Workers Issues in Australia & the Pacific
Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific
30 March 2013
Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific
23 March 2013
The World Socialist Web Site invites workers and other readers to contribute to this regular feature.
Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific
9 March 2013
The World Socialist Web Site invites workers and other readers to contribute to this regular feature.
Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific
2 March 2013
The World Socialist Web Site invites workers and other readers to contribute to this regular feature.
Union calls off Western Australian nurses’ strike
By Joe Lopez, 28 February 2013
Industrial action by nurses, drawing support from other workers, threatened to raise uncomfortable questions for the Liberal government, the Labor opposition and the union.
Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific
19 January 2013
The World Socialist Web Site invites workers and other readers to contribute to this regular feature.
Austrian billionaire Stronach launches new right-wing party
By Markus Salzmann, 6 December 2012
Given the increasing economic and social tensions in Austria, Frank Stronach stridently represents the interests of the financial elite and receives the support of business circles.
Book Review: Gough Whitlam: A Moment in History
An exercise in myth-making
By Nick Beams, 23 November 2012
Whitlam’s demise is presented as the downfall of a social reformer, almost totally ignoring the global context in which the 1975 Canberra Coup took place.
New Zealand mine disaster inquiry whitewashes government
By Tom Peters, 10 November 2012
The disaster was the outcome of the decades-long assault on the jobs, conditions and rights of workers aimed at boosting “international competitiveness.”
Union prepares to sell out Western Australian port dispute
By Terry Cook and Joe Lopez, 24 October 2012
The unsafe conditions on the waterfront are the legacy of decades of union betrayals.
Australia: Union/Grocon collusion against building workers
By Terry Cook and Peter Symonds, 29 September 2012
The agendas of the CFMEU and the Grocon construction company are fundamentally opposed to the interests of building workers.
Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific
8 September 2012
Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific
Australia: Construction union offers to end blockade at Grocon site
By Terry Cook and Mike Head, 5 September 2012
The union’s proposal has only encouraged Grocon to step up its legal actions against the blockade and spearhead a broader attack on workers’ conditions.
Australian police move to break building workers’ picket
By Terry Cook, 1 September 2012
About 100 police officers, some dressed in riot gear, massed at the Melbourne site from 3 a.m. Friday to “take control”.
Nixon-Whitlam tapes shed light on current Australian rifts over US-China conflict
By Mike Head, 30 August 2012
An essay documents acrimonious exchanges in 1972–73 between the Nixon administration in the US and the Australian government of Gough Whitlam.
Corruption scandals rock Austrian politics
By Markus Salzmann, 17 August 2012
A series of corruption scandals, mostly involving former right-wing government officials, is currently dominating political life in Austria.
Australia: Union shuts down warehouse strike, imposes sell out
By Patrick O’Connor, 25 July 2012
After deliberately isolating the workers, the NUW rammed through a regressive enterprise agreement that meets none of the workers’ central demands.
Coles warehouse strikers speak with Patrick O’Connor
By our reporters, 11 July 2012
At a Coles national distribution centre in Melbourne, 600 striking workers are enforcing a 24-hour picket, blocking trucks entering the facility.
Sydney rally against workers’ compensation cuts
By Zac Hambdies, 14 June 2012
The protest was a cynical attempt to divert the popular opposition to New South Wales government attacks on workers’ compensation and its austerity measures.
Australia: Victorian teachers strike over pay and conditions
By our reporters, 8 June 2012
Angered by the state government’s regressive demands, record numbers of teachers stopped work yesterday.
Workers Struggles: Asia and Australia
2 June 2012
Workers Struggles: Asia and Australia
Australia government intervenes into port workers’ dispute
By Terry Cook, 22 March 2012
The Gillard government with Maritime Union of Australia backing has stepped in to effectively shut down industrial action by Asciano workers.
Australian nurses’ union imposes real wage cut
By Patrick O’Connor, 17 March 2012
The overriding priority of the union has been to prevent the nurses’ dispute from becoming a political struggle against the state and federal governments.
Fair Work Australia imposes no-strike bans on Victorian nurses
By Richard Phillips, 25 February 2012
As soon as nurses began industrial action to defend wages, jobs and patient-nurse ratios, the Gillard government’s workplace tribunal declared their action illegal.
Australian coal miners strike over safety, wages and conditions
By Richard Phillips, 20 February 2012
The seven-day strike, the longest by BMA miners in more than a decade, is over management demands for cost-cutting trade-offs in a new enterprise agreement.
