Almost 2,000 West Papuans were arrested by Indonesian authorities in early May, after demonstrations were held to commemorate the 1963 annexation of the territory and to demand independence.
The continuing occupation of West Papua has been referred to as a slow-motion genocide, and has left up to 500,000 dead. According to journalist John Martinkus, writing in the Saturday Paper:
“It was the largest mass arrest of pro-independence demonstrators in Papua, and included the arrest of demonstrators in the regional centres of Sorong, Merauke, Wamena, Fak-Fak and Manokwari. Arrests were made at similar rallies in Semarang in Java and Makassar in South Sulawesi.
“In all, 1888 people were arrested for demonstrating for independence. Photos and video circulating both on social media and local media show the masses of people arrested in Jayapura and taken to the Indonesian police compound – forced to sit in rows in the heat and made to remove their clothes.
“According to local journalist Benny Mawel, reporting for Tabloid Jubi, the treatment of some of those detained was very rough. Activists were separated from the main group and put in cells at the main police headquarters. They were beaten – police stamping on their chests and backs and hitting them in the head with rifle butts. They were threatened with death and stripped of their clothes.”
The protests occurred just after a visit by Indonesian president Joko Widodo. West Papuans are calling for the upcoming Melanesian Spearhead Group conference to grant full membership to pro-independence parties. The MSG was set up in 1986 and includes Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands; the United Liberation Movement for West Papua, a pro-independence coalition, was granted observer status last year.
Despite allegations of torture and widespread abuse, pro-independence activists have vowed to continue fighting.

Shail Shah

Indonesian crackdown on West Papuan activists

It has been six months since trolley collector Duncan Hart and unionist Josh Cullinan launched a legal challenge against Coles supermarkets, one of the largest corporations in Australia. Hart and Cullinan, with the assistance of pro-bono barrister Siobhan Kelly, are seeking to overturn the 2015 national workplace agreement struck by Coles and the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association, the union that covers Coles employees.
According to their case, the deal is so rotten that it leaves thousands of Coles workers worse off than if they were paid under the basic award. If they’re right, the agreement should be quashed. Australia’s current industrial relations laws require that enterprise agreements leave workers “better off” than the award.
On 28 and 29 April, the Fair Work Commission heard closing submissions from both sides. The hearing room was packed. Coles’ lawyers implored the commission to ignore the evidence – real rosters of real Coles workers – submitted by Hart and Cullinan in favour of confected rosters submitted by Coles.
Kelly pointed out that the workers that Coles claims would be better off would be so only if they received carer’s leave, emergency services leave, natural disaster leave, blood donor leave, compassionate leave, defence services leave and be made redundant. All in one year.
To this, Coles and the SDA could barely muster a serious reply. Though it was argued that there is an “intangible”, non-monetary value in being a Coles employee which must also be taken into account.
The commission’s decision on the legality of the deal is expected within weeks. Hart is confident. Speaking to Red Flag he said that he hoped the agreement would be struck out, giving Coles workers a chance to bargain again on their own terms.
“If the Commission found in our favour, it would have huge implications for other retail agreements”, he said. “Hopefully, it will make Coles workers think about how we got into such a situation and about what we can do to challenge our union’s cosy relationship with the company.

