"Lock ‘Em Up And Throw Away The Key" 12:41 pm / 31 August 2011 by Highlander, at Cactus Mouth Informer
Thanks to Ian Bone.
Categories: Political
August 2011
No War but Class War – August 2011 12:09 pm / 31 August 2011 by Phil Dickens, at Truth, Reason & Liberty
The most attention-grabbing point in the class conflict this month was obviously the rioting which spread across England. However, it has been covered to death by this point, and so I will direct anybody who hasn't yet seen them to my analysis of the initial Tottenham riot, my response as the disorder spread across the country, and my notes on the reactionary backlash.
There are also links to other commentary on these events at the beginning of this post.
Elsewhere, one of the major flashpoints in America has been the Verizon strike. The company, which made $19 billion of profits in the past four years, and yet wants to take back $1 billion in health pension and other contract concessions, as well as outsourcing jobs, slashing sick leave, increasing health costs, and eliminating job and pension security. As such, workers ended up on strike for two weeks before the union cut a deal to bring everyone back to work.
However, WSWS reports that workers are far from happy with the deal, since it has seen no agreement from the company to withdraw its demands. "Negotiations continue," but whilst they do the situation still looks an awful lot like a loss.
This is doubly angering given how bitter the dispute became. The bosses used court injunctions and even an FBI investigation to intimidate workers, and set an arbitrary deadline of 31 August (now met) for staff to accept the demands and return to work or face consequences. Pickets responded with mobile picket lines and successful attempts to turn away customers, but ultimately the union sold them out - even going so far as to demand that public protests in support of the strikers stop. Certainly, rank-and-file workers still have a considerable organising challenge as this dispute goes on, not just to fight Verizon but to undo the damage wrought by their own leaders.
Libcom.org reports on a miners' strike and political unrest in Chile;
Strikes in Chilean mines strengthen workers' struggles throughout the copper industry, and reflect growing political unrest in Chile.
2,300 miners at Chile's Escondida copper mine - the largest in the world - have been out on strike since 22nd July, and were joined by 7,000 contractors on 27th July. The mine is privately owned by Australian firm BHP.Workers at Escondida are demanding a rise in monthly production bonuses, and initially aimed for $11,ooo per worker to be paid out by the end of the year. BHP have declared the strike illegal, as bonuses are discretionary and fall outside the collective contract and strict anti-labour laws in Chile prevent workers from striking outside of the collective negotiating agreement. The union rejected BHP's offer of $6,000, which has since been lowered to $5,600 per worker. The strike continued, with the union lowering it's demand to $8,700, but BHP are now refused to negotiate while workers are still downing tools. Today, the union has put the $5,600 offer out to be voted on, and if accepted by the workers, the strike will be over. The union is also demanding protection for workers who contract work-related illnesses, removal of surveillance cameras throughout the mine, and improved punch-clocks which monitor their 12 hour shifts.The Escondida strike is yet another case of workers' struggle throughout the mining industry in Chile and the rest of the world, as workers are demanding their share of record profits. Workers in Zambia and Indonesia have also been striking against private firms such as Anglo-American and Freeport McMoran.Industry bosses are keen to bring an end to the Escondida strike as they fear a success for the workers here could fuel further strikes across Chile. At another major Chilean copper mine, Collahuasi, workers staged a 24hr stoppage over the weekend in protest against anti-union measures, pressure being placed on workers, and bosses attempts to negotiate with workers outside of the collective union contract. Collahuasi workers have previously held a 33-day strike in December 2010.The state-run Coldeco mines have also seen their first walk-outs in over 20 years, prompting the increasingly unpopular President Pinera to meet with union leaders and assure them that Coldeco will not be privatised. Previous strikes at Coldeco saw sub-contractors demanding improved conditions. Signs outside the Escondida mine are calling for the mining industry to be re-nationalised.The miners strikes form part of a wave of growing unrest in Chile, as students and environmentalists have also been protesting against the right wing Pinera government.
Finally, in Greece, it is worth noting that whilst last month ended with the eviction of the Syntagma square occupation, this month ends with 87 university departments under student occupation as a protest against the recent education reform bill. No matter how much force they use, it seems that Greek authorities simply cannot stamp out the popular resistance to their measures.
There is no doubt much and more that I've left out of this month's update. However, with the English riots forcing everything else into the background, it was worth focusing on the other key struggles that the media has lavished little attention on. The class war is flaring up for a number of reasons all across the globe, and it is now more vital than ever that we pay attention to the ones that cause the most ripples. We have as much to learn from the defeats and sell-outs as from the victories.
