Life as a fly-in fly-out (FIFO) worker isn’t easy. Living on the job – four weeks on, one week off – takes a toll. When more time is spent at work than at home, it’s hard to maintain relationships. Life becomes a waiting game, measured in blocks of time crossed off on a calendar.
First steps, school concerts, weekend footy with mates: these are moments that shape and furnish a life, but instead are marked by absence.
It’s no secret that FIFO work practices contribute to mental health problems, fatigue and suicide. In fact, it’s well documented. In June 2015, in response to a spate of suicides (nine on record), a Western Australian parliamentary committee investigated the mental health impacts of FIFO work. The committee recommended the establishment of a code of practice to address risks to workers.
Pressure from unions representing workers on major projects in WA has recently forced the introduction of shorter rosters and new industry standards that limit on-shifts to 23 days. The changes have been made despite significant resistance from employers.
Currently, fly-in fly-out workers on the project work a roster of 28 days on, 7 days off. 
Workers on other projects are organising to spread the gains made in WA. David (“Strawbs”) Hayes, ETU organiser at the INPEX Ichthys LNG project in the Northern Territory, explains the dynamic there: “Many members that are now here in Darwin have worked on the projects that have had the roster improvements; they are bloody keen to see that happen here” .
At an estimated cost of US $34billion, the project is ranked among the world’s largest of its type. After discovering the Ichthys gas field in the Browse Basin off the coast of WA in 2000, Japanese gas company INPEX and its French partner Total arranged with the Northern Territory government to build an onshore processing facility at Bladin Point, near Darwin.
Once the plant is operational, compressed gas, extracted from the Browse Basin, will be piped 890km to Bladin Point, where it will be processed into LNG and LPG. Those products will be shipped to Japanese and Taiwanese utility companies. Ichthys production is expected to account for 10 percent of Japan’s gas imports.
At its peak, expected in September, 8,000 workers will be employed in the construction of the processing facility. Currently, fly-in fly-out workers on the project work a roster of 28 days on, 7 days off. They want this swing shortened. “We have already started the foundation of our better roster campaign with the ‘4 and 1 brings families undone’ message being printed on our shirts and stickers”, Hayes told Red Flag.
Since the project started in 2012, seven FIFO workers have committed suicide. There are more, according to Luke (not his real name), who has worked on the project for more than a year. He said workers who had been sacked before they died won’t be recorded in the official tally.
When a worker was found dead at the Howard Springs accommodation camp in July 2015, the company issued a statement: “INPEX is committed to the wellbeing of the Ichthys Project workforce and will continue to look for ways to ensure a healthy and safe work environment”. Nearly 12 months later, the FIFO workforce continues to work one of the most punishing rosters in the industry. INPEX’s construction contractor JKC refuses to talk to union representatives about changes.
Safety standards on the job are also under union scrutiny. Twelve serious safety incidents have been recorded in the last year. “It’s a combination of [JKC] not caring and incompetence”, said Luke. “We’re proud of what we do and are good at it, but these neoliberal bastards want to use rubbish components that don’t meet industry standards, which then means we have to re-check them all and rewire them.
“If we mess it up, then there’ll potentially be live wires exposed … just last week a bloke got an electric shock. You know what? The only difference between an electric shock and electrocution is luck. If he had been an older fella, or had a bad heart, he’d be dead.” Workers have requested the establishment of an electrical safety committee. JKC has not responded.
But, inspired by gains made by workers on other projects, and determined to prevent further deaths, INPEX workers are getting organised. In the last six months, they have organised three mass meetings with more than 1,000 in attendance at each.
“We encourage members to be active and provide opportunities for them to get involved, whether it be as simple as being proud to wear a union T-shirt, or knowing that an opinion put forward at a meeting will be heard at the right level due to the structures we have built”, said Hayes about the union culture on the job. “Everyone’s contribution builds the union’s strength on the project.”
Hundreds of angry workers have also taken their message to the centre of Darwin. The most recent rally, on 17 April, was the second in a month. More than 500 unionists marched through Darwin chanting, “What do we do when we’re under attack? Stand up, fight back!”
And it’s not just the FIFO workers who are fighting back. Local workers, many of whom work six days a week, have joined them. They say the company is knocking back local workers for jobs and has broken a promise to provide employment and training opportunities to Aboriginal workers.