Penalty rates for retail workers in balance

Often, the industrial scene in Australia can seem like a series of David and Goliath battles. Hart v Coles Supermarkets is one such fight. Supermarket worker Duncan Hart is taking on the combined might of Coles, one of the largest employers in the country, and the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA), the massive union which covers Coles workers.
Duncan has lodged an appeal against the Fair Work Commission’s June decision to approve the latest Coles enterprise agreement. Red Flag’s Shail Shah talked to Duncan about what he’s fighting about, and how it might affect nearly 80,000 workers across the country.
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Last year, Coles and the SDA started negotiating over the terms of a new agreement to set the pay and conditions of Coles’ workforce. From the outset, indications were that it would be bad.
Early on, the company and the SDA locked the Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union (AMIEU) and the Transport Workers Union (TWU) out of bargaining.
Coles and the SDA agreed to remove existing state-based agreements in favour of a single national deal. The new agreement meant a savage cut in conditions and penalty rates for meatworkers and truck drivers. But the picture wasn’t much better for the majority of the workforce represented by the SDA. For these workers, the agreement meant the loss of all night shift and Saturday penalty rates and a hefty cut to Sunday rates.
The SDA argued that the cuts would be offset by a raise in the base wage and that workers would be better off generally. Duncan says that he knew the deal was a sell out, and talked openly about this with his workmates, but could do little to challenge it at the time.
“I hadn’t put two and two together in the sense that there was a process of approval by which the Fair Work Commission could actually look at it and say, ‘This agreement is worse than the award’.”
While the AMIEU protested the deal and meatworkers took strike action in Victoria, with the backing of the SDA the company managed to get its agreement through at the workplace level. After a heavy-handed ‘vote yes’ campaign the agreement was voted up in a country-wide ballot of all staff in May.
But within a few weeks, Fairfax journalists Ben Schneiders and Royce Millar were reporting that the agreement undercut the basic award. Their claims were based on research by Josh Cullinan, an organiser with the National Tertiary Education Union.
Cullinan had undertaken a forensic review of the Coles deal: the results showed that, under the agreement, wages for tens of thousands of workers were lower than if they were on the award – the legal minimum.
At the June hearing to have the deal approved, Coles submitted seven rosters to the Commission to show that take home wages were overall higher. But there was a problem – the rosters were invented. Seven imaginary rosters for seven imaginary workers.
Using real rosters, Cullinan was able to show that a significant number would be worse off under the SDA-backed agreement. He looked at two stores in particular: Northcote in Melbourne and Benalla in regional Victoria. Two-thirds of workers at the Benalla store and one-third of workers at Northcote were worse off under the agreement.
Duncan analysed rosters at his own store in Brisbane and found that 50 percent of people in his department would be better off on the award. Cullinan estimates that the agreement makes Coles’ workforce $60 million a year cheaper than if it paid according to the basic award.
With this information, Duncan – a long time union activist in the SDA – decided to challenge the Commission’s original finding that the agreement left workers better off. His appeal took place in Melbourne on 13 October. Duncan, Josh Cullinan and the AMIEU on one side; Coles and the SDA on the other.
At the hearing, both Coles and the SDA argued against Duncan’s right to object to the agreement, but struggled to explain why a worker affected by the deal shouldn’t be heard.
One of the low points for Coles, Duncan says, was its argument that the Commission may never be able to determine whether workers are better off under the agreement because truth is little more than a construct.
He hopes this challenge to the collusion between the company and the SDA will galvanise retail workers. “Hopefully it can be a bit of a rallying call for workers to organise independently of the leadership, to put some pressure on the officials … This is an indictment of the SDA’s entire negotiating system in every respect”, he said.
The Fair Work Commission is expected to release its decision on Duncan’s case within weeks. “Even if they find against us that would not be the end at all”, he said. “It would just be an argument that the so-called protections the law gives workers mean not much at all and we have more work to do to build rank and file strength in workplaces.”

Supermarket worker challenges SDA sell out

An estimated 150 million workers struck in India on 2 September in what was possibly the largest general strike in history.
The strike, called by 10 union federations, affected the banking, transport and manufacturing industries; schools, mines and entire cities also were shut down. The action was strongest in the states of Kerala and West Bengal, which have a history of left wing and communist activity.
This is the fourth all-India strike called in the last six years. The Central Trade Unions, along with the Central Government Employees Federations, have repeatedly clashed with governing parties, first the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance and now the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance.
Since the mid-1990s, governments have been trying to outdo each other to be the most business friendly: smashing wages, privatising state industries, stripping land from peasants and waging brutal counter-insurgency campaigns in Kashmir and the “Red Corridor” in the country’s east, where Maoist guerrilla groups operate.
The BJP, led by Narendra Modi, was swept into power in a landslide victory in national elections last year. Modi promised to push through a range of policies to boost profits and expand India’s economy. The Economist wrote prior to the elections:
“Indian industry is in a funk and has decided that one man is the answer … It is only a slight exaggeration to say that almost everyone in a suit and with a pulse in the private sector wants Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat state, to become prime minister after elections due by May 2014 … [Modi] will be India’s Margaret Thatcher, a populist reformer who forces through measures that put the economy on a higher growth path.”
Yet Modi, faced with political opposition, has been forced to backtrack on a number of policies. The unions are now calling on the government to implement a 12 point charter to guarantee a basic standard of living for India's poor and workers.
The charter calls for a guaranteed minimum wage, social security for all workers and a universal pension system, among other things. Arguably the most important points in the charter relate to enforcement of basic labour laws and a pledge not to amend the current standards.
It has become an article of faith among the capitalist class that India's labour laws are archaic, unwieldy and a great impediment to progress. The World Bank has routinely called for the trashing of workers’ rights. In 2008, for example, it said: “India's labour regulations – among the most restrictive and complex in the world – have constrained the growth of the formal manufacturing sector where these laws have their widest application”.
In reality, however, labour laws are routinely flouted and ignored. The capitalist class takes any opportunity to further drive down conditions and wages and increase profits.
This strike was a step forward for the left in India. Decades of in-fighting and wavering have weakened the labour movement, as the economy has increased in size. The International Labour Organization wrote in 2010: “The proportion of unionisation rates is as low as 6.3 per cent of the total workforce and is still fragmented by political ideologies. Union inter- and intra- rivalry is high.” The following year, the New York Times noted:
“India’s trade union movement has been in decline since efforts to liberalise the economy began in 1992. Historically unionised sectors like the textile industry had already undergone turbulent reorganizations in the 1980s; the trend accelerated post-liberalisation as the state became less inclined to intervene in labour disputes. Since then, permanent employees have often been laid off in favour of contract workers. Union leaders have been fired, bought out, intimidated or, sometimes, assassinated.”
Nationally, the various left-reformist and communist groups have also declined in membership and influence. However, the ruling classes still see the left as a threat. In Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, members of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) were attacked by the police and hundreds were arrested during the strike.
Despite the strike being a success, the central trade unions have taken a wait-and-see approach to future action. However, as India's economic growth slows, businesses will squeeze as much out of workers as possible. The stage is set for more confrontations. The 2 September strike shows that workers in India still have power and are prepared to wield it.

