Australia - you're standing in it
It's a ploughman's plight plate out there plenty of them to pick from.Why does the Ughyer one tickle your fancy?
Sitting at home in locally sourced cheesecloth?Syp
not at all, sitting in pair of sportsbrand shorts that I assume are made of nylon, and not uygher slave labour cotton, how about you?
(didn't pay for the shorts, because I make a conscious decision not to support such corporations btw)
why uyghers?
the sheer scale and dastardlyness of the deeds
the timing
and the relative silence
the hypocrisy
and the fact not a lot of people seem concerned with nike sweatshops all of a sudden...
I'm in my locally sourced hemp loincloth, makes my roids a bit itchy though
Nike sweat shops have been a problem for many a decade a well worn fight.Interesting the timing call though can you elaborate.
Well then take them off Slug.
I did, wife recoiled in disgust, along with the next door neighbours
A Wire brush and Detol is a great remedy for roids just ask Billy Connolly.
hehe
the timing...
2020, ...2021 now actually...
and the ccp have nazi style concentration camps, operating with millions of people contained in them
...literally millions! ...at a minimum...
these camps have twisted science experiments taking place on the inhabitants, widespread sterilisation practices, live organ harvesting, ...and god knows what else... wide scale genocide essentially, ...in 2021! ...right here, right now!
the most twisted of fucked up nazi style nastyness, under our very noses, ...on 'our watch', ...in 2021!!!
inconceivable for me, how this could possibly be happening in the modern world
especially considering the legoins and legions of currently active sjw's, who seem concerned about every possible conceivable minor greviance available... (and a few inconceivable ones...)
yet not the above... why?
yes nike sweatshops are a long running saga, it was once the pet project of 'the left', always talked about, often in the news ...and here and now, those sweatshops appear to be worse than ever, ...ACTUALLY utilising slave labour, ...using REAL slaves! ...used and abused under duress, ...as opposed to the willing, voluntary 'free' slaves of the 90's, working for coupla bucks a day...
but now there appears less interest than ever... why?
then there's colin kappernackered, the poster boy of blm, the symbol man of the fight against the slavery, an indisputable brutal slavery of the past, a somewhat aged case of slavery, but a noble cause nonetheless...
...and there he is, sponsored by nike! ...the literal modern day slave drivers... is that not bizarre?
a company buying good will, supporting a worthy cause, ...a somewhat aged worthy cause... whilst practicing that very same abhorent practice in the modern context... bizarre is too kind, it's shameful of the highest order, and absolutely beggars belief...
it seems to me that nike have bought a kind of silence from certain quarters, not in a transactional sense, but in a 'scratch my back...' '...let's not upset the apple cart' sorf of sense...
maybe it's just cooperation...
maybe it's just an allegiance of convenience...
maybe it's certain folk conveniently turning a blind eye (...a one good eye blind eye...) to a similar ideolgical view of the world...
maybe it's neoliberalism, and the ensuing corporatisation of social causes, resulting in an ngo smorgasboard that has created a carbo loaded feast of hot potatoes...
maybe it's the davos class, generously philanthropic, but ruthlessly tax dodging, and their 'disaster capitalism' model that has developed as a result of the above, a model that many good people are now angrily vehemently questioning... finally!
maybe it's all of the above...
whatever it is, ...it sux, and a heap of people will not just shut up and fall in line, like the whole apparatus expects us to, ...needs us to...
they can get stuffed
'conflict of interest' has never been more applicable
ironically
again...
talk about 'legacies' all you want, how about some concern for real world real time atrocities?
(I guess we could all just turn a blind eye, ...and then add it to the greviance industry list in about 20 years time... or not...)
I think the Falun Gong are cool cats
not really my trip, but cool cats, so I'll read their 'propaganda' with interest
I found it most interesting when a chick from the 'unbiased' abc did a hit piece on them and the epoch times, not cool...
I think the world really turned to shit when we started to turn a blind eye to the ccp and their twistedness, ...for one reason or another...
it started with tibet, 'the left' ...once upon a time, also used to regularly call out china on their treatment of tibetans, ...big time... and then they didn't...
blame obama, from memory, it was his call to let that wound fester
when you turn your back on the de la lama to concentrate on 'other interests', you know you're on the wrong path
' ...those memes don't make themselves, no matter how lame they are...'
CNN on the other hand...
absolute gold standard
(and you don't even need to manipulate them... they make them for you...)
https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/035/101/CNN_Mostly_Peac...
I wonder how many "surf"brands are involved in this heinous practice?any idea
most twisted of fucked up nazi style nastyness, under our very noses, ...on 'our watch', ...in 2021
inconceivable for me, how this could possibly be happening in the modern world.
