Forty-nine workers at Coghlan and Russell, a car components factory in Geelong, have been stood down after the company called in receivers.
On April 5, the workers discovered that their superannuation had not been paid for more than eight months. When the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) confronted management, it was told that the company had a plan and would talk to the union in a couple of days.
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Sydney city council is preparing a vicious crackdown on the ability to distribute newspapers such as Green Left Weekly and leaflets advertising political rallies and events.
With 80 million inhabitants, West Bengal is the fourth most populous state in India. It has been ruled by the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front (LF) coalition for three decades. This government, however, has regularly used police repression against workers and peasants to defend big-business interests.
Those hoping for a more serious approach to tackling global warming from the federal ALP than the do-as-little-as-politically-possible tack of John Howard’s Coalition government should revise down their expectations. On February 25, Labor leader Kevin Rudd unveiled the centrepiece of his party’s “climate action plan” — $500 million in funding for “clean coal” technologies research.
The Women Workers Help Line is a member-based, voluntary, non-profit making, non-governmental organisation, struggling to create legal, political, democratic and trade union awareness among women for a socially just, economically equitable, politically aware and gender sensitive society, explains the WWHLs vision statement. Green Left Weeklys Jim McIlroy visited Bushra Khaliq, the WWHLs general secretary, at the organisations Lahore headquarters in late March.
The Israeli journalist Amira Hass describes the moment her mother, Hannah, was marched from a cattle train to the Nazi concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. “They were sick and some were dying”, she says. “Then my mother saw these German women looking at the prisoners, just looking. This image became very formative in my upbringing, this despicable ‘looking from the side’.”
The six cabinet members loyal to Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr quit the 37-member cabinet of US-backed Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki on April 16. The Sadrists had headed the ministries of agriculture, health, tourism and transportation.
A preliminary US military investigation indicates that more than 40 Afghans killed or wounded by Marines after a suicide bombing in a village near Jalalabad last month were civilians, the April 14 Washington Post reported it had been told by the US commander who ordered the investigation.
As the regime of President Hosni Mubarak regime in Egypt faces a growing crisis of legitimacy, expressed by protests, boycotts and industrial strikes, the government has pushed through a referendum to amend the constitution and enshrine the countrys police-state laws. On March 25, Amnesty International said the amendments will cause the greatest erosion of rights in 26 years in Egypt.
On April 15, Ecuador voted overwhelmingly to ratify President Rafael Correa’s proposal to convoke a Constituent Assembly with the power to re-write the constitution with the intention of weakening the stranglehold on the country of the traditional wealthy elite.
Returning once again to Venezuela — having last spent four months here in 2005 — I recalled a refrain that had been constantly repeated by Venezuelans: “After we re-elect Chavez in 2006, the real revolution will begin.” It took very little time for me to realise exactly what they meant.
An authoritative opinion poll for the Scotsman newspaper indicates a strong increase in support for the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) in the run-up to the Scottish Parliament elections on May 3. The April 6 Scottish Socialist Voice reported that “in both the constituency and regional list vote, 5 per cent of Scots voters plan to vote Scottish Socialist”, according to the ICM poll. This represents a 3% rise in the regional vote and a 4% increase in the constituency ballot — the biggest increase in support in the previous month for any political party in Scotland.
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