Flight attendants union working against members?

Shenanigans in which former flight attendant union officials are now running labour hire outfits - http://www.smh.com.au/news/business/ welcome-aboard-flight-to-lower-pay-cheques/2007/04/15/1176575687668.html - illustrate the poison that can easily take hold in union officialdom. Scott Rochfort in the SMH of 21 April digs deeper still in an article in News Review entitled "A case of cabin fever strikes Qantas" - which so far I cannot locate online. On 16 April, the day of the earlier report, I emailed the Rights at Work campaign, and still haven't had a reply.

"Dear Rights at Work,

I am very disturbed to read this story in today's SMH, disgusted to read that Maurice Alexander is a former union official. The article also says that "the [flight attendants's] union shares office space with Mr Alexander's labour hire firm. The union's domestic secretary Jo-Ann Davidson declined to comment."

I hope to hear that there are serious errors in this SMH report, and that whatever connection Alexander may have had with the union movement, they do not continue. I support Rights at Work. Alexander is (according to this story) profiting from running a scheme that attacks rights at work.

Please let me know the ACTU/Rights at Work response to these allegations.

In soldarity"

It's not easy to promote trade unionism if this is what union officials can get away with, undenounced, uncensured.

Rudd makes farce of Rights@Work at ALP Conference

The Rights at Work website is running an email campaign to Federal Labor prior to ALP National conference.

They have a form letter that can be edited. I sent this version in response to Rudd’s pre-emptive announcement the a Labor government will retain major provisions of WorkChoices http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/back-to-fair-and-flexible-for-boss-and-worker/2007/04/17/1176696834741.html. It could say a lot more about the right to strike and organise. Someone else might like to write that message.

Dear Mr Rudd, Ms Gillard, and the Labor party team,

The ALP was supposed to be deciding its priorities for the next election at the ALP National Conference this month.

As a Rights at Work supporter, I am writing to express my outrage that you have made pre-emptive annoucements about industrial relations policy.

I am convinced that your policies are going to continue the weakening of the union movement, and thus of the ALP as a party capable of representing workers. Australian Industry Group chief Heather Ridout is quoted in today's SMH "The retention of laws which ban industrial action in pursuit of industry-wide agreements, ban industrial action during the term of agreements and require a secret ballot before industrial action can be taken, appear to be a response to ... industry concerns"

Why give in to "industry concerns" ahead of rank and file ALP concerns, and the considerations that will be brought to ALP Conference? Are you trying to convert the ALP to a US style Democratic Party that requires millions of dollars for campaigning? Are you trying to gut the ALP as a party where working people can organise democratically to express their opinions and have a chance of carrying the day with policies they campaign for? Do you not understand the decay of democracy in general that you are contributing to by flouting the remnants of democratic process inside the ALP in order to behave as the powerful leader who gets his way?

A serious mistake that will demoralise trade unionists and Labor voters.

Working too hard to produce toxic junk

Many of us with jobs spend too many hours at work to maintain what is currently called "work-life balance". Several commentators say we have only ourselves to blame for being greedy consumers (Clive Hamilton, Ross Gittins). Then there is the global warming perspective - too much consumption of energy.
What about putting these 2 issues together and looking at solutions differently? Why should we all be trapped in a way of life based on decisions to produce goods and services, decisions that are made by a minority. Why should production of everything (transport, housing, food, health, entertainment, communication, clothing, everything) be decided by the people who own the means to produce them, being allowed to make guess what the rest of us can be enticed to spend our money on and make them a profit?
So - what if transport facilities were to be decided not by car manufacturers, petrol companies, ad they had no access to lobby governments or departments of main roads? What if the criteria for developing transport services were reducing fuel consumption and environmental impact, reducing gross expenditure on transport, reducing the labour hours involved in providing transport, sharing available hours of work amongst all workers involved in vehicle production and transport services, reducing the time taken to get places? Then we might come up with policies such as - increased public transport routes based on a wider range of vehicles, and free public transport; vehicle manufacture shifting the balance from cars to energy efficient public transport; rail not roads for freight; car depots for occasional personal use; bicycle facilities; free deliveries of groceries. We might find policies to reduce the need to travel, more children at local schools, help people to live near work.
But we don't have a collective basis for making these decisions, because "the market" gets to decide, and government works with what resources it can put together after "the market" has its way. We decide to travel by car, because public transport doesn't go where we want to, when we want to. That's the market. We don't have a "market" mechanism that lets us choose between effective public transport and driving. Who is "the market"? Supposedly us, so we are to blame. But "the market" is what we can all be convinced to consume, to pay for, as individuals. It is the opposite of us being able to make sensible, considered decisions in the common interest.

We need to talk about Kevin (a novel)

Eva Khatchadourian is the mother of a US high school mass murderer. She opens the story of her relationship with her son Kevin when he has been in juvenile detention for about 18 months, during the count of the US Presidential election of 2000. Her reflection takes the form of letters to her husband Franklin, Kevin’s father. She is examining why Kevin killed, looking for the roots of his actions beginning back before he was born, to the decision to have a child, and through his infancy, childhood and teenage years. Is she responsible for Kevin’s murderousness, she is asking.

