The US and its imperialist allies are doing everything they can to overthrow the democratically elected government of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. Trump has declared that Maduro is no longer president. He has also stated “that all options are on the table”. Trump wants a puppet regime that will take orders from Washington.
Trump has formally recognised Juan Guaidó, leader of the defunct National Assembly, as interim president. Guaidó was, until his election to the assembly and Trump’s endorsement, almost completely unknown in Venezuela. Trump has stated that the assembly is the “only legitimate branch of government duly elected by the Venezuelan people”; he and the domestic opposition parties claim there is a constitutional crisis.
Maduro has called for his supporters to resist this coup at all costs. Diplomatic relations between the countries have been severed. The Lima group, a pro-US bloc of 14 states in the American hemisphere, have called for “a democratic transition in Venezuela”, i.e. regime change. The attempt to oust Maduro is also supported by most EU member states.
Venezuela is surrounded by hostility. With the rise to power of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, the election of a right wing neoliberal government in Peru and the demobilisation of FARC in Colombia, a proxy war or direct military intervention by the US is possible.
The opposition in Venezuela may have won international endorsement, but in Venezuela they are deeply divided and are mostly a dangerous rabble of right wing self-seeking opportunists. The right in Venezuela are emboldened. They have for the last 20 years done everything they can to de-stabilise the pro-worker governments of Hugo Chávez and Maduro, resorting to extreme acts of violence, terrorism, drone attacks, assassination of government supporters and even an attempt on Maduro’s life. They have destroyed food, sabotaged social programs and burned people alive. 
Only days after Guaidó declaring himself president, an illegal cache of machine guns, assault rifles, radios and phones was shipped from Miami to Valencia in Venezuela. The opposition, if it were in government, would carry out savage attacks and repression against the left in probably the same way general Pinochet did in Chile in 1973.
This has not prevented supposed leftists from seeking a seat at the table of the opposition. Marea Socialista met with Guaidó to offer their services to legitimise the opposition and call for a consultative referendum on Maduro’s presidency and to restore the constitution. 
Such an approach, given the threat of war, is a terrible mistake. A referendum would simply further US interference in Venezuela’s affairs. While Guaidó has claimed he has acted according to the constitution, it clearly states an interim president can take power only if there is an “absolute power vacuum”. It also clearly states the post belongs to the vice-president, who is Delcy Rodriguez – one of Maduro’s closest supporters.
The opposition do not care for the constitution or democracy. Guaidó’s US-backed National Assembly has passed a “Democratic Transition Statute” that gives Guaidó unlimited legislative power – if he were able to exercise it. What the international media fail to note is that there have been numerous democratic elections in Venezuela. Maduro was elected president on 20 May last year.
The opposition claims that the elections were fraudulent and the mainstream media repeat this lie ad nauseam. Maduro was elected with 68 percent of the vote, and carried 31 percent of all eligible voters. Compare this to Trump, who carried just 26 percent of eligible voters in 2016, and Barack Obama, who won 28 percent of them in 2012.
Four international election monitoring missions ratified the Venezuelan result. The opposition mostly boycotted the election, refusing to unite behind their main candidate, Henri Falcón. We should not be fooled: Venezuela’s “fraudulent elections” are like Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction”.
Jorge Jorquera in a recent Red Flag article, “<a href="https://redflag.org.au/node/6668">The battle for Venezuela</a>”, wrote: “Democratic and left forces worldwide must lend every effort to oppose the imperialist intervention and help give Venezuelan workers every chance to bring their might to bear on the government and crush the opposition’s coup attempt”. He then outlined that the main source of discontent in Venezuela results from “corrupt reformist forces” within the government, which he describes as a puppet of an “insidious capitalist bureaucracy”. 
Such a narrative feeds into the claims of the opposition – that the government is corrupt and undemocratic. It conflates all the problems the country is facing with the economic policies of the government. 
But it is what is omitted from the article that is more problematic. The corporate media around the world blame the crisis in Venezuela entirely on Maduro’s government. Maduro’s real crime is that he presides over a country with the largest reserves of oil in the world. The US wants that oil. As John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser, stated on Fox News: 
“It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.”
That is why for the last 20 years it has waged an economic war on Venezuela. Hyperinflation, due to black market activities, has rendered the currency, the bolivar, worthless, destroying the purchasing power of Venezuelans. Hoarding by the Venezuelan bourgeoisie – which is aligned with the opposition – has added to this crisis, denying Venezuelans basic necessities.
The economic blockade initially imposed by Barack Obama, who declared Venezuela “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States”, has been strengthened by Trump. It is never mentioned. Venezuela’s development and democratic norms are judged as if the blockade never existed, as if the country could freely develop, despite the crippling obstacles it faces. This is despite US hawks such as Bolton using the economic situation to justify intervention.
The sanctions have led to billions of dollars, gold and other assets being stolen from Venezuela and stored in US and European trusts and banks. The sanctions deny the ability of Venezuela to trade in US dollars. More than 7 million barrels of crude oil are held in tankers at sea with no destination. Just like a siege around a medieval castle, these sanctions starve and kill its inhabitants; they are an act of war. However Venezuela is governed, there is no avoiding the impact of these sanctions.
When UN special rapporteur Alfred de Zayas visited Venezuela, he said, “Canadian and European Union ‘economic warfare’ has killed Venezuelans” and noted: “The sanctions fall most heavily on the poorest people and demonstrably cause death through food and medicine shortages, lead to violations of human rights and are aimed at coercing economic change”.
In such a situation, without extensive international solidarity from more technically advanced and wealthier nations, the advance of the Bolivarian revolution in terms of achieving workers’ power is impossible. All activities of the government are subordinate to the national defence and the distribution of goods to meet the basic needs of its people, who are engaged in a daily struggle for survival.
At such a critical conjuncture, when the country is facing invasion, it is not our role to appraise what the government should or shouldn’t do. We should support the principles of self-determination and respect Venezuela’s sovereignty. We should do what we can to prevent imperialist aggression. We should, irrespective of any criticisms we may have of Maduro, mount a campaign against our own government here in Australia, which has refused to recognise the legitimate presidency of Nicolás Maduro and has aligned itself with the warmongers of US imperialism.

