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Allegations made by south Indian Tamil fisherfolk against the recently deposed Mahinda Rajapaksa government in Sri Lanka reveal a trail of death and corruption. They said 750 fisherfolk have been killed by the Sri Lankan navy since 1983. Eighty-four boats were seized in the past six months alone.

The government is ducking and weaving in the face of combined resistance to its cruel budget. Employment Minister Eric Abetz admitted to a Senate Estimates hearing on June 26 that the Productivity Commission's review of the Fair Work Act will now be delayed until the second half of this year. The media say this is to allow the government to devote its energies into getting its budget measures through, and to avoid an all-out campaign by unions to "revive the spectre of Work Choices".

Well, here we are at the halfway mark. It’s been about eight weeks since Alcoa announced it was shutting up shop in Geelong and there’s a little over eight weeks before workers are tossed out the gate for good. But where are the announcements from the state and federal governments or Alcoa about how they will address the economic black hole and job losses in Geelong?

Nobody told me Game of Thrones was starting early this year. Wonderful to hear King Abbott pronounce the return of titles, especially after Sir Joseph of the Coffers recently declared the end of entitlement. I guess he was only referring to us common folk. But we don’t have to worry too much because peasants and workers don’t receive knighthoods. Can you imagine Sir Timothy Francis Gerald Gooden the sixth? No, I thought not. Titles are designed to put one person higher than another, reinforcing the notion that somehow some people are better than others.

Another International Women’s Day passes. It’s been 157 years since working women first took to the streets. Back then, thousands of women textile workers marched through the wealthy boroughs of New York, protesting their miserable working conditions.

Well it's my first day back at work and already the year has started with the predictable attack on workers that usually accompanies conservative governments in their first term of office. They always claim that unions are corrupt and should have special laws to prevent them from being involved in workplaces or politics.

All workers are treated equal, right? Same award rates for the same work, equal pay for women and uniform national modern laws.  But what about workers who are not allowed to work, such as refugees on bridging visas; or workers brought by employers to Australia on 457 visas, who are used for a short time and then sent back?  Are these workers being treated equally and how can their treatment affect the rest of us in the future?  

Thousands of building workers have left worksites across the Melbourne CBD to support a picket line at a Grocon site after police tried to violently break it up this morning. Police used capsicum spray and horses on the Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union picket line.