En Passant

It is now 17 days into the election campaign and the offerings today (Sunday) highlight the differences between the Coalition and the Labor Party. The Prime Minister offered more fear of refugees; the ALP offered cheaper childcare, better wages for childcare workers and free dental treatment (up to $1000 over two years) for seniors and […]

MARRIAGE ACT 1961 – SECT 47 Ministers of religion not bound to solemnise marriage etc.  Nothing in this Part:     (a)  imposes an obligation on an authorised celebrant, being a minister of religion, to solemnise any  marriage; or     (b)  prevents such an authorised celebrant from making it a condition of his or […]

The message seems pretty clear. If you don’t fight you lose. It’s way past time for unions to launch an industrial campaign to end the gender pay gap. Unions?

Given the sorry state of most unions in Australia today, it is now time for rank and file unionists to launch an industrial campaign to end the gender pay gap.

An argument has broken out about the graduate gender pay gap. It misses the real point. The gender pay gap for all women, graduates or not, is systemic, and can only be overcome by militant industrial action.

A militant industrial response from workers and their unions to the systemic gender pay gap has the best chance of improving the lives of women at work. That is a fight that must of necessity take on the ALP for whom the bosses and their profits are more important than equal pay. The first step in that process must be for workers in low paid and traditional gender stereotype industries to organise to smash the glass ceiling of low and unequal wages.

Social and Community Services (SACS) workers across Australia are celebrating a significant victory in their campaign for large scale pay increases. But the drive of governments and big business to cut spending on social services and prioritise profits over the quality of life for ordinary people hasn’t ended. We should savour this sense of what’s possible and we should take that sense of power into the current and future battles for justice.

Today’s International Women’s Day has been stolen from the working class by bourgeois and middle class women and big business, celebrating the opportunity of women to become bosses and lord it over working class women.

The failure to organise a militant fight for equal pay has consigned many women to being second class pay citizens. Join the IWD marches on Saturday 12 March across Australia for equal pay.

It’s time for a real strike campaign for equal pay. Close down the community sector.

The best way to win equal pay for equal work and to keep and expand jobs in the community sector is to strike.

On 3 basic issues, equal pay, equal love and transparency in government, Labor stands opposed to the progressive and democratic position.