Cathy Lewis

FIFO roster dispute spreads

Aboriginal land rights have been articulated and fought for by generations of Aboriginal freedom fighters, activists, unionists, campaigners, community groups and their supporters for more than 200 years.
Why did land become a central battleground? Why is the suppression of Aboriginal resistance still a priority for government and industry? How can the struggle win?
A clash of societies
Prior to the invasion of the Australian continent, the industrial revolution had brought about a social revolution in England. The commons were enclosed; peasants were pushed off their land and forced to join the growing army of workers in the poverty and misery of the towns. Private property became sacrosanct and secured with draconian laws. This huge social upheaval extended into the colonies.
Following the US war of independence, England could no longer send her growing numbers of convicts to North America. After an attempt to transport them to west Africa failed, the authorities decided to establish a convict colony in Australia. The settlement was also intended as a base for whaling ships and to protect British interests in the Pacific.
The arrival of the First Fleet brought a new social order; a class society based upon the accumulation of wealth and property, exploitation of labour (first in the form of indentured and then waged labour), individualism and, of course, oppression and inequality.
By contrast, Aboriginal society was egalitarian. Aboriginal people had a fundamentally different relationship with the physical environment and to each other than the European invaders. Economies and settlement patterns were diverse and based upon particular forms of land use. This relationship is commonly characterised as hunter gatherer, although there is growing evidence that there were more agrarian types of land management.
Bill Gammage in his recent book The Biggest Estate on Earth explains that in 1788 there was no “wilderness”, but a landscape that reflected a sophisticated, successful and sensitive farming regime integrated across the Australian land mass: “The use of fire wasn’t an indiscriminate tool of fuel reduction or grass promotion, but carefully employed to ensure certain plants and animals flourished, to facilitate access and rotation, and to ensure resources were abundant, convenient and predictable.”
There are other examples. For thousands of years, the Gunditjmara people of Western Victoria flourished through their ingenious methods of channelling water flows and systematically harvesting eels to ensure a year-round supply. The Gunditjmara lived in permanent settlements. The area shows evidence of a large settled Aboriginal community dating back thousands of years, farming and smoking eels for food and trade in what is considered to be one of Australia’s earliest and largest aquaculture ventures.
The eel traps and weirs are some of the oldest human constructions on the planet. The Gunditjmara used the eels for their own needs and as a currency when trading with neighbouring Aboriginal people. This provided an economic basis for the development of a settled society.
This relationship to land meant that work for Aboriginal people was also different. People worked only until they had enough to satisfy their immediate needs. Although some people had a special status, there was no entrenched subordination of women, and there were no class divisions. The capitalist imperative to work and accumulate wealth as ends in themselves did not exist.
Heather Goodall has also made this point in her book Invasion to Embassy: “It seems clear that Aboriginal societies developed a precise, although complex, concept of land holding. It was very different from the European concept of land as individually owned private property, a commodity to be bought, sold, and used to generate capital.”
The story of land rights is, at its heart, about the brutality of invasion and the imposition of a foreign social system on the continent. A clash was inevitable because the capitalist mode of production – based on private property, class division and competition – was incompatible with the existing set-up of collective stewardship and egalitarianism. Violence, ranging from small clashes to calculated and systemic genocide, occurred in many regions. This onslaught was often met by armed resistance.
Invasion and resistance
The invasion was not a single event; it took place region by region in a series of uneven steps.
Disease was first. Smallpox decimated the clans around Sydney. From Port Jackson, the disease spread over the mountains and along the networks of people living along the Murray and Darling River valleys. Influenza, measles and other diseases followed. The result was depopulation and disorganisation. Yet survivors regrouped and stayed on their land.
Physical invasion was next as Europeans took land for agriculture and brought their sheep and cattle for grazing. Often this was prime land that was vital for sustaining Aboriginal communities.
Along the Hawkesbury, violence was intense. As Goodall outlines, the fighting was called a war by white observers, and the death toll was high. At least 26 whites were killed along the banks of the Hawkesbury from 1794 to 1800. There were many more Aboriginal deaths:
“At one stage 60 soldiers were sent out to ‛destroy all [Aboriginal people] they could meet and drive them utterly from the Hawkesbury. The Aboriginal dead at one campsite were left hanging on gibbets, to terrorise their kinsfolk … The conflict on Dharuk land continued, with the Kooris, particularly around Parramatta, forming well-co-ordinated fighting bands under a skilled strategist, Pemulwye. Only with his death at the hands of the British in 1802 did the armed resistance diminish.”
There are many other examples of Aboriginal people defending their land from invasion. Along the coastal areas, throughout the grass lands, along the Murray and through to the north-west, fierce struggles took place.
When Europeans arrived on Gunditjmara land in the 1830s, they established new forms of land management. The existing social systems based on communal ownership of land and egalitarianism had to be destroyed. The Gunditjmara fought heroically for their land during the Eumerella wars, a guerrilla struggle that lasted 20 years.
The types of industry that the Europeans introduced shaped the nature of Aboriginal oppression and the resistance to it. Pastoralists sought massive areas of grazing land. For the industry to expand and succeed, the removal of people – whose social system was an impediment to industrial development – was necessary. The integration of the new colony into the rapidly developing British economy via the wool trade drove the dispossession.
The early frontier wars were just the beginning. An Aboriginal working class began to emerge from the earliest days of colonisation. For instance, Aboriginal people worked (sometimes as slaves) in the maritime industry as sealers or on road crews.
