UK retail giant Tesco announces thousands of job losses

John Farmer

Thousands of jobs are threatened at major supermarket chain Tesco, the largest retailer in Britain. This follows the decision of new CEO David Lewis to embark on a £500 million cost-cutting drive and store-closure plan, in an effort to confront the decline in profits and marketshare since 2011.

Tesco is Britain’s biggest private-sector employer, with over 310,000 staff across its 3,300 stores. Forty-three stores are projected to be closed as well as its Welwyn Garden City head office in Herfordshire, Cheshunt, resulting in the loss of some 10,000 jobs. A recent 49-store expansion programme has also been abandoned.

A large percentage of job losses are expected to be management positions. Lewis, who is being drafted in from the Unilever Conglomerate where he earned the name “Drastic Dave” by cutting jobs and doing away with products, is said to be looking to remove an entire layer of management from Tesco stores.

Clive Black, an analyst at Shore Capital, told the Financial Times, “Labour is the biggest operating cost and if Tesco is serious about being a simplified business then you would expect further job reductions.”

Since the 2008 financial crash, all of the UK’s big four supermarket chains (Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons) have faced increased competition from the low-cost supermarket chains Aldi and Lidl. Competition from premier grocers Waitrose and Marks & Spencer has increased. The John Lewis-owned Waitrose expanded its marketshare by 6.6 percent.

The German-owned Aldi and Lidl increased their marketshare by 50 percent in that time period, gaining almost 10 percent of the total market, an all-time UK high. Aldi’s and Lidl’s sales were up by 22.3 percent and 18.3 percent respectively in the last quarter of 2014. Research group Kantar Worldpanel revealed that more than half of British households visited one of the two retailers over the Christmas trading period.

The four major UK supermarket chains are responding with a price war combined with an assault on the jobs of their labour force.

Asda, the UK’s second-largest supermarket retailer, is reducing its labour force by 1,360 and Sainsbury, the third largest, is cutting 500 jobs at its offices as part of its new chief executive Mike Coupe’s “fightback plan”. Morrisons, the fourth largest retailer, pushed through a programme of management elimination last year with the loss of 2,600 jobs.

But the woes of Tesco—the third-largest retailer in the world measured by profits, after Wal-Mart and Carrefour—in recent years are in proportion to its global status.

Tesco lost £17.6 billion in its market value in the five years up to 2014. In 2013, its marketshare fell below 30 percent consistently for the first time in eight years. In October last year, it was revealed that Tesco had lost 50 percent of its market value in a year. For the first six months of 2014 pre-tax profits fell by a staggering 92 percent to £112 million while UK trading profit was down 55.9 percent to £499 million.

Eight senior executive positions have also recently been suspended relating to a fraud scandal that has engulfed the supermarket chain over the last four months. (Outgoing CEO Philip Clark was entitled to a final salary, share schemes and bonuses worth £9.6 million.) An investigation is ongoing by the Serious Fraud Squad into accounting anomalies showing over £250 million of overstated profits in 2014.

The government’s Groceries Code Adjudicator is carrying out an investigation into the possibility that Tesco broke laws in its dealings with its suppliers.

In January 2013, the British media reported that horsemeat had been found in some meat products sold by Tesco, along with other retailers, particularly beef burgers. Tesco was forced to withdraw 26 of its products in response, while more than 10 million burgers and other beef products were withdrawn across the affected chains.

As part of Tesco’s aggressive drive for market domination it made deals with willing local authorities to build stores incorporating housing and commercial development programmes. Protests against these deals mushroomed in the mid-1990s, often citing dubious relations between the private retailer and development strategy of local authorities. These practices were expanded to its overseas operations. The 49 abandoned projects, some in the process of development, have not been costed in the amount of job losses and effects on local authorities.

Tesco expected its expansion of stores in overseas markets would overcome the limitations of its market collapse in Britain but they have proven a disaster. Tesco expanded into Europe in 1996 going on to open stores in China in 2004, the US in 2006, and with operations in 13 different countries.

In April 2013, Tesco announced that it was pulling out of the US market (Fresh & Easy Stores), at a reported cost of £1.2 billion, failing to offload its stores. Tesco’s entry into China was a loss-making failure. In 2014 it struck up a joint enterprise of an 80 percent state-owned and 20 percent Tesco-owned company under the name of Chinese Resources Enterprise.

Tesco also failed in Japan and its enterprises in Europe are seeing dramatic declines in profit margins. Kantar Worldpanel’s report noted that, over Christmas, for the first time it recorded a decline in UK grocery sales by overall value since it began collecting data in 1994.

Tesco and its major global competitors have all been affected by the decline in living standards worldwide through the impact of austerity since the 2008 financial collapse.

Of Tesco’s 217,000 full-time employees, those that work on the shop floor are paid on average around the minimum wage of £6.50. The remaining 100,000 part-time workers are estimated to save Tesco around 14 percent per employer, or around a £100 million over the year.

These savings are made at the expense of government national insurance receipts which would normally go to state pensions and welfare payments. Tesco avoids paying these contributions by employing workers on a minimum four-hour contract. Although a worker can ask for an increase in hours these are held below the level of earnings of £150 a week after which amount the employer is liable to pay national insurance contributions. It estimated that varied government wage top-up schemes cost the UK taxpayers £90 billion a year.

The result of Tesco not paying employment contributions threatens to leave employees with a limited state pension or no pension at all, guaranteeing a retirement of severe poverty.

Employees at Tesco that maintain a pension will be switched from its defined benefit scheme to a career average plan. Tesco’s defined pension scheme was one of the largest in the UK’s private sector, encompassing all its employees. Today these schemes are regarded as a thing of the past.

In 2004, defined benefit plans were contributed to by 20 percent of FTSE 100 employers (100 largest employers in UK); today there are none.

The global economic crisis has resulting in a relentless assault by Tesco, Wal-Mart and the other major retail corporations on their workforces, as they seek to retain marketshare and profits in a cutthroat market.

Last year Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer and the largest employer in the US, announced in a blog post that it would eliminate health care benefits for 30,000 part-time workers and increase health care costs for all employees.

On November 23, protests were held at Wal-Mart stores around the country opposing management abuse, irregular working hours and the poverty wages the giant retailer pays its 1.4 million workers.

Irish police clamp down on water charge protesters

Dermot Quinn

Five anti-water charge protesters have been jailed for contempt of court in Ireland, following a crackdown by the Garda (police) and the state against any effective protest against the hated water charges.

Since Dublin’s Fine Gael/Labour Party government imposed water charges as part of the multi-billion-euro bailout programme concluded with the International Monetary Fund, European Union and European Central Bank in 2010, there has been widespread opposition from working people who correctly see the charge as yet another measure to make them pay for the economic crisis and the collapse of the banks.

