On the Fairfax strikes
Matthew Cummins writes: Re: “Fairfax tells staff it is about to fire: be nicer to scabs” (Wednesday)
It is really amazing that the top management of a major paper doesn’t get the cultural strength of worker hatred of those who break a strike. A scab places her own job and short term income ahead of her own and colleagues’ longer term security and wage. The strength of unionism is the only force which stands between poverty and dignity. Just cast an eye at some of our northern neighbours to see where weakened unionism gets the mass of the population. Bosses do not pay living wages through the goodness of their board. Their willingness to drive wages towards destitution is only matched by their willingness to vote $million packages for themselves.
So when you choose to weaken the union’s stance you effectively contribute to your fellow workers’ impoverishment. At the extreme you take food from their family’s mouths. ‘Scab’ is too kind. Thief, traitor, quisling, even murderer, are all correct depictions of what you do when you break the only bargaining power a worker has. The absurdity of this particular directive from Fairfax is heightened by the absolute failure of successive managements to protect the business. They rail against strikers but have so run the business down that they need to sack large proportions of their staff! Staff who fail to support their fellows commit a massive social crime. That’s why they are called scabs.
On drug testing for welfare recipients
Wayne Robinson writes: Re. “Destroying the joint: drug testing welfare recipients will be expensive and won’t work” (Wednesday)
Of course dole bludgers should be drug tested. If Australia repeats the New Zealand experience, with 22 positive tests costing around $50,000 each, then it would save money with dole cheats being stripped of the exorbitant unemployment benefits of over $50,000 a year. The unemployed, in particular the young unemployed, need to learn that they’re scum.
If anything, it will make us rich old white men happy at the thought that the young continue to be persecuted relentlessly.
I assume Wayne Robinson is being ironic or made a typo – the idea that a “dole cheat” enjoys anything like $50,000 a year is, of course, pure fantasy! Yearly income for a “dole cheat” (i.e. a person who cannot find a non-existent job) is well south of $15,000 per annum. Not enough to pay the rent, spend 5 hours a day looking for work while having enough left over for transportation fees and looking halfway “job ready” i.e. being able to have a decent outfit. That’s before buying food of course!
‘Murderer’ as a correct term to describe someone who’s broken the picket line? Sure, that sounds like a well thought-out and reasonable argument. While we’re at it, we might as well kill them ourselves in a pre-emptive strike to prevent them from murdering us.
Seriously though, more flies with honey than vinegar. You think this Andrew-Bolt level rhetoric is going to swing people across to appreciating the merits of supporting a union? Or would it damage the cause, comrade?
So what would you call someone who undermines solidarity?