Indian workers stage 150 million-strong strike

“Hey Melbourne, listen up! The cleaners are standing up!” About 100 cleaners and unionists rallied to defend penalty rates on 15 June, International Justice Day for Cleaners. After gathering at Victorian Trades Hall in Carlton, they marched on the offices of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) in East Melbourne. ACCI has been one of the loudest industry voices arguing for cuts to night, weekend and public holiday penalty rates. One worker carried a hand written placard reading: “We clean this city while you sleep. Don’t cut our pay.”
The rally was called by United Voice – which represents cleaning workers – and supported by other unions including the Maritime Union of Australia, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Electrical Union, National Union of Workers and the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation.
Red Flag’s Shail Shah asked people what they thought about the attack on penalty rates.
Margarita
“Getting penalty rates means I can pay my mortgage, it means I can help send my kids to school. Losing them means cutting my basic needs.”
Tom
“The extra money I get represents the time I give up to go to work, time spent away from my family and friends.”
Gamal
“Penalty rates usually equal about $220 a week. At 52 weeks in a year, people will lose over $10,000 a year, about a quarter of someone’s wage. How are we supposed to live?”
Alexia
“I don’t think the employers will hire any extra people with the money they save. I think they just want to increase how much profit they make, how much goes into their pocket.”

‘We clean this city while you sleep’

Its noise belied its modest size. The crowd was an angry group of around 60 unionists gathered at the entrance to the national SDA (Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association) office in Melbourne’s CBD on 13 March. They were there to oppose a sell-out deal struck between the SDA, which covers retail workers, and Coles. The agreement will slash the conditions of Coles meatworkers. Protesters, members of SDA and the meatworkers’ union, say that supermarket workers should stick together to improve wages and conditions across the board. 
Instead, the SDA has joined with Coles in a campaign against meatworkers and their union, the AMIEU (Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union). Despite high productivity rates and even higher profits, Coles wants to destroy the conditions and wages of meatworkers, a small and well-unionised section of its workforce. If the SDA-brokered deal goes ahead, penalty rates for meatworkers will be cut, many conditions lost and a tiered wage structure introduced. Some workers argue that Coles wants to drive them out entirely.
Dione has worked at Coles for 23 years and says they deserve their penalty rates: “We are giving up time with our families … as a single parent, working on a weekend means not only having to pay a babysitter, but also losing time with my daughter.”
But penalty rates are just part of the story. Chris talks about how Coles cuts everyone’s hours to avoid paying for rostered breaks. “We’re not asking for more but to keep what we have … what Coles is doing is an absolute disgrace”, he says.
Many meatworkers describe a feeling of being pushed out of a job. More and more meat comes into stores pre-cut and pre-packed. Butchering is increasingly moved off site. Graeme says that Coles is even having them train their replacements – “slicers” – young workers with little experience and low wages. “Big companies can wield a lot of power, and they know they have power”, he says. He thinks that the company is trying to drive out the remaining meatworkers to avoid paying them out.
As the protest marched from the SDA offices to a nearby Coles supermarket, Jane talked about broader politics. She’s not surprised that Coles is pushing so hard now: “The Liberals rule for businesses and the rich”, she says. “If Abbott had his way, there would be no penalty rates for anything.”
Predictions as to how the meatworkers’ fight will unfold are mixed. But morale is high. Sean, an AMIEU organiser, says that, along with those in Victoria, meatworkers in Queensland and New South Wales have taken strike action. However, if they are to defeat the proposed agreement, gaining support from Coles workers covered by the SDA is vital. These workers – the shelf stackers, bakers, checkout staff, storemen and trolley collectors – make up the vast majority of Coles’ workforce.
Where the meatworkers have been able to get the word out, Dione says that the response has been good. “We have support from most of the SDA members at Coles. Many didn’t know what was going on but were disgusted when they found out … we are reaching out to them.”
Unfortunately, the SDA fosters a conservatism and industrial passivity among its membership that makes the meatworkers’ task an an uphill battle. The road ahead will be tough, but a serious challenge to the sell-out deals of the SDA is long overdue.

