When a chemical blending warehouse in Melbourne’s western suburbs went up in flames on 10 July, it produced a plume of black, toxic smoke so large and thick it could be seen from across the bay. 
Storage drums were catapulted onto a nearby highway, and residents were advised not to return home due to the unknown nature of what was being pumped into the air. Meanwhile, 180 firefighters, several of whom later presented to hospital with symptoms of toxic inhalation, were deployed to the inferno which is now being classed as the worst industrial fire of the past six years. A warning to people and pets from the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) to “avoid contact” with local waterways, which were deluged with chemical run-off from the fire, remains in place. 
There are many emotions stirred among residents by fires in the western suburbs, but none are a surprise. This is not the first fire the company responsible, the ACB Group, has caused. The last one, in October 2023, was fatal, claiming the life of 44-year-old factory worker Reece Martin, and seriously injuring two other workers. Since then, the EPA had investigated the site nine times, and WorkSafe has inspected it 24 times, resulting in multiple warnings and compliance notices. Yet ACB continued to operate after the 2023 fire in a way that the father of Reece told the Sydney Morning Herald was like<a href="https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/residents-warned-to-stay-away-from-contaminated-waterways-after-factory-inferno/ar-BB1pLYny"> “a timebomb just waiting to go up”</a>. 
In 2022, hundreds of fish died when <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-23/melbourne-group-lake-fish-kill-pollution-identified/100932824">12,000 litres of chemicals</a> were spilled into the Altona creek system after an unreported fire in the Melbourne Transport and Warehousing factory that stores agricultural fertilisers. The company was fined $1.8 million but continues to operate. 
In August 2018, an illegal chemical warehouse in West Footscray exploded in a major fire described at the time as second in scale only to the 1991 Coode Island disaster. The West Footscray fire released toxic sludge, including the “forever chemical” PFAS, into nearby Stony Creek and connected waterways. Earlier that month, the EPA and local council had inspected the site and found no issue with its chemical <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/concerns-toxic-blaze-lit-to-conceal-chemical-stores-20181201-p50jm1.html">storage</a>. The waterways took months to recover, and <a href="https://www.zaparaslaw.com.au/blog/firefighter-compensation-west-footscray-industrial-fire/">court cases</a> to recognise the health impacts on firefighters who experienced ongoing symptoms like unexplained nosebleeds, vomiting and PTSD, continued for years after. 
Then there’s Kealba, where residents have been in a five-year-long battle for action against a landfill fire that has been burning since 2019. Only metres from hundreds of homes, the almost constant odour from the fire has been reported as causing chronic physical and mental health <a href="https://www.thecitizen.org.au/articles/it-consumes-your-life-landfills-rotten-smells-and-toxic-history">conditions. </a>Yet in a common tale, despite the EPA suspending the licence of tip owners Barro Group, the company remains largely unaffected, and is worth at least $1.8 billion, according to the <a href="https://www.afr.com/rich-list">AFR Rich List in 2022</a>.
In the western suburbs of Melbourne, the profits of reckless and destructive corporations come before the residents who live alongside them and who bear the consequences of the companies’ toxic operations. The bosses of ACB Group should have been shut down and jailed long before this most recent disaster, which could easily have caused more deaths. As long as we have toothless, underfunded regulators like the EPA policing these corporations it’s only a matter of time before another dark cloud covers the west.