Sacked Liverpool Mutual Homes workers demand justice 11:28 am / 31 August 2011 by Phil Dickens, at Truth, Reason & Liberty
Today, I was in Liverpool City Centre to pick up some leaflets from the PCS offices on the third floor of Jack Jones House. Across the road, I came across a protest by a small number of workers, with banners decrying City Council contractors Liverpool Mutual Homes (LMH). Many of the cars going past heeded the sign urging them to honk in support.
The protest was one amongst several, it transpires, after workers were left without a job because of their age. Construction firm Kinetics, of whom LMH were a client, went into administration in June and 273 jobs hung in the balance. However, jobs were saved when LMH transferred the workers to the "in-house" service Housing Maintenance Solutions. It was then that staff over the age of 50 were told their services were no longer
required.
According to those at the protest, this then saw a dispute over whether a TUPE transfer had taken place, and thus who was liable for their redundancy payouts. LMH claimed it was the government, because they hadn't been TUPE'd, whilst the government claimed it was LMH, because they had. Unite the Union is now looking to settle the matter in court.
In the meantime, workers have been staging protests across from the LMH offices in town, following on from early morning protests at their workplace which drew strong support from their colleagues who still had jobs. There is also strong support for strike action, which following a ballot could see protests become picket lines. I offered my solidarity to the group, as well as support should they find themselves having to stand on picket lines, before moving on as they packed away their flags and banners.
The protests will be in the City Centre for the rest of the week, near to Wellington's Column and St George's Hall, as the fight goes on. They deserve our support and solidarity in their struggle, as do all workers whose lives and livelihoods are left at the mercy of state and capital. An injury to one is an injury to all!
Zig Zag Nov 1981 – B. B. King & Action Pact 3:15 pm / 30 August 2011 by Highlander, at Cactus Mouth Informer
Anti-exploitation protest at Liverpool John Lennon Airport 2:20 pm / 30 August 2011 by Phil Dickens, at Truth, Reason & Liberty
Last Tuesday John Foley - a long-time campaigner against exploitation by Ryanair - took to the roof of Liverpool John Lennon Airport. This was the latest in a number of daring stunts with the aim of increasing awareness of how the airline exploits its employees.
John is the founder of the Ryanair Don't Care Campaign, which aims to highlight in particular the airline's recruitment-for-termination scam. New cabin crew recruits are charged 3000 euros for their training and sacked at short notice before their probationary period has ended. You can see videos of John talking about the exploitation here and here.
John released the following statement through Liverpool Solidarity Federation;
The direct action protest is to highlight the recruitment-for-termination policy of Ryanair towards young students wishing to follow their dream as cabin crew. Wrecking so many young lives for profit must stop and we call on all shareholders to sack the whole board at Ryanair NOW.This latest protest was met with a news blackout at the behest of the police. As such, Liverpool Solfed have been the only ones to provide coverage of the event. They report that "the airport's management has particular reason to be concerned as they only realised John was on the roof of one of their buildings after he'd been there for over an hour and a local journalist informed them."
Direct action protests will continue at all airports where Ryanair do business...
We would also like to thank Liverpool Solidarity Federation for their continued support for our campaign.
The NHS needs direct action 1:20 pm / 30 August 2011 by Phil Dickens, at Truth, Reason & Liberty
On the 6th and 7th September, MPs will be going through the third reading of the Health and Social Care Bill. It is widely believed that the passing of this bill "will allow the back-door privatisation of the NHS." As this happens, there will be a lobby of parliament and candlelit vigils across the country. But much more needs to be done to prevent the service being gutted.
But knowing what the problem is and being able to solve it are two different things. In response to the bill, there have been a number of demonstrations around the country. The Trades Union Congress, as the 3rd reading approaches, are calling for people who attend vigils to upload their photos so that they can form part of a giant mosaic, to put posters in their windows, and to send a letter or email to a member of the House of Lords.
The most radical action for the NHS so far has been UK Uncut's "Emergency Operation," which saw direct action against the banks which are being taxpayer-subsidised to the tune of £100bn as our health service is gutted. Not only was this an innovative way of drawing attention to the cause, but it also hit the culprits in the pocket by disrupting trading. Meanwhile, even tentative plans for the very first NHS-wide strike are over the pensions issue, rather than over the attacks we're currently seeing on the National Health Service.
Ultimately, it will only be direct action which wins this fight. Nye Bevin, the Labour Party Minister of Health when the NHS was founded, famously said "the NHS will exist as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it." He wasn't wrong. In fact, the NHS wouldn't have come to exist in the first place without a fight.
