As the genocide in Gaza rages, the Palestine Solidarity movement in Australia has proven itself to be the largest and most sustained anti-war movement in decades. We’ve seen massive and consistent weekly marches, historic high school <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/school-students-give-lesson-solidarity">walkouts</a> and disruptive protests of <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/activists-perth-strike-blow-against-israeli-shipping-company-zim">docks</a>, shopping centres and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/07/melbourne-cup-pro-palestine-protest-israel-hamas-war">racetracks</a>, alongside many community events. 
To date, seven Victorian councils, representing more than one-fifth of the population of Melbourne, have passed motions calling for an end to the onslaught, and community campaigns in several others have motions in the works. 
The federal government continues to support Israel. So local councils have emerged as lone government supporters of the Palestinians.
In recent years, councils have increasingly <a href="https://theconversation.com/beyond-roads-rates-and-rubbish-australians-now-expect-local-councils-to-act-on-bigger-issues-including-climate-change-199861">weighed in</a> on broader political issues, including solidarity with <a href="https://alga.com.au/australian-local-governments-stand-in-solidarity-with-ukraine/">Ukraine</a>. But showing this same basic solidarity with Palestinians runs counter to the priorities of Australia’s imperial interests, and political lines have been drawn at each stage. 
Socialist councillors in Merri-Bek and Maribyrnong, in Melbourne’s inner north and inner west respectively, kicked off these efforts. They drafted two of the strongest motions to date, which called not only for a ceasefire, but for councils to show solidarity by raising the Palestinian flag and investigating how to participate in the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement to cut ties with the belligerent Israeli state. These motions garnered support from socialist, Greens and left-wing independent councillors, and mobilised significant community support. 
Both motions faced stiff opposition from Labor councillors and right-wing independents. Objections ranged from councils needing to prioritise “local” issues (such as “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhzmD18he84">trees dropping nuts all over our streets</a>”) to the political arguments that “both sides are at fault” and the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCg0CI_oAi0">implication</a> that genocide is possible only if Jewish people are the victims of it. Nonetheless, activists rallied, community members booed down the cynical opposition, and both historic motions passed.
However, less than 24 hours after the Maribyrnong motion was adopted, Labor and independent councillors drafted a “Motion to Rescind Supporting Peace in Gaza and Palestine”. This was met by community pressure, spearheaded by Victorian Socialists Councillor Jorge Jorquera, and the motion to rescind was itself rescinded before the meeting. Hundreds came to <a href="https://victoriansocialists.org.au/news/palestine-flag-maribyrnong">celebrate the raising of the Palestinian flag</a> in front of Maribyrnong Council at the next meeting. 
A month later, a similar motion was moved in Darebin council by independent councillor Gaetano Greco with backing from a community group formed by members of the Victorian Socialists and others. So far, they have overcome bureaucratic hurdles ranging from the Greens mayor trying to<a href="https://victoriansocialists.org.au/node/205"> run out the clock</a> at the meeting (to avoid the motion being discussed) to subsequent motions to bring down the Palestinian flag by<a href="https://ugc.production.linktr.ee/e7b447fa-265a-4424-a2f4-d9052190728f_Updated-Media-release--Palestinian-Flag-Darebin--11-01-2024-.pdf"> wedging other left-wing issues</a> against Palestine. Thanks to concerted community pressure and protests involving hundreds, however, the Palestinian flag still flies over Darebin.
Three outer-suburban, working-class councils also passed motions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. These efforts were punctuated by the biggest rallies in recent memory in <a href="https://dandenong.starcommunity.com.au/news/2023-11-28/council-calls-for-gaza-ceasefire/">Dandenong</a>, <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/communities-divided-as-number-of-councils-passing-ceasefire-motions-doubles-in-24-hours-20231219-p5esei.html">Broadmeadows and Werribee</a>, despite those councils being dominated by Labor Party members and right-wing or apolitical independents. If there had been elected socialists within these councils, there’s every indication the motions could have gone even further. 
Yarra Council in Melbourne’s inner north-east also passed a contested motion calling for a ceasefire.
Not all efforts have been successful. An early attempt to put a motion at Geelong Council resulted in councillors being <a href="https://geelongindy.com.au/news/24-11-2023/councillors-gagged-by-city-officials-on-gaza/">gagged</a> from speaking to it by the unelected CEO. In Monash and Shepparton councils, relatively modest motions were voted down. 
Community campaigns have been initiated in Banyule, Brimbank, Bendigo, Hobson’s Bay, Melbourne, Melton, Moonee Valley and Whittlesea council areas. A local group is forming even in Glen Eira, where a pro-Israel <a href="https://www.gleneira.vic.gov.au/media/lhil55pq/co_17102023_min_1109.pdf">motion</a> was passed in October and the <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkaven/police-treating-fire-at-palestinian-owned-melbourne-restaurant-bugertory-as-suspicious">suspicious firebombing</a> of a Palestinian-owned burger shop prompted local protests in November. 
This groundswell shows that even in places where community initiatives haven’t yet taken off, there is likely to be a receptive audience. 
There’s never been a better time to get involved in the Palestine solidarity movement in Melbourne. This is not only an opportunity to broaden the base of support for fighting for genuine liberation in Palestine, but also to call out local politicians and lay the basis for rebuilding the anti-imperialist left at every level of society.
Get involved in your local campaign and get in touch with Victorian Socialists’ <a href="https://victoriansocialists.org.au/campaigns/palestine-action-group">Palestine Action Group</a> to find out where to get started.