Catherine Robertson

Derrimut fire not the first and won’t be the last

UPDATE 22 NOVEMBER: The United Workers Union <a href="https://www.facebook.com/UnitedWorkersOz/posts/200649168909863">reports</a>: “On day 12 of their strike, United Workers Union members at Country Road Group voted to return to work this morning after securing an agreement that includes an increased pay rise, secure jobs and recognition for their chosen union”.
--------------------
Country Road warehouse workers in Melbourne’s west went out on strike on 11 November for the first time since the warehouse opened seven years ago. 
The United Workers Union members have been in a fight for better pay and conditions for a year, but things escalated in May when negotiations for a new agreement began. After management refused to concede a mere $1 per hour pay rise, the workers voted to walk out.
When we headed down to the picket on the second day of the strike, the bosses had already spent an astronomical $100,000 on a Fair Work Commission injunction to force the workers to let scabs into the warehouse.
For many of the workers, the experience was very new. “This is the first time in my life I’ve ever been on strike”, Jan,* who has worked at the warehouse for several years, told Red Flag. Her workmate Tania was the same—she said that, while she used to shake when the boss approached her, the picket quickly changed that. “This has united us”, she said, “and the union has given us backbone to feel united and stand up for each other. I’m here for myself and others, we’re feeling very confident and very brave”. 
In a predominantly female workforce, intimidation from the mostly male management is the norm. Workers sense that management see them as “just pussycats”, and the wages are on average $10 lower than in other, male-dominated, warehouses. The disparity is obvious to Jan. “The wages are horrible here, compared to over the road, where they are getting over $30, and here the average is $24.34. It’s not right.”
Pete, who has been with the company for 14 years in multiple warehouses, all with low wages, explained the impact of this kind of pay. “We’re underpaid. A lot of the workers here are women, and it’s about families as well. A lot of people survive week to week and that’s part of the struggle on a lower wage.”
The story couldn’t be more different for the bosses of Country Road. Owned by the multinational conglomerate Woolworths Holding Limited, in 2020 alone Country Road increased its profits by 44 percent and received $25 million in Jobkeeper payments from the federal government. For Pete, the fight is about that money returning to the workers who made it: “We’re fighting because they made so much profit this year, and we’re trying to get a bit back so we can have a living wage”.
Along with many others on strike, Pete emphasised that their demand for respect was just as important as their demand for more pay. “Bosses look down on you”, he says. “You’re just a number here; they don’t give you any respect, and we work so hard every day for them and they just treat you like a number.” 
Workers have risked their lives and health in the past two years to make these profits, Tania explained. “Through the pandemic, everybody worked, every day, overtime; the pandemic didn’t affect the Country Road at all. We were all essential workers coming in, all worried about catching this disease. We weren't in a position to stay home, and we came in day in and day out.” 
While the company separated the 150-strong workforce into two teams, it wasn’t enough to protect them. “We have had a few outbreaks, and people have had to isolate. [Our breaks are] in a tent with no cooling, no heating, no airflow, which has been raised as a concern.”
For the bosses, this strike is about more than just pay and conditions. It’s about crushing the confidence of their workforce. With the workers vowing to keep fighting, the management is a long way off succeeding.
*Names have been changed.

‘We’re not pussycats!’ Country Road warehouse workers strike

The government’s contempt for the rest of us has been on full display of late. Scott Morrison has doubled down on his refusal to raise the meagre Newstart allowance. Morrison has responded to the demand that the $40 a day payment be raised by saying that it’s not a priority and that he can’t afford “unfunded empathy”. 
This comes as a second senate inquiry gets underway into the grotesque robodebt scheme, which has sent more than half a million automated letters to welfare recipients demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars in falsely calculated debt. 
The robodebt scheme cost $375 million dollars to administer and has destroyed lives of vulnerable people, even pushing some to suicide. The first inquiry into the scheme found it was riven with flaws. Rather than suspend the program, as recommended, the government has ramped it up. One of the latest victims of robodebt was the mother of a deceased disability pensioner, who is expected to pay back almost seven thousand dollars of unsubstantiated debt only a few months after her son’s death. 
While Morrison cries poor, he has plenty of cash to fund this kind of depravity. But the widely popular demand to raise Newstart (which hasn’t received an increase in 25 years)? Oh geez, no money for that. 
The treatment of Newstart recipients is painted as a “harsh but necessary” prevention measure to stop people rorting the system. What an absolute joke, as if those on Newstart are trying to take the system for a ride. To where exactly? Australia has one of the lowest paying and most punitive welfare systems in the developed world, which has resulted in the unemployed in Australia having the second highest poverty rate in the OECD.
A recent study estimated that four out of five Newstart recipients skip meals. More than half have less than $100 a week to live off after housing costs. Meals are not only missed, but showers, energy, healthcare and medication are commonly rationed. And people that once would have received disability or single parent pensions have been forced onto this unliveable payment. 
Is Morrison just a callous arsehole? Well yes, but he can find it in himself to have deep pockets for his mates. Morrison forgave and promoted Stuart Robert, head of the robodebt scheme, after he was found by a senate inquiry to have claimed $38,000 in “entitlements” for home internet access – $2,000 a month. ScoMo has plenty of empathy for this, but not a shred to spare for the rest of us. 
A rise in Newstart and cancelling the robodebt scheme would a step toward regaining decent lives for the poorest people in the country. I guess Morrison is at least being honest when he says he will never have a cent for them.