As the Brighton Solidarity Federation explain;
The single-most cited ‘benefit’ of so-called workers’ parties is the foundation of the welfare state in 1948. Universal healthcare and unemployed benefits certainly represent gains for the working class insofar as they are paid for by the bosses. But why were they introduced? The foundations for the welfare state were laid by the 1942 cross-party Beveridge Report, which recommended the measures implemented by Clement Attlee’s Labour government when they came to power in 1945. Beveridge himself was a rather unsavoury character, who had supported benefits so long as the “unemployable” were sterilised and stripped of civil rights, but it is the motives behind the adoption of the report’s proposals which are most revealing.
Wary of the worldwide revolutionary wave which followed the end of the First World War, there was a cross-party consensus that war-weary workers would need to be given incentives not to turn their discontent (or even their guns) on the government. The Tory Quintin Hogg summed up the prevailing mood in 1943 when he said “we must give them reform or they will give us revolution.” The welfare state fitted that bill, and the wave of post-war mass squatting of disused military bases by homeless workers convinced the ruling class of the reality of the threat.As we saw over student fees and EMA, simply lobbying the government in the hope that they come around will not be sufficient. There needs to be direct action resistance - and since we know it is feasible strike action should be at the centre of that.
But that's not all. Economic blockades targeting private providers and/or occupations of the banks benefiting from the money the health service is losing would further emphasise the struggle. If it were possible to coordinate this with protests across the country - perhaps even other public sector strike action - then the momentum would become almost undeniable. Especially if strike action was rolling or indefinite, rather than of the "one-day" variety.
There has been a lot of hard work done by people raising awareness of the attacks on the NHS and researching the proposals. But now the point has to be to fight. We wouldn't have gotten the NHS "without the tangible threat of working class unrest" in the first place, and we certainly won't be able to preserve it without more of the same.
THE STATE AND ITS HATERD OF UNIONS. 12:46 pm / 30 August 2011 by ann arky, at annarky's blog.
Thetrial of the leader of the Fiji Trades Union Congress
is due to startthis week.
SOLIDARITY.
Fiji's military government has dramatically stepped up its harassment of trade unionists. Recently FTUC President Daniel Urai was arrested for holding an ‘illegal’ meeting, and his trial is due to start on 2 September. Meetings of the FTUC itself have also been prevented. Fiji has been under a military dictatorship since 2006, as a result of which Fiji has been suspended from the Commonwealth and the Pacific Islands Forum. The European Union has also suspended overseas aid payments to the regime. Leaders and activists of the Fiji Trades Union Congress (FTUC) have been assaulted or detained on several occasions. In February, Felix Anthony, General Secretary of the FTUC and of the Sugar Workers’ Union affiliated to the ITF and the IUF was taken from home by three uniformed military officers and subjected to threats. His family including children were also threatened. A new government decree issued on 29 July will, 'effectively abolish all trade unions in Fiji', according to the FTUC. Fiji has ratified the two relevant core ILO Conventions - Convention 98(1974) and Convention 87 (2002) and is obliged to observe the workers' rights enshrined in them. Moreover, as a member state of the ILO, the Government of Fiji has an obligation to adhere to the Declaration of Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work adopted by the ILO in 1998.
An appeal from LabourStart.
Thetrade unions of the Pacific island nation of Fiji are under attack.Please take a moment to join thousands of other trade unionists fromaround the world to send your message ofprotest:
http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/solidarityforever/show_campaign.cgi?c=1086
Pleasespread the word by email, on Facebook, and elsewhere.
This isextremely urgent.
Thank you!
Pleasespread the word by email, on Facebook, and elsewhere.
This isextremely urgent.
Thank you!
Categories: Anarchism
CAPITALISM IN CRISIS. 10:12 am / 30 August 2011 by ann arky, at annarky's blog.
Deleveraging, structural adjustments, severely adverse developments, how these words translate for you and I is, harsher conditions, slashing social spending, rising long term unemployment, as the billionaires, hedge funds and bond markets try to get out of the shit they dropped themselves in by their rampant greed. For those interested in information that hasn't been neutered via the mainstream media, you could do no better than visit, Capitalism in Crisis. The following is just a short extract.
After four years---the financialcrisis and the ensuing policy responses continue to cast longshadows. Economies and financial systems are still vulnerable to evenmodest shocks, and the likelihood of severely adverse developmentshas not decreased.
In the advanced economies atthe centre of the crisis, overall deleveraging and structuraladjustment is still incomplete.
- - - "We estimated in 2009 that theworld had about $30 trillion in ghost assets. Almost half went up insmoke in six months between September 2008 and March 2009. For ourteam. It's now the other half's turn, the 15 trillion USD of ghostassets remaining, purely and simply vanishing between July 2011 andJanuary 2012. “The insolvency of the global financial system, andof the Western financial system in the first place, returns again tothe front of the stage after just over a year of political cosmeticsaimed at burying this fundamental problem under truckloads of cash.”