Brendan Stanton

Councils battle over Palestine

Justin Akers Chacón, a socialist based in San Diego, California, campaigns for worker and migrant rights in the US-Mexico border region and is the author of The border crossed us: the case for opening the US-Mexico border. He caught up with Red Flag to discuss immigrant rights in the US under Democratic President Joe Biden. 
After the polarisation under former President Trump, what has shifted in the politics of the border and migration during the Biden era?
The short answer is that it’s gotten worse. There were some <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/us-immigration-system-changes-trump-presidency">400 executive actions</a> taken by the Trump administration that affected immigration, including family separation at the border, the Muslim travel ban, expanding the border wall and ending temporary protected status for many groups. Much of this framework has been institutionalised under Biden. 
This is despite the fact that, in the lead-up to the 2020 election, the whole discourse of the Democratic Party was towards dismantling the inhumane and punitive measures of the Trump regime. While Biden wasn’t on the left wing of that discourse, he characterised Trump as harmful to immigrants and refugees and promised a pathway to legalisation for migrants in his first 100 days. This shifted immediately after the Democrats won, and they quickly walked back any discussion.
It’s worth also mentioning that Biden technically ordered a month’s moratorium on deportations early in the administration. But the order was overruled by a Trump-appointed federal judge on the day it was issued. The administration used this as an excuse to abandon the promise completely, but it was quickly pointed out by immigration scholars that there were multiple ways in which the administration could have <a href="https://www.law360.com/articles/1351697/attys-say-biden-deportation-pause-can-proceed">worked around</a> that ruling to stop deportations. 
Although vocally opposing Title 42 [a Trump-era measure allowing authorities to turn away migrants at the border on public-health grounds], one of his first acts as president was using it to conduct a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/26/haiti-deportations-covid-biden-homeland-secretary-mayorkas">mass deportation</a> of Haitians from south Texas. Even while the Trump policy of family separation at the border was stopped, the Biden administration announced that it’s going to begin the process of reauthorising <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/06/us/politics/biden-immigration-family-detention.html">family detention</a>.
The Democrats’ real orientation around border politics was signalled by Kamala Harris when she was sent to Guatemala in 2021 to tell Central Americans, “Do not come to the United States”. This signalled the institutionalisation of Tump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which defunded the legal side of the asylum process.
This, of course, didn’t stop people from migrating. Just like under Trump, it created conditions where large populations are forced to live in overcrowded encampments, on the street and in other uninhabitable areas on the Mexican side of the borderlands. 
The Democrats played an equal or even greater role in building the immigration enforcement apparatus than the Republicans. They have no left or progressive or reformist orientation towards immigration, and they face pressure from the right when the Republican Party redeploys all the racist tropes like “our border is under attack”, or “we’re being invaded” during each election cycle. So they consistently diverge their rhetoric during elections, and after elections they converge with Republicans again. 
That’s how we’re in a situation where far more people were deported in Biden’s <a href="https://theintercept.com/2021/09/20/biden-haiti-deportations-texas-del-rio/">first year</a> than under the previous four years of Trump.
Has there been any opposition from the likes of Democratic Party Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or other people who made a name for themselves calling for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Homeland Security division in charge of deportations?
There was this interesting period in 2019, when a lot of these people on the left of the party were going to detention centres and giving speeches. Ocasio-Cortez gave a very moving account of the <a href="https://www.vox.com/first-person/2019/6/20/18693058/aoc-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-concentration-camps-immigration-border">horrors</a> of a detention centre, and said we have to close the “concentration camps”.
But as soon as the Democrats won, it all evaporated. She and other “left” Democrats stopped calling these horrible places “camps” and started promoting the idea that with Democrats in office, there’s going to be reform. That reform never happened, but there has still been a shift in terms of softening rhetoric or not talking about it at all. Since the abandonment of immigration reform after the election, there has been no movement within the Democratic party to change the status quo. 
I wouldn’t be surprised if, in campaign mode leading up to 2024, the Biden administration makes similar promises as before. But for now, it’s shifted far to the right, taking the whole party tent and the stakes to the right with it. 
A couple of months ago, a story broke about undocumented children working in quite dangerous conditions for major US corporations. Have there been any significant changes around labour protection in the wake of that scandal?
It actually created an internal conflict within the Biden administration. Some officials who were monitoring the child refugee crisis were calling the administration’s attention to how many of these children were being absorbed into the workforce as early as a year and a half ago. People higher up, like Susan Rice, one of the chief advisers of Biden, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/17/us/politics/migrant-child-labor-biden.html">knew this was happening</a>. They basically quashed it, said it was not a priority, and so it took outside reporters to break the story.
It’s important to understand what immigration enforcement is designed to do and what it’s not designed to do. It’s not designed to stop people from migrating or to prevent people from falling into these conditions. It creates pathways for this to happen by essentially creating systems of regulation for a growing segment of the workforce in this country. 
Being exposed for their awareness that child labour is flourishing once again in the United States is a public relations problem for the Biden administration, but it hasn’t provoked a political crisis. It’s also because the Republicans and the right don’t have a problem with this issue—they’re not going to try to make it an issue. 
Even within organised labour, it’s not clear that there’s any effort to address the issue of child labour. Like so many other things, it’s either under-reported or swept under the rug really quickly. It’s a reflection of how little opposition there is inside the US to the politics of immigration enforcement
How do you think socialists and leftists should understand the class dynamics of border politics?
We can walk through that child refugee scenario from beginning to end and explain how this is a political function of capitalist policy. 
Between 2011 and 2016, almost 200,000 unaccompanied children, mostly from Central America, came to the United States. Two major factors played a key role in this. One is the Central American-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement first implemented in 2006. By 2010, there were radical economic changes like the opening up of these economies to unrestricted foreign capital investment and the privatisation of much of the economy. 
