A Worker’s Story.

The basic elements of the story: a worker complains about wage underpayment; his/her employer resorts to violence; co-workers side with worker; conflict ensues; unions intervene.

That story is common in capitalism. The latest version of it only adds secondary elements to the same script: the cast of characters use a foreign language, the action is shot on location in Adelaide.

But it’s not fiction we are talking about. It’s news:

(source)

That was on February 2 (longer footage, including subtitles).

In the following days this is how the story developed:

February 3
Man Arrested Over Attack on Young Woman in Adelaide Bubble Tea Shop After Video Goes Viral
By Bension Siebert

February 4.

 

(source)

Another photo. Although Bension Siebert and Alina Eacott did not find it relevant (how can unions be relevant?), note the red placards in both photos. One sees on them “United Workers Union”, just above “Solidarity”.

(source: United Workers Union twitter)

Again, on Saturday 6:

Protesters Call for Wage Theft Crackdown in Adelaide's Chinatown Following Alleged Assault

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The archetype of which that story is a particular instance?

“Thereupon, the workers begin to form combinations (Trades’ Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there, the contest breaks out into riots.

“Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarian, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.

“This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus, the ten-hours' bill in England was carried.” (source)

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Trade unions are not popular in Australia. It’s trade-unionists, not bosses, who are called “thugs,” after all. Ask Scott Morrison (Prime Minister, COALition), Kate Carnell (Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman viii) or … Peter Hartcher (political editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, the poorer Antipodean cousin of the still mighty New York Times).

 

And if the boss is a small businessman of foreign background, then he can do no wrong: the sensible-middle public loves mum-and-dad capitalists; being of foreign origin makes him untouchable to the identitarian leftish.

More precisely, animus against workers and socialists is not uncommon in the English-speaking world. And Scotty from Marketing has us all in his sights:



Join your union, people. They may not be what they once were, but it’s all we’ve got. Remember: every class struggle is a political struggle.