Key sections of capital became dependent on Aboriginal labour, particularly in rural areas, where labour could be scarce. This brought incredible oppression but also meant that Aboriginal people were able to develop their industrial muscle and organise collectively. From the 1880s, Aboriginal people became active in the union movement, organising alongside, and at times leading, their white counterparts. This opened up the possibility of solidarity between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal workers.
The post-World War Two years brought immense change and ushered in a new period of Aboriginal struggle. Coinciding with a generalised working class upsurge, Aboriginal people were drawn into the working class in significant numbers. Many rural Aborigines made their way into the urban centres such as Fitzroy in Melbourne and Redfern in Sydney. In the Northern Territory, many people took jobs with the army; many rank and file white soldiers were critical of the harsh conditions Black people faced.
Soon after the war, Aboriginal workers organised a number of important strikes in the Northern Territory and, most famously, the Pilbara strike in Western Australia. This was the first Aboriginal industrial dispute to gain mainstream prominence. Beginning on 1 May 1946, it affected 6,500 square miles of pastoral country.
Communist Party activist Don McLeod and Aboriginal leaders Dooley Bin Bin and Clancy McKenna were jailed, because it was illegal to “entice Aborigines from their employment”. Support for the striking workers was raised in Perth and from unions, and a march on the jail by the strikers forced the government to back down. Clancy and Dooley were freed and McLeod was given a small fine.
This dispute marked an important breakthrough for Black rights. Aboriginal people had united across tribal boundaries and called for, and received, the support of white trade unionists. The Pilbara strike became the longest strike in Australian history, with the Aboriginal stockmen victorious after three years. The Aboriginal people of the Pilbara had successfully challenged the Australian ruling class and won.
To this point, many of the struggles that had taken place were focused on gaining civil rights, equality before the law and an end to legal and social discrimination, but now the long-standing question of ownership of land again took centre stage. It was this struggle and then the Gurindji strike that laid the basis for the modern land rights movement.
Also after the Second World War, mining capital began taking the lead in campaigning against land rights and driving Indigenous people off their few remnants of reserve land. The later attacks on important (although partial) gains, such as the historic Mabo and Wik decisions, were led by mining interests. Mining companies spent millions of dollars campaigning to have the legislation watered down. Queensland Labor premier Wayne Goss put it succinctly when he said of the Mabo decision: “I’ve been accused of springing to the attention of mining companies when they snap their fingers. To that, I plead guilty.”
Divide and rule
Since the very early days of colonisation, racism has been a key ideological tool that British and then Australian capitalists have used to maintain their rule. It was inherent in the system imported here in 1788, and it remains part of the system today.
While it is commonly held that racist attitudes made the colonialists violent and inhumane, there were more fundamental reasons. As Mick Armstrong discusses in the book Class and Struggle in Australia, “The hostility of pastoralism … does not simply reflect racist attitudes; it is an assertion of their class interests, which are threatened if land is set aside for non-commercial purposes. The political structures of society tend to support these commercial interests.”
Gillian Cowlishaw in her book Black, white or brindle: race in rural Australia, makes the point this way: “The success of [the pastoral] enterprise depended on the removal … of the contenders for ownership of the land … [Aboriginal] resistance was sufficiently effective to make their total defeat necessary if [pastoral] enterprise was to succeed. As in other ways, the physical violence was supported by a web of ideas and explanations.”
Racism is a reflection of the material interests of the capitalist class and the ideological tool used to justify genocide and the continuing expropriation of Aboriginal land. But racism provides other advantages for the capitalists: it can prevent working class sympathy and support, which is vital if oppressed groups are to fight back and win.
When workers are divided by ruling class ideology, whether that’s racism, sexism or homophobia, it is more difficult to unite and fight back against the common enemy. Racism is a weakness for our side but a key strength for theirs. That’s why the fight against racism is not just a fight to support Aboriginal people – it is a fight to unify the working class so that it can more effectively fight against the system.
So the struggle against oppression in all its forms is not secondary for Marxists, or even separate from the class struggle. It is a crucial part of the class struggle.
Recognising that the bosses and their system are the cause of racism and genocide is vitally important. Capitalism continues to be the source of the oppression of Aboriginal people. That oppression can be seen in myriad ways: the proposed closure of more than 150 remote Aboriginal communities in Western Australia, the Northern Territory intervention, the stealing of children, the deaths in custody, the attacks on the Aboriginal Legal Service and the shamefully high infant mortality and suicide rates that Aboriginal communities suffer.
Because Aboriginal people today make up a small percentage of the total population – around 3 percent – it will take a political and industrial campaign involving large numbers of non-Aboriginal workers as well as Aboriginal people to force the employers and governments to give anything other than the most token concessions.
The working class, which includes the majority of Aboriginal people, has the potential to lead a struggle in the interests of all those who suffer injustice and oppression. This is not because the working class is morally superior, but because it has the social power to challenge the system of profit.
Socialists stand unequivocally with Aboriginal people in their struggle for land rights, self-determination and social and economic justice. We do so not simply because that struggle is right and just, but also because we face the same enemy, the same system, and need unity to win.
Murri activist and artist Lilla Watson once said: “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” That’s a sentiment we agree with.

