Friday 25th July 2008 saw 100 Union Solidarity activists from the Western suburbs shut down the CSR construction site, Lyell St Yarraville. Workers and their unions on this site have a range of longstanding issues.

CSR have employed a man named John Kint who has an extremely bad history of eliminating workers' and unions' democratic rights through the Howard years, notably at Port Campbell. Kint has now told workers on the CSR site that if they talk to a union organiser they will be docked four (4) hours. Clearly the same penalties do not apply to employers seeking to meet with their unions/associations!

However Union Solidarity, as friends know, is less concerned with the issues than we are with the use of undemocratic laws against workers and their unions in the righteous pursuit of their interests.

It is this central point around which Union Solidarity was formed and continues to protest: union activities are not criminal as current industrial law paints them, but are simply designed to insure that workers have the same rights as employer organisations in the pursuit of their interests.

more on why Union Solidarity organises assemblies...

Building workers without rights under the Building Construction Industry Improvement (sic) Act are not only disempowered in the pursuit of their immediate interests to a degree not experienced by other workers, and certainly not experienced at all by employers, but importantly for the us in the community, they are unable to play the historic role they have always played in defence of communities and the general good.

It is crucial that we are even more outspoken in our opposition to laws that would silence the working class voice in this country, at this time of impending crisis. If CSR escalates the problems of building workers in Yarraville the community stands ready to build resistance to those moves.

more info: Why Union Solidarity organises assemblies... | John Kint at Port Campbell | Kint pressuring OH&S rep

Labels: Community Assemblies, Community Protest, CSR, Kint