  Industrial Relations (Transparency and Accountability of Industrial Organisations) and other Acts Amendment Bill 2013

This law will make it compulsory for trade unions to hold the same sort of court controlled ballot if they plan any campaign costing more than $10,000.   In today's world, once printing costs, phone costs and labour costs are included, that will cover virtually any campaign that a trade union decides to organise.  The laws will be a template for use in other States and federally under a new LNP government

The Queensland Nurses Union are campaigning strongly against creeping privatisation of the health system.  Teachers campaign for better and fairer education funding.  State public servants campaign for maintaining public services.  Electricians and building workers campaign to maintain jobs and expertise in the public sector.

All of these campaigns are under threat by the proposed laws.  The Queensland trade union movement has started the long road of fightback.  The Queensland Council of Unions launched a campaign on Monday 20th May entitled "Save Your Say".  The website for this new campaign is www.saveyoursay.org.au .  

A QCU fact sheet on the proposed laws can be accessed at

http://standforqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Q-Watch-Fact-sheet-on-LNP-Bill-V2-BY.pdf

Defend cultural inclusivity - Defeat racist chauvinism!

Vanguard June 2013 p. 10
Sean O'G

For a person who projects the image of a simpleton, Bob Katter is quite a complex person.

He opposes privatisation, the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement and other aspects of global finance capital’s neoliberal agenda, voted to throw out Howard’s persecution police in the construction industry (the Australian Building and Construction Commission) and opposed the anti-union WorkChoices legislation.  He has helped bridge the gap between rural conservatives and the union movement through his invitation to Dean Mighell, militant leader of the Victorian branch of the Electrical Trades Union to speak at a Katter Party convention, and his subsequent invitation to Mighell, now retired from the ETU, to draft the Katter Party’s industrial relations legislation.  He is strongly opposed to the Section 457 visa scheme.

 

However, he is just as strongly committed to socially conservative views.  He is homophobic, and his opposition to 457 visas is couched in terms of “jobs for Australians” rather than the CFMEU’s more balanced opposition to rorts of the system, and support for overseas workers to migrate and become Australian citizens.

Complex social and historical base

His electoral base in northern Queensland embraces the best and the worst of the Australian experience.  It has been a stronghold of organised labour, but also the site of continuing frontier violence against Aboriginal Australians.  Meatworkers and others still talk about the Bloody Sunday events of June 29, 1919 when citizens rallying in support of jailed strikers were shot at by police.  Sixteen were injured.  But it was also the region where, 130 years ago, the notorious practice of “blackbirding” – the kidnapping and placing into virtual slavery on the cane fields of South Pacific Islanders – began.

With the monopolised corporation’s print and electronic media now in election mode, Katter’s new political party is organising and using Pauline Hanson’s strategy of xenophobia (fear of foreigners) and chauvinism, e.g., that Anglo and North-East European back-grounded Australians are culturally ‘superior’ compared to other ethnic and indigenous backgrounded Australians.

This is a dangerous a reactionary trend because it divides the working class.  Katter has played a positive role in opposing some reactionary laws and policies, but essentially his support for working people is an investment in securing their support for his party.  He is a temporary ally on some issues, but has no commitment to the overall unity of the working class and its leadership of the movement for anti-imperialist independence and socialism.

Online petition presents a reactionary viewpoint

Let us look at one specific case, the use of an on-line petition attacking a “Middle-Easterner,” a shopping mall owner who stopped the sale of Anzac Day badges on his retail premises.  The only outcome of this petition is division in the community through using fear of cultural difference based on ignorance, political naivety and racial prejudice.

Mr Katter and party know if they can manipulate some ignorant, xenophobic voters to support them, they can gain seats in parliament thus entitling themselves to hundreds of thousands of government taxpayer funds for future political campaigns, some of which will undoubtedly contain echoes of  Pauline Hanson’s bigoted ‘One Nation’ Party.

Online campaign petitions appealing for support based on prejudicial stereotypes or perceptions of any particular culture’s differences assist a tiny minority who already wield enormous power in order to further damage unity and good-will that exists between most Australians. They must not succeed in doing this, as it would exacerbate inequality, unrest and economic misery particularly for poorer taxpayers, who would suffer most, both socially and financially.