Australian coal loader workers continue industrial action
By Richard Phillips, 9 February 2012
Strikes are continuing at the Port Kembla Coal Terminal, while coal miners in central Queensland’s Bowen Basin voted last week to strike.
New Zealand port threatens to sack striking workers
By John Braddock, 21 January 2012
Ports of Auckland is seeking to shatter the conditions of its workforce in line with attacks on waterfront workers internationally.
Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific
21 January 2012
About 100,000 teachers from 24,000 non-government primary schools held a three-day strike on January 17 to demand that they be brought onto the government’s payroll. The teachers threatened to walk out over the issue in March last year and last December several thousand struck and demonstrated at the Shaheed Minar national monument in Dhaka.
Australian mental health workers maintain bans over wages and conditions
By Susan Allan, 19 January 2012
Mental health services are in profound crisis, following decades of chronic underfunding by successive governments at state and federal levels.
Australian maritime union delivers “productivity” demands to DP World
By Will Marshall, 10 January 2012
The deal follows DP World’s 24-hour lockout of workers in South Australia and threat to do the same elsewhere.
Schweppes Australia locks out workers
By Chris Sadlier, 30 December 2011
The pre-emptive lockout of the Schweppes workers in response to limited industrial action follows similar action recently taken by Qantas management and POAG stevedoring.
Union prepares to sell out Australian port workers
By Terry Cook, 23 December 2011
Having ended all industrial action following last week’s lockout, the union is now in backroom talks in the Fair Work Australia tribunal to deliver the productivity demands of the company.
Waterfront workers disgusted by Australian government’s intervention
By our correspondents, 23 December 2011
WSWS reporters spoke to port workers about the lockout by stevedoring company POAGS and the government’s intervention, backed by the union, to end all industrial action
Australian Labor government shuts down port workers’ dispute
By Terry Cook, 15 December 2011
Under conditions of a worsening global crisis, the government is acting on the demands of finance capital for sweeping cost cutting measures to ensure Australian-based corporations remain “internationally competitive.”
Australia: Union shuts down nurses’ industrial action
By Will Morrow and Patrick O’Connor, 26 November 2011
The ANF decision is an abject capitulation to the federal Labor government’s industrial relations regime and the state government’s agenda of slashing wages and conditions.
Australia: The political issues facing Victorian nurses
By the Socialist Equality Party (Australia), 23 November 2011
Tens of thousands of public hospital nurses confront an assault on their jobs, wages, and conditions that is being coordinated between the state Liberal government of Ted Baillieu and the federal Labor government of Julia Gillard.
Australia: Nurses continue industrial action in defiance of industrial laws
By Will Morrow, 22 November 2011
In defying the tribunal’s orders, the nurses confront the threat of having their wages docked, fines totalling thousands of dollars each and jail terms of up to 12 months.
Australian nurses’ industrial action banned by Labor’s laws
By Will Morrow, 18 November 2011
What is facing nurses in Victoria is part of the austerity agenda being imposed in country after country on workers who are being compelled to bear the brunt of the deepening crisis of capitalism.
Australia: Striking process workers resist police attacks
By our reporters, 15 November 2011
The union’s aim is not to improve wages or end the appalling working conditions in the poultry plant, but to extend its coverage and entrench its position in Baiada.
Australia: Union calls off Jeld-Wen strike
By Mike Head, 10 October 2011
On its web site, the CFMEU cynically described the return to work, affecting several hundred workers in four states, as a “breakthrough.”
Australia: Jeld-Wen strike into third week
By Mike Head, 23 September 2011
The door workers’ fight against pay-cutting flows directly from the intensifying global financial crisis that began in 2007-08, when it devastated the US housing market.
Toyota Australia executives threaten shutdown after strike
By Peter Byrne and Patrick O’Connor, 20 September 2011
Toyota is demanding that workers accept a new agreement that entrenches real wage cuts over the next three years.
Australian government’s cuts opposed by public sector workers
By Terry Cook, 14 September 2011
With the aid of the union, the Labor government is seeking to cut public service pay and conditions to help meet its pledge to big business to return the budget to surplus.
Australia: Thousands rally against NSW budget cuts
By Mike Head, 9 September 2011
The large turnout reflected an emerging determination among wide layers of working people to resist the assault underway on jobs, conditions and essential services.