Andrew Martin

Stop Trump’s coup in Venezuela!

A red V8 SS Holden Commodore rolled off the Elizabeth production line in Adelaide on 20 October – the last of 7,687,675 Holdens produced in Australia since 1948. It marked the end of an era, with Toyota already ceasing local production in September and Ford in 2016.
On the last day, Holden and the union that covered the auto workers, the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union, thanked them for their efforts. It seemed that market forces had played their hand and made the closure inevitable. These were good jobs that had provided for generations of workers, but “consumer tastes” have changed. Nobody wanted to buy these big old dinosaurs.
It is true that smaller four-cylinder cars are more popular today. The reasons for the closure, however, go beyond consumer tastes. For one thing, Holden had been manufacturing small four-cylinder cars since the Sunbird in the 1970s, through to the Cruze in 2016, all of which sold well.
The reasons for Holden’s closure are primarily the neoliberal economic policies of the Australian government and the economic rationalist decisions of the US giant, General Motors. GM calculates that there are greater profits to be made by centralising production in much larger factories with cheaper labour and greater automation. In the end, it showed no loyalty to its workforce.
Throughout its history, Holden has traded shamelessly on Australian nationalism. No other brand in Australia has evoked such a high level of parochial support. Yet Holden is not Australian. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of GM – a southern outpost for the US auto giant. The famous 1970s jingle, “We love football, meat pies, kangaroos and Holden cars” was a straight lift from GM’s “I love baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet”.
GM made huge profits out of Australia and did it with significant government support. Holden had initially started manufacturing cars from GM mechanicals with its own bodies. During WWII its manufacturing capacity increased substantially, because it began making boats, torpedoes, anti-tank guns and aircraft engines. The war pressed home to the capitalist class the need for a local manufacturing industry in order to be competitive and to extend military influence throughout the Asia-Pacific region.
GM was in the right place at the right time. Postwar prime minister Ben Chifley arranged for more than £1 million of bank loans to help establish it in Australia. At the unveiling of the first Holden, he remarked: “I came to an understanding with General Motors Holdens that they would engage in what, for a country of this size, is a very gigantic venture”. This understanding was on terms that the government itself would never enter into car manufacturing or restrict the type of vehicles GMH would make. GM, putting in £1 million, had that investment returned 200 times over in less than 35 years.
This was a time when butter, petrol and tea were strictly rationed. Fridges, telephones and washing machines were largely the preserve of the upper classes. Most of the highway between Brisbane and Sydney was gravel. Holden would provide new jobs, new skills and economic security for thousands of workers arriving from around the world.
“Australia’s own car”, the first Holden, the 48-215, was not cheap. Priced at £742, it cost twice the average annual wage, yet Holden couldn’t make enough of them. Built well, rugged and relatively modern, they sold well. By 1950, Holden was producing 100 cars a day and couldn’t keep up with demand. It was making a 7.4 percent profit, a rate unheard of in auto manufacturing. By 1958, Holden had nearly half of the market and was growing. By 1963, it produced more than 180,000 cars a year, employing 22,664 workers. A Holden was rolling off the production line every 40 seconds.
For GM, manufacturing in Australia made a lot of sense, bringing an expansion of its model range and a more intensive penetration of local and surrounding markets. It reduced freight, insurance and other costs such as tariffs. It dominated locally, and embarked on an ambitious export program. By the mid-’60s, Holden was exporting parts or cars to 61 countries.
This success was the result of ruthless exploitation. Its Fishermen’s Bend factory in Melbourne became known as a “gold-plated sweatshop” – a modern factory where work was controlled by the worst Taylorist methods. Union members did not win the right to hold stop-work meetings until 1958, and the company exercised oversight of the Vehicle Builders Union (VBU) – which later became a division of the AMWU. Union organisers were given very restricted access and could not inspect the factory.
GMH was manufacturing with advanced machinery and materials, but the productivity increases that drove its profit growth in this era were due to factory floor speed-ups, or “the hurry-up”, as they were known by migrant workers. Assembly line speed meant that workers were given only seconds to perform complex tasks. New workers were given little training and expected to perform their duties at the pace of ordinary workers within 24 hours. Nothing stopped production, not even calls of nature. It’s little wonder that the auto industry became a pressure cooker.
With more and more speed-ups, tension spilled over into strikes, puncturing the company’s puffed up egalitarian image. In 1963, following the lead of striking Ford workers in Melbourne, 1,700 workers in Holden’s NSW factories demonstrated with banners that read: “We want time to go to the toilet” and “We want time to drink a cup of tea”. The strike lasted 10 days. It won basic union rights and a tea break.
Encouraged by this action, and by a wave of strikes in the US auto industry, thousands of workers at Fishermen’s Bend struck in October 1964. The dispute was sparked when foundry workers were refused a £4 a week pay rise. Their discontent spread, and a demand for £3 a week more for all workers was raised.
The Victorian Trades Hall Council called a mass meeting at Festival Hall, and 6,000 workers participated. The recommendation of the disputes committee, strongly influenced by metalworkers in the AEU, was to strike until all demands were met. The announcement was met with an explosion of cheers, applause, whistling and embracing – the workers had grasped newly found power.
GMH responded with sackings, inflaming the dispute, which spread to all of its factories. The strike lasted for four weeks, involving hundreds of meetings around the country. Tens of thousands of pounds in strike support funds were raised from across many industries. Assured of the support of the Menzies government, the managing director of Holden, David Hegland, told workers that GMH would “fight to the finish” rather than grant any pay rises. Unions were fined more than £9,500.
The VBU and Australian Council of Trade Unions became overawed with the difficulties of the struggle. Instead of increasing organisation (in NSW they refused even to hold meetings), the union officials covering the majority of labour called for a return to work. In the end, the workers were worn down, and through a secret ballot voted for a return. Most workers, sensing a sell-out, refused to participate in the ballot.
The strike ended in defeat, but it laid the bedrock for all future struggles to improve wages and conditions more generally in the auto industry. The workers refused to accept that their working conditions and low wages were inevitable. If the closure of Holden today had been met with the same spirit of resistance, the workers would have had a much better chance of securing their livelihoods.

