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Issue No. 172 | 28 March 2003 |
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Vale: Rule of Law
Poetry: If I Were a Rich Man Interview: League of Nations Industrial: 20/20 Hindsight Organising: On The Buses Unions: National Focus History: The Banner Room International: The Slaughter Continues Legal: A Legal Case For War? Culture: Singing For The People Review: The Hours Poetry: I Wanna Bomb Saddam Satire: Diuretic Makes Warne's Excuses Look Thin
The Soapbox The Locker Room Guest Report Seduction Bosswatch
 Statement on Labor's Response to WarTom's TantieShameless ExtremistsBarbarians at the GateMore War CommentBack-Slapping Bob
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News Uncle Sam and the Union Busters
Stevedoring Services of America (SSA) has never worked in a military war zone but is an old hand at battling workers. America's largest marine terminal operator was considered the key corporate player in last year's bitter lockout of waterfront workers. Speaking last September, ILWU officials fingered SSA as the moving force behind the lockout. "While most employers want to work with us to implement new technologies, SSA undermines negotiations because their primary interest is breaking the union," spokesman Steve Stallone told the San Francisco Chronicle. "It's ideological with these people. They are idologically anti-union and anti-ILWU." Last month, the company was one of four cited by Washington State for forcing watersiders to remain on the jobs for up to 17 consecutive hours without rest breaks. SSA is the focus of a major protest campaign in Chittagong, Bangladesh, where union members have engaged in stoppages, hunger strikes and demonstrations against plans for a $500 million terminal that would cost many their jobs. The Bush administration has handed out a string of multi-million contracts for the rebuilding of Iraq to US corporations without any competitive tendering process. Kellog Brown Root, a subsidiary of vice president Dick Cheney's Halliburton, was contracted to put out oil well fires before the conflict even started. New York Times columnist, Maureen Dowd, put it like this: "Halliburton and other big construction companies that give to the Republicans now stand to make millions in contracts for reconstructing Iraq and reviving its oil industry." The US Agency for International Development justified excluding all but American firms from the first round of Iraqi tendering on the basis that "there are classified documents they have to see". Australian Defence Minister Robert Hill has backed highly-unusual trade restriction. Solomons Unwilling The Solomon Islands have asked to be removed from the US's increasingly-flexible coalition of the willing. When US president George Bush first used the term, he indicated it would cover a broad coalition of nations willing to wage war on Iraq outside UN auspices. However, when only three - the US, UK and Australia - signed up for that proposition it was apparently extended to anyone who had ever given him a nudge or a wink. Even that level of commitment was too much for the Solomon Islands when they learned, this week, that US officials had their name on its list. "The Government is completely unaware of such statements being made, therefor wishes to disassociate itself from the report," The New Zealand Herald quoted Prime Minister, Allan Kemakeza, as saying. However, the tiny Pacific state of Palau has confirmed its place on the list, offering ports and airfields to units taking part in the Iraq offensive. Other states pledged to the fight for democracy, according to the US, include Kuwait, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda, Iceland, Mongolia, the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia.
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