Capitalism, land rights and Aboriginal resistance

Faith Bandler died on Thursday 12 February.
She wa­s the daughter of a slave "black-birded" from the tiny South Sea Island of Ambryn and brought to Queensland to work in the sugar cane-fields. Her mother was of Scottish and Indian descent and imparted on Faith – and her brothers and sisters – a fierce independence.
In the Great Depression, their home opened its doors to everyone – no matter how poor, no matter what colour. Looking after each other was important.
Her childhood was spent in the family orchard listening to the men as they reminisced in Pidgin-English about lost Island homes, and bartered with the poor Irish farmers who lived nearby – exchanging fruit and vegetables for home-made tomato sauce.
Working class whites found their way to her family’s place often. They would sit together under the trees and eat persimmon, pineapple and mango. In exchange, they would chop fire wood for Faith’s mother. Her family did not believe in charity – dignity and self-respect were more important.
As a young woman, Faith joined a dance troupe that was invited to a Soviet youth festival and so, as the dust began to settle after World War II, she danced her way through Eastern and Western Europe. The “cultural delegation” she travelled with was, she said, a “strange combination of people”.
Faith was surrounded by communists, Christians, unionists and, of course, singers and dancers. Walking the streets of Berlin, Warsaw, and Budapest she wondered how many lives were buried under the rubble. Her visit to the Dachau concentration camp made a deep, horrifying and lasting impression. It was the beginning of Cold War McCarthyism, yet the troupe ignored the travel restrictions and went on to Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia – defiance and bravery was important.
Back in Australia, she drew the attention of ASIO. “[They were] interested in me and interested, I’m sure, in a million other Australians. Horrible little snoopers that they are”, she said in a 1993 interview. She and the others had had their passports confiscated by this time.
“None of this surprised me because I knew that great people in the world were suffering as a result of McCarthyism”, she said. “And there was Paul Robeson, who was really imprisoned in Harlem, without a passport for a long time and the author Cedrick Belfridge, and they were people who were called up before the Un-American Committee … and deprived of the right to travel. And it was the same here. And Australia was fast becoming a little America.” Sticking to her principles was important.
Travelling to Europe had been a turning point: she’d seen the barbarism of war and returned to Australia determined to fight for peace. She joined the New South Wales Peace Council and began speaking up at meetings – raising her voice against injustice was important.
Faith’s friend Jessie Street, a white woman inspired by the Suffragettes and the anti-slavery movement in Britain, convinced Faith to turn her attention to the plight of Aboriginals. Together they, Pearl Gibbs, Kath Walker (Oodgeroo Noonuccal) and Dulcie Flower started the Movement for the Advancement of Aborigines.
The tiny group met in the house of two poets. Pearl cohered and led the group, their first campaign was against the hated Aboriginal Welfare Board. “Pearl’s one ambition was to demolish that Board … I can remember her saying, ‘It’s May Day, come and walk, come and march on May Day’, and I said ‘Too right’. So she went down to the waterfront and got some of the wharfies to make a poster for her and it had a huge flame of fire and below was ‘Burn the Board’. And she said, ‘The Board should be destroyed because it controls my people’s lives.’” – organising and protesting was important.
Faith is most widely remembered for her role in bringing about the 1967 Referendum which resulted in Aboriginal people being included in the census, but this outcome was not the sole intent of the campaign. As Faith explained more than a decade ago: “The Referendum was very important to me. It was more important than any other issue that had to do with the Aboriginal people. I was never one to get involved with charity and to this day, I find it hard to accept that we have to have charities to solve our problems … prior to the Referendum, the Aboriginal people lived under six different laws.
“Each state had its own law, own set of governing laws of the people and if, say New South Wales was pushed to build a few houses, or something like that, they would say, ‘We haven’t got the finances’ … It had nothing to do with the right to vote, nothing at all, it had to do with making federal resources available … The matter of health was a major problem, the matter of housing, the need for education, and all these serious issues are linked.”