Advocate for inclusivity and class unity

Advocating for inclusivity and acceptance of cultural diversity in society and encouraging your friends and contacts to have an internationalist view is the just and ethical way to advance. Sure, some individuals are xenophobic, prejudiced, ignorant and intolerant, but this is to be expected since the two main political liberal-conservative parties in Queensland and nationally have in the past continuously discounted public education funding whilst plundering the public purse to turn elite private schools into virtual club meds for affluent electorates.

 However, revolutionary optimism is required to continually dispel prejudicial myths and erroneous ideas and consequently practice open-mindedness and advocate for cultural harmony. Incidentally, the monopolised corporate print and electronic media’s shock jock sensationalist reporting and bias, in collusion with far right-wing nationalist agendas has been an influential part of the underbelly of both Queensland and neo-conservative national political life.

 We have mentioned the Pacific Islander (Kanaka’s) slave trade and the dispossession and oppression of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islands’ peoples from their land. Queensland also experienced the undemocratic period of the Joh Bjelke-Petersen regime, when Australians who opposed the South African Springbok rugby tours were attacked and arrested. These tours were opposed by Australian anti-apartheid and anti-racist workers, students and other citizens who fought against the racist regime in South Africa and its racially selected teams. In addition, examples of reactionary and racist activities from the 60’s-80’s continued on with Comalco’s violent dispossession of the Aboriginal inhabitants of Weipa to make way for bauxite mining and campaigns  opposing Japanese business ventures in Cairns and the Gold Coast regions that often wrongly  took on a racist quality. Queensland was also the birthplace of Pauline Hanson’s racist One Nation party.

Finally, if as Katter and his party say, the owner of the Mt. Warren shopping centre made a decision against selling Anzac badges at his shopping centre, the badge-sellers could have taken their concerns to their council (Local Government Association), to appropriately put their concerns to be discussed and arbitrated on, and sold their badges on public property near the Centre.  

In conclusion, rather than stir up tension and racist, inter-ethnic rivalry as the Katter Party’s online petition suggests (through its reference to the owner’s non Anglo-European Australian cultural background, the badge-sellers should have campaigned by:

·         Writing letters to the local press, speakers on local radio / TV to convince the centre’s patrons to embrace unbiased and not racially prejudiced ideas.  Refer to justice and equality and  not attack  the owner’s cultural background

·         contact the suppliers of goods and services to the centre with the purpose of having a deputation to get the owner to negotiate a satisfactory response that meets the badge-sellers’ wishes (such as approving badge-selling between car parks and retail areas)

·         contact union representatives of the centre’s workers  to discuss industrial action such as strikes, slow-downs, walk-outs, rallies, demonstrations and bans against the shopping centre management’s decision  ( instead of  the owner’s cultural background) till discussions are held with the owner to arrive at a mutually agreeable outcome or change the owner’s mind.

·         contact other service groups to petition the local community through fair means (delete the mention of the owner’s ethnic back ground).

The working class has suffered in the past from so-called ‘patriots’ trying to usurp people’s patriotic sentiment and imposing their own supposed racial ‘superiority’ to generate support for wars initiated by either the British, European and United States of American imperial empires.

·         Unite for a culturally inclusive, independent, non-aligned republic!

·         Recognise the Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islanders’ and Eureka Southern Cross flags - the original indigenous and truly Australian symbols from the land rights, reconciliation and workers’ (miners’) struggles against corporate and governmental tyranny both past, present and for the future!

·         Demand and accept cultural diversity and inclusivity to unite the working class!

·         Stand up for and defend intercultural harmony!

457s and imperialism

Vanguard June 2013 p. 11
(Contributed by a construction worker)

(Above: Perth, February 2011, CFMEU members stand in solidarity with Chinese s457 visa workers)

Most Section 457 visa workers are decent working people determined to make the most for themselves and their families in the short period of time they are allowed to remain in Australia. These workers are being used through a system determined to force wages and conditions down for all other workers and in particular to restrict wage growth in boom areas like mining. 457 visa holders are also known as guest workers.

Guest workers have been used throughout the world in many countries to restrict the growth of unionism and organised labour and force wages and conditions down in those countries.