Marchers discuss political issues raised by Sydney protest
By our reporters, 9 September 2011
WSWS correspondents interviewed some of the participants in yesterday’s 40,000-strong Sydney protest against the New South Wales government’s budget cuts.
Australia: NSW government launches public transport carve-up
By Mike Head, 7 September 2011
Transport for NSW—a new entity that will employ no staff—will have the power to contract out all public transport services.
Australian union to pay compensation to resources giant for strike
By Terry Cook, 6 September 2011
The $2 million payment is another pledge by the trade unions to keep workers straitjacketed within the framework of the Labor government’s punitive industrial legislation.
The Australian Workers Union, steel sackings and anti-China chauvinism
By Patrick O’Connor, 25 August 2011
In the name of protecting steel jobs by boosting the competitiveness of Australian steel at the expense of China, Howes is advocating an economic war that can only have devastating consequences for workers in Australia, China and internationally.
Oppose the BlueScope sackings! Fight for a socialist strategy to defend steel and manufacturing jobs
By the Socialist Equality Party (Australia), 24 August 2011
The fight to defend jobs will only go forward through a rebellion against the trade union apparatuses, which are working might and main to subordinate workers to the dictates of the company and the Labor government.
Australian pay tribunal awards token rise to low-paid workers
By Terry Cook, 21 June 2011
On the back of the paltry increase, the trade unions will continue to work hand in glove with the Gillard government to endeavour to suppress wage demands and deliver the dictates of business.
Australia: Thousands rally against attack on NSW public sector workers
By James Cogan, 16 June 2011
Workers demonstrated outside the New South Wales parliament yesterday against new laws that will allow the state government to dictate wage outcomes for some 400,000 state sector employees.
Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific
11 June 2011
Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific
Australian union chief pledges to help drive up mining profits
By Terry Cook, 10 June 2011
Addressing top mining executives, ACTU secretary Jeff Lawrence called for “tripartite planning body” where “industry, business and unions can and should work together with government.”
Australian community sector workers demand pay increases
By Will Morrow, 9 June 2011
Frustrated social and community services workers demonstrated in major Australian cities yesterday to demand higher wages.
Austria: Poll shows far-right FP as strongest party
By Markus Salzmann, 9 June 2011
According to a poll conducted in late May, the ultra-right Freedom Party of Austria (FP), led by Heinz-Christian Strache, has the highest level of support in Austria.
Australian unions hail “equal pay” ruling for community workers
By Will Morrow, 2 June 2011
The Gillard government has declared that any wage rise for female workers would be at the expense of other government-funded services.
Union betrays nine-week Australian PPG paint workers’ strike
By Margaret Rees, 1 June 2011
The union delivered all the central demands of the US-based company, including the introduction of a two-tier wage system.
Australian waterfront union capitulates, calling off industrial action
By Patrick O’Connor, 28 May 2011
The MUA’s capitulation underscores its determination to entrench itself as the enforcer of restructuring measures and productivity speed-ups on the docks.
Qantas prepares offensive on Australian workforce
By Terry Cook and James Cogan, 27 May 2011
Thousands of Qantas workers—from pilots to baggage handlers—sense that an offensive is looming that will see wholesale job losses.
Australian waterfront company steps up provocations against dock workers
By Patrick O’Connor, 26 May 2011
The dispute is regarded as a critical test case for the Labor government and its draconian industrial relations regime, Fair Work Australia.
Australia: Union enforces job cuts at Fairfax Media
By Terry Cook, 24 May 2011
Thanks to the collaboration of the union, Fairfax Media will now proceed with impunity to outsource sub-editing at its mast-head publications, the Age and Sydney Morning Herald.
Australia: Union prepares sell-out of PPG paint workers
By Margaret Rees and Patrick O’Connor, 18 May 2011
The company and the union have agreed to a new two-tier wage regime under which new hires will be paid 43 percent less than the existing workforce.
PPG workers speak to the World Socialist Web Site
By our reporters, 18 May 2011
“If we accept the two-tier wage system we’re going to start a chain reaction for other companies.”
Australia: PPG paint workers remain on strike as union pushes two-tier wage cut
By Chris Sadlier and Margaret Rees, 2 May 2011
The union involved, United Voice, is conspiring with the company to implement a two-tier wage system, involving new hires receiving a 43 percent wage cut, and other measures aimed at slashing labour costs.
