Photos: G20 State Library Rally and March : Melbourne Indymedia

While I attended the crowd was festive and loud, with numerous banners, songs, chants and street theatre.

At the Barricades on Russell Street - moved only that morning from the intersection of Collins Street - a line of police with truncheons faced off the peaceful crowd. Behind them were mounted police and somewhere in the background the dog squad. The Special Operations Group - the riot Squad - were out of sight but almost certainly nearby.

When I left it there was dancing in the street - most of the tension came from the police lines.

An Unusually high number of police for a rally at the State Library

And you thought your job sucked...

Book Review: Dirt Cheap: Life at the wrong end of the job market by Elisabeth Wynhausen

17 Nov 2006

review by Tash Johnston

AND YOU THOUGHT YOUR JOB SUCKED... so goes the blurb on the back of Elisabeth Wynhausen’s book, leading you to believe that by reading Dirt Cheap: Life at the wrong end of the job market you’ll end up truly thankful for the job you have.

That’s partly correct, but the book is so much more than that. It’s a necessary insight into the lives of Australia’s lowest paid.

Elisabeth Wynhausen from The Australian writes an easy-to-read account of how she attempts to live and work as a minimum wage earner. With a weekly salary ranging from $295 to $450 she tries to cover rent, food, and transport allowing one luxury of a daily swim to maintain her health and fitness.

Woven into tales of work as hotel attendant, nursing home assistant, office cleaner, factory worker and retail store assistant is the story of the increase of casual work being “offered” to workers. Wynhausen says that while working as a casual in a large retail store she earned about $200 a week, “$33 less than the government benefit for a single unemployed person receiving the maximum rate of rent assistance.”

She describes the lack of respect shown by management to her and her colleagues in all but one of her workplaces, and the difficulty of finding affordable yet liveable accommodation. Some Sydney properties renting for under $180 a week in the “least desirable suburbs were near to uninhabitable.”

She tells of packing multiple cartons of eggs simultaneously at high speed, working weekends for the same pay as weekdays, and getting acute wrist pain from repeatedly using a faulty scanner at a retail store.

This is a book that needs to be read. The reality of the minimum wage worker is a struggle to pay rent, grocery bills and transport costs. Many go without health cover; sacrifice their children’s education, and can’t even dream of owning a home - all for a position of uncertainty, low-status and back-ache.

Wynhausen is someone who does own her own property, has no dependents and has a good job to return to after 12 months, but the lessons she learns, people she meets, and types of work she does, paint a very real and frightening picture of the lives of Australia’s working poor.

The plight of the minimum wage worker goes to the essence of the yourightsatwork campaign. Wynhausen had a safety net, but as she shows, many Australians do not.

We must continue to fight for those who are often treated like dirt - and the more people who are exposed to books such as Dirt Cheap the better our collective awareness will become.

Also try:

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich

Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, 2001

No Logo by Naomi Klein, 2000

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Made in China Part 457

Labour rights group cracked down for organising mass signature campaign

A Shenzhen-based labour rights group was forcibly closed down for organising a mass campaign aiming to collect one million signatures calling for the government to scrap the labour dispute arbitration handling fee.

Nearly 100 officers from the municipal civil affairs bureau came to the office of the Shenzhen Migrant Workers Association (shenzhen wailaigong xiehui)(http://www.szwlg.com, in Chinese) on 9 November. They searched the group's office, saying the group was not registered and was doing some "illegal activities", according to Radio Free Asia's Cantonese Service. The officers confiscated six computers and ordered the group to halt its operation.

During the Guangdong Provincial People's Congress in February this year, some delegates to the local people's congress said the handling fee of labour dispute arbitration received by the Guangdong labour authorities was too expensive and they jointly demanded that the fee should be scrapped. Since then, many labour groups in Shenzhen joined the campaign and in March they collected about 10,000 signatures from rural migrant workers asking the government to cancel the handling fee.

Because of the success of the last signature campaign, in early November the groups planned to expand the campaign, aiming to collect one million signatures. Since then, the local authorities started the crackdown on the labour group which initiated the campaign, according to the RFA report.

Zhang Zhiru, who founded the Shenzhen Migrant Workers Association, said the group has been run for about two years and its service was mainly to provide free legal advice to workers and organise recreational activities for workers. He admitted that the group was not registered because it was difficult to get the authority's recognition of their work to defend workers' rights. But he believed the crackdown was mainly related to their signature campaign. Zhang said the group would not give up the campaign because of the crackdown and they would launch it again later when the situation became less tense.

A migrant worker was quoted as saying he regretted the crackdown on the labour rights group. New York-based China Labor Watch also issued a statement condemning the crackdown.

Source: Radio Free Asia Cantonese Service (15 November 2006)

16 November 2006

Over 1,000 state-owned enterprise workers protest against unfair layoff compensation

More than 1,000 workers of a state-owned enterprise in Gansu province staged a protest against being laid off and given unfair compensation after the company was privatized.

The workers of Qingyang City Automobile Transportation Company besieged the company's office building on 15 November and did not allow more than 10 company officials to leave until dozens of police officers dispersed the workers in the evening on that day. The workers and the company officials resumed negotiation the next day, but no agreement has been made.

The workers accused the local government of colluding with the company which purchased the state-owned enterprise in order to gain from selling the state assets. They also felt angry of being laid off and given an unfair compensation offer after the company was privatized.

Qiangyang City Automobile Transportation Company was a state-owned enterprise with nearly 2,000 workers. Due to its ailing business, the local government had been trying to restructure the company by privatization since 2001. However, the company's workers' representatives congress (zhigong daibiao dahui) objected to the restructuring plan for five times, saying that would be detrimental to workers' interests. Earlier this year, the local authorities sent the working group of the restructuring plan to the company again and ordered to halt the workers' representative congress and sold the state-owned enterprise to a Shaanxi-based property company in September.

Since October, the local authorities forced 1,448 workers to sign an agreement to be laid off. The compensation offer was 800 yuan per working year. The workers were not satisfied with the compensation. Some workers who signed the agreement could not get the money when they went to the bank. They were told there was no money in the account. The workers then realised that they were tricked by the authorities. On 13 November, the workers went to the government working group of the restructuring plan and demand an explanation in two days. Without getting any reply, more than 1,000 workers went to besiege the company's office building on 15 November.

Sources: Radio Free Asia (17 November 2006), Mingpao (17 November 2006)

17 November 2006

My Spanish is a little shaky - could someone please translate the Mexican sign for us please? TIA.

Who are these people in the white jump suits? And why did they attack property and fight back against police? They created the 10-second TV grab right there - an image of mindless violence, tarring all the protesters with the same brush. "Hooligans" and "thugs" according to Howard.

I'd love to hear from one of these folk what their point was. Were they in fact agents provocateurs? Looks more like a few self-appointed heros out for cheap thrills, thereby letting our rulers off the hook ie allowing them to avoid any mainstream discussion of the valid criticisms made by the thousands protesting peacefully.