Tom Bramble is co-author, with Mick Armstrong, of the book 'The Fight for Workers’ Power: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in the 20th Century', published by Interventions.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has accelerated a series of underlying trends in world politics that are leading us into a dangerous new world order. This new order is not arriving already formed, and there will be interruptions and reverses along the way, but four key features are coming into view:
Union coverage, in steady decline since the early 1980s, took another sharp turn for the worse in 2022. The latest figures, released by the Bureau of Statistics in mid-December, show that membership has fallen by 76,000 in two years, to 1.4 million, even as the workforce has grown. The outcome is that just one in eight workers in Australia are now union members, down from one in two 40 years ago.
The latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics confirm that real wages are falling at the fastest rate since the Great Depression, possibly even the 1890s, both period of massive unemployment.
The revelation by ABC’s Four Corners program on 31 October that the US Air Force will base six B-52 bombers in the Northern Territory is the latest signal that the United States is preparing for war with China and confirms Australia’s bipartisan commitment to these murderous plans.
Australian workers are suffering the most dramatic reductions in living standards for decades, but the Labor government’s budget will only make things worse. This is obvious if we consider three key issues: real wages, energy prices and housing costs.
Liz Truss’s resignation as Britain’s prime minister after just 44 days in office is the latest indication of a Tory party in chaos. With four prime ministers in six years and four chancellors of the Exchequer (treasurers) in four months, a massive polling deficit against Labour and the party’s business backers in open revolt, the Conservatives are in crisis.