BY DANNY FAIRFAX & NICK EVERETT
SYDNEY — City workers are being encouraged to nominate their most hated "corporate scumbag" to be visited by a March 17 "Corporate Scumbag Tour", being organised by the M1 Sydney coalition as a prelude to the planned blockade of the Sydney stock exchange and financial district on May 1.
Activists are planning to distribute masses of nominations forms to workers in the city's central business district on March 8. The nomination form will also be posted on Workers Online, the website of the NSW Labor Council which has agreed to support and publicise the tour.
Some of the companies nominated so far include BHP, which is seeking to force its Pilbara work force onto individuals contracts, and Korean car manufacturer Daewoo, which has just sacked 1750 workers.
Clothing and footwear giant Nike, long the subject of a campaign against its use of sweatshop labour, Qantas, which is presently laying off workers, and some of Australia's biggest banks, which have sacked thousands of staff and closed hundreds of local branches, are also likely targets for the activists.
Representatives from various unions will take part in the protest, including from the vehicle builders division of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and the airlines division of the Australian Services Union. Speakers have also been approached from Aidwatch, Sydney People Against a New Nuclear Reactor and the Free the Refugees Campaign.
M1 activist and Resistance member Sophie Fischer admits, "Of course, we can't target all the corporate scumbags in Sydney; the march would take far too long. The targets we will choose will have to be symbolic of our broader objective, fighting the globalisation of corporate tyranny. We will be seeking to convince as many people as possible that they must make a stand on May 1, so that our resistance will be as global as their capital."
The Corporate Scumbags Tour will take place on March 17, starting at noon in Hyde Park. If you would like to nominate a company to be "visited" on the tour, fax your nomination, and your reasons for nominating them, to (02) 9699 1960.