Solidarity 256, 12 September 2012

Why is there a community protest at the Queensland Children’s Hospital site in Brisbane, Australia? Workers are demanding a union enterprise bargaining agreement with the main contractor, Abigroup, and a clause to ensure that all workers employed by subcontractors on the site are paid the rate for the job. Almost all the workers on the site are employed by subcontractors rather than Abigroup, and rates for similar jobs with different subcontractors can vary by up to $10 an hour. How did the dispute start? It started on 6 August when a gyprocking subcontractor failed, leaving the workers...

Ben Fogel, a socialist activist in South Africa who writes for Amandla and is active in miners’ solidarity work, spoke to Martyn Hudson. Most of the historic Trotskyist tendencies in South Africa are dissolved to varying degrees. The two most important were WOSA, which was Neville Alexander’s group, which is now largely defunct, and the Unity movement which is now just a few people, but was important. Otherwise there is Keep Left, which is linked to the SWP in the UK. Most Trotskyists are involved in other movements, rather than being in a specifically Trotskyist group. Most organise under an...

The Marikana strike has now inspired a new wave of strikes in the gold mines of the West Rand. 15,000 miners have been suspended for wildcat strike action. There is much support for the strikers across South Africa, and the Marikana massacre is widely perceived as a critical moment for the ANC and its future rule. The split between the ANC old guard and Julius Malema, the former leader of the ANC’s Youth League, is rapidly widening. Malema is leading the solidarity work for the miners and has raised continually the question of nationalisation. His rhetorical offensive against “white capital”...

A row over health cuts threatens to destabilise the Irish coalition government of Fine Gael and the Irish Labour Party in the run up to the 2013 austerity budget. On Tuesday 4 September Fine Gael health minister James Reilly announced Œ130 million cuts targeting home-help services, personal assistants for the disabled and the availability of certain medical products. The announcement was met by a furious public reaction. Opposition parties Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin are planning votes of no confidence in Reilly when parliament returns later this month. In a sign of growing grassroots anger at...

European Central Bank Mario Draghi’s “OMT” programme (6 September) has been hailed as the “bazooka” which will save the eurozone, but it is likely to sharpen the crisis in Greece. Under the OMT the ECB will buy unlimited quantities of eurozone governments’ bonds, not new-issued bonds, but bonds already trading in the global markets. The ECB has run such policies before (the SMP), but more limitedly. The claim is that ECB buying-power will keep up the prices of Spanish, Italian, Greek etc. bonds in the markets, and thus help those governments sell new bonds and so finance themselves. Draghi...

Clashes have taken place between workers of the Alcoa aluminum plant and police in Rome. At big demonstration arrived at the offices of the Minister of Development and its still going on (10 September). Workers are demanding assurances potential job losses under a putative Brazilian company which is said to be about to take over from the current American owners. The government and bosses have in the past stalled with fake offers other chemical and textile industries in Sardegna, until protests have been exhausted and the workers completely sold out and defeated. At the moment the workers are...