En Passant

Fairfax workers have gone on strike against management plans to cut 120 jobs from The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian Financial Review.

 
Here is how the union, the MEAA, puts it:

‘Fairfax Media has announced it will be cutting another 120 FTE [fulltime equivalent] jobs from its Sydney and Melbourne newsrooms – equivalent to about a quarter of the editorial staff.’

Here is an example of the impact of the strike.

Lights out in Fairfax’s Parliament House bureau (Bevan Shields, Federal politics editor The Age and Sydney Morning Herald)

 
The workers won’t return until Monday. The next few days’ editions of The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian Financial Review will be cut and paste jobs from the wires, with scabs doing the commentary. I wonder if suspended Islamophobe Paul Sheehan, the man who published made up stories about Middle Eastern Rape Culture and police inaction, will return to the scab paper?

The strike is, under bourgeois law, illegal. Technically these wonderful workers and their union can be fined thousands a day. Such is their justifiable anger that despite this threat they have gone on strike to defend their jobs.

It would be good to see the Labor Party, the ACTU and the Greens unite to defend these workers and to mobilise their members to do just that.

How then can we show solidarity to these brave unionists? If there are picket lines, join them. If there are protests, attend. Send messages of support and money to the MEAA if they ask for it.

If there are any striking Fairfax workers who want to publish their story, email me at en.passant@bigpond.com

I will print your stories (with you remaining anonymous if you want) on my blog to get the truth out there about the sackings.

John is a member of the MEAA.