Ten years or so ago, an international conference of construction unions representing about 12 countries throughout the Pacific area discussed the problem of guest workers.

Regardless of which country was represented the same story emerged about guest workers undermining wages and conditions in each country and it may surprise readers that even the Chinese representatives had call to complain .

For years the union movement across the world has been confronting this matter and the associated social problems it is designed to create.

Workers from poorer countries move to wealthier neighbouring countries to take up work "no one else wants", while that country's workers would move to an even more wealthier country and so on and so on until eventually guest workers in the form of 457 visa holders eventually arrived in Australia. This issue didn't happen by chance: it is engineered by the ruling class as a tool to restrict wages and conditions of the working class and maintain higher profit levels.

Creating dissent and competition within the working class so workers are at each other’s throats is recorded throughout history. Henry Ford, the Fascist loving capitalist of the USA vehicle industry, made a point of employing Afro-American workers in his car factories in a time when this was unheard of. Not because he believed in equality and non- discrimination, but because he used the fears of white workers being replaced with cheaper paid black workers and encouraged dissent and competition between the two groups of workers to destroy any chance of unity and organised labour to improve wages and conditions.

Today in countries like Australia it is harder to be as obvious as it was in Henry Ford's time, but the same pattern of behaviour remains. Divide and conquer, the great imperialist tool devised thousands of years ago by the ruling elite and still practiced today. Just as the Afro-Americans in the Ford factories were prejudiced against and used to maintain disunity, today 457 workers are just another group being used in the same way.

Unlike our forefathers who arrived here with the promise of a future for themselves and their families, 457 visa holders are exploited for short term expediency, which is the problem.

Many of these workers are under the threat of being sent home if they make waves, including joining unions or speaking out of turn about OHS, or any other issue which might piss their employer off.

Even if a 457 worker is being ripped off and is prepared to stand up, if his/her employer is found guilty, the end result may well be the 457 visa holder is sent out the country because the employer is deemed to then be unsuitable as a 457 sponsor.

 

It is all stacked up against these temporary workers, unlike migrants, who have a long term commitment to their new country. As history shows, Australian migrants integrate into the community, buy or rent houses and all the products which goes with it, take an interest in the politics of the community, are prepared to voice their opinions, join unions and stand up for better wages and conditions and other issues which make for better societies.       

So we should not be condemning these 457 visa workers but supporting them, demanding that the Australian government immediately abolish the 457 rort.

Increase the opportunities for permanent migration of skilled workers and offer each existing visa holder the opportunity to stay in this country permanently with the right to bring their families here to join them.

Making contact with 457 workers is a good start to understanding how to combat the divide and rule issue concerning 457 workers, but we should not be blind to the many, many other ruling class tactics effectively used to divide and rule.

There is none more striking than the parliamentary farce which diverts people’s attention away from the cause to the effect.

The contradictions inherent within Imperialism are the cause.    

.......................
Further reading:  http://www.cfmeu.asn.au/news/make-the-457-visa-system-fair-for-all-workers-cfmeu

http://workinglife.org.au/2013/03/21/our-union-is-standing-with-457-workers-against-exploitation/

http://theredflag.ca/node/453  (for a statement on the same problem from a Canadian perspective)

Building workers hit the streets for safety

Vanguard June 2013 p. 11
Jim H.

On Tuesday 30 April Melbourne’s building industry unions held an important rally and march through the city.

It was to show respect for bystanders killed by the fall on the Carlton Brewery site project and for the crane driver who fell to his death on the Myer site. There were two minute silences at both places.

More than 30,000 building workers took part. Workers and delegates from other industries were there to give their support.

Both are workplaces run by Grocon, the construction industry’s most notorious repeat offender of abuses against the health and safety needs of both workers and the public.

 

On May 6 this year, Melbourne’s Age (hardly known for its tilt at the big end of town), reported that there were serious concerns about attention to health and safety, through 2012 and 2011 on the $200 million Docklands apartment project Tower 8.

An email last July from Mirvac’s Project Manager Dominic McCarthy to Grocon executive Frank Bortoletto and six others, stated “Grocon have little regards for the safety of its workers and that of others and that your site management are too intimidated to act accordingly…The breeches [sic] were evident and your management chose to deliberately and belligerently act in an irresponsible manner.”

