When Chris Breen posted a Facebook event for the Refugee Action Collective (RAC) in March last year he didn’t anticipate he would end up spending nine hours in the cells of Preston police station.

But on the morning of Good Friday, 10 April 2020, he was arrested at his home. Police seized not only his mobile phone and computers but his teenage son’s laptop. By the time he was released from custody that evening he was facing a charge of incitement.

Australia has a good health care system when compared to most of the world. It provides access to primary heath services, hospitals and medication for the vast majority of its citizens at no or low cost. This is achieved through Medicare, the PBS and the public hospital system. It is far better than the American situation where health care is almost fully profit-driven, wildly expensive and completely out of reach of the poor and uninsured. However Australia’s claim to have a universal heath care system is not true, when many vital services are only available privately – dental care and mental health care being two of the most obvious examples.

The media and the politicians are telling us that many of us in Melbourne, Victoria are experiencing lockdown fatigue. That the people that are defying the lockdown laws are crazy or antisocial. They are telling us to hang in there, that we are all in this together.

There is another way to understand this fatigue.

Australia is now firmly in the throes of a recession, as is the rest of the world. Unemployment is at levels not seen since the Great Depression. Entire industries have been destroyed, and many companies will close their doors and simply will not be seen again.

Previous editions of this Bulletin have argued that the economic crisis, though catalysed by the COVID-19 pandemic, was in the makings well before the first COVID case emerged in December 2019. This was evidenced by the crisis in retail, with some 169 closures of outlets in January 2020, as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald in the same month. Those closures and the impact of the retail crisis emerged before the full impact of low sales over the Christmas and holiday period would be realised. In January 2020, these were figures not seen in several decades.

Diarmaid, NTEU
Delegate

How long have you been a union member?

6 years.

Why did you join the union?

As an immigrant, I could see how Australia had better working conditions in higher education compared to other countries I previously worked in. Better pay, more super contributions, long service leave, and other benefits. I recognised that this was the result of the work of my union, the NTEU.

Going back decades, the members had been pushing for better conditions, and now I had the chance to benefit from their victories. So I felt I needed to pay them back. Furthermore, I wanted to be able to pass those benefits onto the future workers in my sector. It’s our responsibility, I believe, to honour the struggle of those who came before us, and pass it on to those who will come after us. Unions are a way to achieve this.

This analysis comes to us from Haley Pessin, member of the Afrosocialist and Socialists of Color Caucus of the Democratic Socialists of America and a rank and file member of 1199 SEIU. She organizes with the group Legal Workers Rank & File in New York Cvity.

Late May and early June saw the biggest wave of mass rebellion in the United States since the 1960s. Protests erupted in every major city and in all fifty states, demanding an end to racist police brutality. The character of these uprisings has been less like protests and more like rebellions, with tens of thousands of people taking to the streets, blocking highways, and burning and destroying police cars along with other symbols of economic and racial oppression. At the time of writing, in New York City alone 47 police cars have been damaged or burned.1 More than 11,000 people have been arrested across the country.2 And, in Washington DC, protests outside the White House temporarily forced Trump to flee to his bunker—allegedly to “inspect” it and not in abject fear of the riots.3

Piergiorgio (Pier) Moro, Australia Services Union VicTas A&S Workplace delegate and a HSR

How long have you been a union member?

I’ve been a member with the ASU for 28 years. I have had shorter stints with other unions.

Why did you join the union?

It just seemed the obvious thing to do really. Two major reasons.

“I am working in administration. I am a casual, now working from home. Does the company I am working for have to provide me with an ergonomic office chair?”

Unfortunately, there is nothing specifically in the law that requires an employer to provide the equipment necessary, for someone to work from home. However, under Victoria’s OHS Act (and similar acts in other jurisdictions), the employer DOES have a legal duty to employees (including casual employees) to, so far as is reasonably practicable, provide and maintain a working environment that is safe and without risks to health. This is called the ‘general duty of care’ and applies to everything: the workplace, the equipment, the systems of work, supervision and training, and so on. But it is qualified by ‘so far as is reasonably practicable’.

The world is still reeling from the shock and speed of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the social and economic ruin it has brought. Whilst the impact of the pandemic has been uneven, the best outcomes in terms of saving lives have been achieved in those countries which have prioritised communities achieving effective physical distancing to stop the spread of the virus over enabling businesses to make profits. In all countries, the virus has caused considerable economic disruption, and businesses and governments have begun to push to reopen economies and to shift the crisis onto working people. While this push will not necessarily be successful, to effectively resist this move, it is important that we understand the current crisis and the attacks which are likely to be launched against workers.

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