There was a systematic displacement of people who could no longer afford to work the land, or whose jobs in manufacturing were displaced by foreign capital. This foreign capital is invested in extreme forms of labour production associated with maquiladoras [US-owned factories], basically laboratories for increasing productivity, repressing wages and keeping unions out. 
This destroys many of the social aspects of the economy, and by 2011 we saw the first significant effects of these policies displacing people. 
Earlier, in 2007, the US initiated a region-wide security strategy called the Mérida Initiative, through which it gave money and political support to Mexican and Central American governments to expand the border enforcement apparatus of the United States further south. The US trains police and militaries in these countries to engage in the Drug War and also control migration, 
Alongside the other realities of the War on Drugs, which contributed to the growth of drug cartels, this has destabilised the region. The illegal drug industry is now one of the major industries of the Western hemisphere, and these cartels have grown in rhythm and tempo with the criminalisation of drugs and the growth of enforcement mechanisms. Instead of the cartels being contained and defeated in Mexico through this regional militarisation, they’ve been pushed further into Central America. 
In 2009, the US greenlit the overthrow of the left-of-centre president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya. This set up the rule of the far right for the next several years, including Juan Orlando Hernández, a strong US ally who was also on the payroll of the cartels. While he was president, a lot of the funding and technology he received from the US for the drug war went towards repressing indigenous populations and social movements. Lots of people were displaced, and hundreds of labour organisers, socialists, LGBTQ people, indigenous organisers and other leftists were killed. 
So all that’s happening down there while we have the building up of the border enforcement apparatus, and the children who ultimately make it through to the United States end up in the workforce to survive. How do we understand the end of that scenario without understanding how every sort of step of this process is predicated on strengthening the ability of capital to exploit? 
The overthrow of a left-of-centre president in 2009 helped embolden a far-right government to destroy the left, attack all these vulnerable groups and displace countless people. When thousands of these children and teenagers start appearing in meat production facilities and construction jobs in the US, it’s a manifestation of US regional policies. It’s not necessarily a conscious act that someone masterminded, but it’s the outcome of decisions that advocate for the interest of capital. 
This creates larger and larger pools of exploitable workers, on both sides of the border, who are hard to organise, including workers who are regulated by the state. That impacts wage thresholds and impacts the whole labour economy. And when immigrant workers rise up, as they did in 2006, that leads to an increase in the repression of the state. 
In light of these border dynamics, in what direction do you think the socialist movement and the labour movement should go?
There has to be a rejection of criminalisation and border enforcement. That has to be a demand for all workers. In 1986 it actually was, when unions backed an amnesty for undocumented workers. This led to a surge in unionisation among newly legalised workers, who were much more class conscious than the rest of the population. Legalisation was a huge boost for the union movement at a time when it was otherwise declining. It also means supporting workers as they organise on the other side of the border.
I’m going to try to paraphrase Marx. He said something like, you don’t know what the problem is until a solution presents itself. In the context of the North American class struggle, capital has invested so much by shifting production south of the border and dividing production into cross-border supply chains. Therefore, the working classes in the US and Mexico have become fused together in ways that are much more apparent. More of these workers, especially workers in Mexico, recognise that class struggle is by necessity transnational, and there have been flashes of this potential and some sustained processes of a transnational labour response. 
There are some maquiladoras in Tamaulipas [a north-eastern state bordering Texas] making parts for General Motors that are going to be used for assembly in Tennessee or in Detroit, and there are also GM plants making whole cars in Mexico. 
The workers in these factories in Mexico have to be very savvy organisers, because in Mexico you don’t just organise against the employers, you organise against the fake unions that are muscle for the employers. You often have to organise directly against local and state governments and sometimes the federal government. 
In 2019, these workers in Matamoros [across the border from Brownsville, Texas], in extreme conditions, coordinated a series of wildcat strikes all at once. Rank-and-file women and men workers organising these networks got over 35,000 workers and shut down 48 factories over a month and a half. All of them won a 20 percent pay increase and a significant rise in their annual bonuses. A big part of why they won is because shutting down their factories disrupted parts supplies all across the US and Mexico, costing bosses an estimated US$50 million per day. 
That same year, United Auto Workers union members went on strike at GM, shutting down almost all production in the US and Canada, but not in Mexico. So GM decided to shift more production to Mexico to avoid further disruption and undercut these workers. In this context, workers trying to organise a union at the largest GM plant in Mexico, in Silao, Guanajuato, said that they supported the strike and the demands of the United Auto Workers in the US. They asked for the UAW to support them and bring them into the union or at least help them build an independent union so they could strike, start the process of shutting down Mexican auto production and completely shut down General Motors production. 
Unfortunately, the UAW ignored them and accepted a largely concessionary contract. But in the fallout was some recognition that they blew this opportunity. How could they not support the organisation of auto workers in Mexico, when GM is actively using these disorganised workers to undermine them? A couple of years later, the UAW began to support these Mexican workers in their unionisation efforts—they won and even expanded to other non-GM auto plants. This didn’t create equal wages. but it was a recognition by the UAW that they can’t afford not to support Mexican workers organising. 
In this process, more workers, especially militants fighting to build fledgling unions, recognise that they have to build international solidarity and engage in class struggle across the border. They recognise they’re not fighting just the employer but all of these other forces. It’s interesting to see how these workers are recognising that, as capital is operating at a North American scale, they too have to organise against it at a North American scale and not let the border divide them.