Do we need a system that throws the majority of the population into deprivation, and robs them of the future and all hope, so that the billionaires can try to recover their losses from their addiction to the gambling casino?
Categories: Anarchism
We’ve been here before… 9:42 am / 30 August 2011 by Phil Dickens, at Truth, Reason & Liberty
Housing Minister Grant Shapps has pledged to "get Britain building again." This is in response to the National Housing Federation warning that "unless they do something about it an entire generation will be locked out of decent housing." This has once again re-opened the debate between liberal and conservatives about the "property ladder" and "generation rent."
Rather than re-hash the matter, I'll point readers to what I said back in May;
For most of us, the current economic system is simply the only means for us to secure such dwellings - whether by rent or mortgage. Meanwhile, as Daniel Knowles neatly puts it in his Telegraph blog, "each month, an anonymous company gets to collect more of my income than I pay in taxes. No one getting a share of that money had anything to do with building the house. They are simply profiting from the fact that it’s still useful." Which is exactly what the government does with tax, though so many crusaders against rent-seeking fall silent when the usury is private.
A house is not a luxury akin to a Porsche or "another form of consumption." But, by the same token, it is not simply a capital asset to be used in securing yourself a decent pension pot. It is a domestic dwelling. Or, as the comedian Alun Cochrane put it, we should "bloody live in it."
The "right" to private property not only leaves so many people renting or living with their parents for far longer, unable to take their first step onto the "ladder." It also leaves around 61,000 households homeless whilst there are around 651,000 empty homes in England alone. All for the "freedom" of a minority to seek rent and gamble on capital accumulation. Which is the more important debate we are not having.
IT’S NOT THE 30′s – IT’S FAR WORSE!!! 8:10 am / 30 August 2011 by ann arky, at annarky's blog.
As the "financial crisis"rumbles on with the pundits looking for growth, and in some caselooking with a microscope to get some encouragement, there is thetendency to spout figures about the future recovery and givepercentages. This isn't science speaking, this is guesswork and it isalso based on the theory that we got out of it last time, so we willget out of it this time. Not always a sure bet. Capitalism develops,it changes and morphs into a different type of exploiting beast. Whathappened after the 30's can not be taken as standard procedure. Afterall it took the second world war to drag the old capitalist beast outof the depression. I doubt if even that would work this time round.Like I said, today's big fat capitalist beast is a different animalall together.
In an interesting article on "AWorld to Win", Fawzi Ibrahim argues that thepresent crisis demonstrates that global capitalism has for the firsttime reached the “critical zone” – the point of “capitaldeficiency”. Below is a short extract from his article. Well wortha read.
In a boom, profits are high; capital accumulates, yielding even more profits which are then invested to produce more profits and so on. However, if for any reason the rate of profit falls, then profits would follow suit unless more capital is invested to counterbalance the fall in the rate of profit. The amount of additional investment necessary to compensate for a fall in the rate of profit would depend on the original or baseline investment.
For instance, a small initial capital of £10m at an annual rate of profit of say 5% would yield a profit of £500,000. If the rate of profit fell by 1%, to 4%, the profit would drop to £400,000. To compensate for this drop and keep profit at the same level of £500,000, investment must go up to £12.5m, a rise of £2.5m, and a relatively small amount which may not be too excessive for the market to provide. However, if the baseline investment was £10bn instead of £10m, then the additional investment necessary to maintain profits for the same drop in the rate of profit would be 1,000 times greater at £2,500m. If the rate of profit fell by more than 1%, an even greater additional investment would be necessary.
In a highly developed economies such as those of the USA and the UK in which the baseline capital investment is in trillions, even a relatively small drop in the rate of profit would necessitate additional investment in billions if profits are to be maintained. If profits are to increase, as it is the aim of all corporations, the additional investment would have been even greater.
In general, therefore, as capitalism develops and capital accumulates, the baseline investment increases and with it the additional investment necessary to counteract a fall in the rate of profit. At some time, when capital accumulation reaches the astronomical levels we have today, a tipping point is reached at which the increase in investment necessary to counterbalance a drop in the rate of profit becomes prohibitively high, greater than the amount the market can provide. This is the “critical zone”, the zone of capital deficiency.
While the outward symptoms of the great depression of the ‘30s and the present financial/economic meltdown are very similar – bank failures, economic downturn, unemployment, hardship and near-collapse of the system – the underlying terrains are anything but; in fact they are polar opposites. The 30s’ depression was one of abundance, capital abundance; that of 2008-09 is one of deficiency, capital deficiency.
Categories: Anarchism