Meatworkers fighting SDA sell-out

The civil rights movement in the United States remains a shining example of what oppressed people can achieve through struggle. Of its leaders, few compare with Malcolm X, an uncompromising fighter for Black rights.
Born into an activist family, Malcolm was struck by tragedy at an early age. In 1931, his father was killed by a gang of racists just outside of Detroit. The same fate had fallen on three of Malcolm’s seven uncles. Both of Malcolm’s parents were members of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and instilled in their kids a determination to fight and organise.
Malcolm bounced around for years afterwards, eventually landing in prison in 1946 for burglary. In prison he turned to politics. He became a voracious reader and befriended a member of the Nation of Islam. Malcolm soon joined the organisation and became a regular correspondent with its founder, Elijah Muhammad. He also took to political activism within prison, threatening authorities with a public campaign unless Muslim prisoners were allowed halal food and prayer mats. He also wrote to president Truman, declaring himself a communist and against the Korean War.
After leaving prison, Malcolm became a rising star within the Nation of Islam, travelling across the east coast of the United States giving speeches and recruiting members.
He was well known for his oratory skills and quick wit, as well his open defiance of the authorities. During a tour in Philadelphia in 1955, Malcolm said to a crowd: “The FBI follow me everywhere across the country and they cannot do anything … The devils have lost their power and the only thing they can do is try to frighten the Black men who are still dead.”
By not relying on charity or help from the government, Malcolm appealed to many young Black people who were disillusioned at the way the US government was treating them. However, the Nation of Islam hierarchy was wary of its young protégé. The organisation had grown to several thousand members, and Elijah Muhammad and others were scared that Malcolm could jeopardise that growth.
In the late 1950s, Malcolm’s stature grew even further. In 1958, he led a march of several hundred into a police station in New York to protest against the beating and detaining of four young Black men. The police were thrown into a further shock when Malcolm organised a picket of the station.
In 1963, Malcolm was suspended for 90 days after he made provocative statements following the death of John F. Kennedy. Malcolm interpreted the suspension as an expulsion. He travelled across the world, and soon founded the Organisation of Afro-American Unity. He drew links between the civil rights fight in the US and the anti-colonisation struggles across Africa.
This month is the 50th anniversary of Malcolm’s assassination in Manhattan. His death produced an outpouring of grief – almost 30,000 people attended the public memorial.
Despite being shot down in his prime, Malcolm X left an enduring legacy. His name is still a powerful marker of the struggles of African Americans, which continue to this day. As a new generation of activists is growing out of the struggles against police violence, we can learn from the life of Malcolm X: “Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you want it, you have to take it.”

Indonesian crackdown on West Papuan activists

Penalty rates for retail workers in balance

Supermarket worker challenges SDA sell out

Indian workers stage 150 million-strong strike

‘We clean this city while you sleep’

Meatworkers fighting SDA sell-out

Revolutionary Lives – Malcolm X

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Indonesian crackdown on West Papuan activists

Penalty rates for retail workers in balance

Supermarket worker challenges SDA sell out

Indian workers stage 150 million-strong strike

‘We clean this city while you sleep’

Meatworkers fighting SDA sell-out

Revolutionary Lives ­­– Malcolm X

Other Media

Shop

Manage Your Subscription

Contact Us

Revolutionary Lives – Malcolm X