On February 19 the High Court imposed a sentence of 28 days on three anti-water charge protesters for failing to maintain a 20-metre distance from water meters when they were being installed in housing estates. Two other protesters, who have since been refusing food (Derek Byrne from Donaghemede and Paul Moore from Kilbarrack), were jailed for 56 days.

The frustration and anger of many local communities has resulted in numerous water meter installations being blocked by residents, who have physically obstructed work being carried out by contract firms on behalf of Irish Water. Irish Water was the body set up by the government to collect the water charges from the population.

Following the arrests, more than 10,000 people, led by the families of the jailed anti-water charge protesters, marched to Mountjoy jail in Dublin calling for the release of the protesters.

The jailing of the protesters followed a general crackdown by the Garda and the courts on the right to protest. Twenty-three people were apprehended in dawn raids by the Garda recently and later released without charge. On February 9, Socialist Party TD (Teachta Dála—member of parliament) Paul Murphy, along with three other members of the Anti-Austerity Alliance, were arrested in the early hours of the morning and detained under section four of the Criminal Justice Act 1984. This act permits the detention of people for up to 24 hours for a wide range of offences against the state.

According to the Garda, the arrests were in response to a protest last November in the predominately working class estate of Jobstown, near Tallaght, Dublin in which angry protesters spontaneously surrounded the car of Tanaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) Joan Burton. Detaining her for over three hours, the protesters shouted defiant slogans against the introduction of water charges and Burton’s slashing of lone parents’ payments. Social Welfare cuts to be introduced in July this year will see 6,400 lone parents lose up to €36.50 per week; 4,500 will lose up to €57; and 800, who are also carers, will suffer €86 per week in cuts to payments.

Derek Byrne, one of the five protesters jailed for contempt in the latest crackdown, was also involved in a protest at the end of January. This received huge media coverage, as footage emerged in which he was heard calling President Michael D. Higgins a “midget parasite” as Higgins’ car left a visit to a Dublin school. In the footage, Higgins is also repeatedly described as a “sellout” and “traitor”. The media and the establishment went into overdrive to condemn all those involved in the protest, pointing out the sanctity of the presidency and the necessity to keep the position of president “above politics.” Labour TD John Lyons described the protest against Higgins as “thuggery.” Minister for Health Leo Varadkar even described the protest against Higgins as “an attack on the Constitution.”

As the anger and frustration against austerity and the continuing impoverishment of the majority of the population continue to grow, the pseudo-left Socialist Party and Socialist Workers Party’s front organisation People Before Profit (PBP) continue to bend over backwards to proclaim their loyalty to capitalism—seeking what many have described as the formation of new party styled on Syriza in Greece.

These groups secured a smooth transition for the establishment at the beginning of the Irish banking crisis by sending representatives to discuss the austerity measures with officials from the troika—the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund—thus securing a sizeable amount of coverage from the media for their contribution to parliament and policies which differ little from the nationalist Sinn Fein.

Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins now contributes loyally to the inter-party banking inquiry which was set up last December by the government despite the fact that the dogs in the street know it is a farce and that the inquiry has ruled out any criminal procedures against the super-rich who crashed the economy through financial speculation.

As the Socialist Party has been co-opted over the past years by the ruling establishment and its state institutions, it finds itself having to walk a thin line between its radical face of organised protest and its pro-capitalist politics. When responding to the recent arrests, Higgins declared they were a “waste of Garda resources.” Paul Murphy stated, “It’s really blatant and disgusting in the context where policing resources are needed for things that make a difference for people.”

Although Murphy condemned the arrests as “political policing,” he made it clear on a TV talk show that protests needed to be confined within “official guidelines” and that protesting against the president was out of line and needed to be strongly condemned. When shown a video of the Michael D. Higgins protest, Murphy was emphatic in saying, “I have condemned it repeatedly. I wasn’t there, I don’t approve of it, I don’t agree with it, I condemned it repeatedly. They were wrong.”

In reference to the blocking of Joan Burton’s car in which he was accused of shouting through a megaphone, “Do we let her go if they withdraw the special units,” he went on to say, “The Garda had explicitly asked me to put that question to the crowd. The Garda wanted to deescalate the situation and they choose to talk to me. I was trying to play a role in having a disciplined protest. If I had orchestrated this protest this would not have happened. I arrive on the scene and what role do I play? I attempt to put a shape on the protest, to put a discipline on the protest.”

Poland increases military spending

Sonja Bach

By 2016, Poland will reserve two percent of its GDP for its defence budget, thereby fulfilling NATO’s minimum military spending requirement, Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz announced last week. As a close ally of Germany and the United States, it is evident that this military build-up is directed, above all, against Russia.

In total, an additional €33.6 billion is to be invested. Already in 2012, a plan for the technical modernisation of the armed forces from 2013 to 2022 was adopted. At that time, the increase was to be €25 billion.

The announcement of the increase came during talks over the latest ceasefire in Ukraine. President Bronislaw Komorowski told journalists on February 12, “The possibility of a lasting peace still remains remote.” In spite of the Minsk agreement, government officials declared that the risk of the conflict in eastern Ukraine heating up remained.

The additional billions will be used to purchase a missile and air defence system, armed drones, armoured vehicles and submarines armed with cruise missiles. A total of €2.5 billion alone is to be spent on the purchase of 70 military helicopters. Three producers are competing for the contract, the American manufacturer Sikorsky, Europe’s Airbus Helicopters and the British-Italian concern AgustaWestland.

Since the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis, the Polish ruling elite has been pushing ahead with the country’s militarisation. Only a few days after the overthrow of former Ukrainian President Yanukovych, the US stationed 12 F-16 fighters and 300 US troops in Poland at the request of the government. In April 2014, then Prime Minister Donald Tusk demanded NATO troops be sent. At the end of last year, it was decided to relocate the focus of the country’s military to its eastern border.

The Polish government’s claim that the military build-up is taking place on account of an alleged potential threat from Russia is a lie. In the first place, the plans to modernise the armed forces go back to 2012. Secondly, Poland bears considerable responsibility for the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis.

The government at the time, in particular Foreign Minister Radoslav Sikorski, backed the right-wing opposition of Vitaly Klitchko, Arseniy Yatseniuk and the fascist Oleg Tyahnibok. Prior to this, the Polish government was heavily involved in the drafting of the Association agreement between Ukraine and the European Union. Yanukovych’s refusal to sign the agreement became the trigger for the Maidan protests.

With the assistance of right-wing paramilitary groups like Right Sector, and with the backing of the imperialist powers, a pro-western government came to power in a coup a year ago. Since then, Kiev has been leading a bitter struggle against its own population in the east of the country and provoked conflict with Russia. A law was drafted to remove Russian as the country’s second official language.

