Workers safety?

The father of a Fife miner who was killed at a mine in New Zealand said he was "disappointed and angry" to hear the gas blast was preventable.

Scots Malcolm Campbell, 25, from St Andrews in Fife, and Pete Rodger, 40, from Perthshire, were among 29 workers killed at the Pike River mine in 2010. The miners' bodies remain in the mine

An investigation has found multiple warnings were ignored. Safety systems at the mine were inadequate, and reports of excessive methane levels were "not heeded". Workers were exposed to "unacceptable risks" because health and safety was not adequately addressed in a drive to achieve production created the circumstances for the tragedy, the report found. "In the last 48 days before the explosion there were 21 reports of methane levels reaching explosive volumes, and 27 reports of lesser, but potentially dangerous, volumes," the report said. "The reports of excess methane continued up to the very morning of the tragedy." The Department of Labour did not have the "focus, capacity or strategies to ensure that Pike was meeting its legal responsibilities. The report called for a new regulator to be established to focus solely on health and safety issues and for mining regulations to be updated.

New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key apologised to relatives of those who died for regulatory failures, but hit out at the mining company, saying it "completely and utterly failed to protect its workers"

Malcolm Campbell snr, said  "Unbelievable in this day and age"

Socialist Courier is sorry to say that such tragedies are part and parcel of the capitalist system

The real union struggle

Since the Industrial Revolution there has been a Us versus Them.  Lined up on one side are the men and women who do the actual work, who toil long, tedious hours for a defined wage, and lined up on the other are employers who, while grudgingly recognizing the necessity of workers, are committed to not paying them any more than is absolutely necessary. It’s an economic law. You charge for your product as much as that the market will bear, and you pay your employees as little as you can get away with. Adhering to the principle that there is “strength in numbers,” workers have joined together to form trade unions. And without those strong, militant labour unions acting as buffers, there is no other force capable of resisting the bosses muscle. Unless working people have some form of organisation to represent their interests, they will be subject to any draconian measures the capitalist wishes to enact. Without the capability to fight back—without the means to offer genuine resistance— workers are not only vulnerable, they’re virtually defenseless. Workers need to take care of themselves rather than rely on politicians to do it for them. And taking care of themselves means banding together collectively. Until they band together and have strength in unity, no one is going to take them seriously.

 It is only through such an organised fight-back and the use of the greatest working class weapon - the strike - can the employers attack on worker's pay and conditions be repulsed. It’s a fight that must be engaged; a fight that must be won. Workers’ only real bargaining power is their ability to stop production. And to do this, workers must fight as a class. These two unavoidable facts gave birth to solidarity pickets, secondary strikes and boycotts that involved whole communities, regions and ultimately the nation. Class solidarity means halting scabs crossing picket lines, and blacking struck goods. We can and must lay the foundation for renewed struggle in the here and now. Without unions maintaining decent wages and benefits, we’re all subject to the inevitable downward pull of market forces, which, given our surplus of labour in this time of high unemployment, means that many of us will slide inexorably toward the minimum wage.

Capitalism cannot function unless it subordinates workers, so the employers close ranks and build their own class solidarity backed by the power of the government. Almost every political pundit has written about the decline and forthcoming death of the labour movement. The populist mantra is to pander to the wallet. Cut the inflated pay and pensions of public workers is the best way to help those who are suffering in a depressed economy. Curtail the corrupt power of unions is the solution. Not only have the rich succeeded in convincing workers to cheer on their campaign against labour unions — the one and only institution dedicated to their welfare —  but they’ve convinced them to support the interests of the wealthy rather than the interests of their own class. Some working people actually refer to other workers as privileged — to people who, by virtue of a union contract, have managed to stay above water, who’ve managed to retain an element of decent wages and benefits, and haven’t fallen totally victim to the recession. Instead of a union contract serving as a model — something to raise all our standard of living — they see it as being above the rest of us! With the poor now jeering at union members, the rich have had their wettest dream come true. The traditional union principle that capital can create nothing without workers – that labour creates all wealth – has been turned on its head, so that capital is now revered as the source of jobs and prosperity.

In the class war, workers may be struggling but they are far from dead. In any war there are only two options: fight to win, or surrender. Both options produce casualties. There is no “safe” option for workers under attack, no place in the trenches to hide in the hope of protecting one’s individual job, dignity and life.