Government officials and politicians have been bending over backwards to sweep the issue under the carpet. It was a scandal that Grocon had taken out the award for having Australia's best private sector workplace health and safety management system.

 

Building industry workers and their unions are not prepared to accept this. They want action in regard to Grocon and they want the whole industry cleaned up. On 30 April they left the message that they are prepared to fight for it.

This action and the promise of more to come, is very welcome indeed. Not only does it defend the rights of building workers, but all workers facing the threat of deteriorating working conditions and on job safety in the current economic and political climate. When workers act together they become an unstoppable force.

(Above: Victorian Trades Hall Council Secretary Brian Boyd addresses construction workers at the rally)

The march finished at Worksafe Australia, the body that is supposed to police job safety. The demand there was that its officials get off their hands and do the job they are supposed to do.

Of course, Worksafe Australia was never really set up to actually do anything. It is no more than a smoke screen; aimed at putting up the illusion that something is being done.

The track record shows the truth of this. Many are killed and maimed at work each year, often through deliberate neglect and cost cutting. Employers are very rarely punished. On the other hand, workers who speak up about health and safety issues are routinely victimised.

 

Regardless, the rally made it loud and clear that if Worksafe does not do the job, the workers, backed by their unions, will do it by building up their longer term campaign.

In the lead up to the rally there was vocal public condemnation of the unions and workers from representatives of the Victorian government. With this they laid bare on which side they stand. They are friends and protectors of Grocon and its kind.

No other response had been expected. Dirt like this has to be swept up and buried once and for all. The sooner that happens, the better it will be for everyone else.
................

Watch CFMEU video on Grocon:
http://www.cfmeuvic.com.au/campaigns/a-dispute-about-safety

Orchardists, factory workers stand together

Vanguard June 2013 p. 12
Jack D.

The Goulburn Valley agricultural area is in deep trouble.

The regional city of Shepparton is surrounded by dairy farms, orchards, some sheep and cropping plus smaller operations like poultry, pigs and so on. It is an irrigation area where water is a big issue. The shopping precinct shows just how bad things are with over one hundred shops closed, empty.

The Australian fruit industry does not compete on a level playing field in domestic or export markets. For example, the tariffs applied by China and the EU on imports are, on average 20%, while tariffs applied by Australia are 5% or zero depending on the source of the imports.

Given the fact that Coca-Cola Amatil now own SPC Ardmona, the regional cannery, the overriding interest is profit. As it is in the interests of the multinationals in general, and in the interests of manipulating Australia to allow greater and greater penetration of our markets by foreign cheap goods, a bit of hurt to one of their own (Coke Amatil) is tolerable. Is this a part of the softening up process of the people of Australia prior to forcing the Trans Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement on us?

The resulting cut to the fruit intake at the cannery means growers will be reduced to about half the normal amount of fruit. A significant number have been told they will not be able to send their pears in at all. Depending on what other fruit they may have, they may be forced to leave the industry or go broke.

The showgrounds rally

The effects of multinational manipulation of the Australian are the underlying cause for the recent rally organised by orchardist Teena Knight and SPC Ardmona (SPC A) worker and union member Lee Luvara. Both are among many who are dependent on fruit growing for their livelihood.

 

 

Facing the ever tightening financial situation, Teena and Lee with others organised a protest rally (above). At that rally, the desperation of the people of that area was palpable. It was obvious they are between a rock and a hard place. But let them speak for themselves.

Prior to the rally, Teena Knight said, “We need to band together to support the canners, the struggling suppliers and workers. We need to support each other. Bringing the fruit industry back to life will, in turn, keep our town alive.” She had said she hoped the meeting would be well attended. She was not to be disappointed. Over 1500 attended at very short notice.

Lee Luvara, the co-organiser of the rally, who is an employee of about 18 years with the company said, “At peak times we can have up to 1200 people come through SPC Ardmona as part of our seasonal workforce. If we see a reduction in the labour required, that means a reduction in income for the local small businesses.”

Lee also wants people to buy the Australian grown product more often. He said, “I’d ask people to think about the quality of what’s in that tin, and then to think about SPC Ardmona and the people behind it. That’s why we’re asking people to toss a (SPC A) tinnie in their shopping trolley.”