Pick a plight.Pick an agenda.Pick a fight.Return to sender.
"Ask the yanks if they can shoot and pick fruit then your in."
Great "Zen" like comment Optimist, thanks for the laugh.
NSW Gestapo at it again. Not even The Qld cops under Sir Joh would go this low.
https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/family-defends-byron-bay-mother-whose-bab...
Love this article. Please tell me that Australians realise the ABC is nothing but Fake Left propagandists at heart . The ABC is the perfect weapon to deploy on the masses to quell class disquiet. By focusing on identity issues they are able to distract from the issues which really affect our population. namely the instruments used to entrench and enhance inequality and class divisions.
From Macrobusiness :
“There is no such thing as a worker shortage. There are only price movements to reflect the relative availability of labour. This is a maxim that years of trickle-down economics brainwashing has erased from the Australian press.
We would expect to see this kind of partial analysis from the AFR, which is has been governed by overly simplistic trickle-down economic thought since the appointment of Michael Stutuchbury as editor. Hence, we see a story like the following today in which an employer has a good old whinge about lazy workers:
Rashid Khan, the chief executive of Khan’s Supermarkets, wants to hire 50 workers.
But, he says, the unemployed are bludgers and frauds, preferring JobSeeker.
Only foreign workers have any get up and go.
Where we should not expect to see such tripe is the ABC:
“The worker shortage crisis is forcing some farmers to move towards more automation, replacing seasonal employment opportunities in Australia long term.
Potato farmers have welcomed the steep rise in demand for their produce since the start of the pandemic, but many are left with the impossible task of securing enough workers.
Virginia Farm Produce chief financial officer Jessica Snaddon said they saw a “huge uplift” in demand for their fresh potatoes, but “since the working holiday-maker pool dried up” due to the pandemic, sourcing labour was their biggest struggle.”
This is not, as the ABC would have it, a problem. It is EXACTLY HOW IT SHOULD WORK.
If capital needs labor and it’s not available then it should hike prices to attract it. The rising wages increase demand more widely. The rising wages then trigger the drive for more efficiency of production via automation.
This culminates in two outcomes. Productivity rises and so do profits. Those still working get higher wages. All are better off.
Sure, there may be fewer jobs at the one firm initially but the higher profits and wages trigger more investment and demand which reallocates resources into new jobs, so on and so forth, to the advancement of all.
Consider the alternative scenario that the ABC is implicitly campaigning for. Cheap foreign labour is imported. Wages don’t move at all. The farmer does well for a while but if he’s in a tradable sector, and he is, then his efficiency will fall and cheaper imports rise. The farmer’s capital base erodes.
This is disproductivity. Wage-earners go backward and demand turns chronically weak. Interest rates crater and asset price rise. The worker now can’t buy house let alone get a pay rise. Speculators prosper as workers and the real economy are hollowed out. Inequality skyrockets.
Why has the ABC, supposedly the bastion of leftist or even centrist thinking in Australia, become the useful idiot of this short-term economic stupidity? Because all it sees is the race issue in less jobs for foreign workers.
This is a microcosm of everything that has gone wrong with the contemporary fake left. “
that is true.
sypcan where is evidence of atrocities against muslim urguars?
is it from the WMD mob? ...usa media?
Blowin - fake left ABC issues aside my simplistic take on fruit and fruit picking labour pre Covid is this.
I pay $10 for say 5 peaches at the supermarket which is $2 a peach. Now by the sounds of things the farmer and fruit picker don't seem to be making any money out of my expensive fucking peach. So who is??? And why don't they throw a bit of money back in the bucket to make fruit picking a financially attractive employment prospect. As I said a simplistic view from an office boy who knows nothing about agriculture.
If people are available to work but choosing not to work in a particular role or industry, do not the terms and conditions need to change to make the particular role or industry more attractive for people?
Gary - I’m no expert in commercial peach farming either. But I think that the approach to the conundrum varies upon the economic ideology prevalent at the time.
Under a pure Capitalist ideology the peach farmer needs to either automate or pay the workers more to complete the harvest. To cover this cost he might need to demand a higher return from the crew he sells to who might then pass on the increased cost to consumers. If the increase in cost is not viable at any stage of the chain then peach farming is not viable and the land needs to be turned to a more suitably profitable and productive use.
Under a social democracy- such as the sort Australia used to be - the peach farmer would receive subsidies and tax breaks from the government so that the project would benefit the people of Australia through exports , higher wages and food independence. The finger of government was on the scales tipping the favour towards Australians.
