RIO TINTO BORAX vs ILWU Boron California March 11 2010 ...

in Australia, where the company exploits some of the world's most important iron, coal and uranium reserves, it has uprooted traditional unions, cut real wages and (as it is now trying to do in Boron) replaced collective bargaining with variable individual contracts.

Aussie miners and train drivers, however, have fought back with wildcat strikes and new organizing campaigns. Their defiance has led the company to an extraordinary solution: a fully automated "mine of the future" that won't require unruly miners or railroad workers. A working prototype is being developed in the remote Pilbara iron range: eleven mines with robotized drilling, automated haul trucks and, soon, driverless ore trains, all controlled from an operations center in Perth, 800 miles away.

....and the marchers begin to assemble, about 600-strong, behind a banner that spans the entire width of the road:

An Injury to One Is an Injury to All.

http://codepink4peace.org/blog/2010/01/how-you-can-help-in-haiti/

After the quake depend on women MADRE, an international women's human rights group, is working with the Haitian relief organization, Zanmi Lasante, to bring humanitarian aid into the country overland from the Dominican Republic. http://www.madre.org/index.php?s=4&month=2010-01&news=267

JUAN GONZALEZ: Let me ask you about another sensitive issue, which is the question of the Dominican Republic. How has the Dominican government, which would be in the easiest position to provide some kind of assistance, since it has a large land border with Haiti—what has been the response of the Dominican government to try to assist Haitians?

Raise your glasses of champagne to mark Class Wargames' decisive victory on the cultural front: the launch of our film on Guy Debord's The Game of War. http://www.classwargames.net/

For the first time, the Situationist politics of this military simulation are carefully explained in sound and vision. After watching this movie, opponents of spectacular capitalism will understand the importance of studying The Game of War. By playfully competing against each other over its board, they are learning the strategic and tactical skills required for success in the deadly struggle against the global bourgeoisie. Détournement is no longer the privilege of a minority of avant-garde artists. Media communism is now embedded in everyday life. Become a 21st century Debord - a director of remixed movies. Sweep away the anachronistic barriers of intellectual property. Switch on the computer, start up the video editing software, plug in an external drive filled with rendered DVDs and begin making your own film. Everyone is a practical Situationist. Ludic Labour! http://www.facebook.com/group.php?sid=722bbc2f0e2ef862daaf0a3289102b09&gid=58141166910&ref=search

"My conception of the strike of the future is not to strike and go out an starve, but to strike and remain in and take possession of the necessary property of production". . . .lucy parsons

Autobiography of Mother Jones: Chapter XXVII – Progress in Spite of Leaders " The rank and file have let their servants become their masters and dictators. The workers have now to fight not alone their exploiters but likewise their own leaders, who often betray them, who sell them out, who put their own advancement ahead of that of the working masses, who make of the rank and file political pawns. Provision should be made in all union constitutions for the recall of leaders. Big salaries should not be paid. Career hunters should be driven out, as well as leaders who use labor for political ends. These types are menaces to the advancement of labor." http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/jones/ch27.htm

Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

"wear red" to the equal pay breakfast 9am September 1st Victorian Trades Hall Building Carlton - or organise your own event ! http://www.equalpayday.com.au/

Equal Pay Day is held on Tuesday 1 September 2009 in Australia, to signify the point into a year that a woman must work to earn what a man made in the previous financial year. Census statistics released in 2008 show that the gap between men's and women's earnings changed by less than one percent from 2006 to 2007, narrowing only slightly from 76.9 to 77.8 percent.

Rosie the Riveter redux: Women work it at W.T.C. Nontraditional Employment for Women - NEW - runs six-week training programs designed to launch women into careers in construction and other building, transportation and energy trades.

http://gangbox.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/the-tradeswomen-of-ground-zero/

“I wear the ring as a decoy,” Johns said, laughing as she ate lunch on the edge of the construction site on a recent afternoon. “They don’t really bother me,” she said of her male co-workers. “I just use [the ring] to throw them off.” Johns, 35, is one of the rare women who choose carpentry as a career. For every 65 male carpenters, there is only one female carpenter, according to a 2008 U.S. Dept. of Labor study. Other trades are even more skewed toward men — in the same 2008 study, the most unbalanced of all professions in the country was bricklaying, which boasted only one woman for every 230 men. On the whole, women represent 2.5 percent of the total workers in the construction and excavation industry, up from 2.1 percent 20 years ago, the Dept. of Labor said.

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The Workers' Union by Flora Tristan 1843 “As the first political analyst to call for an international union of workers (even before Marx) and as the first to link socialism and feminism, Tristan emerges as an important figure in nineteenth-century political and social history. . . . The Workers’ Union allows students of women’s history, working-class history, and European history to understand Tristan’s unique role as a bridge between the utopian and scientific socialists, as a passionate advocate of Christian humanitarianism, and as a feminist who made women’s rights a vital part of working-class programs for social reform.” CHOICE

“A revolutionary classic. . . . In France, Flora Tristan holds a position comparable to that of Mary Wollstonecraft in England and Margaret Fuller in the U.S.--as a pioneering radical feminist.” --Industrial Worker

"well behaved women rarely make history" banner by www.climaterush.co.uk

There is a book launch of Women Working Together on Tuesday March 31st at the

Welsh Church Hall 320 La Trobe Street City

The Age newspaper on Saturday March 28th A2 Section page 29 states Zelda D'Aprano, Moira Rayner & Judy Small will be there. organised by women's web more information telephone: 9486 1808

e-mail: wmnsweb@iprimus.com.au

WOMEN WORKING TOGETHER suffrage and onwards Using the words of feminists and their enemies, this work tells stories of the Women's Movement in Victoria

excerpt: interview with Zelda D’Aprano

We had so much fun. We felt alive, so alive. It was a wonderful experience being part of the Women’s Liberation Movement at that time.