Labor’s sorry record on uranium mining and Aboriginal rights

Ark Tribe faces the bosses’ court – time for unions to get back on the front foot, Socialist Alliance Unionists, 17 June 2010, “…..Indigenous rights? The racist and humiliating Northern Territory Intervention. Uranium mining? Looming open slather for mining bosses. So why support the ALP?

We’ve all heard the standard reply – the Coalition would be worse and Labor has to be supported to keep them out of office.As long as this argument rules in the union movement we are doomed to permanent retreat.

Labor governments will always get away with implementing the smallest possible improvements – safe in the knowledge that their union supporters will paint these as massive pro-worker reforms.The unions are the biggest influence on workers and so long as union leaders maintain the line that Labor is the voice of workers (even if they are “a bit right of centre at the moment”), they will continue to hold back the struggle for workers’ interests……

Showing The Way

It’s a step forward that the Victorian Electrical Trades Union is holding a membership ballot on whether it should remain affiliated to the ALP; that the ETU’s Queensland branch sacked two MPs who refused to oppose the Bligh government’s privatisations; that the Victorian branch of the CFMEU is calling for a vote for the Greens in the Senate; and that the Victorian branch of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union is calling for a vote for the Greens in the seat of Melbourne.

Ark Tribe faces the bosses’ court – time for unions to get back on the front foot