Unfunded empathy, funded depravity

Chants echoed through Brisbane’s streets on 28 May as thousands of unionists walked off the job to protest dodgy construction contracts being handed out by Queensland’s Labor government. 
The main demand of the rally, called by the construction union, was for an inquiry into the “best practice principles” that came into effect in relation to the state’s procurement in 2018. The changes were meant to ensure that companies bidding for major public works upheld “best practice industrial relations” standards, along with other measures to funnel jobs and money into the local community. But with “best practice” inadequately defined, contractors and government have imposed dodgy contracts that don’t operate in workers’ interests.
The mood was angry, with one worker saying to Red Flag, “It’s just after an election and it’s pretty sad the Liberals are back in. But here in Queensland, it’s the Labor Party that’s in, and they’re handing out this money to construction companies and we’re getting nothing. It’s the unions that started Labor; we’re owed a bit of respect.”
The two major sites at which unions are calling for contracts to be reviewed are the Watpac Stadium in Townsville and Brisbane’s future Cross River Rail project. 
Watpac was handed a $250 million contract to complete the north Queensland stadium under the best practice legislation in 2018. But soon after, the construction union uncovered the contractor engaging in sham contracting, wage theft and mismanagement.
Unionists marched to the Department of Housing and Public Works, which is responsible for ensuring the implementation of the best practice principles, demanding that it commission an audit of Watpac and terminate the company’s contract.
Most of the workers at the rally were not from the Watpac site, but were rallying to ensure proper implementation of the principles at future public works like the huge Cross River Rail project set to begin soon across Brisbane.
The mood was angry, with workers telling Red Flag they were sick and tired of the poor conditions, low pay and rotten shortcuts the bosses take on their sites. “I’m not on one of the sites that’s on the dodgy contracts”, one worker said, “but I broke my leg a few weeks ago on site, and I’d be pretty screwed without the union. It’s like, what else can you do but come out and support?” 
Rowdy, a construction worker from a city site just down the road from where the rally finished, said Queensland shows that getting a better deal for workers is a fight against politicians of all stripes: “We’re out here standing up for workers’ rights”, he said. “We need to make a stand. Sham contracting, cheap labour and nothing that we brought the government in for or asked them for ... Like everything else, if we don’t make a stand now, we’re going to be walked all over by these contractors who aren’t giving decent conditions and pay. We’re all about safety. We want to be able to go to work and come home.”