The fight for migrant rights in the US: an interview with Justin Akers Chacón

Chants of “No hate, no fear, Nazis are not welcome here!” rang through the streets of Sunshine on 25 February as more than 500 anti-fascists and local community members marched through the multicultural, working-class suburb in Melbourne’s west. 
We were protesting against <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/inside-the-melbourne-boxing-gym-with-a-neo-nazi-underbelly-20221223-p5c8ga.html">neo-Nazis who recently used a local boxing gym as an organising and training centre</a>. 
“We remember what Nazis have done—the genocide, the Holocaust, the gas chambers and the concentration camps. We remember what fascist regimes did to workers and minorities all across Europe. We remember”, Victorian Socialists member Liz Walsh said in one of the speeches. 
“And look at the massacres committed by neo-Nazis in the past ten or twenty years. Think about Anders Breivik, who in 2011 massacred 69 left-wing youth at a summer camp in Norway. Think about Dylan Roof in the US, who massacred eight African American people as they worshipped at their church. And we remember that Australian fucker, Brenton Tarrant, who massacred Muslim people in Christchurch, New Zealand.” 
Thomas Sewell, a Melbourne neo-Nazi thug, previously attempted to recruit Tarrant to the organised movement in Australia. 
“We say Thomas Sewell is not welcome in Sunshine!”, Walsh concluded.
Fascist groups have been organising more brazenly and confidently in the wake of the <a href="https://overland.org.au/2021/12/anti-vaxxers-and-the-far-right/">anti-vax protest movement</a>, in which many were participants. Neo-Nazis have targeted <a href="https://www.starobserver.com.au/news/melbourne-neo-nazis-target-drag-performer-at-family-friendly-youth-fest/217074">LGBT+</a> <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-08/glitter-nova-youth-pride-celebration-postponed-protest-threat/101751478">events</a>, crashed a mourning <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/neo-nazis-crash-merri-bek-council-mourning-ceremony-20230126-p5cfpc.html">ceremony</a> on Invasion Day and engaged in other public <a href="https://www.starobserver.com.au/news/after-protests-against-drag-shows-neo-nazis-perform-nazi-salute-at-melbourne-lookout/220561">displays</a> around Melbourne.
The protest was jointly called by the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism and Victorian Socialists. As it marched, more and more locals joined the protest when they heard the anti-racist chants.
Prior to the rally, Nazi stickers were put up in the area, but only one fascist was spotted on the day. He was swiftly shouted down by the crowd. 
“It moves me very much, to be among hundreds of people today in the suburb of Sunshine, fighting to eject a Nazi training gym from our neighbourhood” Jorge Jorquera, a Victorian Socialists councillor in Maribyrnong, said in another speech.
“Fifty years ago, the Allende government in Chile was ousted by a military coup. Pinochet’s fascistic regime proceeded to kill and torture thousands of Chilean workers. Hundreds of thousands of us were forced into exile. And here we are, 50 years on, proudly standing in the tradition of those who resisted Pinochet by fighting fascists and the far right in this country!”
Locals peered from footpaths, car parks and balconies as refugee activists denounced Australia’s brutal asylum seeker policies. 
“We have to protest the government, too. We have to protest until all refugees have a place here to stay”, Kirithik Ramachandran, from the Young Refugees Collective, told the crowd. “Australia depends on the work of refugees. Without us, this country can’t run! We want permanent visas now!”
The protest was a success, and a moral victory for anti-fascists. We need to build on this to create a vibrant anti-racist movement that keeps the Nazis in their basements and challenges the system that bolsters their bigotry.

Hundreds march against Nazi gym in Melbourne

Testimony from front-line workers at Victoria’s hotel quarantine inquiry has shone a light on the perfect neoliberal storm that unleashed Victoria’s “second wave” of infections. Much attention has rightly been focused on the deregulated, profit-driven security companies that were contracted by the state government to staff crucial roles on Victoria’s front line. But testimony from two nurses employed in the hotel quarantine program indicates that the problems were more extensive than that. They painted a picture of a shambolic, cut-price operation in which health workers faced victimisation for attempting to remedy gross defects in infection control and medical care.
Michael Tait, a 19-year veteran nurse, worked for the for-profit labour hire company Your Nursing Agency. He was recruited to the hotel quarantine program via mass text message and ended up working at four different quarantine hotels. 
He was sent to the Crown Promenade expecting to swab passengers as part of their COVID-19 tests, but he encountered a chaotic scene:
“During the first five days at Promenade, only about 25 guests were tested for COVID-19. This was because we did not have enough swab gear available to us. The nurses were also hesitant to do swabs because we did not have adequate PPE [personal protective equipment] to protect ourselves. We didn’t have medium gloves until day four. We did not get N95 masks until day eight. We never got hoods, face shields or shoe coverings even though we were told we would ... We also had lots of very sick and elderly people. It was just heartbreaking at times where young kids would infect their grandparents with COVID-19 and then the grandparent would be taken away to hospital.”
Another nurse, Jen, who worked for the same agency as Michael, took shifts in three different hotel programs. She reported adequate PPE at the Park Royal, but insufficient training on its use: “I saw a lot of security guards ... constantly wearing the same gloves throughout their shifts, going and making themselves a coffee with gloves on, using their phone, things like that. [They were] wearing their masks so that their nose was hanging out or that it was underneath their chin. Yes, that was constantly seen.” When she raised concerns and suggested a nurse provide training for security guards, she was ignored. 
The Park Royal also lacked a program to limit contamination. The top floor of the hotel was open to the public during the entire time Jen worked there. The public would use the same doors and lifts as quarantined guests. International transit passengers used the same toilets as nursing, security and other staff until nurses advocated for their own facilities. 