Like its NATO allies, Poland seized on the crisis it helped provoke as a pretext to build up its military forces. At the NATO conference in Wales last September, a detailed action plan was presented. The centrepiece was the creation of a so-called spearhead, a rapid deployment force of between 3,000 and 5,000 soldiers, to be sent to a crisis region within hours. These troops will be commanded from NATO’s headquarters in eastern Europe, situated at NATO’s multi-national northeast corps in the Polish port city of Szczecin. Poland leads the corps, together with Germany and Denmark.

At this year’s Munich Security Conference, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced an increase in NATO combat forces from around 13,000 to 30,000 in eastern Europe. Six command-and-control units are to be established in the three Baltic states, along with Poland, Bulgaria and Romania.

At the same time, Stoltenberg warned all European governments of the need to increase their defence budgets to two percent of GDP. He said, “Last year, there was a further decline of about 3 percent. So the fact is that our security challenges are increasing. But our defence spending is decreasing. This is simply not sustainable. We cannot do more with less forever.”

It is no surprise that Poland has met Stoltenberg’s request so rapidly. Its government has supported every initiative taken by US imperialism and its partners. In 2003, Poland supported the invasion of Iraq. Last year, it was revealed that torture prisons of the CIA had been established and run on Polish territory with the agreement of the Polish government. Today, Poland fully supports the aggressive policy of the United States against Russia.

Defence minister Tomasz Siemoniak recently gave his support to supplying Ukraine with weapons. In comments to the Financial Time s on February 9, he said, “Russia must take into account that the US, or the west in general, can make a decision to arm Ukraine and that it is a card that is held by the West, that can be used in the future, if not today. … The Polish position is that we should not say this card will never be played.”

In May 2014, the army decided to strengthen its reserves by up to 10,000 volunteers. From March 1, the first men and women will be able to register to receive military training. In 2016 and 2017, a further 15,000 volunteers are to be recruited.

Based on its aggressive policy towards Russia and its military build-up domestically, the Polish government is hoping to regain its role as a regional power. At the same time, its reactionary programme is encouraging right-wing extremist and nationalist forces.

In December 2014, the extreme right-wing Alliance for a National Movement (ruch narodowy) announced it planned to regroup as a party. The alliance is notorious for its anti-Semitic and anti-Russian agitation. On November 11, the day of Polish independence, the group provoked violent clashes in which 50 people were injured.

In the process, the rightists chanted slogans calling for the revival of “Greater Poland,” a concept that draws on Poland’s territorial power in the 17th century, when the country controlled the Baltic states and large sections of Belarus and Ukraine in partnership with the grand duchy of Lithuania.

Sri Lankan president’s visit to India highlights foreign policy shift

Deepal Jayasekera

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena’s visit to India last week further underscored the shift in Colombo’s orientation toward the US and India, and away from China, with which his predecessor Mahinda Rajapakse had developed close ties.

Sirisena’s election as president last month followed his defection from Rajapakse’s cabinet and the alignment of various parties, including the pro-US United National Party (UNP), around his campaign. It was a regime-change operation sponsored by Washington, with India’s involvement.

In a clear foreign policy signal, Sirisena selected India as the destination for his first presidential trip abroad, following Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera, who visited New Delhi on January 18 and joined Sirisena on last week’s visit.

Sirisena met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Pranab Mukherjee on February 16, then held a joint press conference with Modi. “We are at a moment of an unprecedented opportunity to take our bilateral relations to a new level,” Modi declared. India was deeply concerned about Rajapakse’s ties with China, as it considers Sri Lanka as a part of its own sphere of influence.

Modi accepted Sirisena’s invitation to visit Sri Lanka. He will arrive in Colombo on March 13, for the first state visit by an India prime minister since 1987, when Rajiv Gandhi came to sign the Indo-Lanka Accord. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Sri Lanka in 2008, but only to participate in a South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit.

Four bilateral agreements were signed during Sirisena’s visit. The most significant was a civil nuclear cooperation pact, which Modi described as a “yet another demonstration of our mutual trust.” It was the first such deal signed by Sri Lanka with any foreign country.

Under the deal, India will help Sri Lanka develop infrastructure for nuclear power generation, including the “exchange of knowledge and expertise, sharing of resources, capacity building and training of personnel in peaceful uses of nuclear energy.”

For Modi, the agreement means a strategic advantage over China as it will help integrate Colombo into India’s orbit. Apart from New Delhi’s own geo-political interests, the deal also serves the interests of Washington, which wants India to play a more active role in the region as a partner in its “pivot to Asia” against China. During his visit to New Delhi in late January, US President Barack Obama asked India to help “the transition in Sri Lanka and Burma.”

The nuclear deal was signed on Sri Lanka’s behalf by Power and Energy Minister Champika Ranawaka. As a minister in Rajapakse’s government, he had raised safety concerns over nuclear power plants in Kudankulam on India’s south coast. Thus, his signing particularly highlighted the change in foreign policy orientation.

In a Daily Mirror interview on February 23, Ranawaka, while claiming to adhere to “our non-aligned foreign policy,” accused Rajapakse of making “a mistake by allowing the Colombo Port to be used for docking Chinese submarines and other military activities.” India publicly objected to last year’s Chinese submarine visits to Colombo.

The US signed a civil nuclear deal with India in 2008, which became a major plank of their strategic partnership. Accordingly, the Obama administration welcomed the India-Sri Lanka deal. US State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki commented on February 17: “We welcome regional cooperation on nuclear energy that is consistent with IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) safeguards and other international standards and practices.”

Other agreements signed during Sirisena’s visit covered cultural cooperation, education and agriculture.

Modi and Sirisena also discussed “expansion of cooperation in the energy sector, both conventional and renewable.” New Delhi wants access to potential Sri Lankan oil and gas exploration sites. According to Colombo media reports, a team from Cairn India, which discovered natural gas in the offshore Mannar basin between the island and the southern tip of India, will arrive in Sri Lanka this week for talks.

Another factor in the Indian calculations is Colombo’s attitude to the island’s Tamil elite. India has been pushing for a power-sharing arrangement between Sri Lanka’s Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim leaderships, which will allow limited devolution of powers to the country’s Tamil-majority north and east. The Hindu ’s editorial on January 22 noted: “India’s foremost expectation from the new government would be an early settlement of the Tamil question.”

New Delhi hopes to boost its influence via the Tamil elite that would share power in the north and east. The posturing of Indian governments over the conditions facing the island’s Tamils are aimed in part at containing discontent in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, whose majority Tamil population has centuries-old cultural and family ties with Sri Lankan Tamils.

The public statement issued about Sirisena’s visit made no mention of any discussion on the Sri Lankan Tamil issue. This is an obvious concession to the Sirisena government in return for signing agreements that provide New Delhi with strategic advantages. Any reference to the power-sharing question could destabilise the government, which includes Sinhala chauvinist parties, and be exploited by its opponents in the lead-up to this year’s parliamentary election.