There can be no common interest between bosses and workers, only war. Workers will always lose if they play by the boss’s rules. The power of workers lies in their ability to stop production. If they don’t use this power, they have nothing with which to bargain. Workers can stop production only if they unite as a class, disregarding the boundaries of job description, workplace and industry. Now that production is international, class solidarity must also be international. In order to fight effectively, workers must break the laws laid down by the employers and their State when they are able. When workers challenge the employers’ right to dictate what happens in the workplace, they challenge the essence of capitalism itself. The question of political power over economic power must lie at the core of any union strategy.

The American Election

The poor health of Scotland

The gulf between the health of the affluent and the poor in Scotland is exposed in a new report which shows the divide is wider in Scotland than most other countries in Europe. Only Hungary and the Czech Republic report a deeper contrast between the death rates experienced by men who left school with no qualifications and those who graduated from college or university.

The gap between women from the different academic backgrounds is greater in Scotland than any of the other 20 countries included in the research.

 Dr Gerry McCartney, head of the Public Health Observatory Division for health improvement agency NHS Health Scotland, said: "It is a massive injustice. If you are a child born just a mile from where I live you have got a 50:50 chance of making it to your 65th birthday. That is an appalling record."

 There were 501 more deaths per 100,000 men per year among 30 to 59-year-old Scottish male manual workers, than among non-manual staff. This was a greater difference than in all the 13 other European countries included in this aspect of the research. In England and Wales the difference was 222 deaths, and in Switzerland it was 121.

What is this thing with nationhood?

The capitalist class flood the air waves with illusory phrases such as, “national economic interest,” “national security,” “national unity,” “national competitiveness.” We are told that we all rise or fall together — as one nation and one people.

One of the key areas for nationalist talk is the economy. Patriotic voters are urged to ignore class divisions, shun unions, and join the bankers and bosses, sacrificing their own worker interests for the “good of the nation.” But let’s get real. Cuts, austerity measures, and wage freezes benefit only the rich, not the whole country. The capitalist economy can never work for all of us, because it’s designed for the wealthy, who relentlessly endeavour to widen the gap between rich and poor.

THE WIDENING GAP

Christia Freeland has spent 20 years of her life working for the Financial Times and Reuters and she has recently turned her long experience of the owning class into a book about them. Entitled Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich it was recently reviewed by the press. "In the 1970s, the top 1% of earners in America captured about 10% of national income. Today their share has more than doubled to 22%. .... Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have the combined wealth (about $100 billion) of the bottom 40% of the US population - about 120m people." (Sunday Times, 28 October) RD

THE CLASS DIVIDE

The daily press in Britain is fond of creating the myth that workers are gradually improving their economic position in society but occasionally a journalist will report on what is really happening. Here is an example from the writer Philip Collins giving the facts about Britain. "On current trends, an ordinary family will have 15 per cent less cash coming in by 2020 than 2008. This has happened all over the world. Blue-collar workers in America have hardly had a pay rise in 40 years. Their counterparts in Germany and Canada have been stuck for a decade. In the UK the household fuel has risen 110 per cent, council tax by 67 per cent and food is 37 per cent more expensive than in 2000." (Times, 1 November) Needless to say during this period the owning class have improved their economic standing. RD

War

To be sure, Socialist Courier is offering no defence of American policy. Where US interests are challenged there are no lengths American government won’t go to, nor the stinking depths it will sink, to secure its own ends, regardless of the cost of life.  Yet the focus on the role of American imperialism and the couching of anti-war sentiments in terms of US withdrawal from the world stage presents itself as if the American government had some choice in pursuing an imperialist policy, that its actions result from some mysteriously gung-ho national characteristic, rather than from the dictates of capitalist economy. It also ignores the fact that even if the US ceased to be the disruptive force for chaos in the region, there are plenty of willing understudies to take over that role. Every country in the world adopts a policy that it hopes will advance the interests of their capitalist masters. Duplicity and double-dealing are the norm in the cut-throat world of capitalism. All capitalist states are basically imperialist in character and ambition.

While it is important that workers oppose war, it is just as important that they recognise just why armed conflicts between states break out and in whose interests wars are waged. Without setting war in its true context some are going to oppose war and its effects, yet will still be prepared to support capitalism , as in the anti-war movement many still do, and then it will be a life of continual constant campaigning. The weakness of the anti-war movement is that the majority want nothing more than a return to capitalist "peace" rather than the overthrow of the system that causes war.

Socialists are always on the side of the oppressed against the oppressors and the massive use of overwhelming force by the US and Nato clearly exposes it as the oppressors. But just because we sympathise with the victims of US/Nato oppression does not mean that we favour the solutions popular amongst them. "Anti-imperialism" is the slogan of local elites who wish to dominate the region in place of the US, a situation which would still leave the mass of the population there exploited and oppressed.