Meat pies, kangaroos, class struggle and Holden cars

Ice cream manufacturer Streets, owned by Unilever, is the latest company to apply to terminate its enterprise agreement with its workforce. Workers at the Streets factory in Minto, south-west of Sydney, could be forced back on to the award if Streets wins its case at the Fair Work Commission.
The Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union, which represents the 178 skilled production workers whose agreement is on the line, says that award wages are up to 46 percent lower than under the agreement. Under the award, workers would also lose a number of important conditions, including some annual, personal, parental and compassionate leave entitlements and redundancy payments. The company will be able to ignore existing restrictions on the use of contractors and labour hire and changing shift patterns.
The workers produce all major Streets ice creams, including Magnum, Golden Gaytime, Paddle Pop, Cornetto, Splice, Callipo, Bubble O’Bill, Blue Ribbon and Vienetta. The union is calling for a boycott of Streets ice creams and will be campaigning throughout summer to raise awareness of the dispute. It is calling for a “Streets-free summer” and will target major events, such as the cricket, with a message about workers’ rights.
Negotiations for a new agreement started 18 months ago. The company has been pushing for a 4 percent pay cut and the scrapping of longstanding conditions. Before the company went to the commission to strengthen its hand by tearing up the existing agreement, workers had voted overwhelmingly to reject the company’s sub-par offer.
According to Stephen Murphy, AMWU site organiser, the factory is producing record tonnages of ice cream products. The workers know that the push to cut their wages is driven only by greed. They are refusing to submit to the company’s ultimatum.
The dispute is shaping up to be another major test for a union movement facing off against a renewed employers’ campaign to wind back long standing wage rates and conditions. As with the months-long brewery dispute at CUB in 2016, Streets workers can target popular consumer products to publicise their struggle.
Concerned about the impact of a campaign against its brands, Streets has already taken the extraordinary step of issuing a memo to workers that bans them from reacting to the union’s social media posts. The company has even threatened workers with consequences if friends or family are found to be posting about the dispute.