Lionel Shriver, writing as Eva, probes into many dark moments of mother-child relationships, she identifies many typical childish or teenage behaviours, and imbues them with evil portent, that could arouse parental doubts about even the most loving and co-operative children. She also picks on the potential for a couple to be divided by their children. These are well-observed and fear if not through provoking incidents and patterns. The outing of the possibility that a parent, especially a mother, may not find it easy to love a child is the most discussed aspect of the book. The interview with Lionel Shriver suggests that in this aspect the book is an examination of her own fears of parenthood, which she has never take on.

However, the other aspect of Lionel Shriver’s inspiration seems to have achieved much less attention. High school massacres in the USA are a recent disturbing phenomenon. She is looking for possible explanations for the psyche of the high school mass murdereer as a type, personified by Kevin. Her picture of Kevin as perpetrator of a massacre does not seem to fit the profile shown in Bowling for Columbine - guns and the ready availability of bullets were the common thread there. Kevin does not use a gun. She builds a picture of Kevin as a nihilist. What is the source of Kevin’s nihilism?

A series of possibilities is suggested in the course of the story.

Kevin was born angry. His anger was a cover for sadness, for emptiness, but he refused mother love, certainly mother’s breast. He went on to either lack, or wilfully refuse to show, interest or desire for anything to do with his mother – no food, no toys, no activities. Eva attributed deliberate intent on the part of her baby, to deny her any satisfaction. He ate only when she wasn’t looking. He refused toilet training till the age of 6 when his mother gave violent expression to her anger and frustration. Eva saw Kevin as spiteful and secretive.

Kevin’s father always encouraged Kevin, looked for the best interpretation of his son’s actions, almost never, if ever defined and enforced any limits – typifying a style of parenting, which accepts a boys’ bad behaviour as a legitimate expression of “being a boy”, and so does not socialise them. Kevin actually scorned his father, and went along with Franklin’s rosy view all the better to prepare his crime. Franklin’s lack of comprehension of Kevin actually made Kevin feel more estranged and alienated and angry than his mother’s critical view of him, which at least made him feel partially understood and recognised for who he was and what he really felt. Eva never even asks if Franklin’s fathering of Kevin could have anything to do with Kevin’s criminality. Yet her telling of the story makes this a highy plausible factor. Perhaps the author is trying to illustrate that poor fathering is rarely considered a problem, and that mothers are typically blamed for the misdeeds of their children.

Eva is, or was before the terrible day, a Democrat and liberal (she no longer cares). She had loved travelling overseas, it had been her business. She hated red-necks, US militarism, US suburban life, and Republicanism. Strangely though, Franklin was an ardent Republican. Most strangely Eva gave up work altogether to look after Kevin, and Franklin continued an absolutely full-time job and took no share of domestic duties. This second aspect of her marriage seems highly improbable, if not necessarily in the earliest years, at least as it became apparent that Eva was struggling and did not enjoy Kevin, whereas Franklin thought Kevin was fantastic.

Kevin rejected the hypocrisy of his mother’s liberalism, and her anti-Americanism. He rejected her supposed liberal tolerance, yet her intolerance, constant criticism of US culture (and him). This shows another strange inconsistency. As a political liberal, Eva could be expected to be the parent to excuse childhood misdeeds, and fail to discipline, whereas the Republican father could be expected to be tougher on law and order outside and inside the home. Eva wants to hold Kevin responsibile for his criminality (or in hindsight, his predictive criminal tendencies) whereas it would more typically be the liberal (in US terms) who might seek to explain, if not justify and exonerate social deviance, on the grounds of nurture by a sick society. When Eva reflects on her own nurturing role, or lack thereof, and really can only see that for Kevin it was in his nature to be bad. So, the introduction of Democratic versus Republican into this novel seems off the mark.

Yet, in a way perhaps Democratic versus Republicans illustrates an aspect of Kevin’s nihilism. There is no real substance to that choice, or any other on offer to the comfortable for the well-off, middle-class of the USA. There is only meaningless repetition of meaningless routines. Kevin could not see any point, any purpose, felt no passion. He was actually very perceptive and intelligent, but found no worthwhile application for his capabilities, until he came to plan his crime.

Lack of love is the other possible explanation of Kevin. Eva made rare efforts to show and feel affection for Kevin, and apart from a few days when he was very sick in his later childhood, he always spurned her, as she saw it. Perhaps Kevin was not a very lovable or responsive infant, and we and Eva only have Eva’s recollection to go on. Eva seemed to feel that Franklin was acting out a fatherly role rather than genuinely connecting with Kevin, so there was not real love there either. Small signs emerge as the story matures, that Kevin felt a stronger bond with his mother than she might have realised, and her growing realisation of this bond is at the centre of the resolution of the book. Perhaps it is possible in some way to love your own child, even if he has done something very evil, and perhaps love is a kind of antidote.

