This is part of an email I got the other day:
Down here in Australia our government has kindly brought in laws that make all union activity in the construction sector illegal, unless it’s expressly related to legally sanctioned Enterprise Bargaining Agreement negotiations. The Australian Building and Construction Commission was set up to enforce these laws (technically it’s supposed to enforce all industry laws, but employers are effectively never called up on safety violations and under-paying workers). The ABCC also has its own quasi-police force, which can require any worker at, or any person who was a bystander near, a construction site to come before a secret interrogation. If they don’t show up, answer any and all questions, or if they divulge to outsiders anything that took place during the interrogation, they can spend six months in gaol. More info here:
http://organisesa.blogspot.com/2010/04/leaflet-against-abcc.html (if you look around the site you’ll see the Greece solidarity poster we put up around town as well)
http://arkstribe.blogspot.com/
So long story short, next Tuesday is the trial of the first worker being prosecuted for not cooperating. A whole lot of unions and radical lefties are holding a protest to support him for the length of the trial. […] If you could spread the word around about what’s going on here, that would be muchly appreciated too.
So I thought I would do just that, because it’s an important issue. As the financial situation becomes more and more extreme, and everyone realizes that there’s no going back to how things were before, the powers that be are doing their best to make it illegal for anyone to stand against their austerity measures and destruction of workers’ rights. It’s important to fight these developments and to raise consciousness about what’s going on, so if you’re in the vicinity, please consider giving these people a hand.