The paperwork was always behind and often inaccurate. Jen learned of a family who were in their room for a week without any contact from a nurse. After finding medical notes recklessly discarded, she set up her own documentation system and trained other nurses to use it.
Even though there was a shortage of work in hospitals, both nurses reported that the hotel quarantine program was understaffed. Michael explains: “On average it was about one nurse to every 100 patients, but it fluctuated and got to times where it was up to one per 150.” 
The few nurses on staff were frantically fielding phone calls about guests’ different medical care issues, since screening prior to arrival was minimal to non-existent. Nurses were also expected to deal with inquiries about everything from dirty rooms and unstocked minibars to supporting domestic violence survivors and responding to medical emergencies. 
These working conditions are unacceptable at any time, but when they also present a serious risk to the general public they are positively criminal. People in quarantine are more likely to be cooperative and responsible when they are well supported and respected. When people have their dignity and human rights violated, there’s far greater pressure to subvert quarantine protocols. 
Nurses like Jen were routinely blocked from providing adequate care. Fresh air breaks were sparse to non-existent, allergies were ignored, diabetics were stuck with sugary food, and adequate pain relief was denied to an endometriosis sufferer. Those who asked for help were treated as a “problem”, and nurses who advocated for them risked retaliation.
Specialised mental health nurses were not always made available, according to Jen, meaning nurses with no additional training “were just assigned as the mental health nurse for that shift”. This practice didn’t change even after someone at another hotel committed suicide. In one case, a guest was threatening to commit suicide, and Jen said the department told them “they needed to stop threatening suicide just so they can get a cigarette”.
In the classic dysfunctional pattern of outsourcing, nurses and other workers were caught between many levels of management. They had to navigate their agency, hotel management, Qantas’ hospitality company and the health department, represented by an opaque layer of authorised officers and team leaders, people often pulled from other government departments with very little health expertise. 
Michael describes the confusion. “If we needed something we did not have, we talked to the department team leader. The team leader mostly told us what we could not do, rather than what we could do. This team leader was always a new person every shift and there was no consistency. Additionally, as nurses we were not part of the ‘team’ led by the team leader.” 
Unsurprisingly, none of this made quarantine safer. Quite the opposite. When nurses asked for help, they faced retaliation. Jen explains how her tenure at the quarantine program ended: “After the incident with the endometriosis patient escalated, department staff made a rule that nursing staff were not allowed to give their name to the patient or tell them who we worked for”. Jen was told not to give the names of health department staff either. She challenged the department on this, the department complained to the agency, and Jen was never offered a hotel quarantine shift again. 
This wasn’t an isolated incident: after another nurse at the Park Royal insisted on a deep clean and a separate toilet for nurses, she too “never worked another shift at the hotel”. Michael’s employment ended after he sent an email to his manager at the nursing agency expressing concern about the ratios at the Metropol hotel and conditions. “After I sent the email”, he wrote in his inquiry submission, “[my manager] called me straight away... I explained that I was just trying to do what was safe, especially because I was taking swabs all day at work without adequate PPE”. Later, Michael’s manager called to tell him the department had cancelled Michael’s shifts, including the five he was rostered on for. He has not worked in the program since.
“Disorganisation, lack of appropriate staffing and lack of planning were the key problems in the Program”, concludes Michael. “Ultimately however, the experience made me very proud to be a nurse. We did an impossible task caring for these people while having to constantly adapt to poor and constantly changing [health department] policy.”
The costs of the current outbreak and stage four lockdowns are far greater than a well-funded and functional quarantine program would have been. However, a government steeped in neoliberal thinking and practices can’t shift gears fast enough to provide a sane response in a time of a crisis. 
Instead, in one of the richest countries in the world, the heroics of workers trying to prevent disaster in the face of a monstrously dysfunctional system are met with blacklisting and the threat of the dole queue.

The hotel quarantine inquiry shows how nurses were victimised

If Victorian teachers and education support staff need any vindication that schools were unsafe and should have stayed closed for face to face learning this term, they’ve got it. 
The Victorian government released <a href="https://twitter.com/rwillingham/status/1293399886054871040/photo/1">data</a> in mid August showing schools have the second highest outbreak numbers and total infections after aged care centres. Since 1 June, there have been at least 630 positive cases in 69 clusters centred on schools. 
What makes these figures so frightening is that students have spent hardly any time in class during this phase of the pandemic. Most students and staff were only in attendance for the last three weeks of term two (9 to 26 June). Over this time, daily infection rates in Victoria grew from five per day to 41, but as term three approached, there were well over 200 new infections per day.
The risk that this represented was crystal clear to teachers. They knew how difficult or impossible social distancing would be, and studies continued to emerge discrediting the notion that children are less likely to contract or transmit the disease. 
Government officials were well aware of the danger. In fact, the day before staff and students returned for term three, Victorian Chief Medical Officer Brett Sutton said, “Child to child transmission has become more apparent as we have tested more kids”. 
Incredibly, at this same press conference, he insisted schools were “not a serious risk”. 
The decision was made, and year 11, 12 and specialist schools went back to face to face learning on 13 July. It was a cold calculation about the economic impact of shutting down schools and managing the rest of the economy. 
In the disastrous weeks that followed, daily Victorian infection rates ballooned well into the 600s. Dozens of schools were shut down because of outbreaks, and the Victorian government focused on blaming individuals instead of shutting down schools and non-essential workplaces.
