Vol. 72/No. 35      September 8, 2008

Robert Aiken, Communist League candidate for mayor of Canterbury in the September 13 local elections, addressed the gathering. “My campaign is getting out the truth about this intervention and the resistance to it. All working people have an interest in supporting this fight,” he said.

Aiken is a meat packer and member of the Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union. Linda Harris, a sewing machinist and member of the Textile Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia, is standing for Bankstown City Council as a Communist League candidate.

At the August 9 launch of the Communist League campaign, Aiken described the fight in defense of casual workers that is beginning to develop at Primo, a meatpacking plant where he works. The company, with a workforce of more than 1,000, also uses an agency that hires Chinese-speaking workers. The agency pays them $2 per hour less than other casual workers at the plant and does not pay any additional allowances or overtime rates. Until the workers protested, it did not issue the required pay slips. More recently, some of these workers were not paid on time.

Some workers at Primo have been discussing how to use union power to protest this abuse of immigrants.

“As the mayor, I will champion these struggles by workers for pay and conditions, and demand that all visa categories that enable bosses to increase the exploitation of workers be abolished,” Aiken said.  
 
Opposes ‘antiterror’ raids and laws
Harris told the audience at the campaign launch she was running for office in a working-class area that feels the “heavy hand of the cops” on the streets, from daily harassment against youth of Middle Eastern, Pacific Islander, African, or Aboriginal appearance to several recent “antiterror” raids.

In February a criminal trial began against nine men who were arrested in an “antiterror” raid in Bankstown in November 2005. All are facing charges of “conspiracy to do acts in preparation for, or planning, a terrorist act,” which can carry a life sentence.

In the guise of “fighting terrorism,” Harris said, since 2001 the government has introduced laws, backed by both the Liberals and Labor, “aimed at curbing the rights of working people to organize and act in our own defense.”

The Communist League calls for the repeal of all “antiterror” police powers and laws. Harris called for the release of the “Bankstown Nine” and the dropping of the frame-up conspiracy charges.

She also called for “the immediate withdrawal of Australian and all ‘coalition’ troops from Iraq, Afghanistan, and other theaters of the ‘war on terror,’ as well as all Australian forces out of East Timor and the Pacific.”  
 
 
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