No Gaytimes this summer: union calls for ice cream boycott

Aurizon, formerly Queensland Rail, is closing its Rockhampton workshops and slashing 126 train crew positions. The decision is a major attack on the working class of central Queensland. Aurizon, which is one of the country’s largest rail freight companies, said the cuts were a “result of varying customer demand in the resources sector”. Train crews were given two weeks from the company’s 31 May announcement to accept “voluntary” redundancy or transfer to other depots, or face forced redundancy.
Aurizon wants more flexible crewing arrangements based on contract labour. In total, 181 jobs will be cut from its Queensland workshops. In Mackay and Townsville, 62 jobs will go, on top of hundreds of job losses last year. The closures will be in stages until the workshops are finally phased out in 2018.
The Rockhampton workshops are used to service, maintain and overhaul the railway rolling stock that carts coal, livestock and agricultural produce such as grain and raw sugar from central and far north Queensland. For 150 years, Rockhampton has been known as a rail town. Since 1910, the ALP has been the bedrock of political life, but the 2010 privatisation of Queensland Rail (QR) by the Bligh Labor government sorely tested that loyalty.
Union leaders expressed shock at Aurizon’s announcement. The Rail, Tram and Bus Union called it “a low blow” and “un-Australian”. A 25-year-old fitter, Shaun Jones, employed at the workshops since leaving school, explained his dismay to the ABC: “I’ve got a young family, a young lad and just started a mortgage last year, so thinking my job would be something that I’d have to see me well into my career as a fitter and turner to be pretty much taken away, it was gutting”.
The state secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union, Rohan Webb, called it a dark day for the Rockhampton community. “Aurizon has chosen to put greedy profiteering above the interests of the Rockhampton community”, he said. He’s right.
Aurizon is shipping record amounts of coal. Its share price has never been higher. Aurizon announced in February that it had increased its underlying earnings by 21 percent, taking its total half-year profit to $488 million. Projections are that it will earn $955 million this year.
The company’s top executives are awarded bonuses and salaries that rival those in the big banks and mining companies. CEO Andrew Harding, former Rio Tinto boss, takes home around $6 million a year.
Justifying the cuts, top Aurizon executive Mike Carter stated: “Aurizon needs to continue to change in line with what our customers need if we are to remain competitive. Historically, most of our train crew have been permanent full-time employees and we have been unable to match fluctuations in weekly and monthly demand”.
There have always been shifts in demand for rail freight. Drought, recession and population movement can cause fluctuations. What doesn’t change, day to day or month to month, is the need for workers to be paid so they can live.
A LEGACY OF ATTACKS ON WORKERS
The privatisation of QR in 2010 laid the groundwork for these attacks. The privatisation was part of a $15 billion suite of asset sell-offs pushed through by the state Labor government, including Queensland Motorways Limited, the port of Brisbane, Forest Plantations Queensland, the Brisbane, Mackay and Cairns airports, and the Abbot Point Coal Terminal.
Coal and freight were sectioned off from QR and renamed Queensland Rail National and later Aurizon. It was a multi-billion dollar gift to big mining interests, which would have needed to spend hundreds of billions to build the rail network from scratch. Aurizon’s executives were mostly former big mining goons, who have filled their pockets with the loot from Queensland’s vast resources.
Since privatisation, Aurizon has waged a vicious anti-union war on the long-held and hard-fought-for conditions of rail workers. But when the question of privatisation was in the balance, the plan faced little resistance from trade union officials, apart from a feeble publicity campaign that focused on lobbying members of parliament.
In 2009, a joint union campaign of industrial action would have created a crisis that had the potential to stop the handover. There was a basis for a genuine fight, one that could have drawn in active community support. Several opinion polls registered community opposition to Bligh’s fire sale at more than 90 percent, one showing that two-thirds of Queenslanders would support industrial action to stop the sell-off.
Within the maintenance workshops, there were frequent calls for the AMWU to organise action. Employing the most powerful weapon in the union movement’s arsenal – halting the transportation of coal across the country – was never countenanced. Instead, the AMWU state secretary, Andrew Dettmar, also president of the Queensland ALP, channelled rank and file resistance to privatisation into meetings between union delegates and sitting members of parliament, who were unmoved by the arguments of rail workers.
Today, AMWU secretary Rohan Webb speaks against this new round of cuts, but when the option was there, he resolutely opposed union members waging a campaign of industrial action to stop privatisation. Instead, he wanted the focus to remain on the union’s media campaign aimed at a Queensland public that was already firmly opposed to privatisations.
FIGHTING BACK
Despite the pressure from union leaders, rank and file maintenance workers did take strike action against privatisation. We couldn’t stop the sell-off but managed to push back some of the worst proposed attacks on wages and conditions for all QR workers, including holding onto an important “no forced redundancies” clause.
After privatisation, a series of voluntary redundancies meant that the most experienced and union-conscious workers, who could see the writing on the wall, left. Supporters also left the ALP in droves, and union leaders were unable to mobilise their membership to campaign for the party in the 2012 state election. The result – 27 percent of the primary vote – was one of the worst in Labor’s history. Anna Bligh has since gone on to take up the role of chief lobbyist for the banking industry, confirming her credentials as a shill for big business.
The workers who were left at Aurizon, demoralised and defeated because of the failed anti-privatisation campaign, were attacked again. In 2015, Aurizon asked the Fair Work Commission to terminate 12 existing enterprise agreements. The commission complied, finding that it was “appropriate” that Aurizon’s workforce be kicked off their enterprise agreements and onto award rates. This landmark ruling set a precedent for many to follow, including Griffin Coal and Murdoch University in Western Australia. Workers at Aurizon lost thousands of dollars while a new agreement was being negotiated. They also lost their “no forced redundancies” protections.
Speaking to workers at the front gates of the Rockhampton workshops after its closure was announced, Webb again committed the union to a familiar strategy: a plan to avoid confrontation at all costs. The union will lobby politicians and argue against the closures in the media. This is a strategy that has had its day. It was tried in 2010 and it failed.
On the back of years of defeat, if Queensland rail workers are to build a fightback, they will be starting from a long way back. But Aurizon’s success in squeezing its workforce can’t be a reason to give up. It only makes it more urgent that the union take a real stand and mobilise workers to defend their livelihoods.

Rail workers still paying for the privatisation fight that never was

Seventy workers in the Victorian border town of Echuca are holding out against an aggressive attempt to gut their wages and conditions. The Parmalat factory, which usually manufactures dairy products, has been shut for more than 40 days due to a lockout imposed by the company. It has also asked the Fair Work Commission to terminate the existing agreement. If its application wins, Parmalat – whose Australian operations took in $1.6 billion in 2015 – will be entitled to put its workers on to award rates of pay.
The workers have set up camp outside the gates of the factory, protesting their treatment. The unions representing workers, the AMWU and ETU, remain in negotiation to settle the dispute. “At every meeting the members have become more and more determined for a just resolution and refused to be intimidated by the bullying tactics of Parmalat”, AMWU organiser Tom Hale told Red Flag.
There are a number of issues on which the company has so far refused to budge, including a clause relating to contract labour. The company wants to be able to contract labour, at its discretion, to undertake maintenance tasks. This would undermine union power, conditions of work and safety standards at the plant. As the agreement currently stands, the company must consult with the unions covering maintenance workers before engaging contractors. Union members have also rejected a clause that would allow the company to employ new workers on lower pay and worse conditions than existing staff.
Despite numerous meetings with the unions since the lockout, the company has refused to drop these claims and is continuing to try to bully the workers into submission. It recently arranged to turn the water off at the taps that were supplying the camp.
The company has ridden roughshod over the unions by issuing a secret ballot asking the workers to approve an agreement that does not have union endorsement. As predicted, the agreement was rejected, but workers also used the opportunity to compile a “lockout top 10” playlist which included Bruce Springsteen’s “No surrender” and “The no no song” by Ringo Starr.
The Fair Work Commission has also tried to conciliate the dispute, but the workers are standing firm and want their right to bargain collectively respected.
“Members want to hang on to their existing conditions and are not going to give in without a fight, but this is about much more than pay and conditions, this is about justice in the workplace and the right to be represented by a union”, Hale said.
The Parmalat workers’ camp is being supported by donations of food and supplies from workers at nearby factories. They are also seeking solidarity from Parmalat’s other sites at Bendigo and in Brisbane, where production from the Echuca site has been transferred. Both sites are covered by the NUW.
The lockout has been a costly exercise for the company, workers estimating that it’s costing $90,000 a day in lost production.

