Eight workers on strike at Thompsons Roller Shutters in Turella returned to work on November 15 after winning a 12% wage rise over three years and other conditions in a collective agreement. The company had been the target of a number of community pickets over the preceding week.
691
Population growth
In his letter in GLW #690, Colin Hughes blames global warming on population growth, and calls for the end to the "baby bonus" so as to reduce incentives for population increase. He makes this claim based on the assumption that
There are six socialist candidates standing in the November 25 Victorian state election, and we call for your support for all of them.
We all stand for socialism, a society that is run by and for the vast working-class majority, a society in which the needs of the mass of people come first, not the greed of a handful of mega-millionaires.
A society based on satisfying human need is totally realistic. Imagine what could be done with the tremendous wealth in Australia if workers, pensioners and small farmers had the real power.
On November 14, the federal court ordered the reinstatement of two National Union of Workers (NUW) delegates after their employer, Saint-Gobain Abrasives, was unable to prove that its decision to dismiss them was unrelated to their involvement with the union.
The new student organisation at the University of New South Wales, established as a result of the Howard governments voluntary student unionism (VSU) law, is forcing staff earning $40,000 or more per year onto individual contracts (AWAs Australian Workplace Agreements).
The Democratic Socialist Perspective will be holding its biennial educational conference at Sydney University on January 4-7, 2007. The conference theme Ideas to change the world is inspired by Karl Marxs 11th Thesis on Feuerbach (1845): Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.
Australians have joined the international campaign calling on U2s Bono who has appealed to the world for peace and poverty reduction to apply those same values to block the manufacture and distribution of a video game that promotes the invasion and destruction of Venezuela.
Three to four thousand people joined a rally and march against the G20 meeting on November 18. The rally opposed the neoliberal and militarist agenda of the meeting, which brought together finance ministers from the G8 group of rich nations, Australia, the European Union and 10 economically significant Third World nations, as well as the heads of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
Protest actions were held around Australia on November 17 as part of the Chavez not Bush! international week of solidarity with Venezuela. The actions called opposed US interference in Venezuelas December 3 presidential election. In Sydney (pictured), 40 people picketing the US consulate were addressed by Keysar Trad from the Islamic Friendship Association, and Kiraz Janicke and Marce Cameron from the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network. Trad spoke strongly in favour of Venezuelas right to self-determination and pointed to Iraq and Afghanistan as disastrous examples of the US governments failure to respect this principle.
At a joint November 17 press conference with his New Zealand counterpart Helen Clark, Australian Prime Minister John Howard announced that a joint Australian-New Zealand force of both military personnel and police will, in response to a request from the government of Tonga, go to Tonga tomorrow morning.
On November 16, 45 people rallied outside the Philippines consulate in the CBD to demand an end to the killings and harassment of political and trade union activists in the Philippines.
More than 200 Aboriginal activists and other supporters of justice for Indigenous people marched through Brisbane to commemorate the second anniversary of the death in custody of Palm Islander Mulrunji. A coroners report found that Mulrunji was killed by Queensland police sergeant Chris Hurley.
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