I found the book gripping but gruelling. If it's meant to air the unspoken truth that mothers don't always love or like their children, this novel does so in a very scary way. I don't think it would help mothers who do not love their children, to be more prepared to discuss this and expect a supportive reaction. I think it is more likely to inhibit women who are unsure of their feelings about their children, and feel that as mothers they are a source of danger to their children.

Exporting democracy to Iraq: neo culpa

A Vanity Fair article titled Neo Culpa by David Rose reports interviews with Neo Cons who had advocated the invasion of Iraq, now expressing their disappointment and pessimism. There is a little belated expression of the need for Iraqis to be their own liberators, which they think could have been incorporated into the US invasion plan. It would have been better, acording to the NeoCons if Iraqi battalions had liberated Baghdad and toppled the Saddam statue, if reconstruction contracts had been granted to Iraqi companies rather than US multi-nationals, if Iraqis had been sought for intelligence, and if an Iraqi had been selected prior to invasion for immediate appointed as the leader (Chalabi, or Allawi or Pachachi), rather than appointing Paul Bremer to be the governor of Iraq.

Since any of the 3 named would have been a US appointment, and since they've all participated in post invasion government, there is thin reason to believe that the last condition would have helped to bring a sense of self-liberation to Iraq.

What the article does highlight is that democracy cannot be imposed from outside or above.

A most telling point the article makes is that the US expected to find in Iraq the mechanisms of a secular government, ready made to be taken over by a post-Saddam administration. But these mechanisms had all been destroyed during the sanctions, when Saddam had distributed largesse to tribal leaders to bribe support and exchange of goods in the conditions of scarcity. UN sanctions, as demanded by the US, had done more damage to efficient administration than they had to the dictator.

If democracy and national self-determination is self-governance, then that requires local institutions, organisations, forms of co-operation and collective capability.

The Vanity Fair article does not touch on either the Provisional Government's attitude to democratic rights for Iraqi civil society or to communal politics. Democracy could not fbe created by the invasion because the USA undermined democratic possibilities for its own interests. The US appointed governor, Paul Bremer, maintained Saddam's anti-union laws. Even so hamstrung, Iraqi unions opposed privatisation of Iraqi industry and have stood for workers' rights and wages against the US and multi-nationals, Halliburton, etc, that were awarded so-called reconstruciton contracts. With legal rights to organise, the unions could have achieved a great deal more and been a force for democracy that would not have suited US interests or Islamists. The USA through Bremer in Iraq chose to negotiate for an Iraqi government with religious and communal leaders, not secular or Iraqi nationalist interest groups. This also cultivated a sectarian civil war, rather than a secular democracy.

It is Iraqi trade unions above all, along with other secular civil organisations that need international solidarity, just in order to survive, and keep alive the seeds of a future possible democratic secular Iraq.

Which school leavers deserve dull and dirty work?

In NSW this year there are 75000 HSC applicants for university places, and just over 65000 places being offered. University graduates in paid employment or professional practice generally earn more than non-university graduates.

A further 225000 approximate school leavers in NSW at the end of 2006 have not applied for a university place.

Thousands of these will apply for TAFE courses, and a percentage will be turned away from TAFE, or not achieve their first preference. TAFE graduates in paid employment or running their own business generally earn more than adults without a qualification.

As these 17-19 year olds leave school, they are funnelled into the world of work where having a job, or being unemployed are defining features of their lives. Fantasies of fame and fortune are forced aside by real choices.

It looks fair enough, doesn't it? If you work hard and you are smart enough, you get your first choice. If you don't work so hard, or you are not so clever, then you must deserve a less desirable course or job, and you get on with it.

But it is parents, families, that make the biggest difference to students results. Parents who have spent more years in education, and who are better off than average, have children who do better in school. It's called merit, but it's really the luck of who your parents are, that means you will or won't be seen to have merit in the education system.

Lots of school leavers can expect to accept if not unemployment, then the kind of work that most people would rather not do if they felt they had a choice – cleaning up after other people, processing or preparing bulk food, assembling gadgets and clothes, taking and making phone calls, serving, serving. These jobs might be acceptable for a short time, and some people may be satisfied with jobs that require no further education. But most people would choose work that is more interesting and better paid if they felt they could. Yet at least some of this low-skilled or unpleasant work needs to be done.

How would we eat and enjoy a clean, odourless, convenient world, if schools didn't produce enough children and teenagers who would accept that dull or dirty work is their lot in life? (Immigration plugs some of the gaps but not all). In fact many of the students whose destiny is dull and dirty are those who are seen as problems at school. The might disrupt classes, or just not turn up.

They don’t expect to succeed in the competition for university places, TAFE places and better jobs. So why bother?

Education policy makers seem to be looking for ways to improve learning, behaviour, literacy and numeracy, and results for the least successful students in the system. But some students know, and some students come from families and communities who expect to be unable to compete against these kids from better schools, richer schools, richer and more educated families.

I think Australia should find a way to share the dull and dirty work fairly, and give everyone a go at spending some time working at something that is interesting to them, and reasonably paid. Then all school kids will have a reason to learn, without expecting to have to beat kids with an advantage of birth, for a place in the learning and earning lottery.

In 12 months time my oldest child will find out what she has drawn in the post-school education lottery.