Parmalat lockout: workers hold firm

The investment phase of one of the biggest mining booms in world history continues to wind down. Tens of thousands of jobs were shed from the industry in the two years after the boom’s peak in 2013. Earlier this year, National Australia Bank predicted 50,000 more would be lost as investment continues to decline over the coming two or three years.
The centre of the boom, Western Australia, is now reeling. The state has lost 64,000 jobs, and unemployment is 6.5 percent – a steep rise from a 4.5 percent average over the past decade and now the highest in the country. A walk through Perth past high rise apartments and imposing city office blocks gives a stark reminder of the many opportunities lost: high rates of homelessness, mental illness and growing listlessness among unemployed youth are immediately apparent. The end of the boom portends a bleak future for workers here.
Regional towns are decaying. Unused railway tracks criss-cross the wheat belt while roads have been left to deteriorate. Increasing rates of suicide, substance abuse and road accidents scar the lives of teenagers in rural areas. With the exception of some select areas frequented by tourists, rural towns increasingly look like places from the rust belt of the US. The Pilbara has been especially hard hit. One shire president told the ABC in March: “We’re pretty much devastated … families are just packed up and gone within a month. Empty houses everywhere”.
Boom times
The boom was largely driven by Chinese demand for iron ore and coal. The scale of the mining expansion was unprecedented. Australia racked up an extra US$1 trillion in exports over a 10-year period; $300 billion was added to government revenues. The price of iron ore reached an astounding $180 per tonne. The dividends to the mining companies were so large that the ALP Rudd-Gillard government called them “super-profits”.
In 2000, the total value of bulk commodity exports (hydrocarbons, minerals and metals) was just under $45 billion, according to BIS Shrapnel figures. By 2012, the figure had more than quadrupled to $188 billion. Huge engineering works dramatically increased the capacity of the mines as companies invested in infrastructure that hadn’t been substantially improved in decades. The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics estimates that nearly $360 billion was spent on expansion projects.
This boom fuelled a massive expansion of new housing stock as people migrated to WA in search of work. Perth housing was growing at 70,000 a year by 2012. Median house prices in the hot, dusty and remote town of Port Hedland peaked in 2013 at $925,000. Wages grew at the peak of the boom at almost 5 percent per year.
Grand theft
The development of WA has long been shaped by its vastness, its isolation, its mineral wealth and its integration into the global economy through exports of primary commodities. Larger than Western Europe, it lacks the same integration with the national economy as other states. It is the most parochial state, with sentiments of secession rising during the mining boom. State premiers forever play to feelings of Western Australian exceptionalism.
A handful of plutocratic tycoons such as Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest and Gina Reinhart exert considerable influence over state political affairs. Along with Sam Walsh, CEO of Rio Tinto, and Marius Kloppers of BHP, they were instrumental in getting rid of the federal Labor government’s proposed Resource Super-Profit Tax, spending $22 million in six weeks on a PR campaign that toppled the leadership of Kevin Rudd.
With the federal ALP government caving to mining magnates, the rich did very well. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the total pre-tax profits earned by mining firms operating in Australia were more than $51 billion in 2009-10. So how much tax did they pay? The Australian Institute estimated that the effective corporate tax rate of mining companies was only 13.9 percent, well below the average of 21 percent.
It’s estimated that total government subsidies to mining corporations reached $10 billion a year – including such things as discounted or free water and electricity and rebates on diesel fuel, all of which they use in colossal quantities. There are lax environmental regulations and very little scrutiny of the impact of mining. The construction of airports, roads and other infrastructure associated with housing the mining workforce is often done at state expense.
The companies also receive direct government investment in research and development and geological mapping. On top of that they claim accelerated depreciation on all their assets and receive tax write-offs for capital works. To say mining companies enjoy generous tax deductions would be a great understatement.
BHP took avoidance to extremes. During a Senate inquiry into corporate tax avoidance, the company revealed that between 2006 and 2014, it paid a tiny US$121,000 on profits of $5.7 billion. It channelled its sales of bulk commodities through a special “marketing hub” established in Singapore. Through the scheme, BHP buys resources from its Australian operations and resells them at a higher price internationally. The profits declared in Singapore are virtually tax free. BHP admitted in the Senate inquiry that more than 40 percent of its on-sale commodities were not subject to tax in Australia.
Bust
Politicians acted as though the boom would forever deliver mountains of wealth to state and federal treasuries. But from late 2011, the price of commodities began to fall; a huge collapse ensued, the commodities price index more than halving by the end of 2015, with only a slight recovery throughout 2016. Writing at the Conversation, University of Western Australia professor Richard Heaney noted in late November:
“The Western Australian economy posted a dismal 0.7 percent growth in Gross State Product per capita in the year 2015-16, a number shared only with Queensland. Further, WA’s Real Gross State Income – a measure that also includes adjustment for purchasing power, was actually negative in the year 2015-16, at -6.4 percent. The next worst performing state was again Queensland, although it at least achieved a 1.1 percent growth rate.
“The impact of decreasing capital expenditure is particularly evident in the State Final Demand figures – a measure of domestic demand. Demand in Western Australia actually shrunk, declining 4 percent.”
The chance to reap significant social rewards from the boom has been squandered. The WA government is now in debt and is selling assets to try to balance the books. Not only have people stopped migrating here, but there’s now an exodus. Interstate migration numbers dipped from a net inflow of 8,898 in 2012 to a net outflow of 3,005 in 2015. International migration is following a similar trend.
During the boom, Perth experienced the highest population growth of any city in Australia, with a record number of houses being built in sprawling suburbs based on large estates that have no trees, green spaces, amenities or access to public transport. These are the future ghettos, with high levels of mortgage stress, housing that is bland, featureless, inefficient, poorly designed and dislocated from the centre of the city.
Home lending has dropped by 8.6 percent, and the rate of mortgages that are more than 90 days in arrears has doubled in one year. Mining town property values have dropped by as much as 78 percent, and building approvals have dropped by almost 25 percent, according to the ABS. The “mining state”, as it’s commonly called, recorded the largest increase of insolvencies in all Australia in June. The number of debtors in Perth rose 22 percent in the June quarter. Rockingham has been dubbed “the most bankrupt region in Australia”.
No other advanced capitalist country in the world squandered its resource boom quite like this. The end of the price and investment boom was always going to happen, but there was nothing inevitable or natural about the consequences of its collapse.
The period ahead will be marked by greater precariousness for workers. We have already seen evidence of this in an industrial dispute at Griffin Coal in Collie. The agreement covering maintenance workers was scrapped by the Fair Work Commission “in the public interest”. This sent workers back to the Black Coal Award, slashing redundancy and super entitlements, cutting wages by 43 percent and removing their even-time roster.
The union representing the maintenance workers, the AMWU, stayed strictly within the confines of the law and observed all the dictates of the commission, muting any sort of resistance, refusing to picket the entrance of the mine. What could have been the start of a fightback against anti-union laws and austerity turned into a miserable defeat.
Admittedly, the union had not faced such savage attacks in decades and has not been able to keep up with the rapid shifts in the industrial landscape. At a delegates’ conference in Fremantle, AMWU state secretary Steve McCartney described the unravelling of the boom and attacks on workers as the “new normal”, and indeed that is how industry heads describe it.
We should resist this sort of language. “New normal” reinforces the idea that workers have to put up with austerity and job cuts without fighting back. The big mining companies will look at the Collie defeat with glee and without fear of a unified explosion of working class resistance to its restructuring drive.
While the investment phase of the boom is over, the production phase is still on – export volumes remain at record highs even with price declines. Productivity levels have risen sharply as new operations finally come on line after years of the construction phase. So the mining companies are still raking in billions – looting the future of Western Australians.
It’s important to reflect on the missed opportunities of the boom and the defeats of mining workers so that we recognise that each fight against job cuts and austerity is significant and is the staging ground for a more united resistance that can win back the ground that has been lost.