The Indian elite was elated over the Sri Lankan president’s visit. An editorial on February 18 in the Hindu, titled “New thrust in India-Sri Lanka ties,” noted: “Relations between India and Sri Lanka have not just been reinforced during the visit of President Maithripala Sirisena but have also gained new direction and momentum.” The newspaper was particularly pleased that “in a departure from the routine nature of such visits, both sides signed four substantive agreements.” The editorial hailed the nuclear agreement “as it imparts a new strategic element to bilateral relations.”

China responded cautiously to the close ties cemented between India and Sri Lanka during Sirisena’s visit. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said: “We believe the sound relations among the three countries are conducive to the three countries and to the whole region. Therefore we are happy to see development of relations between Sri Lanka and India.”

China’s proposal for trilateral relationship between India, China and Sri Lanka seeks to woo India away from the US orbit and reassure the Indian ruling class that Beijing’s interests in Sri Lanka are not directed against India. Beijing clearly feels increasingly under pressure from Washington’s aggressive moves to integrate countries throughout the Indo-Pacific region into its “pivot” against China.

Australia: Aurizon workers confront deep assault on conditions

Terry Cook

Trade unions called limited industrial action in central Queensland over the past week at Australia’s largest rail freight haulage company, Aurizon, in a bid to contain widespread anger among workers over the former state-owned company’s attempt to dismantle long-standing working conditions and protections. Further strike action was called off this week, however, as the unions seek to reach agreements with Aurizon over its cost-cutting demands.

Rail, Tram and Bus Union (RTBU) members stopped work for 24 hours on Monday at depots near Mackay, while Australian Federated Union of Locomotive Employees (AFULE) members held stoppages at freight depots, including Rockhampton, Emerald, Maryborough, Mackay, Toowoomba and Goondiwindi.

RTBU members previously banned overtime at several Queensland coal depots from January 3 until January 7 and stopped work for 24 hours at Aurizon’s Jilalan coal depot on January 3–4.

Stoppages were scheduled across the Blackwater coal rail corridor later this week after being postponed due to cyclonic weather conditions in the region. But they were again called off by the RTBU, which claimed “progress” was made in negotiations with Aurizon over the weekend. The company hauls around 50 million tonnes coal a year from Blackwater area mines.

RTBU state president Bruce Mackie told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “Let’s be realistic, the best way for this agreement to be resolved is for the workplace delegates, RTBU officials and decision-makers from the business, sitting around the room and trying to come up with an agreement.”

Aurizon has made clear over 18 months of negotiations that it will not budge on its drive to abolish what it calls “legacy provisions that are not reflective of modern Australian workplace agreements.”

While offering 4 percent annual pay increases for four years in new enterprise agreements covering 3,400 of its employees, Aurizon is demanding sweeping changes to working conditions. These include reductions in notification times for rostering changes, changes to shift lengths and the scrapping of a number of allowances and entitlements, such as free train travel. Workers would be given as little as 24 hours’ notice for fluctuating start-times on shifts.

Most significantly, Aurizon is demanding the removal of restrictions on forced redundancies and relocations. This signals plans for widespread job destruction. Amid mine closures and plunging coal prices, Aurizon is seeking to drastically slash costs to boost profits at the expense of its workforce

Aurizon chief executive Lance Hockridge last week cited “a challenging operation environment” and declared the company was determined “to become “a simpler and leaner organisation.”

The company previously announced savings targets of $350 million by 2016 and driving down the operating costs-to-revenue ratio to 75 percent in order to produce a 25 percent profit margin. It then wants to cut the cost ratio to 70 percent by 2020.

This inevitably means further heavy job cuts. Since Aurizon took over the assets of QR National, which was privatised by the previous Queensland Labor government in 2010, it has cut its national freight workforce from 9,390 to 6,977.

Despite falling coal and iron ore haulage volumes, Aurizon still generated a $308 million profit for the six months to December 2014, up from $107 million for the corresponding period in 2013.

The company’s “transformation program” to reduce costs and drive up productivity contributed $69 million toward the profit. Another $40 million came from selling “surplus” maintenance facilities at Redbank, west of Brisbane. Aurizon shut down passenger train workshops in Redbank and Townsville destroying 480 jobs.

Aurizon is under increasing pressure from large mining companies to reduce haulage costs. In a submission to the Queensland Competition Authority last year, BHP-Billiton warned that high rail freight charges were “hurting coal miners”—that is, mining corporations.

Aurizon workers showed their determination to fight the company’s offensive by voting overwhelmingly for industrial action in ballots last December and by rejecting a company-drafted work agreement circulated by Aurizon last year.

While the rail unions have begun limited industrial action, past experience shows that such campaigns are designed to let off steam and give the unions time to come to an arrangement along the lines dictated by the company.

A similar modus operandi was used to contain and then dissipate the widespread opposition by rail workers to the Labor government’s privatisation of QR National and the job destruction that followed.

Last year, as the negotiations dragged on, Queensland RTBU branch secretary Owen Doogan complained that Aurizon “had been unwilling to seriously negotiate in order find a compromise on many of the key sticking points.” He did not elaborate on what he meant by “compromise.”

Over the past 12 months, rail unions have already signed off on regressive new work agreements covering Aurizon workers in New South Wales and Western Australia. An Aurizon spokesman boasted that about half of Aurizon employees nationally “are now on contemporary enterprise work agreements.”

Similar deals have been struck to cover Pacific National and BHP Mitsubishi Alliance rail workers in Queensland. “Both enjoy the kind of provisions that we are seeking,” Aurizon chief executive Hockridge told the Australian Financial Review .

Aurizon’s restructuring drive will be backed by the recently elected Queensland Labor government of Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, which won office with the support of the trade unions. Last week, Palaszczuk met with leading business representatives to assure them of her government’s pro-business credentials, saying “our doors are open” and “we want to listen to you.”

Queensland Resources Council chief executive Michael Roche told the media he was “confident that a globally competitive resources sector will continue to enjoy bipartisan political support as an essential contributor to Queensland’s economy.”

In a front-page story on February 17, the Australian Financial Reviewhighlighted the potential impact of industrial action by Aurizon workers and declared that it was a “challenge” for Palaszczuk’s cabinet.

The government has not as yet intervened directly into the Aurizon dispute, preferring to rely at this stage on the ability of the unions to curtail any industrial action. That could rapidly change, however, given that big business has put the government on notice. Queensland Treasurer Curtis Pitt told the media: “We (the government) will continue to monitor developments.”

The US “pivot to Asia” and the Australian leadership crisis

Peter Symonds

A fortnight after Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott survived a Liberal Party backbench revolt, the leadership issue is clearly unresolved. Increasingly Abbott, his gaffes and unilateral decisions, or “captain’s calls,” have become objects of ridicule in the establishment media. Speculation remains rife that Abbott has just months to improve the party’s fortunes or face a leadership challenge.