Lee also made it clear this was not the last people will hear about SPC Ardmona and that this (kind of struggle) will go national because of many small towns and industries across Australia.”

Orrevale grower Chain Sangha comes from generations of Indian farmers. The decision by SPCA to cut off his pear allocation could be the end. He couldn’t bear to watch last week as 400 of his canning pear trees were ripped out. After 18 years, and reaching the status of “gold” supplier, he was told his pears were no longer wanted. He said, “They might take some apricots and apples. They didn’t promise this. I don’t know what they are going to do.”

When a primary producer faces this situation and their produce is no longer viable as an income source, it is not simply like someone just losing their job, as serious as a job loss is. They lose their means of livelihood, future earnings, their home, their lifestyle, their provision for their old age, their children’s inheritance, their self-esteem and often their health and relationships.

 

 

At the rally there were other speakers, the mayor Jenny Houlihan, Bob Katter from Queensland (above) among them. Bob displayed a good understanding of the problems of foreign imports harming Australian agriculture and industry, has an understanding of the role of trade unions and is, within his class understanding of things, willing to work with all those willing to struggle for the interests of the Australian people. He was very good in the struggle to stop the privatisation of Telstra.

We can expect many more such struggles to be an ongoing thing across Australia both in industry and in agriculture, in regional towns and cities and in the capital cities as the push to get the TPPA passed by government intensifies. Should that ever be passed, this current level of struggle will seem like a tea party compared to what may yet be forced upon us.

 ................
Further information:

 

http://www.mmg.com.au/local-news/shepparton/rally-organiser-wants-to-shutdown-shepparton-1.48977#

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Save-SPCA-Australian-Made-and-Grown/189331717880694?directed_target_id=0

Unpaid work - capitalism's sleight of hand!

Vanguard June 2013 p. 12
Max O.

 

Capitalism continually endeavours to influence workers that it operates on the mantra - 'Fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay'. This disguises the fact that workers labour power creates not only value to reproduce themselves (wages to provide food, clothing, housing etc) but surplus value (profit) that the capitalists keep for themselves.

In addition to this is the obsession capitalism places on productivity. Workers are led to believe if they work harder, smarter and give away their 'obsolete' practices and entitlements everyone would be better off - business, workers and consumers.

Disciplining workers' labour-time

What capitalists are really on about is disciplining workers' labour-time. This is achieved by speed-ups, casualisation, time-and-motion tactics, piece-rates, undermining health and safety standards and unpaid overtime.

 

According to the Australia Institute, which recently commissioned a survey on work, full-time employees work 70 minutes of unpaid overtime during a typical day. Over a year that's 33 eight-hour days.  Another way to look at it is that it is more than the average employee's annual leave entitlement. The Australia Institute pointed out that this free labour is worth $72 billion a year to business.

These figures are backed up by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), who point out that more than a quarter (26%) of the nation's workers who work overtime are not being paid for extra hours. That is about 800,000 workers. The ABS published study also showed that one-in-three employees spend extra time at work.

The Australian Institute  survey shows that only one in five Australians are working the hours they want to work and that four out of five would like to reduce their working hours. In other words full-time workers want to work a lot less and part-time and casual workers want to work a lot more.

They claim that cutting back on overtime could create about 400,000 extra jobs and improve the health of workers. However we won't see the Business Council of Australia and their multinational backers consider these figures when arguing for another round of productivity improvements from the working class. They'll never acknowledge what they're got out of labour through the backdoor or by intimidation.

Productivity in the interest of Capital

Rises in productivity under capitalism, like profits, benefits capital not labour. When labour does get some crumbs, capital screams it is anti-productivity and will cause job losses.

For capitalists productivity and competition mean: When there is a high Australian dollar, manufacturers such as GMH lay off employees; airlines like Qantas seek mergers and carry out structural change, sacking huge numbers and leaving fewer to do the same amount of work; newspapers switch over to websites so journalists and printers are shown the door and conditions are lost; retailers panic over sales being taken away by Internet outlets, jobs are shed.

 

The only alternative is for the working class is to collectively unite and wield their labour power to their advantage. Ultimately it means transforming our country into an independent and socialist Australia!