The referendum provided Aborigines the freedom to cross state borders unhindered, meant that families and friends could reunite and importantly, that people could seek out employment – economic justice and reparations was important.
The launch of the petition for the referendum was an ambitious affair. The tiny group decided to book the Town Hall, which had a capacity of 2,500 people and a steep fee of £80. They barely had 80 pennies to their name. They turned to the unions for support.
“We went to the wharfies and to the Seamen’s Union and a few other unions and said, ‘Would you circulate these, we’re going to have a public meeting at the Town Hall and we are launching a petition for a federal referendum, for the rights of Aborigines’, and the unions took them and took the petition and the handbills and particularly the Seamen’s Union. And they were marvellous because they were able to drop them at all the ports around Australia.” On the night of the launch, the hall was packed – solidarity was important.
Faith Bandler was a member of the Communist Party, the Union of Australian Women, the Aborigines Progressive Association, the Australian Aborigines League and co-founder of the Australian Aboriginal Fellowship. Her activism in the immediate post-war years coincided with a generalised upsurge in working class activity.
The Pilbara strike – the first Aboriginal industrial dispute to gain national prominence, and then the Gurindji strike drew support from unionists in the Eastern States. Faith worked together with these forces to provide concrete support for both groups of striking Aboriginal workers, without which the strikes would likely have failed. The issue of wages was front and centre and laid the basis for the demand for land rights – recognising the strength of the working class was important.
In many ways, what Abbott is doing – cutting millions from federal funding for Aboriginal programs, while re-negotiating with states over others – is reversing the intent of the 1967 referendum. As the commonwealth withdraws funding from Aboriginal programs and services, the states are required to pick up the slack.
However, with the states crying poor, premiers like Collin Barnett have found justification to shut down “expensive” remote communities and then claim to have no choice. The buck passing continues, as does the social and economic injustice. If we want to live in a world free of war, slavery, exploitation, poverty and oppression, Faith Bandler’s story remains important.
The final word belongs to Faith: “I’m a great believer in the power of people and I think, you know I’m a street woman, I believe we should make good use of our streets. They are not just there for motorcars, they’re there for us to get out and express our feelings of how we feel, particularly about war, about peace, the manufacturing of arms, the banning of the manufacturing of arms and so on. And so my faith is in people and I can’t say anything else other than that. It always has been and it always will be.”
Vale Faith Bandler.

‘My faith is in people’ – in memory of Faith Bandler, 1920-2015

Plans to develop Australia’s first nuclear waste dump at Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory have been shelved.
After a long running, defiant campaign led by traditional owners and backed by environment groups, the ACTU and the Public Health Association, the federal government yesterday committed not to act on the Northern Land Council’s contested nomination of Muckaty as the dump site. 
The decision is a significant victory for traditional owners and serves as a powerful demonstration that communities who stand united and strong, can fight back and win.
Kylie Sambo, Muckaty traditional owner and participant a Federal Court case against the dump said: “[This victory] means that we don't have to worry about a nuclear dump coming to Muckaty ... I'm very happy for our win and I will be partying for whole week
“Also I would like to say that if anyone thinks that something is going wrong in their country they should stand up fight because if we can do it then so can you."
“Muckaty is the latest in a series of failed attempts to impose a dump on unwilling communities in both South Australia and the NT,” said Dave Sweeney from the Australian Conservation Foundation. “It was a secretive and ill-considered deal that has properly failed the test.”
Law firm Maurice Blackburn has been acting on a pro bono basis for traditional owners opposed to the dump in a four-year legal fight that was two weeks into a Federal Court trial when it was resolved.
Lizzie O’Shea, lawyer for the traditional owners, said of the case: “The community is thrilled. The traditional owners of Muckaty are hugely relieved that their efforts to resist the dump over seven years have been rewarded.
“The next steps for nuclear waste management are really up to the Commonwealth but we are just pleased we have avoided it going on Aboriginal land without consent of traditional owners.”