The safety guidelines produced by the government lacked sufficient support for the teachers at greatest risk from the virus due to medical conditions like serious respiratory conditions. If they did not suffer from a compromised immune system, they did not meet the criteria for a medical exemption. Missing too was consideration for household members with compromised immune systems or other conditions who were at heightened risk from any infection brought home from school.
As pressure was mounting, Sutton sent a letter to all Victorian school staff about school safety on 31 July, denying the danger teachers and students were witnessing in schools. Incredibly, he claimed schools were safe, even though “maintaining a physical distance of 1.5 metres between students during classroom activities will not always be practical in education settings. Physical distancing is most important between adults”. 
There’s a scientific consensus that physical distancing is the most important measure to control the spread of the virus. Research continues to show that the virus spreads through tiny aerosol droplets produced by regular speech and breathing. Yet, according to Sutton, Victorians were meant to believe that students studying indoors for hours on end would not be at risk, despite being in close proximity to each other. 
The risks of school outbreaks had clearly been established. In March, there had been 52 cases liked to a Chilean high school. In April, 92 cases were linked to an Auckland school. And in May, 178 cases originated from a single high school in Israel. Yet, according to Sutton, “transmission in school settings is uncommon, and the risk to staff and students in both mainstream and specialist settings remains low”. 
He had previously admitted that at Al Taqwa College in western Melbourne, “transmission in the school that was quite substantial. They are older kids, they tend to have more transmission that is akin to adults,” after that outbreak lead to 186 cases. Yet the Victorian government sent these high-risk students back in droves for college entrance scores. In Sutton’s letter, he had the nerve to “reassure” Victorians that “schools remain safe places for staff and students.”
His assertions that, “children are less impacted by the virus, they tend to have milder symptoms and are less likely to develop severe illness,” were hollow. The long-term effects of this virus, including mild cases, are unknown but potentially very serious. New studies continue to show that children and teenagers can contract and transmit the virus at high rates. 
During those weeks, the health department was overrun with cases and unable to perform its duties creating disruptions in learning and chaos in many schools. Teachers, students, and parents were crying out about the lack of communication while they were stuck waiting for days or weeks to find out if they were a close contact. Yet Sutton claimed he was “confident in our ability to identify and respond appropriately when a student or staff member tests positive to coronavirus”.
He said “The vast majority of cases of coronavirus (COVID-19) observed in schools involve the student or staff member acquiring the virus in the community, and these cases have been well contained through reactive and temporary closures” – even while the numbers of cases with unknown sources continued to grow.
Within 48 hours, more than 300 school staff, parents and students had signed an <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdpravEZLufArn3taVp4gLSv9tc8Qqj_d9cBEi8g4DIwZN3uw/viewform">open letter</a> condemning Sutton’s dangerous “advice”. 
Teachers were absolutely right to demand school closures, and it’s a crime that it took so long. Stage four restrictions and the accompanying school closures finally came on 2 August, just two days after Sutton’s extraordinary letter, pausing some of the madness. However, the economic motives behind the government’s reckless decision making hasn’t changed. 
Since the start of the pandemic, there has been a tussle involving the giant corporations and governments who want to prioritise “business as usual” over public health. Schools have become key battle grounds for this contest, in both the first and second waves of the pandemic in Australia. 
The tepid response of the teacher’s union leadership has been disappointing. Education workers were forced to take their students safety in their own hands, speaking out against the dangerous situations at schools and sub-branches had even passed motions for school closures. All the union leadership could muster was a request for principals to have more flexibility to close schools. 
These union heads eventually got bailed out by the Victorian Government. When stage 4 lockdowns were introduced, schools were shut down and there hasn’t been a single public statement from the Australian Education Union about school safety since. This is an ominous sign. 
School openings have been a major contest between public health and profit-driven “business as usual” in many parts of the world. In the US, both President Trump and many Democratic politicians have been pushing hard for schools to reopen as normal for the new school year. This has been staunchly and successfully resisted by some teacher unions, with the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) leading the way.
Lori Lightfoot, the Democratic mayor of Chicago, had been intent since May for teachers and students to return to classes in person as scheduled in early September, but the CTU did not take that lying down. The union launched a media blitz about the dangers of in-person learning, editorials and interviews by rank and file members were published in major outlets and the union maintained consistent organising drive to mobilise rank-and-file teachers. They hosted multiple massive, socially distanced protests and eventually threatened to strike if schools opened. 
Two days after this gauntlet was thrown down, the mayor backed down and switched to remote learning. 
Even after their victory, the CTU has continued to organise. It has been advocating for more reasonable expectations of students, promoting victories to take police out of schools and pushing for an expansion of internet access and other adequate support for teachers and families entering remote learning. 
The Chicago success story is no accident. During the 2000s, there was a massive rank and file campaign to democratise the union and replace the stodgy leadership. This culminated in a more militant union with an active rank and file who were able to carry out historic strikes in 2012 and 2019. 
As infection numbers continue to fall in Melbourne, there will be more pressure to throw teachers and students back into the front lines of the pandemic. “New” guidance issued by the education department on 18 August reproduces Brett Sutton’s outdated, wrong and dangerous assurances about school safety from late July, word for word. It’s time to build a rank and file movement that can amplify the voices of the brave Victorian school staff fighting to keep our communities safe.

Teachers were right: government data confirms reopening schools was never safe

More horror stories come out daily as COVID-19 rips through Victoria’s disastrous aged care system. A woman’s body was left to rot for 10 hours after she died. Another woman was found sitting alone grieving and pleading for death after her husband of 56 years died of the virus. Providers telling family members their dying loved ones are fine. 
