Oceania

Workers at the Lihir gold mine in Papua New Guinea walked out five days ago over a pay dispute in an unofficial action that is still unresolved. Efforts to cut a deal have stalled while managers consider Lihir's workers' demands, which include sacking the entire management of the mine. It is claimed that workers have been consistently denied the right to organise to protect their rights at work.

They are demanding the reversal of a 5% pay cut and the changing of the retirement age from 60 to 55, and an additional 10% pay rise. The pay cut and change in retirement age were announced shortly after the military government took power in a coup last December.

The action involved striking for 55 minutes of every hour, 24 hours a day in a struggle for better wages and conditions.

About 140 Reefton and Dunollie miners were due to meet in Runanga at 1pm to decide their next step.

In an escalation of previous action, the Spring Creek miners walked off the job on Friday morning.

The strikers confronted the shared hostility of governments, employers and union leaders alike. The text also deals with how the racism prevalent in the labour movement affected the conduct and outcome of the strike.

"THIS IS A STRIKE that has vanished from history. In August 1925, the seamen of Britain, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand walked off their ships in protest against a ten per cent wage cut. It was one of the few genuinely international strikes, directed against a powerful international cartel. One would have expected it to be widely debated. Yet, newspaper coverage apart, history has largely been silent.

A local businessman, Ulaiasi Taoi, has been detained twice over the past month in relation to a blog and Mr Sayed-Khaiyum has warned of the dangers of bloggers using their anonymity to attack the government. A wave of blogs sprang up after the coup, with many bloggers publishing uncensored accounts of the coup and of the actions of its instigators once in power.

The strike action is in support of a claim by workers for increased salaries and for their benefits to be brought into line with those of other workers at the Officeof post and telecommunications (OPT). An inter-union grouping of CSIP, CSTP/FO, Otahi, A Tia I Mua called the strike and 60% of workers are observing it.Tikiphone shops are either closed or picketed.

Remembering Jim Duke
"I started performing poems as a timid person with a stutter but the spirit of the times soon converted me into a bellowing bull." Jim Duke

“The voice played like a human saxophone.” Nicholas Zurbrugg

The Public Employees Union (PEU), representing almost 5,000 blue collar public servants, has voted to back a strike planned by the country's largest union, the Public Service Association (PSA). The PSA voted overwhelmingly on Friday to strike after the military government slashed civil servants' wages under a plan to save the nation's economy from collapse.

Nurses & teachers ballot

Alison Ribbon reported that the strike was apparently unplanned and dubbed a "wildcat strike" by the railway union.

Safety issues surrounding Pacific National have been in the headlines recently, with three derailments involving the company's trains in less than a year.

A train carrying paper from Hobart to the Burnie port derailed near Ulverstone a week ago.

Auckland Newstalk reported that union members in various parts of the organisation carried out lightning strikes between four and seven o'clock. They also took industrial action before One News aired on Friday night.

This article from 2004 discusses several episodes of resistance to austerity in New Zealand in the 1990s.

The dancers are part of a performance group, "Mauri", which provides regular shows at the attraction. They walked out during the middle of an $85/head dinner and performance, then went to the offices of the attraction to stage a haka dance.

Customers filled shopping trolleys with goods then used them to block the aisles of the Foodtown Tauranga supermarket. Each trolley included a message of support for the locked out workers.

Direct Action, later a monthly magazine, was first published by the US-founded Industrial Workers of the World union in Sydney in January 1914. They borrowed some dough from a member and bought themselves an archaic printing press so that all restraints upon expression of ‘clear cut revolutionary principles’ were removed.

Scabs, coppers, strikes and footy

John Pilger in his book Secret Country wrote about graft and corruption in Australia Today. He mentions several various powerful individuals. These same individuals – Sir Peter Ables, Rupert Murdoch, Bob Hawke all were involved in the conspiracy to smash the Australian Federation of Air Pilots.