the Banner Bright

A hopeful story about organising in the so-called gig economy from Jack Shenker’s Now We Have Your Attention: “organised resistance by digitally outsourced workers has erupted repeatedly on the streets of major cities in recent years, usually beginning in the back alley spots where delivery riders are encouraged by their apps to congregate and then fanning out rapidly through WhatsApp networks, word of mouth and some technological trickery. In 2016, for example, an announcement by Deliveroo that it would soon be unilaterally altering its rider payment structure prompted a six-day ‘strike’ in which riders acted en masse to make themselves unavailable for orders. Colleagues from Deliveroo’s rivals, Uber Eats, swiftly followed suit, and began taking advantage of a promotional offer within the app that granted new customers £5 off their first order. By repeatedly creating new accounts and ordering low-value meals to be delivered to the picket line, the strikers amassed both a mountain of free food at Uber’s expense and a steady stream of fellow riders, who would turn up with the order only to be met by a sea of radicalised peers cheering their arrival and chanting ‘Log out, log out!’” (There is a long excerpt from the book in The Guardian.)

Mungo McCallum: “The Greens reckon that Peter Dutton is a sadist — that he positively enjoys inflicting cruelty on his defenceless victims. But this is probably unfair to the potato-headed potentate. Dutton is certainly heartless, but his cruelty, while undoubtedly real, is more of an inevitable consequence of his demeanour than a deliberate agenda. What the Home Affairs minister really enjoys is power — what George Orwell once described as the image of a boot stamping down on a human face. He exults in trampling his opponents, leaving them defeated and demoralised. He gets his kicks not so much from tormenting them, but from crushing them into impotent misery. Thus the brutality of his treatment of the Sri Lankan asylum seekers from Biloela is almost incidental. What matters is his demonstration of supremacy — his ability to override all the normal standards of decent behaviour just because he can.”

Fair Work Commission deputy president Gerard Boyce is under fire for partisan social media comments about the Labor Party and the trade union movement. He was one of six members with employer backgrounds appointed to fill a single vacancy [$] when the polls showed the Coalition was unlikely to win the next election. Boyce has a long career representing militant bosses; when he worked for the mining industry he complained that WorkChoices didn’t go far enough. He is now deciding whether it is legitimate for BHP to set up a subsidiary company, create a new EBA with 16 employees — with a margin of just one vote — that would cut wages by up to 40% and strip hard-won working conditions, and then transfer hundreds of employees into the new company. It is unlikely there will be any consequences: former Peter Reith staffer and now FWC senior deputy president Jonathan Hamberger cleared himself of bias for retweeting Michaelia Cash’s anti-union propaganda while continuing to hear cases involving the same union.

A worker was sacked by BP after sharing a Downfall parody meme about the state of enterprise bargaining with his colleagues. The sacking was upheld by Fair Work Commission deputy president Melanie Binet — a Michaelia Cash appointee and former Freehills colleague, who earlier this year had a decision overturned due to “lack of empathy towards an employee who missed a deadline, because his two-month old son had been diagnosed with a potentially life-threatening heart condition”. Binet compared the Downfall meme to other cases where workers had shouted that their managers were Nazis, and ruled that “when viewed in context … a reasonable person would consider the Hitler video inappropriate and offensive”. The AWU is now considering an appeal, because “anyone with a smartphone and a sense of humour can tell you, Hitler Downfall parody videos are not about comparing anyone to actual Nazis.” Indeed — I am not comparing Deputy President Binet to actual Nazis in this Downfall parody meme about her terrible Downfall parody meme decision.

Four Extinction Rebellion protestors charged with disrupting Brisbane traffic will try to set a new legal precedent; Emma Dorge explained: “I’m pleading not guilty on the basis of the extraordinary emergency defence… We’re in the midst of a crisis and that’s the climate crisis, we believe we’ve essentially been forced to break the law to avert a far more catastrophic outcome.” The Queensland benchbook (a guide for judges on how to instruct a jury) sets out the test: “a person in an emergency cannot always weigh up and deliberate about what action is best to take. [They] must act quickly and do the best he can. If you consider that an ordinary person with ordinary powers of self control could not reasonably have been expected to act differently, or if the prosecution has not satisfied you beyond reasonable doubt of the contrary, you must acquit.” That hurdle will be tough to clear. But before even reaching that point, the court must be satisfied that the accused was acting “under the stress of an extraordinary emergency” — and if the protestors can get a ruling that climate change is legally recognised as an extraordinary emergency, that will be significant regardless of the final outcome of the case.