Under a neoliberal ideology the peach farmer receives subsidies from the government in the form of lowered wage costs through mass immigration providing continuous excess labour supply* . The benefit of the arrangement falls on the farmer ( Capital ) at the expense of the Australian people. The finger of the government is again on the scales but now in favour of Capital and never in the interests of the Australian people.
* More people competing for the same job = lower wages.
Is anyone else watching the 3 part series The Pacific: In the Wake of Captain Cook on Monday nights of ABC TV?
Part two aired last night but parts one and two are now available on iview.
https://iview.abc.net.au/show/pacific-in-the-wake-of-captain-cook-with-s...
Highly recommended.
finally!!
some common sense pervails...
(dare I say common sense)
"...The development came after a coalition of 180 human rights organisations banded together in an open letter to world governments, urging they boycott the 2022 Games to “ensure they are not used to embolden the Chinese government’s appalling rights abuses and crackdowns on dissent”.
“The IOC foolishly decided on having the Winter Olympics and Paralympics in Beijing (so) we are forced to speak out,” Kalden Obara, president of the Tibetan Community in Japan, said at a Tokyo news conference last week.
“If China doesn’t stop human rights violations in Tibet and the neighbouring regions, then China should not be allowed to host this 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.”
China’s treatment of its Uyghur Muslim population in the Western Xinjian region is at the forefront of the international disagreement. The government has been accused of holding over a million Uyghurs and other minorities in camps, collecting large amounts of international backlash."
...and from good ol beijing biden...
"...US President Joe Biden’s administration refused to comment on whether the United States supported moving or boycotting the games in the current climate.
“We’re not currently talking about changing our posture or our plans as it relates to the Beijing Olympics,” White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said on Wednesday, before referring to the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee for further comment."
gutless fucker
bought beijing biden?
beijing bought biden?
let's hope morrison has more balls... (if any)
and, shame shame shame IOC
https://www.news.com.au/sport/olympics/china-will-sanction-countries-pla...
and happyppl...
really?
I think you need to broaden your media landscape...
.. further to blowin’s points above
https://www.smh.com.au/environment/sustainability/rampant-expansion-of-b...
“It costs his farm about $20 to produce a 1.5 kilogram tray of blueberries that he can sell for $21.50 if he's lucky”
an industry dependent on slave labour promoting harmful land use practises that are detrimental to the catchment, waterways and oceans.
who’s winning here?
There is a number of problems with fruit picking.
1. It's a seasonal job, while most people want reliable all year round work in the same location, so it's not attractive to most people.
2. It's mostly paid per KG or by volume, if you were a farmer and paid by the hour at a decent rate, you would lose at heap of money or go broke, especially these days with people distracted by their phones.
3. lots of fruit picking you can't automate.
Lift pay rates and cost of fruit goes up and if its competing against imports at lower prices, then lots of people will buy the cheaper fruit, unless a huge difference in quality.
The real problem Australia has is our min wage is so high, second highest in the world but was number 1 for 2019-20
When you are functioning in a global market this is a problem.
Hard to see much of our fruit producing industry surviving long term.
You're right Indo, shocking problem we have here in Australia that we don't have an underclass of working poor. I mean, really we should be emulating the US in this regard, it's helped further enrich so many in the upper classes.
At least we know for sure there is no social / cultural costs to it.
JQ - how do you reckon the US came to have an underclass whilst Australia ( sorta ) managed to avoid it ?
How did the US Union system get undermined so much more readily than the Australian union system do you think ?
The US should have been a working man’s utopia with its massive industrial base. Why not ?
.... Indo..
1. Thats true. but anecdotal reports by many during Covid indicate a high desire by many local residents to pick work if a) they could find a sympathetic employer willing to employ a non-backpacker and b) at a legal wage and conditions.
2. Thats true. Which is why the whole thing is perverse. Family (horticulture) farmers (who’d be one) only choice to make a quid is by paying wages to unscrupulous middle man at dodgy rates for returns that barely break even at overwhelming costs to the environment (in the case i linked above - BB farms north coast).
3. That’s true.. for now perhaps. which begs the question…why do it.. especially if you are a savvy business person. Why should our farmers / businesses compete in a global market where our competitors are heavily subsidised by foreign governments in comparison including Europe, US etc. We like to bash our farmers for their taxpayer handouts but they lift above their weight in many cases in global comparisons
No the real problem is productivity, not wages. A reliance on below market (illegal) labour to subsidise a industry that on which it is dependent, is not smart.
Perhaps a better metric is cost of living (inequality) not min wage. which is what the RBA is trying to address (albeit hopelessly). Facto / Memo posted a good article on this from the the new daily .