No nuclear waste dump for Muckaty

At six months old my daughter started to attend protests with me. Tucked safely into her little pouch, she would sleep blissfully through boisterous chants and speeches, her little head nodding off as we marched through the streets surrounded by hundreds, sometimes thousands, of noisy people.
If only she slept that well at home.
Since then she’s attended countless demonstrations, pickets, sit-ins, vigils and public meetings. At age three she was an active participant in the Occupy Melbourne protest.
Along with other kids and their carers, she was part of the “Teddy Bears Protest Picnic” as it occupied foyers of government departments and cluttered up reception areas with homemade placards, prams, nappies, snacks and soft toys.
We even paid a short visit to the premier’s office, delivering a novelty-sized report card on the state of public education and cuts to child care. The kids joined in on a “mic-check” and sung their little lungs out about why the 1 percent should learn to share.
Security called for backup as two three-year-olds skipped their way into the lobby.
According to Andrew Bolt, right wing columnist for the Murdoch press, this makes me a terrible mother, guilty of child abuse. Apparently no other crime is as heinous as subjecting a child to collective, organised protest.
A multi-billion dollar industry has been created that provides advice to parents about how to raise happy, healthy children; the focus being the urgent need to protect them from a frightening and dangerous world.
An abundance of books, DVDs and websites feeds off the deep sense of isolation and confusion that many first-time parents feel when confronted with the enormity of bringing a child into the world. They confirm what you already suspected – you are woefully and hopelessly under-prepared and under-qualified ever to be a good parent.
Advice about how to “build emotional intelligence through silence and stillness”, and handy hints on how to reduce your little ones’ “stress and emotional overload” abound. But absolutely none will guide you to including your child in progressive political activity.
So, in the spirit of fast and accessible info – a must for busy parents – here is a top five list of reasons why you should involve your kid in left wing politics:
1. Children are not passive objects. They are active participants in the world and are able to engage with complex ideas, even at a very young age. For example, my daughter has witnessed police attempting to intimidate and harass Aboriginal people on the street. She recognised very early on that if you are Black, you are treated differently, and she didn’t like it at all. No one is born a racist.
2. Children are often confronted with information about why the world is a horrible place but rarely about how it could be changed. Teaching them that they have agency and the capacity to change the world is a powerful and important lesson, and one that the state will take great steps to ensure they don’t learn.
3. Going to left wing protests can foster a sense of community and solidarity. I’ve spoken to my daughter about how the government locks up little children in detention centres. It’s a difficult subject to broach with a five-year-old, but virtually impossible to avoid – after all, the government has spent millions of taxpayer dollars on advertising to make sure we all know about their “tough love”. By being included in the rallies, she has learned that there are good and decent people willing to take a stand for these kids. And she’s one of them.
4. Society is not impartial. Dominant capitalist ideology is so pervasive it has almost ceased to be noticeable. The status quo is unquestioned and made to seem “natural”. There is no such thing as “unbiased” – everybody is operating in the frame of some ideology or another. The question is whether it is acknowledged or not. School teaches kids that there is no other option than the system we have now; to think otherwise is deviant.
At the same time violent and sexist images and information bombard them from every angle. It’s your duty to help them make sense of the world. Abrogating this responsibility is just acquiescence to ruling class ideology.
5. Kids learn by example. If you can, you should provide a good lead. In 1911 thousands of schoolchildren in the UK and Ireland, some as young as three years, staged a mass walkout. Their demands were fewer hours (so they could work and help support their families), free pencils and erasers and the end of corporal punishment.
The children organised themselves into strike committees and flying pickets and drafted statements to the media. These kids took control over their lives and brought about positive change. All this was learned from their parents, who worked on the docks and were also on strike for better wages and conditions. This is the kind of organisation that we will need if our children are ever to live in a world free of oppression and exploitation.
I’m sure this article will draw criticism and I welcome it, because I want to teach my daughter another lesson: it’s important to stand up for your principles and to fight for what you believe in, even if you are told you are wrong to do so. If that make me a bad mum in the eyes of Andrew Bolt, then I say, “Good!”
[Get your kids along to the Marxism 2014 conference School of Rebellion this Easter. Visit <a href="http://marxismconference.org/">marxismconference.org</a> for details.]