Australia: PPG paint workers strike against 43-percent wage cut
By Peter Byrne, 21 April 2011
Over 120 PPG employees in Melbourne walked out last month to fight company demands that a new enterprise agreement include drastic cuts to new starters’ wages and conditions.
Qantas CEO escalates provocative campaign against workforce
By Alex Messenger and Patrick O’Connor, 21 April 2011
Qantas chief Alan Joyce denounced the resistance of pilots, engineers, and ground crew to his airline’s plans to undermine wages and conditions as “nothing short of a Kamikaze campaign.”
Australia: Maritime union calls off industrial action by port workers
By Terry Cook, 19 April 2011
The MUA, an unwavering supporter of the Gillard Labor government, is preparing to impose another betrayal of waterfront jobs and conditions.
Australian Labor government, Greens hail imperialist assault on Libya
By Patrick O’Connor, 21 March 2011
The entire political and media establishment has thrown its support behind the drive to oust the right-wing Gaddafi dictatorship and replace it with a client government amenable to the strategic and economic priorities of US and European imperialism.
Australia: Gillard government’s laws used to shut down strike by desalination workers
By Margaret Rees, 10 March 2011
Construction workers walked off a major water desalination plant near Melbourne and were immediately threatened with massive fines under the Labor government’s anti-strike laws.
Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific
5 March 2011
Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific
Australia: Qantas pilots vote for industrial action to defend jobs
By Terry Cook, 23 February 2011
In a bid to fight the company’s aggressive cost-cutting, Qantas pilots have authorised their union to organise industrial action to insert a job security clause in a new enterprise agreement.
Australia: Reject the New South Wales nurses agreement
By James Cogan, 15 February 2011
Nurses should reject the deal that the New South Wales Nurses Association has struck with Premier Kristina Keneally’s state Labor government.
Australia: Union enforces sweatshop conditions at Foxconn’s Sydney plant
By our reporters, 11 February 2011
Angry Foxteq workers condemned the union’s role at a recent meeting, where the deal was presented as a fait accompli, with workers given no right to read the document or vote on it.
The Bavarian state bank’s corruption scandal
By Michael Schneider and Markus Salzmann, 26 January 2011
Caught in a whirlpool of corruption, businessmen and politicians involved in the BayernLB scandal are conspiring to make the working class pay for the state-owned bank’s losses.
Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific
22 January 2011
Taxi drivers in two central Chinese cities are on strike to protest new local government policies which they claim will damage their livelihood.
Australia: Electrical union promotes right-wing MP Bob Katter
By Patrick O’Connor, 20 January 2011
The Victorian branch of the Electrical Trades Union last month presented Katter before several dozen construction workers at Melbourne’s new children’s hospital, where the MP chauvinistically denounced “free trade” for sending Australian jobs to China.
Australia: New South Wales nurses union shuts down action over staffing
By Zac Hambides, 14 January 2011
The nurses union agenda is to use a mandatory ratio as a selling point to lull nurses into accepting a behind-the-scenes deal being worked out with the NSW state government.
Australia: National Union of Workers sells out six-week Swift meatworkers’ struggle
By Margaret Rees and Frank Gaglioti, 13 January 2011
While the Swift meat workers were locked out on December 3 after rejecting company attempts to slash wages they were deliberately isolated by their union for nearly six weeks.
Australia: Union shuts down picket of locked out meatworkers
By Margaret Rees and Patrick O’Connor, 28 December 2010
The National Union of Workers shut down a picket of 140 cold storage workers at a JBS Swift meatworks plant in the western Melbourne suburb of Brooklyn on December 22.
Australia: After police attack, unions betray two-week Visy strike
By our correspondents, 21 December 2010
Whenever police arrest striking workers, the unions “condemn” the attack whilst using it to intimidate its members into accepting company demands.
Australian meat workers locked out in dispute over wages and conditions
By Chris Sadlier, 21 December 2010
Swift’s attack is part of a wider offensive against the working class in Australia and internationally, involving the use of police and other state agencies.
Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific
18 December 2010
Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific
Australia: More than 70 striking Visy workers charged, but unions prepare sell-out
By our reporters, 17 December 2010
In the most serious police attack on Australian workers for two decades, 71 Visy workers have now been charged with “besetting a premises” and obstruction for picketing during a strike over an enterprise bargaining agreement.
