Western Australian public sector workers will rally at the state parliament on 17 August to demand that wages keep up with the cost of living. The rally, organised by the Public Sector Alliance of nine trade unions, follows several stop-work rallies held at WA hospitals over the last month, involving thousands of health workers.
Workers across the country are facing a largely one-sided class war. A combination of bosses raising prices on essential goods, the housing crisis and profiteering on the part of energy companies is leading to a cost-of-living crisis. Conditions are ripe for a fight back: unemployment is at historic lows, and bosses are so desperate for labour they’re trying to entice pensioners back to work.
Chants of “Victory to the RMT” echo through Britain’s major cities as 40,000 rail workers continue their resolute campaign for better pay. Their actions have ignited the confidence of a working class facing wide-ranging assaults on living standards. Headline inflation is running at 9.4 percent in the UK, and ordinary workers are being hit hardest. Housing, water and fuel costs have New South Wales Nurses and Midwives Association members across the state have voted branch-by-branch to reaffirm their commitment to fighting for a pay rise of at least 7 percent, in defiance of union officials. From its formation in the 1890s, the ALP has consistently sought to mediate the ongoing struggle between capitalists and workers. Labor leaders have striven to confine class conflict within limits that are compatible with the long-term stability and profitability of the capitalist system. In a political landscape in which rising costs of living and attacks on work conditions confront a union movement hamstrung by spineless leaders and bureaucracy, it’s easy to forget what it looks like to really fight. In Australia today, despite the best efforts of rank-and-file activists, mass working-class struggle is on the ebb. For a generation of young workers, this means that it is not a matter of forgetting what real, militant unionism looks like, so much as never having experienced it to begin with.
