Murdered for being a Unionist
The IUF condemns the assassination of yet another member of the Colombian rural workers’ union SINTRAINAGRO, union activist Jesús Marino Mosquera, who was murdered while returning from work on October 11. Mosquera was employed for over 20 years at a farm in the municipality of Carepa, where he served as a union representative on the joint labour/management committee for the past 12 years. Mosquera’s murder brings to well over 400 the number of SINTRAINAGRO officers and members who have been murdered since the union was founded.
As a member of the NTEU, I sometimes find it a little difficult to muster the energy to attend the Labour Day march, or go to branch meetings, but at least I don’t have to worry about being gunned down! Makes Howard’s union-busting laws look a little insipid…
Guilty of Travelling While Asian
The Daily Mail reports that two men of Arabic appearance were removed from a flight from Spain to Britain because passengers feared they were terrorists:
...two British citizens in their 20s waited in the departure lounge to board the pre-dawn flight and were heard talking what passengers took to be Arabic. Worries spread after a female passenger said she had heard something that alarmed her.
Passengers noticed that, despite the heat, the pair were wearing leather jackets and thick jumpers and were regularly checking their watches.
Thank God I’m white, and don’t wear a watch…
While it is easy (and somewhat satisfying) to scorn the implied racism of the gullible passengers, this a clearly one of the logical outcomes of the policies of panic indulged in by many western governments, Australia’s included. It is such a small step from “Alert but not alarmed”, to lynch mobs…
Capital Speed
An especially shiny and unsurprisingly optimistic take on new shifts in globalised capitalist production from BusinessWeek:
Take clothing retailer H&M. Every time it designs a new outfit, the Swedish company can choose on the fly among more than 700 manufacturers worldwide. It looks for the right skills, geographic proximity, and ability to finish the job quickly—and then gets the plant rolling in a matter of hours or days. Or consider Wipro Ltd., the Indian outsourcing firm. It does engineering and design for clients, and in some cases, part of its fee is based on the success of the product it delivers. Customers can keep costs low, until they know they’ve got a hit on their hands. “Our clients are under a lot of pressure to get new products faster into the market. Their core employment isn’t adequate for it, so they’re looking for partners who can do it for them,” says Azim Premji, Wipro’s chairman.
It’s all about speed, you see. Might be time to start reading up on Paul Virilio again.