Workers around the world share a lot in common. We all want peace and security for our families and a chance to participate in and share the production of wealth. In a conflict over which state and ruling classes should control a region, no working class interest is involved except in so far as it is they who are its innocent victims and need the killing, maiming and destruction to stop - without qualification or equivocation. Peace groups should be congratulated for their humanitarian outlook and attempts to stop the war but they must also be reminded to work to end the cause of all conflicts – capitalism

Cuba's Capitalism

The misty-eyed support for Castro's Cuba would not be so worrying were it confined to the ranks of Stalinists; however, its tendrils reach well beyond them to many Scots. The US trade embargo established in 1960 — the world’s longest-running trade sanctions — continue to squeeze Cuba’s finances, targeting foreign companies that do business with Havana for huge fines. But what has changed in recent years is that Raul Castro now publicly acknowledges that the island’s most nagging economic problems are mainly the result of bureaucracy and excessive state control.

The Castro regime has proven remarkably resilient and has maintained a tight control over the economy. At times, this has meant a heavy hand. None of this has abolished the commodity nature of production, nor the wages system. Generous subsidies from Moscow kept the island’s economy afloat until 1991, when the aid was cut off by the Soviet collapse. A period of painful austerity set in that Cuba has never really recovered from. The collapse of the Soviet Union, and the loss of Cuba’s export markets as well as the convenient supply of oil for industrial purposes led to the economy undergoing serious recession. Since then, the government has been trying to re-orientate the economy. President Raul Castro has been making headlines with easing travel restrictions and modifying agriculture land use rules. It's a cautious, free-market experiment meant to help streamline an inefficient economy. Since about 70 percent of Cuba’s food is imported. Castro has made boosting local agricultural production a priority of the reform effort, handing over 3 million acres of state-owned land to private farmers and cooperatives. But farmers still face massive red tape and restrictions on where they can sell their produce. Nor can they buy tractors, trucks or other key farming equipment without government permission.  New rules allow farmers to re-lease up to 165 acres of fallow government land. The change allows farmers to build homes on the land, which was previously prohibited. In the case of disability or death, a farmer's properties will be transferred to the surviving family. However they cannot buy tractors, trucks or other key farming equipment without government permission. In Cuba, 85% of the population is employed by the state but a pilot program will convert 222 state-owned companies into worker-run cooperatives. The government will maintain ownership of the company’s physical property and charge rent to the cooperative, but members will determine their own hours, pay and management.

Who Owns the SOUTH Pole

A switch from our usual pole.

  No one owns Antarctica, although a few countries persist in maintaining their frozen claims to slices of the continent for research and scientific purposes in line with the Antarctic Treaty. In reality, the international community is responsible for the region, operating through the Antarctic Treaty and its related agreements. The International Maritime Organization (IMO), the UN body responsible for regulating shipping internationally, designated the Southern Ocean as a "special area"

Many parts of Antarctica have been coming under increasing pressure as the growing global demand for sea food means the region's rich resources are increasingly targeted. There are fishing boats, both legal and illegal, including a new breed that vacuum krill from the sea. 

The United States and New Zealand put forward competing plans to create a marine protected area of 1.6 million square kilometres in the Ross Sea. Another proposal would have created a reserve zone around East Antarctica - At around 1.9 million square kilometres, it would have covered an area almost three times the size of France.

For the past two weeks the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, made up of representatives from 24 governments and the European Union, has been meeting in Australia and has failed to reach agreement on new marine protected areas for the Antarctic ocean. They have deferred a decision until July 2013. Environmental groups blame Russia, China and Ukraine for blocking agreement.

"There are competing interests, in terms of commercial interests and in terms of the economic control of these areas" Steve Campbell of the Antarctic Ocean Alliance stated.

As long as power and money rule our lives the planet will never stand a chance! We talk about protecting the planet but what does that mean? Governments are more interested in protecting what share holders make. The bottom line is profits. As long as we continue to think that profits are more important than our future, the condition of this planet will get so bad it will be too late to save it.

