At their factory in South Dandenong, the Yakult workers’ protest was a sight for sore eyes. A solid picket that turns around trucks and stops others from leaving the site is a rare thing in Australia today.
The Yakult workers’ strike was protected action, but because of the state of industrial laws in Australia, an effective picket is generally unlawful. This didn’t faze the Yakult workers, who maintained their protest for 10 days under the constant glare of Victoria Police.
The National Union of Workers members were on strike for a 3 percent pay increase and rostered days off. Their demand had climbed from an earlier claim of 2.5 percent a year. After management rejected their original demand, the workers unanimously voted to strike and ask for more.
A couple of years ago, it was a different story at the Yakult factory. In 2016, a ballot to authorise strike action didn’t get up. Management have learned that a lot can change in two years.
“We’re fighting for our rights, and to show them that they can’t push us around any more”, one striker told Red Flag. “We’re showing them what a union is for; the union gives us our voice”, said another.
The Yakult workforce is composed of migrants from around the globe. Red Flag spoke to workers born in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and the Philippines. Some reported being told by the company that they would be sacked if they joined the union. Another tactic the company employs to undermine collectivity on the factory floor is to single out some people for pay rises.
The company’s attempts to divide them were one of the workers’ main concerns. One striker explains the significance: “This is why we came out: we’re all the same, and we’re all workers. We want a collective pay rise”. Management’s tactics fooled none on the picket line. “We all do the same job, we’re all the same, why pay us differently? Because they don’t like unions.”
It was this commitment to sticking together and standing up to management that won the Yakult workers all of their demands. While everyone from the secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions to the governor of the Reserve Bank laments wage stagnation, a small group of factory workers in Melbourne has shown exactly what it will take for workers to get back on the front foot.
Measured by the sheer volume of stuff produced, capitalism is a very successful system. According to World Bank data, in 1960 global gross domestic product (GDP)—which measures the monetary value of goods and services sold—was just under US$1.4 trillion. By 2022 it had risen to $101 trillion. The world’s population has increased a lot in that time, but the volume of stuff produced has increased by far more.
As Israel’s latest brutal war against the people of Gaza drags on, the need to challenge the Zionist state and all those who facilitate its genocidal campaign couldn’t be clearer.
In the latest outburst of national security hysteria, ASIO spy chief Mike Burgess declared, in a speech on 28 February, that an unnamed former Australian politician had betrayed our beloved country by clandestinely working for an evil foreign spy network—which he called “the A-team”—to provide secret information to a rival power.
Banyule City Council has become the eighth metro council in the Melbourne area to formally call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
In a monumental betrayal, Melbourne University’s Students’ Council last month voted to rescind a motion supporting the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and the global Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement.
The military ordered hundreds of thousands of people into a designated “safe” zone. On reaching it, they were shelled by the army and the air force. The generals said there was another safe zone; if the people kept moving, respite would be found. It wasn’t. Again they were attacked. The scene repeated, but now, corralled onto a tiny stretch of beach and trapped against the ocean, there was no way out.