Lessons were not learned from the disaster at Newmarch House, the aged care centre in Sydney’s west where a coronavirus outbreak in April infected 70 people, killing 17. Loosely regulated providers have continued to prioritise profits over safety. By May, 80 percent of aged care facilities had failed to increase staff numbers, and 20 percent had reduced them. Cost cutting trumps keeping pensioners alive in the “lucky” country. 
More than 90 percent of aged care centres in Victoria and 96 percent across Australia are private. Unlike those that are government run, there are no mandatory staffing ratios in private centres. So scrimping on staff maximises profit, and residents are not always in a position to complain when their wellbeing suffers as a result. 
As Sarah (not her real name), a former aged care worker, explained to Red Flag, “The pace at which you’re expected to work is unreasonable. The workload is so high that it forces you to cut corners”. The only corners workers are able to cut leave already vulnerable people more vulnerable. 
Government and media narratives imply that irresponsible workers are largely to blame for aged care outbreaks, but it wasn’t until 27 July that the Fair Work Commission ruled that some casual health workers are entitled to paid pandemic leave. And there are still loopholes that exclude workers and put pressure on them to work when sick. 
Casual workers earning $22 per hour are often in no position to take leave, nor are they encouraged to. House expenses, debt, childcare costs and even immigration status can depend on employment, so workers are forced to keep management happy. Speed is everything in the industry, and the workload is unmanageable. 
Sarah described not having enough time to care adequately for residents: “[In the morning we have to] get three people ready in an hour. With your other duties, that’s about 15 minutes per person, [to be] washed, toileted and dressed ... You have to make the bed, leave the room tidy and leave the blinds up. You also have to shave men’s faces, clean up if anything has been soiled, empty someone’s catheter and anything else that’s needed. Any number of things could be missing to slow you down”.
With this extreme time crunch, residents often receive only partial meals, adding to the malnourishment problem in aged care and increasing vulnerability. Workers are pushed so far beyond their capacity that they run out of time to provide adequate water, meaning something as basic as dehydration can become a major hazard. 
The job of a carer is to care for residents, but other duties get pushed onto them to maximise profits. Sarah explains that at one centre, “They used to have cleaning staff to clean the equipment, but then to save money they said we, as care staff, had to clean the equipment ourselves”. When things got hectic, cleaning became one of those corners that got cut. 
Some employers reduce costs by limiting gloves and other supplies, as the expense of residents’ hygiene. “One place that I worked was shocking”, Sarah says. “Gloves are expensive, so they would tell staff to only wear one pair of gloves per resident. That means if you have to put cream on, help them shower, wipe them from going to the toilet and clean their dentures you were expected to use the same pair of gloves ... Managers would inspect your pockets to see if you had extra gloves.” 
Even before coronavirus, gastroenteritis outbreaks were becoming a more common problem in aged care. Sarah explains that these are completely preventable. “Gastro outbreaks are a concrete sign of poor care standards. This could be insufficient staffing, not enough PPE, or inadequate infection control. There’s a common misconception that vulnerable people in close quarters will inevitably deal with an outbreak. This not actually true. It’s actually a sign of terrible care. It’s a sign of bad management, poor quality of food and overworked staff.” As the ongoing Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety has revealed, some centres spend as little as $7 per day per resident on food. 
When Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor of Texas, said “lots of grandparents” were willing to take their chances with COVID-19 for the sake of the economy and “keeping the America that all America loves”, his comments were met with justifiable outrage. But the state of the profit-driven aged care sector indicates that this was merely a more direct and vulgar expression of how modern capitalism views people who don’t directly generate profits.
This system exists to extract profits from workers. People outside of the workforce, whether children, injured workers, those battling addiction or the elderly, do not directly contribute to these profits, and are devalued accordingly. The elderly not only fail to generate profit, but there’s no promise of future profitability for bosses to invest in. That’s why there is panic about the “grey tsunami” and politicians everywhere are trying to increase the age of retirement. 
After people’s working lives are over, and there is no more labour to be squeezed out, they are abandoned and isolated from the rest of society. 
We urgently need an adequate health care response for people in aged care centres. Management of the centres should be taken away from greedy corporations and immediately nationalised. There should be a massive expansion in the size of the workforce on all levels, with far better training, better pay and proper job security. Adequate ratios of qualified staff need to be mandated, and massive investment made to improve facilities. There should be programs to provide training for unemployed workers urgently, and the centres should be brought under the democratic control of staff and residents.
But even that’s not enough. COVID-19 has shone a spotlight on Australia’s abusive, neglectful, profiteering aged care system. We need to overthrow the system that created this crisis in the first place so that all workers can age with dignity. Because while elderly people might be more vulnerable to the disease, the profit motive is the real killer.

Profiteering is the real killer in aged care

<blockquote>“When my school closed it was in school holidays. People found out 13 days after they were in contact with this student that they had an infectious student in their class …. They won’t tell you the student’s name, they won’t even tell you their year level.” 
</blockquote>
<blockquote>-Kim, secondary school teacher, Melbourne
</blockquote>
<blockquote>“At my school we got the information about the positive case, at 10 or 11 last Monday night. As of lunch time yesterday (Saturday) the contact tracing hadn’t actually happened. The official line is that ‘contact tracing is continuing’ but we all know that it hasn’t even started.”
</blockquote>
<blockquote>-Cathy, secondary school teacher, Melbourne
</blockquote>
In the midst of a massive COVID-19 surge in Victoria, premier Daniel Andrews’ reopening schools for senior students was always <a href="https://redflag.org.au/node/7260">risking disaster</a>. Add an overrun or incompetent Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), and the risk is multiplied. 