Underlying the political crisis are deep frustrations in the corporate elite over the Abbott government’s failure to drive through their demands for far-reaching pro-market reforms and austerity measures. Key policies from last May’s budget, including lifting the pension age to 70, cuts to welfare benefits and a co-payment for doctors’ visits, remain blocked in the Senate by Labor, the Greens and minor parties, who fear a backlash from working class voters. Abbott sparked fresh concerns in business circles when he suggested that the government would back off harsh measures in this year’s budget.

No one has declared a formal challenge to Abbott’s leadership, but the most likely challenger is obvious—Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull, a merchant banker, former Liberal Party leader and one of the wealthiest individuals in the Australian parliament. Turnbull appeared on last week’s edition of the ABC’s “Q&A” panel show, where the issue of the Liberal Party leadership was so much in the air that an audience member asked whether Abbott would last and was the next prime minister present in the room. Slick, urbane and smug, Turnbull passed over the question.

Turnbull did exploit the show to lay out his strategy for pushing through unpopular budget measures. Well aware that the Labor Party’s opposition to austerity is empty posturing, he declared that both sides of politics agreed on the need to “sort out the budget mess.” He called on Labor for a collaborative approach to implementing the austerity agenda demanded by big business. Sections of the media have been calling for months for such bipartisanship in order to overcome the parliamentary logjam and have backed Turnbull as the only figure capable of achieving it.

However, a major obstacle to Turnbull’s leadership ambitions lies in Washington. In the midst of rising geo-political tensions, a key test of any Australian prime minister is the degree to which he or she is willing to unconditionally align with US intrigues, interventions and wars, especially the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” and its military build-up throughout the Indo-Pacific region against China.

The ousting of Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in June 2010 by a handful of Labor and union powerbrokers with close links to the US embassy marked a key turning point in Australian foreign policy. Rudd was not opposed to the US-Australian alliance, or the necessity for preparing for war against China. However, his proposal for an Asia Pacific Community and suggestion that the US reach a modus vivendi with China cut directly across the Obama administration’s determination to confront Beijing and maintain America’s untrammelled hegemony throughout Asia.

Every subsequent government has lined up fully with Washington. Since winning office in September 2013, Abbott has functioned as a reliable attack-dog for the United States: confronting Putin over Ukraine, committing Australian military forces to the new US-led war in the Middle East, and further opening up Australian bases for the Pentagon’s “rebalance” to Asia, aimed at encircling China.

Questions continue to hang over Turnbull in Washington, however. Like Rudd, Turnbull has in the past suggested that Australian interests would be best served by encouraging a balance between the US and China, now the world’s second largest economy. Obama’s confrontational stance toward China has heightened the dilemma facing Australian imperialism, which depends heavily on China as its top trading partner but remains reliant strategically on its post-World War II alliance with the United States.

The views expressed by Rudd and Turnbull reflect those of layers of the Australian corporate and financial elite who are deeply concerned that rising tensions between the US and China are impacting on their economic interests. They are fearful of the growing danger of conflict, as well as the opposition that the US war drive could provoke among workers and youth. Since Rudd’s 2010 ouster, however, critics of the US “pivot” have been increasingly marginalised.

In a significant speech entitled “Asia’s Rise: A View From Australia” at the London School of Economics in October 2011, Turnbull, mesmerised by the statistics of China’s economic growth, foreshadowed “a massive realignment of economic and, in due course, political and strategic power at a speed and on a scale the world has not seen before.” He suggested that “within a few decades the IMF’s head office may be in Beijing rather than Washington.”

Turnbull’s superficial assessment that China would soon eclipse US imperialism ignores the contradictory character of China’s economic rise. Its expansion has at every stage depended on investment, technology and markets that remain dominated by the major global corporations and investment banks, which take the lion’s share of the profits. Militarily, despite its heavy defence spending, China lags well behind the United States, which has a global network of alliances and bases that are being “rebalanced” for a potential war against Beijing.

Turnbull’s conclusion was likewise based on the same false premise. Arguing against a policy of containing China, he declared: “The best and most realistic strategic outcome for East Asia must be one in which the powers are in balance, with each side effectively able to deny the domination of the other.” US imperialism, however, has no intention of allowing China, or any other power, to undermine its dominance in Asia or globally. As US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton bluntly declared, “the United States is not ceding the Pacific to anyone.”

In November 2011, Obama used the Australian parliament to formally announce his “pivot” or “rebalance” to Asia and signed an agreement with Rudd’s replacement, a fawning Julia Gillard, to base US Marines in the northern city of Darwin. The “pivot” not only involves a US military build-up throughout Asia, but also an aggressive diplomatic offensive to undermine Chinese influence and an economic component—the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)—aimed at compelling countries throughout the region, particularly China, to accept Washington’s far-reaching demands to fully open up to US trade and investment.

In a speech just days later, Turnbull pointedly warned: “An Australian government needs to be careful not to allow a doe-eyed fascination with the leader of the free world to distract from the reality that our national interest requires us truly (and not just rhetorically) to maintain both an ally in Washington and a good friend in Beijing.”

Turnbull cautioned against “the misapprehension” that “even though China is about to become the world’s largest economy and is actually in the centre of East Asia, nonetheless the United States will remain the dominant power in the region.” To assume that the US would retain its hegemony, he concluded, was “not a sound basis on which to build Australia’s foreign policy.”

Following Obama’s speech, the dominant sections of the Australian political and military establishment concluded that their interests were best served by lining up with Washington and its reckless efforts via the “pivot” to secure US dominance over China, even if that precipitates war. Significantly, Turnbull’s remarks came under a blistering attack from Greg Sheridan, foreign editor of Murdoch’s Australian newspaper, one of Washington’s staunchest advocates. Turnbull’s “two important speeches on China,” Sheridan declared, “help explain why he was such a disastrous Liberal leader and why he should never be considered for the leadership again.”

More than three years after Obama’s speech in Canberra, global geo-political tensions have continued to rise dramatically, fuelled by the ongoing breakdown of world capitalism. Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam, encouraged by Washington, have aggressively pursued their territorial disputes with China, greatly inflaming tensions in the East China and South China Seas. The US has forcefully intervened in Asia Pacific forums to undermine Chinese influence, resulting in a reorientation by the Burmese junta, long considered firmly in China’s camp, toward Washington. Just last month, a US-sponsored regime-change operation in Sri Lanka saw the removal of President Mahinda Rajapakse, who was considered too closely tied to Beijing.

The US military build-up has continued apace to meet Obama’s target of basing 60 percent of naval and air assets in the Asia Pacific by 2020. Australia, along with Japan, is central to the Pentagon’s war planning. Since 2011, the Australian military has been integrated more and more closely with its US counterparts. US basing arrangements in Darwin and other areas in the north and west of Australia are being expanded. US spy facilities at Pine Gap and North West Cape have been enhanced to expand their ability to provide phone, electronic and satellite data from across Asia and the Middle East. So essential are these bases that Australia would be automatically involved in any war with China.