Australia: Unions betray seven-week Prysmian strike against casualisation
By Mike Head, 17 December 2010
The outcome of the protracted strike highlights the role played by the unions in Australia and worldwide in isolating workers’ struggles.
Australia: Visy strikers denounce mass picket line arrests
By our reporters, 14 December 2010
In a major strike-busting operation, scores of police armed with batons and pepper spray arrived to arrest workers.
Australia: Striking Visy workers arrested on picket line
By Richard Phillips and Tania Baptist, 13 December 2010
Visy Board has responded to industrial action at its Victorian and New South Wales plants with an organised attack on striking workers.
New Zealand: Former Pike River Coal miner hits out at lack of mine safety
By Tom Peters, 10 December 2010
While the bodies of the 29 men killed in New Zealand’s Pike River mine remain trapped inside, a former miner there has spoken out, insisting that the disaster was caused by the company’s neglect of workers’ safety.
Australia: Unions stifle struggle by NSW nurses
By James Cogan, 9 December 2010
Since a state-wide strike last month, nurses in New South Wales have been diverted away from a genuine political struggle against the funding crisis of the public health system into dead-end government-union negotiations.
Australia: Visy workers strike over casualisation
By Richard Phillips, 7 December 2010
Visy Board workers in Sydney and Melbourne are on strike against the giant packaging corporation’s attempts to expand casual employment and undermine job security.
Australia: Prysmian strikers face growing dangers as unions maintain isolation
By Mike Head, 6 December 2010
Now on strike for six weeks, the 200 workers at the Prysmian cable-making plant in Sydney face the threat of being ordered to return to work under the Gillard government’s anti-strike laws.
Staff members stood down at two Australian universities
By our reporters, 4 December 2010
Academics and other staff members have been stood down without pay this week for withholding exam results at two Sydney universities—the University of New South Wales and Macquarie University. Both managements are aggressively pursuing the Gillard government’s market-driven “education revolution”.
Australia: Prysmian workers stand firm as they enter fifth week of strike
By Mike Head, 27 November 2010
After nearly five weeks on strike, workers at the Prysmian cable making plant in Sydney remain determined to resist the company’s demands, which are part of a global offensive against workers.
Growing anger over New Zealand mine deaths
By Tom Peters, 26 November 2010
One week after the initial explosion at the Pike River Coal Mine, mining experts, relatives and friends of the 29 dead miners have condemned the company’s unsafe practices and its failure to carry out a rescue operation.
Australia: Labor moves to tighten coercive industrial powers after construction worker acquitted by magistrate
By Terry Cook, 25 November 2010
The Gillard government and its construction industry watchdog, the ABCC, have pledged to overcome a legal technicality that was yesterday used by an Adelaide magistrate to acquit South Australian construction worker Ark Tribe on charges over his refusal to be interrogated by the ABCC.
Australia: Desalination workers challenge attempt to cover up spying affair
By Patrick O’Connor, 23 November 2010
Construction workers at a desalination plant site in Wonthaggi, Victoria yesterday took an important and principled stand when they voted to remain on strike, in defiance of pressure from the trade unions to resume operations.
Australia: Striking Prysmian workers fighting global “restructuring” offensive
By Mike Head, 20 November 2010
For all the government and media hype about a mining-based boom, the Prysmian dispute shows that workers in Australia face the same kind of corporate restructuring as their fellow workers in the US, Europe and worldwide.
Australia: Desalination plant workers strike over corporate spying revelations
By Patrick O’Connor, 20 November 2010
Construction workers in Wonthaggi, Victoria have gone on strike after revelations that the company in charge of the project had mounted a covert and allegedly illegal spying operation targeting militants and aimed at preventing industrial action.
Australia: Sydney Foxconn workers expose sweatshop conditions
By our reporters, 13 November 2010
Workers at a fully casualised sweatshop factory in Sydney’s western suburbs this week revealed the Depression-style conditions imposed by their employer, a subsidiary of the global computer assembling firm Foxconn.
Australian cable workers in third week of strike against restructuring of conditions
By Mike Head, 11 November 2010
In a battle against the wholesale restructuring of their conditions, workers at the Prysmian cable plant in Sydney have been on strike for three weeks. The unions have isolated their struggle.
Austrian government adopts austerity budget
By Markus Salzmann, 9 November 2010
At the end of October the Austrian grand coalition adopted a rigid austerity budget which involves massive social cuts.
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