Queensland workers rally against Labor state government 

Despite desperate attempts by prime minister Scott Morrison to breathe life into Australia Day – pledging millions of dollars to build a replica of Captain Cook’s ship, the Endeavour, to re-enact its circumnavigation of Australia, which it never did, and threatening to ban councils from holding citizenship ceremonies if they refuse to hold them on 26 January – Invasion Day rallies continued to grow this year.
Tens of thousands marched across the country to protest the grotesque celebration of invasion, dispossession and genocide that is Australia Day.
Dwarfing official celebrations, in Melbourne tens of thousands assembled outside state parliament. It was difficult to move through the tightly packed crowd. Speakers highlighted the continuing crises of Indigenous Australia, including appallingly high rates of youth detention, police brutality and deaths in custody. 
Rally organiser Meriki Onus called for the repeal of the public drunkenness law, which is often used to target Aboriginal people such as Tanya Day, who was arrested on the charge and died in custody in 2017. Tanya’s daughter was an organiser and speaker at the protest.
“We have a prime minister that wants to divide us”, another speaker said. “He wants to erode whatever little we do have. We have a premier that calls himself progressive but sends out a small army of cops onto us when we are peacefully mourning [at the Invasion Day dawn service] today … There is no date appropriate to celebrate genocide; there is no date appropriate to celebrate land theft.”
It was their first Invasion Day rally for many. Sarah from Latrobe University had been to rallies for Palestine and Syria but not 26 January protests. She told Red Flag: “As many people as possible should be here now, to stand up to a government that uses its power against refugees, Muslims and Indigenous [people]”. 
“If you don’t support Australia Day, you have to be here”, said regular attendees Ross and Amanda. “You just have to be here.” 
Chantel, another first time attendee and a social worker, said that colonisation “was the first in a long line of human rights abuses that are continuing today”.
The Sydney march attracted tens of thousands, and several thousand came out in Brisbane, Hobart and Adelaide. In Canberra, 800 marched from the centre of the city to the Tent Embassy. A similar number turned out in Perth.
Banners and chants delivered the same messages in all states: “always was, always will be, Aboriginal land” and “no pride in genocide”. 
There were actions internationally, including the unfurling of an “Abolish Australia Day” banner across London’s Westminster Bridge and a protest by Australian expats in Berlin. 
Back in Melbourne, Onus, to deafening cheers, closed the event with a call to arms: “We’re not going to go away – we’ll be back next year! And we’re going to keep fighting between Invasion Days too!”

‘We’re here and we’re the majority’: Invasion Day protests surge

Bus routes across Victoria shut down on 10 July, as 600 bus drivers employed by CDC Victoria set up 24-hour pickets at five major depots. This was the first stop-work by bus drivers in Victoria in 20 years. 
The strike comes after four months of failed negotiations with the company. CDC has offered only a 2.5 percent pay rise, while drivers are pushing for a 4 percent wage rise and a 1 percent superannuation increase. Around 95 percent of union members voted for the action.
CDC can easily afford to meet the workers’ demands. The multinational company’s annual global revenue is $400 billion, $420 million of which is generated in Australia. 
The strike shut down 49 bus routes in Melbourne along with multiple routes in Ballarat and Geelong, where a majority of routes operated on a Sunday timetable. Red Flag visited the picket in the Melbourne suburb of Oakleigh and found spirits to be high and nearly the whole workforce out. Signs dotted around the picket read “family before fares”. These workers staff the busiest bus route in Victoria – the 601 between Monash University and Huntingdale station – meaning the effects of their action are keenly felt. 
Reminiscences about the last strike for higher wages dominated discussion on the picket line, some of the workers having taken part in the action 20 years ago. Back then their demands were won after a single day’s strike, and for some time after workers benefited from the legacy of the victory. Other workers with backgrounds in different industries likewise shared their experience of industrial action in previous jobs. 
Overall, the mood on the picket line was confident. Drivers say they are prepared to go further if the dispute continues. Their confidence is not misplaced. The lines run out of the Oakleigh depot were severely hampered all day, and newspapers ran headlines about the resulting chaos. 
Many drivers told Red Flag that they are wary about the encroaching privatisation of buses in Victoria (private operators now control around 30 percent of the industry). It is hoped that the fight of the CDC workers will spread to other companies when they enter negotiations. Follow-up stop-works by CDC workers are planned.
In an attempt to counter the impact of the strike in Oakleigh, private operators were deployed to drive scab buses between Monash and Huntingdale station. More numerous than the scab buses were honks of support from other drivers as they passed the picket. 
The bosses will always try to derail workers fighting for their rights, and solidarity goes beyond a single workplace or industry. When transport workers go on strike and the bosses, media and politicians try to turn commuters against them, we must stand alongside those fighting for their conditions.