Australian critics of the “pivot” continue to express their misgivings and concerns, which are rooted in the objective dilemmas confronting Australian imperialism and the rising dangers of war. They have, however, been compelled to adapt to the changed facts on the ground. Rudd served as foreign minister in the Gillard cabinet and fell into line with Washington’s foreign policy, as did his replacement Bob Carr, who had criticised the 2011 decision to base US Marines in Darwin.

Similarly, while his underlying concerns remain, Turnbull has modified his public stance. Although it is not his brief as communications minister in the Abbott government, he has continued to speak occasionally on foreign policy. Last June, the Australian pointed approvingly to his remarks to a security conference at the Australian National University, describing them as “one of the bluntest assessments yet from Canberra of Chinese territorial claims in the East and South China Sea.” Turnbull blamed China for the rising tensions, declaring that its determination “to muscle up to one or other of its neighbours, or all of its neighbours at different times” was “counterproductive” and “singularly unhelpful” to regional security.

Turnbull’s public silence on the controversy last November over the Chinese-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is also noteworthy. After Abbott’s cabinet initially approved Australian involvement in the bank, that decision was abruptly reversed after an extraordinary intervention by Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, on the grounds that Chinese investment would serve Beijing’s military aims. In 2012, by contrast, Turnbull had not been reticent in airing his opposition to the Labor government’s decision to ban Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei on security grounds from any involvement in the Australian national broadband network.

Most significant, however, was Turnbull’s speech to the US/Australia Dialogue in Los Angeles on January 30—that is, on the eve of the challenge to Abbott’s leadership. In many ways, it sounded like to job application to Washington, even though elements of the speech would still have jarred with the Obama administration.

Turnbull laid out his credentials as a proponent of pro-market restructuring and austerity to ensure that high-wage countries like Australia are “internationally competitive.” He singled out the US-backed TPP as the “broad-based and enduring regional agreement” needed to open up Asian economies, and called for China’s inclusion in the TPP on that basis.

Turnbull returned to his concerns that “the speed of Asia’s rise ... could exacerbate the likelihood of conflict. This transition in global power will be a very different hand-off than from Britain to the US a century or so earlier.” As noted earlier, the US has no intention of “handing off” to China or any other power.

Nevertheless, Turnbull made clear where he stood amid the rising tensions, once again blaming China for exacerbating maritime disputes in the East and South China Seas. Moreover, in concluding his speech, he expressed his full support for “strong and continued American engagement in the region.”

While pointing to diplomatic engagement, rather than “military might or dollars,” Turnbull declared: “The Obama administration’s pivot to Asia is a vitally important stabilising, reassuring factor in the peaceful development of our region.” After referring to American wars in the Middle East and Central Asia, he continued: “But the main game, the highest stakes, the most to win or lose is in the Asia Pacific. That is the new centre of the global economy and America, a Pacific nation, has as much skin in this game as any of us in Australia.”

Turnbull was well aware of what he was doing. In making his pitch to Washington, he was pictured alongside Jeffrey Bleich—Obama confidante, point man for the “pivot” and the US ambassador to Canberra during the 2010 coup against Rudd. It remains to be seen, however, whether Turnbull has modified his message enough to satisfy the White House.

One significant indication that Turnbull is at least being seriously considered in Washington was the appearance of Greg Sheridan in last week’s “Q&A” program and his answer to the question as to whether the next prime minister was seated in the room. Sheridan could have repeated his unequivocal statement of 2011 that Turnbull should never be considered for the top post, but did not. Instead, he declared: “It’s quite clear the leadership is in play. I think Tony [Abbott] has a 50-50 chance of staying as leader. I think if he were to lose support definitively, it’s very likely the party would ask Malcolm Turnbull to take the leadership.”

Whatever the outcome of the Liberal Party leadership crisis, the continuing and sharpening geo-political undercurrents are another warning that, behind the backs of the working class, all factions of the ruling classes, whatever their tactical differences, are preparing for conflict and war.

Conflict over DHS funding masks bipartisan attack on immigrants in US

Patrick Martin

Political proceedings in Washington over US immigration policy are running on two parallel tracks. One is the highly orchestrated and largely phony conflict between the Republican Congress and the Obama administration that is the focus of US media attention. The other is the vicious US government persecution of immigrants, the real day-to-day substance of immigration policy, on which both the Democrats and Republicans agree.

The battle between Obama and the Republicans has been in what might be called the dress rehearsal stage for a month, with the first full performance Monday night, when Senate Democrats, for the fourth time this year, blocked legislation to fund the Department of Homeland Security past midnight Thursday night.

Senate Republicans were meeting behind closed doors Tuesday, and House Republicans were set to conference Wednesday, in efforts to reach an agreement on legislation that could win enough Democratic support to overcome the Senate filibuster before the February 27 deadline.

The DHS funding bill includes a provision rescinding Obama’s executive order on immigration, issued last November, to allow about four million undocumented workers to receive work permits without threat of deportation for a three-year period. Senate Democrats have successfully filibustered the House-passed bill, which Obama would veto anyway if it should somehow pass, with no prospect of a veto override in either house.

The outcome of this political furor is entirely predictable: there will not be the slightest disruption in the core functions of the DHS, one of the central elements in the emerging American police-state. The Secret Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, TSA, FEMA and a dozen other agencies will continue running, although paychecks will be delayed.

There will be much finger-pointing, political posturing and media bombast. Both parties will make right-wing appeals. The Democrats will lambaste the Republicans for undermining the nation’s security in the face of terrorist threats by disrupting operations of the DHS. The Republicans will denounce Obama for exceeding his authority with his executive order on immigration, and failing to secure the southern border with Mexico.

A likely outcome is that sometime before the February 27 deadline a bipartisan deal will be reached in which Obama’s immigration policy will continue, since it has the support of most of corporate America, and DHS funding will be restored, since both corporate-controlled parties support the ongoing buildup of state repression.

A major purpose of this degrading spectacle is to give the Obama administration and the Democratic Party the opportunity to pretend to sympathize with the plight of undocumented workers (a deliberate lie), while they portray their Republican colleagues as hard-hearted and racist (as of course they are).

The real attitude of the White House to undocumented immigrants is indicated in a parallel proceeding in a Washington, DC courtroom, where federal district judge James Boasberg issued an injunction Friday to bar Immigration and Customs Enforcement from holding women and children seeking asylum in detention centers pending much-delayed hearings.