Infection and death rates have broken records in July, and schools have not been immune. The term started with three schools officially closed due to COVID-19 infections. By the end of the first day, the total was 24. There are currently 65 closed, while staff and large numbers of students at those still open are expected to risk their lives for the sake of university entrance rankings. 
The government assures us that this arrangement is perfectly safe, protected as we are against this unprecedented threat by the mighty Victorian DHHS. This department, now overrun with cases to followup and avoiding comment to the media, underwent a classic neoliberal transformation last year. According to their annual report, the department cut or outsourced more than18 percent of its staff – around 2,500 workers – in just one year. Now we get to witness the fruits of this “streamlining” in the form of contradictory public health messaging, a chronic failure of contact tracing, and botched communication about handling positive COVID-19 diagnoses. 
The DHHS is responsible for responding to COVID-19 outbreaks in workplaces, including identifying close contacts of confirmed cases, contacting those people, and giving instructions for isolation. But as this gutted agency is overrun with cases, this is frequently doesn’t happen. Teachers and students in affected schools, for example, are waiting for days or weeks to be officially advised about their level of exposure. 
Four teachers from different high schools shared their experiences with Red Flag. Michael (names have been changed) is a Melbourne high school teacher. “About a week ago we found out a student had a positive case, so the school shut down. It was Sunday night, so we had to start remote teaching the next day, with no equipment since everything was at school… Supposedly [as of the following Sunday], contact tracing is still happening. The school could have done it in 15 minutes, but students and staff are still waiting to see if they are close contacts to this single case.” 
With government agencies unable to come anywhere close to an adequate response, teachers are forced to take responsibilty for their health and that of their students. Physical distancing is impossible in many schools, as there just isn’t the capacity to spread classes out. There’s also the challenge of imposing physical distancing on teenagers during breaks, as one teacher told the Age, “the thought of trying to get them to stand 1.5 metres away from each other is like asking an elephant to skip rope … it’s not what teenagers do.” 
 And while the requirement regarding mask wearing is positive, in the face of a virus that travels as aerosol droplets, the utility of a face covering is reduced when large groups meet indoors for hours on end. 
Kim explains the situation at her school: “Ventilation is an issue [to prevent infection] but it falls upon individual teachers to decide to open windows. When the kids come in and complain about it being cold, saying that the other classes don’t have their windows open, the teacher gets in trouble”. 
As students in years seven to ten learn remotely, whether or not teachers are allowed to teach them safely from home is at the discretion of principals. Some work from home, while others are required to come in for yard duty then “teach remotely” from their classrooms. “So if you’ve got a good principal and they’ve got a bit of flexibility,” says Kim, “then they can make some good decisions. But if you’ve got a bad principal, they’re still going to be a tyrant in the workplace.”
Some of these “good principals” are subsequently being undercut by the education department. After the Age reported that staff and management at Melbourne High had agreed to teach remotely several days per week, the principal who made this arrangement was overruled by the department. 
The department is not known for communicating well with school staff at the best of times, but this has turned into a dangerous farce during the second outbreak. Teachers no longer receive even the basic daily emails about changes in policy. In fact, the new manual for safe operation was riddled with contradictions and only emailed to staff the night before classes started.
As they watch schools close around them, students and teachers face constant fear and uncertainty. “Every day when you leave school, you grab all your things,” says Anne, “because there are neighbouring schools that went into closure… you don’t know when our school will shut down.”
Once schools are shut, teachers don’t know when they are expected to return. Michael explains: “On Thursday night we were told we aren’t coming in on Friday because contact tracing is still happening. On Sunday night at 11pm we heard that we weren’t coming in on Monday, and last night at 10pm we heard we weren’t coming in today. Day by day, right at the last minute, we’re being told if contact tracing is complete or not. At the same time, we’re being told ‘be ready to pick up your phones! You may be a close contact!’ The uncertainty of it is what’s wearing down students.” Add to that the worry about potential infection and the possibility of passing it on to families, and the impact on teaching and learning is predictable.
The situation is further complicated when some students and teachers are told to isolate but others remain at school. Teachers’ workloads are increased and education quality suffers as Michael explains, “We’ve got half of our year 12s in a two-week quarantine and at least four VCE teachers are also in quarantine. If we go back to teaching on site, half of year 12s won’t get taught. We can’t do both on-site and remote. We don’t have the resources to have someone supervising a class while teachers are online doing remote learning. It makes sense to just continue with remote learning [for all year 11 and 12 students] but that’s against department policy.”
In the early days of the pandemic, teacher unions around Australia refused to endorse school closures until a widespread, largely spontaneous grassroots movement withdrew more than a quarter of students from schools – prompting the Victorian premier to finally declare an early end to term one. This time around, the initial response of the Australian Education Union has been just as weak. 
Despite this, rank-and-file teachers continue to organise. Union sub-branches at several schools have passed motions for school closures as surveys and petitions circulate through grassroots networks. When union organisers and officials are confronted with this pressure, they have tried to stall its momentum, repeating false government claims and misrepresenting democratically passed sub-branch motions as individual complaints. 
On 28 July the Australian Principals Federation called for all Melbourne schools to return to remote learning. Along with media interest and the rising concern of rank and file teachers, this finally prompted the union to issue a statement stating that the government has “failed to genuinely support the health and safety of staff.” However the union still stopped short of calling for a full shutdown, instead just requesting more flexibility at a school level.
So Melbourne school staff are left to deal with a situation which is dangerous to health and life, and much too unstable and stressful for effective teaching and learning. It seems that no one is coming to save us, except ourselves – so we’d better keep pushing!

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