Why you should take your kid to a protest

Tell anyone you work as a temp, and more often than not they’ll assume you provide short term secretarial or administrative support. The stereotypical temp is an unskilled (or maybe semi-skilled) worker – always a woman, usually young – who files paperwork, answers the phone and fetches cups of coffee. But this narrow and sexist image is a far cry from the reality of temporary, labour hire or agency work today.
Transient work has always existed under capitalism, but “the temp”, didn’t appear until the middle of last century; she was an employment industry construct.
The temp was promoted as a “never-never girl”. According to a now ill-famed US advertisement, she “never takes a vacation or holiday. Never asks for a pay rise. Never costs you a dime for slack time (When the workload drops, you drop her.) Never has a cold, slipped disc or loose tooth. (Not on your time anyway!)”
She was created for bosses who wanted to fill short labour gaps arising during staff absences or unexpected business peaks. To establish the industry, and minimise union opposition, temping agencies deliberately constructed an image of temps that relied heavily on the accepted gender roles of the time.
Temp work, they said, was for bored housewives who needed something to fill their inane lives while the children were at school. Confined to performing basic administrative work, temps were not considered “real” workers. The agencies assured organised labour that they were no threat to union jobs.
Today, a temporary or labour hire worker is as likely to be found in a warehouse or down a mine as in an office. A 2012 survey conducted by Hays, one of the world’s largest suppliers of temporary staff, found that in Australia and New Zealand close to 45 percent of temporary workers are men. Most are older than 30.
Nick Deligiannis, managing director of Hays, says, “The use of these workers is no longer a quick fix but is a long term staffing solution for employers.” Deligiannis’ observation is informed by a good dose of self-interest. But he points to a real dynamic.
A 2005 federal government inquiry reported that labour hire workers grew from 0.8 percent of the total workforce in 1990 to 3 percent in the early 2000s.
This may seem an insignificant figure, but the effect can be felt in a number of ways.
First, workers who are engaged as temps can constitute a secondary market. They often experience unpredictable hours, fluctuating pay and inferior rights and entitlements. The relationship between the temp worker and employer is indirect; the “host” organisation has no contractual relationship with the employee.
Temps are therefore denied sick leave, holiday pay, paid lunch breaks, maternity leave and other entitlements. Unfair dismissal and compensation obligations also can easily be circumvented – and it is difficult for temps to engage in protected industrial action against their “host”.
The employment of temps and labour hire workers can be a way to fragment the workforce and weaken solidarity. In some instances, they have been used directly as strike breakers.
Unified action is more difficult in workplaces where people are employed under different contracts with different pay rates and conditions; the overall bargaining power of workers is therefore weakened.
The strategy of divide and conquer has always been part of the bosses’ arsenal. So it’s no surprise that the sectors in which the largest groups of temp workers are now found – mining, manufacturing, the public sector, health and community services – have traditionally also been among the better unionised.
With annual revenue in excess of $20 billion in Australia alone, the labour hire industry isn’t going to disappear any time soon. Our strategy has to be to remove barriers that stop temps joining the same union as their permanent co-workers. And then we need to fight like hell for their rights – together with everyone else’s.
[Cathy has worked as a temp with a single “host” employer for six years]

Temp workers aren’t just bored housewives

After 30 years of fighting for justice, the family of murdered Aboriginal teenager John Pat will finally receive an apology from the WA government.
The 16-year-old was beaten to death by five off-duty police officers in Roebourne who later were cleared of any culpability and returned to active duty.
On 25 September, the WA shadow Indigenous affairs minister moved a motion in parliament calling for an apology for John Pat’s death in police custody.
The motion received bipartisan support and was passed unanimously, including by Premier Colin Barnett, who gave his full backing for the motion and joined in the minute’s silence.
John’s mother Mavis Pat, together with other family members, witnessed the motion while hundreds of supporters rallied outside at a protest organised by the WA Deaths in Custody Watch Committee. The rally was part of a national day of action in which protests and commemorations were held across the country in Perth, Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne.
While the gesture was earnestly received, Mavis Pat is also demanding compensation for her son’s brutal death and a reopening of the coronial inquest. “I’d like to see justice be done. It’s been so long but nothing has been done. They’ve never done nothing; some people have come up to talk and see me in Roebourne, they’re trying to help but we never got any letters or nothing. No answers or no letters”, she said.
Speaking to supporters gathered outside the WA parliament, John Pat’s sister Maisie said, “An apology’s not going to bring my brother’s life back [but] I think maybe my mum needs some sort of apology … she hasn’t been paid any compensation or anything. Today there’s still no justice.”
Undoubtedly an apology should be given to the Pat family, and to all families who have had loved ones taken from them, but Colin Barnett’s remorse can only be described as hollow as long as his government continues to perpetrate crimes against Aboriginal people.
Incarceration rates in WA are an absolute disgrace: Aboriginal people are being locked up at nine times the rate that black South Africans were imprisoned under apartheid. One in every 14 Aboriginal adult males is behind bars, while juveniles in WA are a staggering 48 times more likely to be jailed than their non-Indigenous peers.
Home to the country’s most comprehensive mandatory sentencing laws, which further target Aboriginal people and have led to increased incarceration rates, WA’s particular brand of racism is fortified.
While urging both sides of parliament to put differences aside and support the motion, Barnett callously and with complete disdain for the suffering he is currently creating, continues to justify locking up 140 Aboriginal children in an adult maximum-security prison.
These children, some as young at 10, are being denied education and are forced to endure strip searches, lockdowns and solitary confinement for 23 hours a day.
When will the WA government apologise for the crimes they are committing on these young lives?
Expressing solidarity with others who have lost loved ones at the hands of racist police, Maisie Pat said, “I feel for all the other parents who’ve lost their child in police custody. I do feel for them. It’s just the beginning.”
An apology is a first step. But for the Pat family, it is still a long way from justice.