After tens of thousands of immigrants, mainly women and children fleeing violence in Central America, crossed the US border last summer, most of them turning themselves in to the ICE and seeking asylum, the Obama administration reversed its policy of releasing such refugees into the community pending administrative action, and began locking them up, first in a detention camp in Artesia, New Mexico, then in two new camps opened in Texas. Thousands passed through these camps on their way to deportation back to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

More than one thousand mothers and children are currently imprisoned in these camps, even though immigration hearings have found most had a “credible fear” of persecution if returned to their countries of origin. A recentNew York Times Magazine cover story, “ The Shame of America’s Family Detention Camps ”, examined both the nightmarish conditions in the camps and the Orwellian legal procedures used by the Obama administration to keep asylum-seekers, including mothers with their children, locked up indefinitely.

Under the 1997 settlement of a federal court case, Flores vs. Meese, the US government agreed not to lock up unaccompanied children simply because of their immigration status, but to place them in the community with relatives or others willing to take them in. This policy was generally applied to children accompanying their parents as well.

The Bush administration abandoned this policy in 2005 and began locking up women and children at the Hutto Detention Center in Austin, Texas, but the Obama administration reversed course and emptied Hutto after it took office in 2009. Last summer the Obama administration resumed jailing mothers and children and built several new prisons for that purpose.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other organizations filed suit on behalf of the detainees, and Judge Boasberg’s ruling granted a preliminary injunction in their favor, ordering the ICE to stop jailing women and children seeking asylum.

Boasberg cited comments by Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, to the effect that the ICE was sending a message to prospective immigrants from Central America by detaining indefinitely those who succeeded in reaching US soil. The “current policy of considering deterrence is likely unlawful,” the judge wrote, and “causes irreparable harm to mothers and children seeking asylum.”

A spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement said that the agency was “considering” whether to appeal the ruling, claiming, “ICE’s family residential centers are used as an effective and humane alternative to maintain family unity as families go through immigration proceedings or return to their home countries.”

Reports from immigration lawyers suggest that the immigration judges are beginning to release detained families on bond of as little as $1,500 per family, raised by relatives and supporters in the immigrant communities where those detained will be released.

The savage treatment of innocent women and children at US detention facilities in Texas should be kept in mind throughout the upcoming media blitz about Obama’s executive order, the congressional deadlock over funding the DHS, and the threatened partial shutdown of the agency.

Insofar as there are policy differences between Democrats and Republicans, these concern the best combination of exploitation and repression in dealing with immigrant workers. Both parties do the bidding of those sections of big business—agriculture, construction, clothing sweatshops—dependent on undocumented, super-exploited workers to maximize their profits.

In leaked recording, Egyptian minister calls for machine-gunning protesters

Thomas Gaist

Egyptian Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim personally called for the use of automatic weapons against protestors, according to recordings obtained byAl Jazeera this week. He made these comments in a November 2014 meeting of the leadership of the Central Security Forces (CSF), the riot police of the US-backed Egyptian military junta.

“Use all that is permitted by the law. I think you all understand,” Ibrahim said. “Whatever is permitted by the law, use it without hesitation, any slight hesitation, from water to the machine gun.”

“I hope for decisiveness in confrontation. I hope you do not give them the chance to rally in the first place, even if you have to deal with them at the mosque. This is a national security issue,” he said.

“Do not wait for 100 to swell into 1,000 or 2,000 or 3,000, then we are all helpless before them,” he said. He also advised the CSF on how to murder protesters without turning them into martyrs.

Ibrahim spoke as the Sisi regime prepared to employ mass repression and violence against youth and workers in Cairo and other cities protesting police detention and torture of thousands of Egyptians last fall.

Minister Ibrahim's warning points to the main concern of the thugs and murderers who control the US-backed Egyptian dictatorship. The Egyptian junta is deathly afraid that mass protests could again escalate beyond the capacity of the security forces to drown them in blood, as they did during the revolutionary uprising of 2011 that toppled US-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak.

In the recording, Interior Ministry officials also discussed the government’s decision to reinstate a security officer who sought to blind demonstrators by targeting their eyes with birdshot-style shotgun ammunition, according to Al Jazeera.

This open discussion of mass murder and terror tactics against protesters is an indictment not only of the Sisi junta, but of the imperialist regimes in the United States and the major European powers that have backed it. The Sisi regime has continued to receive billions of dollars of US government support since taking power in a bloody coup d'état in July 2013. This money is going to fund and arm a regime that has murdered thousands of people in the streets of Egypt's major cities, and that is preparing for new bloodbaths in the future.

US support for the Sisi junta also exposes the hypocrisy of Washington’s humanitarian pretexts for its wars in Libya and Syria, after the working class toppled Mubarak in 2011. US officials, the corporate media, and pro-imperialist intellectuals insisted that the wars were launched because they could not tolerate the thought that the Libyan and Syrian regimes might use violence against protesters.

In fact, Washington and its European imperialist allies happily endorse and support regimes that deliberately resort to the mass murder of peaceful protesters to keep power. Their hypocritical denunciations of Libya and Syria were pretexts for long-prepared wars for regime change against regimes Washington did not support, as part of a neo-colonial restructuring of the Middle East and Africa in the interests of the banks and the NATO imperialist powers. These wars led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and turned millions into refugees.

In Egypt, the imperialist powers are backing the authoritarian policies of the Sisi junta. In the audio recording, Ibrahim instructs his subordinates to conduct mass arrests against attendees of any gathering of more than 100 people.

Since taking power, the junta has banned any criticism of the executive leadership and judiciary, and used police violence to enforce sweeping bans of the right of assembly. On Monday, the junta ordered the dissolution of some 170 non-governmental organizations.

The ferocious repression meted out by the Egyptian junta aims above all to crush working class opposition to its free market policies, drawn up in consultation with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the imperialist powers.

The Egyptian government is predicting that foreign direct investment (FDI) will reach $8 billion in FY 2014-15, according to a report published Tuesday by FTSE Global Markets, “Egypt at tipping point for growth in foreign investment inflows.”

During a recent press conference addressing Egypt’s “road map to improve the business climate,” acting Egyptian Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb proclaimed that “Egypt hopes to attract billions in foreign investment over the next four years.”

“The economic DNA of the country is a free-market yet disciplined economy. This is a good time for the government to put the country’s DNA in front of the international investment community. The government has been doing all the right things with the reform program,” the top officer of Egypt’s largest private bank noted in similar remarks.

“People think that there is proper leadership in Egypt and that will make it attractive to foreign investors,” he said.

The ongoing devaluation of the Egyptian pound, overseen by the Egyptian Central Bank with support from the military junta, is being “welcomed by the business community,” he said.

While devaluation erodes the value of the national currency held by most Egyptians, who live in conditions of desperate poverty, it simultaneously creates more favorable conditions for foreign investors. Devaluation “boosts the competitiveness of Egyptian exports in both goods and services (tourism in particular) and encourages investors and international financial institutions to consider increasing their investments in Egypt,” the financial officer said.