From boom to bust in Western Australia

Maintenance workers at the Griffin coal mine in Collie, Western Australia, went on strike for 24 hours as part of protected industrial action for a new union agreement on 24 June after the company forced through a 43 percent pay cut. The wage reduction affects 70 maintenance workers. Griffin Coal argues that “overly generous conditions” have made its business unsustainable.
Lanco Group, which bought the mine five years ago for $740 million, claims that it has suffered $300 million in trading losses. However, it will not release any profit and loss statements to the AMWU, the relevant union, saying that the details of its finances are “commercial in confidence”.
The company claims that it faces geological issues, with a high water table and multiple coal seams making extraction of the coal difficult and costly. The coal is also of poor quality, contaminated with sand and clay.
Its biggest complaint, however, is having to pay workers a decent wage. There is not a single entitlement or condition of employment that it respects. Salaries, overtime, rosters, breaks during shifts, use of contractors, staffing, redundancy payments, superannuation, travelling allowance, personal leave and long service leave are all issues that the company wants the Fair Work Commission to amend.
The company withdrew from discussions for a new agreement after 12 months of negotiations. It was seeking a 26 percent pay cut and an extension of the working week by seven hours. The company’s proposed agreement was rejected by 91 percent of workers. Enraged by the workers’ defiance, the company applied to terminate the existing agreement. Fair Work agreed without reservation. Under the Black Coal Award, the workers will be around $50,000 a year worse off.
They will also have superannuation entitlements stripped back, lose income protection and death benefits and have termination and redundancy pay reduced. The proposed shift rosters are disruptive and could be changed any time the company sees fit. Many of the workers have more than 20 years of continuous work; some have more than 30.
In his ruling, Danny Cloghan, the Fair Work commissioner, stated, “Unproductive, inefficient, inflexible and unprofitable businesses do not remain in existence as some sort of societal right”. Fair Work says it is in the “public interest” for Griffin Coal to maintain its profitability.
The legal precedent for terminating workplace agreements in the “public interest” goes back to the privatisation of Queensland Rail, Australia’s largest rail freight operator. Along with the name change to Aurizon, the company went on an anti-union offensive and, with the backing of the full bench of the Fair Work Commission, terminated 12 enterprise bargaining agreements in the middle of negotiations.
Cloghan reprimanded the workers for making submissions that gave “little consideration to the interests of Griffin Coal”. In his ruling he stated: “In bargaining, the parties have a complex relationship with reality”. He mentioned two workers by name – Mr King and Mr Chappel – and singled them out because they are close to retirement: “Intuitively, I consider it fair to conclude that Messrs King and Chappell will be less impacted by termination of the maintenance agreement than the person with short service [who is] starting a family and … in a different segment of the normal financial life cycle”.
So under the pretext of the greater good, Cloghan stripped away their hard won entitlements, leaving them in a situation where they’ll have less chance to retire in any sort of dignity after more than 30 years of exposure to black coal, diesel fumes, solvents, extreme weather and excessive strains and stresses from a dangerous work environment.
The decision to cut the maintenance workers’ pay will have flow-on effects to the town of Collie, which relies on income from the mine. The agreement covering mine operators is also due for negotiation this year. These workers are represented by the CFMEU, which faces an uphill battle to retain pay and conditions if the maintenance workers lose this fight.
With a local economy that’s already contracting, the mine workers of Collie face a crisis. Those in debt will be unable to sell their houses, which have no chance of retaining their value. The lay-offs that will follow will compound this problem further.
Workers at the other coal mine in the town, run by Premier Coal, have been in negotiations for several months. On hearing of Cloghan’s ruling, Premier Coal has pulled everything off the negotiating table.

