Ark faces jail as bosses go on killing

Adelaide construction worker Ark Tribe returned to the courts of the capitalist class on June 20.

He is being tried on charges that he refused to attend a compulsory and secret interrogation by the thugs of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, created to intimidate workers in the building industry.

In a tragic twist of fate Ark's return to court came just three days after a fellow construction worker was killed at the Adelaide Desalination Plant site (below).

In South Australia, bosses who kill workers may be fined. Multinational giant BHP Billiton was recently fined $75,000 for causing the death of worker Scott Rigg. It's a paltry sum for a giant corporation.

There is no law on industrial manslaughter in SA.

Hence the international consortium building the bitterly opposed desalination plant won't see any of its executives sent to jail for the death at the plant.

But Ark, who refused to be interviewed by the scum of the earth after standing tall over a safety issue at his workplace, faces a mandatory 6 month's jail!

To support Ark, rallies were held in major cities around Australia. Altogether tens of thousands of workers downed tools. For the sake of some minor disruption to the work at the Flinders University site where Ark was employed at the time he was charged, tens of thousands of work hours have been lost to some of the biggest construction comanies in Australia each time Ark has fronted the courts.

And if Ark is jailed, his union the CFMEU has pledged to stop work right around the country.

Photos of the rally follow:

(The oath of the 1854 Eureka rebels at the Ark Tribe Embassy opposite the courtroom).

(Ark Tribe, second right, listens to speeches of support).

(State President of the Australian Education Union Correna Haythorpe details how members proposing to place a moratorium on NAPLAN testing to oppose school league tables were threatened with individual $6000 fines under Gillard's FairWork Act. Gillard, now Prime Minister, also threatened to send parents into schools as strikebreakers.)

(Jamie Newlyn, State Secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia and President of SA Unions. His members stopped work for 24 hours nationally after a death of a member on the Melbourne wharves a week ago.)


("Ark Tribe - here to stay!")

("CFMEU - here to stay!" - with the support of comrades in the AEU, AMWU, ETU, CEPU, IEU, PSA, RBTU, MUA, LHMU present at the rally.)

(And as Ark went into court, we went off to confront the ABCC in its rats nest and vent our anger at its attacks on our class.)