JAPANESE MULTINATIONALS THREATEN AUSTRALIAN WORKERS: Who Comes First-Australia Or The Foreign Bosses?

JAPANESE BUSINESS LEADERS HAVE ISSUED A THREAT TO AUSTRALIAN WORKERS, STATING IN THEIR JAUNDICED LANGUAGE THAT "A FRESH WAVE OF UNION MILITANCY THREATENS THE SUPPLY OF CRUCIAL RESOURCES AND BILLION-DOLLAR INVESTMENTS."

Australian nationalists know that some unions have raised workplace issues, compelled as they occasionally must be by the rank and file, which put the immediate interests of the worker at loggerheads with the profit-driven Japanese multinationals.

Australian nationalists know that attacks upon the union movement are seldom calculated to curtail a crook union leadership or to overcome some fault of industrial behavior. Rather, they are usually designed to make ordinary Australian workers subservient to the foreign bosses-particularly right now when the globalised economy totters on a knife edge.

Nippon Steel's Australian boss, Yoshifumi Nakata, said his company wanted assurances Australia would not return to the "industrial days of the 1970's" when Japan was "forced" to look to Brazil for key supplies.

The steel giant was "afraid and very concerned" that an esculation in industrial action would disrupt export markets, Mr. Nakata said.

"We are seriously concerned with the stable supply of raw materials, particularly iron ore and coking coal," he added.

This is all rhetorical muck that was used 30 years ago by the Frazer and then Hawke governments to attack, not a few corrupt unions and silly work-rules, but the tried and true structures of Australian workplace culture. We now live with the results of that foul attack: work contracts, visa labour, fewer union rights, intrusive courts and commissions and so on.

It can be rightly said that the Japanese multinationals are more concerned about what they can rip out of Australia vast wealth, with lowering the price of Australian labour and weakening proper conditions, than with any issue of industrial lawlessness.

Nippon Steel, one of Japan's largest steel producers, is among several foreign firms to express "concern" over growing industrial militancy in Western Australia. Indeed, some unions have called snap strikes and disrupted production work there in past months. And why not ? At the moment the unions demand fairness. The day will come when the Australian People will demand an end to the fire-sale of our national wealth!

The fear of the foreigner for any form of union activity comes as workplace relations, emerge as an issue in the next election. The two faces of the regime ( Liberal, Labor ) will vie with each other to promise the Japanese multinationals that they will curtail the unions and they will spin the Australian suburban voter wild tales about trade union thuggery stopping projects that will make us all rich-as their justification for stripping us of the right to freely associate in unions and fight industrial struggles.

Resources giant Woodside Petroleum last month announced it was suing the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union ( CFMEU ) after the union called an eight-day strike. The action halted development of Woodside's $12 billion liquefied natural gas processing plant on the North West Shelf. This project feeds Chinese imperialism and not just the Japanese. The union should be praised, not criticised!

With annual exports of $50 billion, Japan is Australia's biggest market. Iron ore and coal account for exports worth about $30 billion while LNG exports are valued at $8 billion. There is nothing wrong with trade with Japan, but there is everything wrong when the Japanese multinationals can demand openly that restrictions be placed on Australian workers and their industrial organizations.

The Japanese concerns were raised during all-day Australian-Japanese talks behind closed doors in Canberra last week. Japanese delegates directly raised the matter of Australia's industrial past. In their view, they want subservient unions like in Japan. They wanted assurances government would act against unions and workers.

Western Australia Treasurer Troy Buswell said: "Investors are growing very nervous." And such a worthy group of parasites these investors are! As if, we must run when investors crack the whip.

The answer of our traitor class is always to rule for the foreign master. The idea of establishing an economy for Australia is not on their agenda. Nonetheless, threats to the Australian workers may spread the idea of Australian Independence, the vision splendid where the ordinary people control their own wealth and their own country.