Workplace ‘Flexibility’: Comment from Australia Relevant to Populist Perspectives on Labor and a Fair Wage Stateside

Here some strong commentary on ‘casual workers’ and the ‘enterprise culture’ from an anonymous hospitality industry worker down under. It can speak to the predicament faced by many workers across the American Middle West. As he says: “We can fight for a fair go, for a decent share of the profits of our employers and for decent working conditions, But we must do it together.” In Australia and Middle America, the struggle is one.  This is from the site http://www.workersforum. info/   Perhaps the Midwest Alliance needs a similar forum for contingent and low-paid workers.

As labor historian Stan Phipps noted:

“the legacy of the People’s Party to the modern workers’ movement and the struggle for independent political action is substantial. They demonstrated how the plain people in society could build upon the existing democratic forms in the U.S. to generate democratic aspirations capable of mounting a serious challenge to the business-oriented opinion leaders and policy makers. Farmers and workers showed by example how marginalized people could create for themselves the psychological space necessary to organize a first rate struggle for a level of social and economic change which opposed the existing unjust status quo through the creation of an independent political movement that put the interests of farmers and workers first” (“The People’s Party: An Insurgent Party of Farmers and Workers,” Socialist Organizer, http://www.theorganizer.org/LP/USHistory/peoplesparty.html

Maintaining the myth of flexibility: The enterprise culture and Australian Workers

On the surface it would appear that the Federal Government’s employment policies provide flexibility and choice to workers, enabling people to effectively balance work, leisure, family and educational commitments. The reality is that these policies create inequality. The myth of workplace ‘flexibility’ is a weapon of control that is used by employers and the Federal Government to serve the interests of business above those of workers. In an era of reduced union membership, our rights come under attack on a daily basis. The full-time job is no longer attainable for the majority of Australian workers and many of us are forced to work for poor pay and under appalling conditions, often in more than one job, just to make ends meet. I have worked in hospitality for almost ten years and too often have I generated thousands of dollars for an understaffed business in the space of a few hours; only to be rewarded with a wage that could barely buy a large round of drinks and a slap on the wrists for not working fast enough.

The Howard Government’s workplace policies are a result of an increasing global trend towards economic rationalism. Advocates of this neo-liberal thought advocate an “enterprise culture” that promotes:

“hard work, competition, motivation, self-reliance, flexibility, boldness, daringness, innovation and success…essential components of the entrepreneurial individual” (Kenny 1999 p. 54).

Great on the surface, but what of those people that don’t possess the education, skills and mindset to become entrepreneur’s? They get left behind! We are no longer creatures of the jungle where only the strong survive; we formed civilised society so that we could work together and help those that are weaker, slower and disadvantaged. Why? Because it is in our best interests and we will achieve a lot more together than alone!

This enterprise culture has manifested itself in Australian employment policies with the introduction of Australian Workplace Agreements (AWA’s), the promotion of contract labour, a decrease in collective bargaining and an increase in casual labour. These policies are articulated as “providing flexibility and choice to Australian workers”, “everyone can be their own boss, while promoting economic growth for the great nation that is Australia.”

However, there are a few things that stand in the way of this growth, mainly the liability that is paying workers unnecessary benefits such as holiday pay, sick pay and overtime. But the one thing that provides the greatest obstacle to the implementation of these policies is a unified force of workers; together, we would never accept policies that hurt us, but alone, there is not much we can do.

We have to start making our collective voice heard, whether it be by joining a union or taking part in this forum, or dobbing in a dodgy boss [informing on a tricky boss]; We can fight for a fair go, for a decent share of the profits of our employers and for decent working conditions, But we must do it together. CASUAL WORKERS. UNITE!

Tags: australia, economy, fair wage, federal government, labor, workplace
Categories: Commentary, Economics, Labor, Farmers
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I find it ironic that an ethnicity that has been so toiled by a history of oppression, persecution, and bigotry has so little sympathy for those who suffer under conditions that approximate some of the frightful circumstances that the Jewish ethnicity has found itself, in many varying forms, with respect to its history.

Indeed, many Jews, who espouse a camouflaged guise of the Zionist discourse, possess a metropolitan world-view with respect to the Palestinians and their history in this and the previous century, which amounts to nothing less than victimization as the subjects of the ethnic cleansing practices of an imperial culture, the Israelis.

I would like to perform some historical revision 101 for those who seem to lack the ability to adequately conceptualize the relationship between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The Palestinians did not voluntarily hand over their homeland to the influx of Jewish colonialist immigrants, occurring under the auspices of Zionism. The Palestinians were systematically routed by the Zionists.

Furthermore, the Palestinians, who were under the rule of the Egyptians and the Jordanians in Gaza and the West Bank, did not launch the second conflict against the Israelis in the last century; rather, it was the Israelites, who struck first upon the Egyptians, whom, according to the Israelis, where about to strike the state of Israel in order to initiated an anti-colonialist struggle; thus constituting what Israel refers to under the rhetorical ploy of an, ‘existential threat.’ Therefore, the Palestinians living in these two occupied territories did not concede their autonomy through some process of military defeat. Instead, similarly to the Checks in the Sudetenland, they came to be occupied by the Israelis due to the foreign-policy decisions of other nations.

Therefore, there is no justification for the state sponsored terrorism enacted by the Israelis against the Palestinians in the occupied territories; (notice the lexiconic relationship between territory and terrorism: they both possess the same stem, TERROR). So, perhaps, now, all those who scream, “Anti-Semite!” when anyone accumulates the necessary courage to speak out against the insidious assassinations conducted by the Israelis, always with a manifold of ‘collateral damage,’ can realize who the real terrorists are with respect to this ghastly situation in the Middle-east.

Perhaps, even, these profoundly insincere people - mostly Zionists and Evangelicals - will begin to realize the symbolic isomorphism, with regards to the significance these two concepts assume within their respective mythologies, between “Reich” and “Zion.”

Russell Cole

Tags: empire, ethniciy, foreign policy, Global, imperialism, israel, middle east, oppression, palestine, Russell Coles Blog, society, Terrorism, war, zionism, zionist
Categories: Commentary, Global, Society, Russell Cole's Blog, War, Empire, Terrorism, Foreign Policy, Imperialism
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