Still no justice for John Pat

Thirty years ago, a young Aboriginal boy was beaten to death by five off-duty police in Roebourne, Western Australia. His crime had been to defend his friend, who’d been called a “black cunt” and set upon by the officers. His head was bashed in and he was left to die in a cold prison cell.
The autopsy revealed a fractured skull, haemorrhage and swelling as well as bruising and tearing of the brain. He was just 16 years old.
John Pat’s brutal death led to an outpouring of grief and anger. Thousands mobilised across the country, forcing the federal Labor government to announce a Royal Commission into Black Deaths in Custody.
A coronial inquiry committed the five officers to stand trial – not for murder but for the lesser charge of manslaughter. A year later, they were declared innocent by an all-white jury in Karratha.
The police returned to active duty and later were promoted. While they literally got away with murder, in a sickening twist, charges were laid against some of John’s friends, all of whom were Aboriginal. They were fined for assault, resisting arrest or hindering police.
The Royal Commission into Deaths in Custody made 339 recommendations. To date, most have been ignored.
At the time of the commission’s final report in 1991, Aboriginal people were eight times more likely to be imprisoned than non-Aboriginal people. A decade later they were 10 times more likely to be imprisoned. Today Aboriginal people are 14 times more likely to be jailed.
John was not the first to die at the hands of racist police, and tragically won’t be the last. Since 1980, more than 2,000 Aboriginal people have died in custody, yet not a single police officer has been convicted.
The Pat family, along with countless others, continue to fight for justice and an end to the systemic racism of the police force and the legal system that protects them.
The Deaths in Custody Watch Committee - Western Australia, together with the Pat family, have called for a national day of action with community rallies and a remembrance ceremony to be held in a number of states. The committee is calling on the WA government to table a motion apologising to the Pat family.
Deaths in Custody Watch Committee chairperson Marc Newhouse told Red Flag, “In Western Australia, 3 percent of the population is Indigenous, but they make up 38 percent of the adult prison population and 68 percent of the juvenile detention population. This is outrageous and clear evidence of systemic racism in the criminal justice system.”
Actions for justice
Perth: Remembrance Ceremony, rally and apology motion – 4pm Wednesday, 25 September, Parliament House.
Sydney: Thirty years but still no justice! – 12pm Saturday, 28 September, Town Hall.
Melbourne: Thirty years but still no justice! – 12pm Saturday, 28 September, State Library.
 
	John Pat, by Jack Davis
	Write of life / the pious said
	forget the past / the past is dead.
	But all I see / in front of me
	is a concrete floor / a cell door / and John Pat.
	 
	Agh! tear out the page / forget his age
	thin skull they cried / that's why he died!
	But I can't forget / the silhouette
	of a concrete floor / a cell door / and John Pat.
	 
	The end product / of Guddia* law
	is a viaduct / for fang and claw,
	and a place to dwell / like Roebourne’s hell
	of a concrete floor / a cell door / and John Pat.
	 
	He's there – where?
	there in their minds now / deep within,
	there to prance / a sidelong glance / a silly grin
	to remind them all / of a Guddia wall
	a concrete floor / a cell door / and John Pat.
	 
	* “Guddia” is a Kimberley (north Australian) term for “white man”.

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