THE RICH GET RICHER

The current economic recession has led to unemployment, house repossession and general lowering of workers standard of living, but it is not all doom and gloom. "The 100 richest people on the planet added $12.7 billion to their collective net worth this week after worse-than-forecast corporate earnings in the U.S. wiped out most of the gains global stocks had posted earlier in the week. Mexican Carlos Slim, 72, increased his fortune $1.8 billion after Telmex, the land-line unit of his Mexico City-based telecommunications company America Movil (AMXL) SAB, said on Wednesday it will begin offering high-speed Internet service without binding it with a phone line package. Slim remains the world's richest person with a $77.6 billion fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index." (Bloomberg, 19 October) RD

EXPENSIVE COCKTAILS

Newspapers and television from time to time run items about the excessive drinking of young workers. We are regaled by journalist painting a dire picture of workers behaving badly after too much to drink. Little or nothing is ever mentioned about the owning class and drink, but here is one of their tipples that no worker is likely to purchase. "Salvatore Calabrese broke the record for the world's most expensive cocktail with his 'Salvatore's Legacy' drink which was made up of ingredients more than 200 years old. Salvatore, whose nickname is 'The Maestro', made the costly concoction using 1778 Clos de Griffier Vieux Cognac, 1770 Kummel Liqueur, Dubb Orange Curacao circa 1860 and two dashes of Angostura Bitters circa 1900s. The drink was valued at £5,500, smashing the previous record for the world's most expensive cocktail that was held by The Skyview Bar of Burj Al Arab Hotel, Dubai, which cost £3,766.52 a glass." (Daily Mail, 15 October) RD

Poverty means failing in school

Children who live in poverty in Scotland are already failing before school starts, a new study from Save the Children report suggested. Youngsters from poorer backgrounds were twice as likely to start primary school with developmental difficulties.

 The study found poorer children were twice as likely to have emotional and physical development difficulties. They were also twice as likely to have problems with communication and expressing themselves or making themselves understood. The report's authors said poorer youngsters were 50% more likely to face difficulties mixing with other children and were 40% more likely to be behind in their cognitive development - the ability to gain knowledge and learn. Figures from later in the education system showed that these children begin their school life behind their classmates and never catch up.

China, Chairman Mao, and Capitalism

0.1% of all households in China hold nearly half of the total wealth said the report released by Boston Consulting Group.  A long way from the image of Mao's China which was that of a regimented and spartan but egalitarian society, without hierarchical class distinctions. The blatant inequalities of post-Mao China have served only to enhance the image in retrospect. Yet the image was always an illusion, a meticulously maintained lie. China under Mao was, like China before Mao and China after Mao, a class-divided society. Since 1949, all top party leaders have lived and worked under extremely privileged conditions and in virtually total isolation from ordinary people.

Mao mobilised terror witch-hunts in which anyone refusing to wholeheartedly join in would find themselves a target. He repeatedly used this strategy throughout his career to gain and hold power, culminating in the infamous Cultural Revolution, which accounted for some 100 million people being humiliated, tortured, maimed and, in 3 million instances, murdered.

His callousness is almost beyond the scope of human imagining. In one year, 22 million people died of starvation – brought about primarily through Mao’s disastrous project to make China – then one of the poorest countries on Earth – into a nuclear super-power. The famines and over-work induced by the programme led to 38 million deaths. While people starved he would gorge himself on whole chickens and huge quantities of meat and fish.

He used women almost as imperial concubines, procured from the local labour force. Anyone who objected to his and other leaders’ privileges amongst squalor were derided as “petit-bourgeois egalitarians”.

Mao was more concentrated on fighting the nationalist government than the Japanese. On the Long March (a period of retreat by the Red Army from the nationalists), Mao and the other leaders didn’t march with their soldiers: they were carried. And the workers and peasantry have been carrying the party officials ever since. It is argued that Mao deliberately meandered along the Long March in order to strengthen his grip on the party before they met up with the rest of the army.

Some quotes of Mao:

“The present-day capitalist economy in China is a capitalist economy which for the most part is under the control of the People’s Government… It is not an ordinary but a particular kind of capitalist economy, namely, a state-capitalist economy of a new type”

“The transformation of capitalism into socialism is to be accomplished through state capitalism….”

“Some workers are advancing too fast and won’t allow the capitalists to make any profit at all. We should try to educate these workers and capitalists and help them gradually (but the sooner the better) adapt themselves to our state policy, namely, to make China’s private industry and commerce mainly serve the nation’s economy and the people’s livelihood and partly earn profits for the capitalists and in this way embark on the path of state capitalism….”

“the character of the Chinese revolution at the present stage is not proletarian-socialist but bourgeois-democratic….”

“A certain degree of capitalist development will be an inevitable result of the victory of the democratic revolution in economically backward
China….”

“it will guarantee legitimate profits to properly managed state, private and co-operative enterprises–so that both the public and the private sectors and both labour and capital will work together to develop industrial production…” [a very 'marxist' class interpretation indeed!]

