En Passant

Aussie jobs and similar slogans are part of the problem, not the solution. Class struggle offers the best way to defend foreign workers and win them residency and employment rights and conditions the same as other workers in Australia. That fight can then lead to a fight against the same and other bosses when they sack workers in Australia or cut their wages or conditions.

And that is what happened in Melbourne today. Workers responded to direct government attacks on them by walking off the job, an action that is illegal under Labor’s industrial laws. It may be just the start of a real fight against these draconian laws against construction workers.

Workers in Perth could follow suit, not for Aussie jobs and other dead ends but for more jobs, for permanent residency for all who come here to work, for proper wages, for empowering unions to police all worksites and for more spending on education and training, paid for by the bosses.

QANTAS workers could walk off the job tonight, and picket to stop any supplies or personnel getting in or out. That way, like the magnificent Fair Work Australia and government defying Victorian nurses, they might have a chance of winning.