How bad are things today when even the head of the Reserve Bank of Australia agrees workers are feeling too insecure to demand wage rises.
Speaking at the Australian National University on June 19, Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe said: 鈥淧eople value security and one way you can get a bit more security is to not demand a wage rise.鈥 Although his argument was about the impact on economic growth, it highlights the level of insecurity felt by workers today.
In her first address to the National Press Club as ACTU secretary on March 29, her earlier statement that it was right to break unjust laws.
She said Australia鈥檚 workplace laws were broken and that 鈥渨age theft鈥 had become the new business model for too many employers. McManus also set out the ACTU鈥檚 case for a $45 a week increase in the minimum wage.
Will the election of former Australian Services Union NSW head Sally McManus as ACTU secretary result in a strategic shift in the trade union movement in this country? Many unionists and activists are hoping so.
The government is tightening the screws on workers and the poor, intent on further attacks on the social wage, privatising health, education and welfare services and attacking refugees. We need to fight back. Strong, fighting unions are essential to building an effective resistance to corporate power and to defending our rights.
By now you must have heard. The ACTU has been taken over by a terrorist spouting, in , 鈥渁narchist Marxist clap trap鈥 about destroying the rule of law, and presumably replacing it with a reign of terror in which CFMEU thugs will drag innocent bosses and Liberal politicians to the guillotine.