The merger of United Voice and the National Union of Workers to form an innovative new super-union — to be called the United Workers Union (UWU) — has been approved by an overwhelming 95% of members. Responding to the result, the NUW’s Tim Kennedy said, “We represent workers at the sharp end of social and economic inequality, in areas such as education, logistics, cleaning, building services, health and aged care. We represent the workers who manufacture and distribute the food, beverages, and pharmaceuticals we all rely on. Our combined 150,000 members share a strong history of taking up the fight for all working people. They have voted for a transformative new union that will put workers at the centre of our economic and political system.” Employers are concerned that the new union will use “co-ordinated industrial ­action … to leverage their greater power in a more strategic manner as a means to promote change to business and government policy”. Bring it on.

The President of Victoria’s Court of Appeal has questioned the validity of some forensic evidence, suggesting that our courts are wrongfully convicting people: “There have been a string of wrongful convictions across the world. The benefit of better DNA testing has shown that very many people convicted on the basis of ‘crook science’, for example, bite mark analysis, were innocent. This seems to me to be a matter of profound concern.” The deputy director of the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine shares these concerns, saying that significant American reports (such as a 2016 report by the President’s scientific advisory council) had been rejected by Victoria Police: “They are very resistant to change. When it comes to fingerprints, they are most often right. But it is the other stuff — like analysing foot marks, tool marks, ballistics, there is no real evidence-based science around what they are doing. It is purely opinion based on ‘I’ve done a thousand of these, you should believe me’.” This warrants a thorough review of the rules of evidence and police investigative practices.

Nine Entertainment — owner of the Nine Network, the SMH, The Age, 2GB, 3AW, 4BC, 6PR and more; chairman Peter Costello — “used its historic TV studios in the Sydney suburb of Willoughby to host a $10,000-a-head corporate fundraiser for the Liberal party on Monday night. …[C]orporates paid handsomely for the chance to dine with the prime minister, Scott Morrison, and the communications minister, Paul Fletcher… All the funds raised — at least $700,000 — will go into Liberal party coffers.” This is shameless, but not surprising. As Tim Dunlop pointed out last week, “People often claim, or presume, that there is, or has been, some sort of ideological divide between the Murdoch media and Fairfax, with the former habitually anti-Labor, and the latter more progressive. What [Sally] Young shows [in Paper Giants] is that, in terms of electoral support, ALL Australian newspapers have been virulently anti-Labor. … It is a useful reminder of the hill Labor has to climb at every single election, when the mainstream media is so implacably opposed, almost to their very existence, and at the least, to the idea of them forming government.”

Men need to take more parental leave: “What can a government do to encourage the best fathers possible? The single greatest gift might be functional parental leave policies that actually encourage men to take time off and be active early in family life.  Right now paternity leave in Australia isn’t working for fathers. Just one in four use the two weeks’ leave available to them as ‘partner pay’ in the first year of a child’s life. The obvious reason is it is paid at the minimum wage, which means it doesn’t resolve the conflict that fathers face in choosing between financially supporting or spending time with their families.” Recent studies link increased paternal leave with more equal division of housework (even years later), greater life satisfaction for both partners, and lower divorce rates. Setting up the father’s involvement is important for their kids, too: “Toddlers whose fathers play with them with warmth and encouragement go on to have better results in maths and reading in primary school… in addition to other benefits for the child’s emotional regulation, social adjustment and mental health… The specific activities were less important than the quality of the play and father’s degree of involvement.”

The Obama-funded documentary American Factory depicts the culture clash when a Chinese billionaire opens an automotive glass plant in a former GM factory. As his management becomes more authoritarian, morale drops and workplace injuries rise. The company spends a million dollars on “union avoidance” strategies, forcing workers to attend propaganda meetings and openly admitting to sacking union supporters. While the film has been criticised for sitting on the fence and pushing a flaccid “common ground” agenda, I think its dry presentation underscores the importance of a real union (not a servile company union like the official Chinese factory union shown) to protecting workers from exploitation. That seems to be what Chinese viewers have taken from it: “‘Who doesn’t know China’s efficiency comes from stripping low-class workers of their health, safety and dignity?’ read the top-voted comment on review site Douban. ‘Chinese people have given Americans a lesson on what capitalism is like,’ a Weibo comment said.” And as Vox notes, the filmmakers “train their cameras on not just the people but the tasks and materials of the job, giving audiences less familiar with the factory floor an idea of just how complicated and difficult the work is, and how valuable skilled labor is as well.”