Anxious times for coal miners

An unfamiliar scene played out recently at Brisbane’s port. On 15 February, in the middle of the night, six train cars, each 25 metres long and wrapped completely in plastic, were unloaded from the hull of a ship. The carriages will be used on the South East Queensland Rail Network.
In the past, Queensland’s passenger trains have been manufactured by a joint enterprise between Bombardier and Downer Rail at a facility in Maryborough, north of Brisbane.
The new trains are manufactured by Bombardier in Savli, India. To produce these locally and to the government’s deadline, Downer Rail would have needed to double its workshop capacity and rapidly expand its workforce, hiring more than 1,000 workers for the project’s duration.
There is a generational divide between those who have actively participated in industrial campaigning and the democratic functioning of their union and those who have little awareness of trade unions at all.
Manufacturing the trains in India ensures that Bombardier can sidestep a unionised workforce that would demand entitlements on termination of the project.
The decision is a slap in the face to those workers left at workshop in Maryborough. It is a facility in which electric trains have been produced for almost 40 years. It is yet another blow to the union that covers those workers, the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union.
Growth and retreat
The AMWU can trace its origins to 1852, when the Amalgamated Society of Engineers first met on board the immigrant vessel Frances Walker in Sydney Harbour. The union has a long history of fighting industrially for the pay and conditions of metalworkers, campaigning for social justice and advancing the interests of the entire working class.
It was once considered the most powerful left wing union in the country. Under the centralised award and arbitration system that characterised Australian industrial relations until the early 1990s, the metal trades awards set the pace on wages and conditions. Then, the AMWU was at the forefront of important industrial battles – campaigns that were led from the floor – including for a 35-hour week.
For more than 130 years, the AMWU enjoyed uninterrupted growth. Others looked to it as a model for recruitment, training, organisation and leadership. By the 1990s, it had a membership of 200,000. It was then one of the largest organisations in Australia.
Like most unions in Australia, the AMWU has been in steady decline for 30 years. In the 1980s, the Prices and Incomes Accords between the ALP, big business and the unions neutered industrial militancy; wage rises were limited by arbitration courts on the promise of social gains that never transpired. The introduction of enterprise bargaining in 1992 further fractured workers’ industrial power by limiting activity to individual shops and workplaces.
Award rates have stagnated since then, and national campaigns to improve working conditions or wage rates are only a memory. AMWU membership has dropped to around 80,000.
There is now a critical generational divide between those who have actively participated in industrial campaigning and the democratic functioning of their union and those who have little awareness of trade unions at all.
Manufacturing in Australia
The demise of train manufacturing is not unique. According to ABS figures, an average 1,900 manufacturing jobs were lost every month between 2007 and 2013. In 1966, manufacturing accounted for 26 percent of the Australian workforce. By 2013, it was 8 percent.
The job losses have been widespread. By 2017, all car manufacturing in Australia will have ceased. In 2013, both Downer Rail and UGL stopped manufacturing diesel-electric freight locomotives. It is unlikely that electric passenger trains will be made in Australia beyond the next decade. The last white goods manufacturer, Electrolux, is set to close its doors this year. With a glut of steel and aluminium on the world market, every steelworks and aluminium refinery has wound back production.
Shipyards are idle. There is hope that the billions of dollars promised for war machines by the current federal government will bring production back to Australia. But there’s no guarantee. The Turnbull government recently announced that two new supply ships will be built in Spain at a cost of $1 billion.
‘Times have changed’
As if we need to be told, Paul Bastion, AMWU national secretary, wrote to members in February to announce that “times have changed” and that the union is reviewing its operations and structures.
The review was undertaken at the end of 2015 by former ACTU secretary and ALP parliamentarian Greg Combet, and company director turned corporate consultant Andrew Whittaker. Their document presents the idea of a major restructure as inevitable given the difficult circumstances the union faces. The authors and backers of the review are counting on a demoralised and disinterested membership letting its recommendations through.
The review predicts that AMWU membership will fall to 45,000 by 2020. It recommends scrapping the union’s divisional structure and centralising power in a national office. It calls for state and national secretaries to have the power to hire and fire union organisers. Currently, most organisers are elected by the membership.
While the review admits that “most AMWU members now and in the future will likely never see an organiser”, it imagines that better use of the internet can compensate sufficiently. “The union needs to provide a transparent value proposition for the membership fee – and it can do this in a cost-effective manner through digital-based communications and services”, Combet and Whittaker write.
One of the most significant proposals to come out of the review is the suggestion that consideration be given to amalgamation. While no other unions are named, it is understood that the ETU, NUW and United Voice may be candidates for a merger with the AMWU.
There is no doubt that the AMWU is at a critical juncture. Unfortunately, this review looks likely to entrench further our decline, not turn it around. The review offers nothing in the way of plans to rebuild rank and file engagement or strengthen our industrial base.
It agonises over the purpose of the union in a hostile climate. It never once considers the potential for a fightback. It characterises the union as a “value proposition” that would be improved if it diversified the “services” and “products” it offers.
Not a single mention is made of the restrictions on the right to strike. Yet there is no other way out of this quagmire but to fight, even if it means relearning every lesson that has been forgotten as our union has fallen to its knees.
Our struggle on the shop floor is now – as it always has been – our main weapon. Any changes to the union have to be aimed at strengthening organisation on the ground. What is needed now is the reinvigoration of the union’s democratic structures, not their removal. The measures proposed by the review will only further alienate the rank and file, who are the only force that can play a decisive role in rebuilding the union’s strength.