Victorian bus drivers on strike

217 days. That’s how long striking workers have been picketing gas giant ExxonMobil at its Esso site in Longford, Victoria. The dispute began in June 2017, when Esso’s maintenance contractor UGL forced through a sham enterprise agreement that cut wages by 30 percent and introduced drastic changes to shift rostering and workplace conditions.
The agreement that Esso and UGL want to apply to hundreds of workers in Victoria was voted on by five workers in Western Australia. The deal was then presented to the Longford workers as a “take it or leave it” proposition in a legal manoeuvre similar to that which sparked the long-running CUB protest in 2016. In response, 200 contracted maintenance workers walked off the Longford rig and processing plant to set up a protest at the gate.
That’s where we find ourselves today, more than six months into the strike, at a community rally called by the three unions involved, the Electrical Trades Union, Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union and the Australian Workers’ Union.
Looking around, it’s clear that this was never going to be an easy fight; the effects of going without pay for more than 200 days are as devastating as you can imagine. Wayne, a scaffolder who has been in the industry for more than 17 years, says it’s completely changed his family’s lives.
“Everything we do, from shopping, clothes shopping, kids, excursions, it’s all changed”, he says. “It’s a disgrace on the company towards the local community; it’s not just us missing out. It’s also the local community where we spend our money that misses out too.”
Next year will mark the 50th anniversary of the day that gas was first piped from the Longford processing plant to Victorian homes. The rigs have been the lifeblood for many in the surrounding communities since then. Wayne, his partner Lauren, and their two young kids have lived in Longford their whole lives. Lauren’s father worked at Esso until he retired.
It’s history like this that motivates these workers to hold firm, despite the drawn-out nature of the dispute and the company tactics to pressure them to fold. UGL has run to court a number of times to whinge about various aspects of the protest, including a claim that a large inflatable raft named “Scabby” was unduly intimidating. Workers have also been pulled up for “bullying” over the most trivial interactions with scabs. All of this is part of the companies’ campaign to slander the picketers and attack the solidarity that keeps them going.
Just as the companies involved know how much is at stake, many on the picket recognise that the dispute is about more than protecting the wages and conditions of one group of workers. It’s about the company’s plan to fundamentally reshape its workforce and completely wrest control over conditions from a well-organised group of skilled workers.
Picketers can share numerous examples of the ways in which hard-fought-for safety standards are being degraded by the day by a scab workforce brought in to work on the rigs. Everyone has heard the horror stories about what conditions have been like, on and off the rigs, over recent months. Many are angry about the conditions the rest of the workforce is copping whilst still in there working alongside the strikebreakers.
There are reports that standard safety procedures are being routinely ignored. Important work rules are being junked: life-saving rules like stopping work in unsafe weather and ensuring that safety barriers are up around deadly open holes on the rigs.
Rob, a rigger scaffolder with 25 years’ experience, explains: “These people are going in cold without knowing what they’re doing … they are cutting corners, cutting live pipes, it’s basically an accident waiting to happen”.
The purpose of the rally today is to draw attention to the tax avoidance of the biggest multinational corporations in Australia, including the most notable enemy here, ExxonMobil. While doing everything in its power to drive down workers’ wages, Exxon works as hard to avoid paying taxes. Records released by the Tax Office confirm that the giant resources company paid nil corporate tax in 2014, 2015 and 2016, despite declaring about $25 billion in income over the period.
Revelations that the company they are fighting is one the country’s biggest tax evaders are just grist to the mill for this resolute group. “We don’t want to lose this fight, we don’t want major companies that don’t pay any tax going on to treat other workers like they are treating us”, Wayne says, “slashing their conditions and wages down so far that our younger generation has to suffer”.
217 days in and the message of those out here today is the same as it was at the start. A win against a corporate giant that thinks it can get away with anything is worth fighting for, not just for the 200 strikers, but for us all.

Derrimut fire not the first and won’t be the last

‘We’re not pussycats!’ Country Road warehouse workers strike

Unfunded empathy, funded depravity

Queensland workers rally against Labor state government

‘We’re here and we’re the majority’: Invasion Day protests surge

Victorian bus drivers on strike

217 days out, Longford gas workers still resolute

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