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Issue No. 126

01 March 2002

E D I T O R I A L

I Don�t Like Sprouts
I've always thought brussel sprouts tasted like reconstituted vomit, so the latest smart-arse advertising campaign for the Clearview pension fund doesn�t really wash with me.

F E A T U R E S

Interview: Clean Hands
Susan Ryan was Labor's first female Minister, today she represents the trustees responsible for our super funds, where the move to socially responsible investment is happening, albeit slowly.

Corporate: Out of Asia
The decision by America�s biggest employee pension fund to pull out of a number of Asian countries because of their poor labour rights and civil liberties standards has sent shock waves through the region.

Unions: Tears, Real And Crocodile, At The Ansett Wake
It�s ended in heartbreak but the campaign to keep Ansett flying should really be remembered for the courage, determination and decency of the airline�s devoted staff writes Noel Hester.

Economics: Labour�s Capital: Individual Or Collective?
More Australians own shares than ever before, asks Frank Stilwell, but is it the best way to share the wealth?

History: Mardi Gras: The Biggest Labour Festival?
The struggle for the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender workers has been part of the wider struggle for workers rights, in Australia and internationally.

International: Driving A Hard Bargain
Public sector workers in Korea are using the last twelve months before local and national elections � and the up-coming soccer World Cup � as bargaining chips in their campaign against privatisation of public utilities.

Review: In Bed With a Sub-Machine Gun
In this extract from his new book, Night Train to Granada, GB Harrision travels from Drepression era Newcastle to Spain under Franco's heel.

Satire: Whitlam Forgives Kerr: "At Least He Didn't Dismiss A Rape Victim"
Gough Whitlam claimed today that the man who dismissed him is no longer Australia�s worst Governor-General. �Sure he dismissed me, but at least he never dismissed a child rape victim like Governor-General Hollingworth,� said Whitlam.

Poetry: Dear Mother
Thanks to the generosity of the Defence Signals Directorate, Workers Online has obtained intercepts of recent communications between Australia and London. A transcript is below:

N E W S

Unions Stats Snow Job

BHP Strike Over Super Control

Some Light Reflects Off Ansett

Net Porn Highlights Privacy Lag

Mad Monk To Float Down Oxford Street

Burma the Next Chernobyl

Govt Breaches Its Own Guidelines

Sartor Policies Irk Council Workers

Service Fee Push Hots Up in Qld

Casino Workers Show Their Hands

Hotel Bosses Have Full House But Cry Poor

Airport Screeners Win Training Rights

CFMEU Korean Activist Honoured

Support For Fijian Union Battle

Beer Cold and Prawns Peeled

Activists Notebook

C O L U M N S

The Soapbox
Grumpy Old Men (And Bettina)
Scratch the surface of most conservative commentators and you'll find a lapsed Leftie, Paul Norton argues.

The Locker Room
Black and White
The Australian way of playing rugby union, cricket and the development of our own game, Australian Rules, were profoundly influenced by a forgotten man.

Week in Review
Gridlocked
Jim Marr loooks at a week when trains, planes and ships of shame all threatened to come to a grinding halt.

L E T T E R S

More on Harry Bridges

Harry Bridges was a great fighter for US workers, and this naturally made him very unpopular with US governments and security agencies. During WWII he was directly accused of sabotaging the war effort because of his communism (even at the time the Soviet Union was facing the might of Nazi forces). The US had been trying to deport Harry for years before this.

Harry eventually came to an agreement with authorities on the war effort, as detailed in the biography by Charles P. Larrowe (New York: Lawrence Hill, 1972)

A bit more about how this agreement came about is in Alexander Cockburn and Jeff St Clair's White Out: the CIA, Drugs and the Press (Verso, 1998). The book details the leading role the CIA has played in the increase in illicit drug trading throughout the world since WWII. Harry was hit in the early stages of US intelligence agencies hooking up with the worst elements of any society to further their version of "the national interest."

The US was concerned about sabotage on the docks during the war, and immigrant labourers were suspected of assisting the Germans and the Italians with information about ship movements. At the time Lucky Luciano was a resident of a high security US prison, and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONA) had the bright idea of using him to stop the sabotage.

Whilst Lucky was still in prison, he still controlled a large chunk of US organised crime, which at the time was extending the drug business. Luciano had made three attempts to win clemency up to 1942, but he got the word out that he was willing to help the ONI. This bore fruit and he was moved to a lower security prison where he was regularly visited by his trusted lieutenants Meyer Lansky and Joey Lanza and they worked out how to handle the docks. Many other Mafia commanders made the trip to his prison "so that the inmate might assist the war effort" as the commissioner of prisons put it.

The navy was worried not just about sabotage, but about more traditional US administration concerns - strikes and organising efforts on the docks that Harry was co-ordinating. Harry was "encouraging dockworkers to leave the mob-infested International Longshoremen's Association and join his International Longshoremen and Warehousemen's Union.

The ONI and the Mob knew Harry as Brooklyn Bridge. A taped conversation between Lanza and Haffenden (from ONI).

Haffenden: How about the Brooklyn Bridge thing?

Lanza: Nothing on that

Haffenden: I don't want any trouble on the waterfront during the crucial times.

Lanza: You won't have any. I'll see to that. I'll give you a ring. We'll get together.

Harry's strike was duly broken by the Mob. When Harry came to an organising rally in New York City shortly after, Lanza handled matters personally. "I had a fight with him, I belted him, and that was that."

"Between 1942 and 1946 there were 26 unsolved murders of labour organisers and dockworkers, presumed murdered and dumped in the river by the Mafia, working in collusion with Naval Intelligence.

The eventual outcome of Luciano's support for the war effort was his return to Sicily to take control of the whole island pretty much after World War II, with US backing, again to stop post-war communism, and thus ensuring the mafia kept control and expanded the drug trade and other illegal activities. Cockburn and St Clair outline this, as does Peter Robb in his terrific Midnight in Sicily (Duffy & Snellgrove, 1998). Of course, some of the main targets of Luciano's associates in Sicily were communist organisers who were trying get land reform and improve the lot of peasants in Sicily.

Harry was criticised by dockers for his compromises on conditions for workers during the war. Being a committed communist, his approach followed the fortunes of the Soviet Union, and thus was a wholehearted supporter of war against the Nazis after the invasion. This was not a popular position when he was arguing for an increase in productivity without an appropriate pay increase. However, being a communist in the US didn't any easier. His major efforts were on the Pacific Coast of the US, where despite his support of productivity surges, he was always seen as a communist first and foremost, not a patriot.

Neale Towart

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