” A sharp distinction should be made between the feudal exploitation practiced by landlords and rich peasants, which must be abolished, and the industrial and commercial enterprises run by landlords and rich peasants, which must be protected…”

“To counter imperialist oppression and raise her backward economy to a higher level, China must utilize all the factors of urban and rural capitalism that are beneficial and not harmful to the national economy and people’s livelihood…Our present policy is to regulate capitalism, not to destroy it.”

LEONARDO AND LOLLY

Last month the Sistine Chapel ceiling painted by Leonardo Da Vinci was 500 years old. "The anniversary comes amid renewed controversy over the overcrowding of the chapel, now visited by five million tourists a year. At peak season as many as 25,000 sweaty, dusty people troop through the sacred space, posing a risk to the art they have come to see. The number has doubled in the last 20 years and new arrivals from Asia are sure to push attendances even higher." (Times, 27 October) The idea of limiting the amount of visitors in order to preserve the artwork has been suggested but there is a powerful argument against that proposal. A ticket to enter the Vatican Museum cost £11.25. Five million paying visitors a year represents a tidy sum for the Vatican's coffers. RD

DEATH IS CHEAPER IN ASIA

In order to cheapen production costs and enlarge profit margins many European capitalists are transferring manufacturing to where costs of wages are low and trade union activity is poor. "Germany's biggest discount clothing chain has agreed to pay almost £750,000 in compensation for victims of a factory fire in Karachi that killed 289 workers and injured 100. Kik agreed to the payout after evidence showed that up to 90 per cent of the garments being produced were for its Okey jeans." (Times, 26 October) The same report mentioned that Kik had sold clothes worth 1.69 billion euros last year, so £750,000 is hardly likely to bankrupt them. RD

Immigration for the rich

Hungary plans to offer non-EU nationals permanent residence if they buy at least 250,000 euros' worth (£201,000) of special government bonds.

 "The goal of the modification is to create the institution of 'investor residency' in Hungary," the lawmakers who put forth the legislation wrote in their proposal.

 Across the globe, residency or citizenship is also offered to foreigners who invest in a country’s economy. Canada used to allow "experienced business people" willing to invest 800,000 Canadian dollars to settle in the country.

The Failure of Zionism

The Zionist needs anti-semitism like heroin addicts need their fix. Islamists thrives on hatred of Moslems.

Zionism misled many Jewish workers with its promise of a "homeland for Jews". Israel has failed as a state to protect Jews. The terrible experience of the Second World War convinced many European Jews to embrace the idea of a Zionist State. However, the establishment of Israel did not end anti-semitism. In fact, it has actually caused it to spread to where it had seldom existed before – to the Arab-speaking parts of the world. For centuries Jews had lived in peace and security, integrated and speaking Arabic, in these parts of the world. Now, as a direct result of the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine, they came to suffer the same persecution that the European Jews had. The result was that centuries of integration was undone in decades. Today there are virtually no Jews living in Arab countries: most Arab Jews are now in Israel where they form an underprivileged group.  And those Arab Israelis who remained within the state of Israel suffered the same fate the Zionists sought to free Jews from: being a minority in someone else’s “nation-State”. Israel is an apartheid state which enforces policies of ethnic segregation.

As socialists we re-affirm that all peoples should seek their emancipation, not as members of nations or religions or ethnic groups, but as human beings, as members of the human race in a world without national frontiers and in which free movement is possible and where all people live together as equals. They should unite to abolish the division of the world into so-called nation-states and to establish a World Cooperative Commonwealth of which we will all be free and equal members – citizens of the world, not subjects of nation-states.

We sympathize with the suffering of our fellow workers, whatever their ethnic origin. It is always they who suffer the brunt of their masters’ wars. Peace is always better than war. Because wars are never fought in the interests of ordinary people. It is also because war provides an ideal opportunity and excuse to suppress democratic rights on both sides. Peace will create better conditions for democracy. No longer obsessed with ethnic conflict, “Jews” and “Palestinians” will be able to re-focus on the social, economic and ecological problems spawned by the “normal” peacetime functioning of capitalism. A space for socialist ideas will open up in this corner of our world. 

PROGRESSING BACKWARDS

The idea that we are all getting a little better off financially all the time is one that the media try to sell us but the facts say otherwise. "13 % is the fall in national income per person in the UK since the start of 2008, adjusted for inflation according to the Office for National Statistics. The decline was more rapid than after the 1978 oil crisis." (Sunday Times, 28 October) RD

health inequality

Statistics released by the Scottish Government show people from more deprived parts of Scotland are more likely to die from alcohol-related causes.

The largest rate of inequality was in alcohol-related deaths among those aged 45 – 74. The report says that while there have been improvements, death rates and levels of inequality were higher in 2010 than 1998.