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Gary wrote: > We too are living in a world with very little hope certainly in terms of > the absence of what William Morris called 'a rising people'. Dans bitter > and heartfel observations about the General Strike in France are typical > here. I on the other hand cannot even imagine what it would be like to be > in a country where a general strike was possible. That is because I live in > Australia the land of the most accommodating of working classes and union > bureaucrats. It's a funny thing but we look slightly enviously across the Tasman at Australia's union movement, for all its toadying up to the ALP. Neither Australia nor New Zealand have union movements to be particularly proud of, but I thin ours is particularly appalling. Having said that, there are a few glimmers of hope. The best is the Unite union, formed only a few years ago by Matt McCarten to organise low paid workers in areas like fast food. (Tragically, Matt is dying of cancer.) Unite has had its share of failures but it's had quite a few successes too, even against big operations like McDonalds. Most recently, it has engaged in a "name and shame" campaign against companies that have tried to pull a fast one in various ways in the aftermath of the earthquake we had here on Sept 5th. After the earthquake, which has destroyed a lot of old buildings in the centre of Christchurch (the city where I live) and a lot of houses in various parts of the city and outlying townships, a state of emergency was declared. Various companies forced their workers to go into work, even into buildings that had not been declared fit for use, and others sent their workers home and required them to use annual leave to cover the days off. Unite planned a "Tour of Shame" of four such businesses and two capitulated before the series of pickets even took place. We ended up picketing the remaining two and since then, it too has caved and refunded the workers their holidays. So there have been a couple of good, albeit small, victories. Sometimes you need to hold onto those because they can be few and far between and, as Gary says, it often feels like we are living in a world pretty much devoid of hope. Cheers, John ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
