Red Report Back - Week Ending 23/10/2022
Teenager Lynched and Community in Mourning
A 21-year-old Perth man has been charged following the vicious murder of 15-year-old Aboriginal boy Cassius Turvey. Cassius died after being placed in an induced coma following a vicious beating by an adult with a metal pole, with multiple surgeries not being enough to save him.
Reports stated that Cassius and a group of friends were walking home on October 13 when they were followed by a black Ford Ranger ute. Jack Brearley then jumped out of the car and ran towards the group and began viciously assaulting the 15-year-old boy with a metal pole. Allegedly, the man attacked the group of children as he mistakenly believed they were responsible for previously throwing rocks at car windows in the neighbourhood.
This is the current state of racism in Australia today - where an Aboriginal boy’s life is seen as being worth less than a pane of glass. Where people feel that they can act with impunity and unchecked savagery towards Aboriginal people because the system does it all the time without being punished for it. Where this is normalised to the point that most people don’t even bat an eye when there is yet another Black life extinguished in custody.
Only last week we saw how institutionalized and systematic this is with new revelations in the coronial inquest into the killing of Kumanjayi Walker at the hands of Northern Territory police officer Zachary Rolfe. While the unarmed teenager these pigs shot lay dying, they refused to give him mouth to mouth. If a bunch of coppers did this while a politician lay on the ground after being shot multiple times, there would be a public outcry. But for a dead Aboriginal teen, there is near silence. This silence is deafening. It is high time that this silence was turned into a howling roar that shook the racist institutions of the Australian capitalist state to its core, and brings them crashing down. Rest in power, Cassius. May your family get justice against the scumbags that took you too soon.
Workers Take Action against Apple’s Rotten Core
Last week, unionists from the Retail and Fast Food Workers Union (RAFFWU) that work at Apple took landmark industrial action. In response to degrading working conditions and low wages, hundreds of workers across the country walked out in day long strikes.
The actions came about in protest of a new pay deal where Apple refused to offer its skilled workers weekends and set rosters, despite the employees engaging in months of negotiations in good faith. In addition to walking out, members from RAFFWU have been placing work bans on customer service, launching what is likely the first nationally coordinated retail strike in Australia.
RAFFWU’s actions recieved overwhelming solidarity from the left and union movement, best captured by the comments from striking CFMEU workers in Victoria. These members, who are currently fighting against another multi-national exploiter, Knauf, sent a message of support, saying “We stand in solidarity with the Apple workers, fighting for what’s fair. Apple has the most profitable stores in the world so we call on Apple to share that extraordinary wealth with the Aussie workers who make it possible”.
Indeed, it is inspiring to see these workers engaging with a retail union that refuses to accept these meagre conditions. Workers must stand up against sub-standard wage offers that leave them worse off as inflation soars. Under capitalism, workers must fight if they wish for more than starvation wages. Workers must stand up against the attempts of the bosses and capitalists to crush what little freedoms we have. But we must not limit our struggle to the workplace and just bite the outside of the apple. We must strike at the rotten core of the capitalist system, and destroy its seeds so it does not grow again. Solidarity, comrades. Strike the bastards down.
SEQUR Rally against Landlords’ Housing Summit
In Brisbane this week, renters, supporters and members of the South East Queensland Union of Renters (SEQUR) rallied out the front of the Convention and Exhibition Centre in protest of the Palaszczuk Labor Government’s farcical Housing Summit. SEQUR and its supporters turned up en masse to call out the hypocrisy of the pro-(and literal) landlord ALP state government, and to show them that the working class deserves better as it faces the increasingly stark reality of the housing crisis.
SEQUR summarised the motivation for the event in aptly highlighting how the rights of renters, and the solution to the housing crisis for workers, will not be found in a summit room consisting of pro-market, pro-landlord politicians and their cronies, but rather through collective action and the power of workers. Workers across Australia must build on this initiative and continually emphasise that the struggle for housing justice and workers’ justice is one and the same. Both have the same enemy in the propertied capitalist class, who see workers and tenants as profit-boosting resources to be exploited.
As SEQUR themselves put it, Palaszczuk is not really attempting to address the root of the issue “because she’s a landlord, in a parliament full of landlords, whose pockets are lined by the landlord lobby”. The Premier, Deputy Premier and Housing Minister are themselves all landlords. As such, SEQUR summarised the grim reality that working class people currently face, and amplified the call to action we must all answer in saying “we renters will never be looked after by landlords, politicians or the rest of the ruling class. We can only look after ourselves - and we do that by organising ourselves into a powerful block with shared interests, a union, and fighting back together”.
The housing crisis in Brisbane, as with most of Australia, is increasingly impacting the wallets and wellbeing of workers, with real estate agents in the city actively encouraging landlords to increase their rents by up to 20%. As landlords, politicians and realtors manipulate the market and legislation to boost their profits and portfolios, workers are forced into substandard housing, onto the street or into near starvation as they try to survive. SEQUR has shown us that when confronting these parasites, there is only one solution - unity and solidarity of the working class, taking it to the street. All power to you, comrades.
Rail Workers Action Screeches to a Halt (Again)
The back and forth between the Rail, Tram and Bus Union (RTBU) and their union-busting, anti-worker opponents in the NSW Liberal Government has again shifted this week. Once again, the capitalist state has done its best to crush the rights of workers fighting for their livelihoods, with the Perrottet Government launching a Federal Court case against the union seeking damages for lost revenue in earlier industrial action.
The RTBU was set to take industrial action this week by turning off Opal card readers at stations, after an overwhelming majority of members voted in favour of the move. This would have advanced the unions fight for higher wages to meet inflation and to provide safer trains for workers and the public. At the same time, it would have allowed passengers to travel for free on transport without being inconvenienced, while the union’s members would have been able to work and provide their vital services to the public in a safe and responsible manner. However, this went against the government and their narrative, which has done its best to frame the union as an irresponsible, greedy group that doesn’t care about the public.
Naturally, the RTBU has been highly critical of the move, calling it a “vicious, unprecedented attack on workers”, being used to stifle the already severely limited ability of workers and their representatives to take industrial action. NSW State Secretary of the RTBU, Alex Claasens, said that “if the government continues to stop us from giving commuters free fares, the only actions available to us are things like strike action”. Transport Minister David Elliot had the audacity to then point the finger at the RTBU and accuse them of playing a “political game”.
This seemingly never-ending dispute once again captures perfectly how the modern industrial relations system is fundamentally geared against workers. When workers attempt to play by the rules, the capitalist state will find new ways to stifle their implied rights. When workers try and act in a way that endears them to the public, the government will find a way to frame them as the enemies of the public. When workers seem to have gained a small victory, the government will find a new way to penalise them. There is no appealing to the mercy of an enemy who wants to kill you, stuff you and put you on their wall. The RTBU needs to take on the mantra of Bon Scott when dealing with these shameless criminals - if you want blood, you got it.