United Steelworkers reaffirm support for big business Parti Quebecois

Laurent Lafrance

The United Steelworkers, whose members in the United States are locked in a bitter struggle with the oil companies over pay and conditions, has found yet another way to attempt to politically shackle workers in Quebec. The union has publicly endorsed one of the candidates for the leadership of the Parti Québécois (PQ) and, in so doing, has reaffirmed its staunch support for a big business party that over the past three decades has repeatedly come into headlong conflict with the working class, imposing sweeping social spending cuts and outlawing strikes.

In a letter published in the Montreal daily Le Devoir last month, the Steelworkers’ leadership announced that it supports “unreservedly” Martine Ouellet’s campaign to become PQ leader. The Member of the Quebec National Assembly (MNA) for the Montreal South Shore riding of Vachon, Ouellet was the Minister for Natural Resources in Pauline Marois’ PQ government.

The Steelworkers’ endorsement is part of a campaign being mounted by the Quebec union bureaucracy to “save” the PQ, whose popular support has reached an historic low. Since the end of the 1990s, the PQ and the PQ-led movement for Quebec’s secession from the Canadian federal state have experienced one debacle after another because of their right-wing politics. The unpopularity of the PQ deepened further during the Marois government, which held power for 18 months, from September 2012 to last April.

The letter, signed by Daniel Roy, the leader of the Métallos (the Steelworkers’ Quebec branch), argued that in a situation where “the link between this party and the workers is now more tenuous,” it is fundamental to “rebuild the bridges” with the PQ. Roy, who is also the vice president of the Quebec Federation of Labor, added that “despite its faults and its recent backsliding,” this party “remains the best political vehicle for taking power and putting forward the interests of the middle class.”

In reality the PQ is an enemy of working people and, along with the pro-federalist Liberals, has served for the past forty years as one of the Quebec elite’s two parties of government. It won the elections called in the summer 2012 in order to put an end to the six-month-long province-wide student strike that had erupted against the university tuition increases of the Liberal government of Jean Charest. Its ability to do so was bound up with the support it received from the student associations and from the unions, which had intervened to isolate the strike and prevent it from spreading to the working class under the slogan, “After the streets, to the ballot box.”

The unions’ claim that the PQ was the “lesser evil” to Charest’s “neoliberals” was endorsed by the pseudo-left, pro-Quebec independence Québec Solidaire. It appealed to the PQ for an electoral alliance, then on the eve of the election announced that in the event the QS held the balance of power in a minority parliament it would sustain the PQ in power for at least a year.

Once in power, the PQ rapidly imposed huge budget cuts and permanent annual tuition fee increases. The PQ government also upheld Montreal’s P-6 regulation and similar municipal bylaws that duplicated the draconian restrictions on the right to demonstrate that the Charest government had imposed in its notorious anti-student-strike law, Bill 78. P-6 continues to be regularly invoked by the police to declare demonstrations illegal and violently disperse them.

While maintaining record low taxes on big business and the rich, the PQ government in which Ouellet was a minister slashed social assistance and enacted an emergency law to criminalize a strike by 75,000 construction workers. And with its “Quebec Charter of Values,” the PQ fomented animosity against religious minorities and immigrants, especially Muslims, with the aim of diverting attention away from its austerity measures and splitting the working class on ethnic and cultural lines.

When new elections were called in spring 2014, the billionaire press magnate and arch-right winger Pierre-Karl Péladeau announced he would run as a candidate for the PQ, further underlining its character as a party of and forbig business. The Liberals ended up winning the elections, while the PQ, with only 25.4 percent of the popular vote, recorded its worst result since 1970, the first election in which it participated.

In his letter, Roy—whose 60,000-members Métallos are the province’s largest industrial union—calls on the union bureaucracy and the so-called “left” to close ranks behind the PQ. He exhorts “progressives, unionists, environmentalists, whether they belong to the PQ or not, members of [Québec Solidaire] or non-affiliated” to “become paid-up members of the PQ.”

This line dovetails with the campaign being mounted by the QFL and other major unions and by the SPQ-Libre (a political group inside the PQ that speaks for the union bureaucracy) to get workers to join the PQ so as block Pierre-Karl Péladeau from winning the PQ leadership.

No matter which party has been in power, the pro-capitalist unions have for decades faithfully collaborated with the employers and the government to impose job- and wage-cuts and other concessions on workers.

However, the union bureaucracy cemented a political alliance with the PQ soon after it emerged in 1968 as the result of a split from the Quebec Liberal Party. The turn of the pro-capitalist union bureaucracy to the PQ and Quebec nationalism was a means of politically harnessing the massive offensive of the Quebec working class that convulsed Canada’s only majority French-speaking province in the early 1970s to the drive of a section of the Quebec bourgeoisie to expand its wealth and power. It also served to quarantine the Quebec workers’ struggles from those of their class brothers and sisters in the rest of North America.

Elected to power for the first time in 1976, the PQ rapidly abandoned its façade as a party “favorable to workers.” In 1982-83 the PQ government of René Lévesque slashed public sector workers’ pay by as much as 20 percent and when teachers rebelled threatened them with mass firings. In the name of achieving a “zero deficit” the PQ government of Lucien Bouchard eliminated more than 40,000 jobs in health care and education between 1996 and 1998, then broke a strike of nurses with a savage back-to-work law.

The Steelworkers’ leader gives his “unreserved” support to Martine Ouellet (a member of the administrative committee of SPQ-Libre from 2004 to 2007) precisely because she, more than any other candidate, wants to continue close collaboration with the unions in order to stifle the class struggle.

The bureaucracy has feathered it nest through the corporatist government-employer-union collaboration long promoted by both of Quebec’s major parties, but especially the PQ. Roy is himself a member of the Board of Directors of the QFL’s Solidarity Fund, a $9 billion investment fund that provides capital to Quebec businesses.

According to Roy’s endorsement, Martine Ouellet is “firmly progressive,” and the candidate who will provide the best “left” cover for the PQ’s reactionary project for an independent capitalist Quebec.

An engineer, Ouellet built her political career during the 1990s when the PQ was carrying out a marked turn to the right. As natural resources minister she worked closely with the big mining companies, putting in place policies favorable to them, including the maintenance of low levels of taxation.

Perceived as a “left” candidate because of her connections with the unions, Ouellet herself insists that this “label” is not appropriate and that she is “very pragmatic” regarding the economy. She is also promoting herself as the candidate most determined to make Quebec a country, a claim also made by the very right-wing Péladeau.

No matter who wins the leadership of the PQ, the party will remain as determined as the Liberals to impose the dictates of big business and international finance.

Under conditions where the working class in on a collision course with the current Liberal government, which is seeking to implement massive social cuts, workers must take the unions’ embrace of the pro-austerity PQ as a serious warning. As they did during 1980s and 1990s, and more recently during the student strike in 2012, the unions are seeking to smother opposition to capitalist austerity and isolate the Quebec workers from the Canadian and North American working class by channeling them behind the PQ and promoting Quebec nationalism.