AMWU review proposes major changes as membership falls

After more than nine months of negotiations, workers involved in the construction of Chevron’s Barrow Island liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant have secured a new collective agreement.
The deal was struck by the AMWU, ETU and CFMEU and covers more than 3,000 workers. Chevron does not employ any construction workers directly, so the new agreement is made with its infrastructure and construction contractors.
The major sticking point in bargaining had been the unions’ demand for “family friendly” rosters for the exclusively fly-in fly-out (FIFO) workforce. Prior to reaching the new agreement, they worked a punishing roster of 26 days on the island and 9 days off.
Situated 50km off the Pilbara, in Western Australia, Barrow Island is one of the most remote places in the world. It is a hot and harsh place where some of the strongest wind gusts in recorded history have been registered.
In the early 1800s it was used as a site for slave trading of Aboriginal people. From the 1880s it was mined for guano. Crude oil has been extracted there since 1967.
It is now the site of the biggest resource project in Australian history. Chevron’s LNG plant will have cost $55 billion by the time of its completion. It is set to mine 15.6 million tonnes of gas every year. 
The island’s FIFO workforce is housed in accommodation on the island or on an old cruise ferry, the Europa. With limited phone and internet services, it is difficult for workers to communicate with friends and family at home.
Research at Edith Cowan University has shown that the incidence of depression among FIFO workers is more than double the rate in the general population. A number of workers on the project have committed suicide in the accommodation camps.
Despite the strain of the existing roster, the campaign for a new agreement was initially slow to get off the ground. Union membership rates on Barrow Island were low at first.
“Recruitment [to the unions] started in the ones and twos”, explained Dave Fox, AMWU construction organiser. He spoke to Red Flag about how the dispute developed. “We’re at the point now where just two weeks ago 91 people joined the AMWU in one week. This was in the face of some very petty acts of intimidation by some of the construction firms”, he said.
“Notices were sent out to workers pressuring them not to take industrial action and to report any ‘coercion’ from union delegates or organisers. Questionnaires were sent to all workers asking if they would participate in any industrial action … they claim this was to determine industrial capacity, which is just laughable”, Fox said.
He explained how the unions and their members grew numbers and built strength over the campaign. “[At first] some of the contractors had offered a roster of 26/9 with a 3 percent pay rise. We didn’t have the numbers then to pull on a strike, but the whole site knocked it back, giving us a good base to build from.
“By April we were ready to strike, but the commissioner stepped in, putting a halt to any action. At that stage we were offered 25/10, which was voted down. The next offer was 23/9, which was also voted down.”
With negotiations appearing to stall, Fox says union members voted by an overwhelming majority to strike. A deal was reached hours before union members – by then a clear majority – were to down tools on 4 September. 
“A compromise of 23/10 was put on the table with a 5 percent pay rise”, Fox said. “This was taken to the membership and accepted by majority vote.”
After a long fight, the union says the Barrow Island agreement will now be the benchmark for other major resources projects with a FIFO workforce. “Inpex, Roy Hill, Wheatsone and future expansions are next.”

FIFO workers win new roster on Barrow Island

The eastern goldfields in Western Australia were a turbulent place at the turn of the 20th century, a hotbed of militancy and the centre of labour politics in the state.
Women had a tough time getting recognition here. According to the social mores of the time, they were expected to cease paid work once married. But many worked to overthrow the notion that a woman’s sphere was a simple four-room dwelling.
Foremost among them was Jean Beadle, a trailblazer who quickly gained a reputation for her feminist ideals, agitational abilities and social conscience.
Born in 1868, Beadle quickly became acquainted with hardship. She left school early to care for her widowed father and worked in the clothing trade in Melbourne. She married militant iron moulder Henry Beadle. They both became dedicated socialists committed to the cause of labour. After they were blacklisted, the Beadles relocated to WA in 1906.
Beadle was shocked by the conditions that women faced and set about organising the Eastern Goldfields’ Women’s Labour League (EGWLL). It brought together women in a range of occupations and was more than just a union. It sought to educate and train women as activists. The league also held socials and dances, which often raised funds for strikes.
Although the league was never large, it became so influential that the vice-president of the Australian Labour Federation (the precursor to the ALP), A.E. Green, remarked in 1911, “It is the most powerful organisation of its sort in the state.”
Men were allowed into the league, but at a higher membership fee. They could speak, but had no voting rights and could be asked to leave the meetings.
One of the league’s first tasks was to organise for the provision of maternity beds in the hospitals on the goldfields. Beadle spent much of her time writing for the papers and journals of the labour movement. She was often sought out to speak at trade union meetings and held many positions in the federations and trade union councils of the goldfields.
She was most concerned with the situation of women shop assistants. The league campaigned for legislation that would give them some protection. A male shop assistants union had already been formed but would not admit women.
In time, they were forced to rely on Beadle when shops in Boulder increased work hours and reduced the pay of their employees. Beadle was able to form a union. She remarked that those who attended its meetings were young girls and asked the question in the Westralian: “Where were all the older women who did all the complaining?” Because victimisation of women unionists was terrible, Beadle constantly was in dispute with employers over unpaid wages.
Women wore their union badges proudly. Other unionists would insist on being served only by a union member. This enabled women to secure their jobs in a precarious environment.
Employer organisations called for deregistration of unions representing women. They scorned women’s suffrage and in the daily papers singled Beadle out. “Who’s minding the baby?”, asked one. The employers’ reaction was to no avail. The solidarity of women held fast as their conditions continually improved. A procession of the EGWLL defiantly proclaimed “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.”
In the conservatism that comes with war, many of the unions that Beadle helped organise did not make it through WWI. Despite that, and despite being absorbed into the ALP like many militants of the time, she left behind a legacy of lifting up a whole generation of women activists who not only could take their place in the union movement, but led it.

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