It is a global market but not one that is in our favour unless of course you are the 10% that depend on unequal market measures.
https://wid.world/world/#sptinc_p90p100_z/US;FR;DE;CN;ZA;GB;WO/last/eu/k...
I wouldn’t worry about our fruit producing industry. cash poor. asset rich.
Regarding fruit picking didn't we hear the same arguments abut retail jobs?
Retail whinged for years about the relationship between weekend penalty rates and profitability when in truth the real problem was largely the rents charged by landlords.
With stone and citrus fruit growers I'd like to ask them what price are they now paying for water, assuming they can actually buy it, now that the water that once flowed freely down our rivers has been "corporatised" into a "water market" where the highest bidder (speculator) including non farming financiers win (note: a Chinese non farming investment firm owns massive rights to water in the Murray-Goulburn).
Further I would like to also ask if the cost of labour is so high for fruit farmers they must break the law and pay below award rates why is it wool growers paying shearers award rates can make a quid and the global market accepts it? Perhaps sheep are less dependent on water than fruit??
The cost of water has to be a major factor here for stone and citrus fruit growers but given the LNP has mostly but not entirely fucked water up lets just blame wage rates like we did in the retail sector.
What are we up to now? Workchoices Mark 3 or is it 4?
Many Horticulture crops are Perennial that require watering in good and bad. Cost of water correlates. Notice amount of bores and Dams being built. Stock can be sold and bought to suit climatic conditions and thus less drain on resources during hard times.
Water market a can of worms. Hence almond market booming in southern MD basin. High value crop to suit cost of water despite its intensive use
Sexy time corpo media 'cut-through' comin' right up?
Yeah, right.
Time for another Chy-na story drop, methinks.
And defo when Scotty and the boys fuck up.
Again.
It’s a start but until the ALP start prioritising Australians over potential immigrants by capping immigration numbers the rest is just fiddling at the margins. Neoliberal lite.
Fruit picking work is in no way comparable to retail jobs
Retail jobs aren't seasonal in odd locations which is the major issue, not to mention repetitive physical labour out in the elements.
And retail work has always been based on an hourly rate, because shops are small spaces where employee can't avoid doing their job, fruit picking is different, you don't have someone watching you, if you are getting paid an hourly rate you can do fuck all.
This problem isn't going away no matter who is in power, it was already a problem when labor were in power they didn't fix it.
Increasing pay rates might help to some extent but that cost needs to be passed on to the consumer, if there is no imported product on the shelve cheaper you can get away with this, but if there is an imported product of a decent quality sold cheaper, then a lot of people will go for the cheaper product.
I doubt an increase in wages will still fix the problem though, just because of the work being seasonal and strange locations and physically hard repetitive work.
Only reason backpackers will do it, is they have schemes that reward them, plus there is an end game for backpackers, that next destination and keep their travels continuing.
Then workers from Asia or South Pacific, even if underpaid are making money they could only dream about back home, not to mention many are use to hard work out in the elements.
Damn! Bit early for Beer Bingo!
Well put by another online commenter :
“Labor won’t touch overall immigration numbers, why would they?
The old adage still applies. To the Right, immigrants are cheap labour, to the Left, they are cheap votes.
Keneally’s pivot on immigration and preferring permanent migrants over temporary is driven by a desire to get back the electoral advantage from the Libs.
The Liberals deliberately shifted the dial to temporary migration for two reasons:
1. Temporary migrants are easier to exploit
2. Temporary migrants can’t vote
Labor knows it must bring in more permanent migrants who can become voting citizens so it can regain its electoral advantage through its talent for ethnic branchstacking and racially targeted campaign tactics (though the libs are getting better at both, admittedly)
It’s merely a war over the type of migrant. Both sides silently agree that continuing mass immigration is probably the only way to prevent the debt ponzi from collapsing“
Who's Anthony albanese???
A testosterone-free , milquetoast boomer who looks like his only form of nutrition is still his mum’s mammary and who betrayed the Australian working class by being pro-neoliberalism and by allowing a tubby , unelectable, shit-stained fucktard of a Prime Minister free reign to run our nation into the ground .
That’s who Albo is.
geez we're spoiled for choice with those 2 cuts of prime beef
and by prime beef i mean buckets of tripe
Then there’s the next rung down - Peter “ Potato Nazi “ Dutton and Tanya “ Rolled Gold Wokester “ Plibersek respectively.
Fck me dead. We’ve got no chance.
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/exxon-set-to-close-altona-re...
Altona to close, that leaves just 2 refineries in Australia: Viva @ Geelong and Ampol @ Lytton QLD.
Cheers for the carton of Sparks, you tabloid regurgitating saps. Now home to taste the spoils.
Yew!
The "I can't believe it's not politics" thread.