#FBFBEF;line-height:120%;">The United States and United Kingdom have even more inegalitarian domestic economies than many of the countries they trade with. Fifty-eight per cent of the nations that Australia's consumption depends on have greater internal equality than Australia. Nine per cent of countries we trade with have more egalitarian economies. This counters the overall trend of developed countries having more egalitarian domestic economies than those they trade with. Russia, however, despite high inequality within its border, in 2010 had the lowest inequality footprint in the world because approximately 62 percent of its international trade was with Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, where inequality is low. Commodities producing countries tend also to produce inequality. Globalisation does not have a positive effect on inequality. The findings come from the first ever ‘inequality footprint’ of nations, created by researchers at the University of Sydney, demonstrating the link that each country’s domestic economic activity has to income distribution elsewhere in the world. The results, expressed more subtly, are published in the journal PLOS ONE today from research led by the University of Sydney’s Integrated Sustainability Analysis group in the School of Physics. “The footprint maps the movement of commodities around the world. It is a new tool which can assist businesses, government and non-government organisations in understanding the complex dynamics of inequality and trade,” said Ali Alsamawi, a PhD candidate in the School of Physics and lead author of the PLOS paper (see attached).

See also, BBC 2012 article by Charlotte Pritchard, "Is one in eight Australians really poor?", from which this photo comes.

The study uses the employment and household income accounts and (Gini) indexes of income distribution for 187 countries, from 1990 to 2010. It introduces the concept of an inequality footprint – taking into account the inequality of both the internal and external workforce required to satisfy the consumption demands of a given country. The results show that most developed countries, with their international trade taken into account, have less internal inequality than the countries they trade with.

“The United States and United Kingdom are notable exceptions to this. Among developed countries only these nations have within-country inequality higher than their inequality footprint,” Alsamawi said.

Forty million of the 70 million workers from outside the USA who are responsible for many of the products Americans consume, come from countries with high inequality. Despite this, America’s internal inequality is still higher than the inequality footprint representing its international trade. The same applies to the United Kingdom. The United States showed an increasing inequality footprint during the Bill Clinton era and especially after the NAFTA treaty came into force. It has slightly decreased during Obama’s presidency. In the United Kingdom the inequality footprint increased after Tony Blair left power and also jumped after the global financial crisis and recession. Australia and Japan are the only countries with comparable levels of trade activity to the UK and USA. Forty percent of Australia’s international trade activity is with China, a country with relatively high inequality.

“But compared to America and the UK our internal inequality is still much less, giving us an overall footprint of relatively high equality - on a par with Germany but less equal than Japan or Canada,” Alsamawi said.

By contrast Russia has high inequality within its border but in 2010 it had the lowest inequality footprint in the world because approximately 62 percent of its international trade was with Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, where inequality is low. That situation will have greatly changed since trade sanctions have been imposed by some of its trading partners in the context of the war in the Ukraine (more than 20 percent of Russia's external workforce came from Ukraine in 2010). Commodities producing countries tend also to produce inequality Commodities that are inequality-intensive, affecting the internal inequality of the nations producing them and the footprint of the nations they trade with, include electronic components, chemicals, fertilizers, minerals, and agricultural products.

“In the past it was assumed that globalisation would raise the income of almost all nations and help redress inequality but evidence suggests no obvious relationship between a country’s participation in globalisation and positive changes in inequality,” said University of Sydney’s Dr Joy Murray, an author on the paper.

“We do not argue whether trade between more and less equal countries is a social good or ill but have provided a robust, global account of inequality and trade upon which further economic analysis may be built.”

The authors of The Inequality Footprints of Nations are Ali Alsamawi, Dr Joy Murray, Professor Manfred Lenzen and Daniel Moran, all from the University of Sydney’s Centre for Integrated Sustainability and Keiichiro Kanemoto from Tohoku University.

The results, expressed more subtly, are published in the journal PLOS ONE today from research led by the University of Sydney’s Integrated Sustainability Analysis group in the School of Physics.

“The footprint maps the movement of commodities around the world. It is a new tool which can assist businesses, government and non-government organisations in understanding the complex dynamics of inequality and trade,” said Ali Alsamawi, a PhD candidate in the School of Physics and lead author of the PLOS paper (see attached).

See also, BBC 2012 article by Charlotte Pritchard, "Is one in eight Australians really poor?", from which this photo comes.

The study uses the employment and household income accounts and (Gini) indexes of income distribution for 187 countries, from 1990 to 2010.

It introduces the concept of an inequality footprint – taking into account the inequality of both the internal and external workforce required to satisfy the consumption demands of a given country.

The results show that most developed countries, with their international trade taken into account, have less internal inequality than the countries they trade with.

“The United States and United Kingdom are notable exceptions to this. Among developed countries only these nations have within-country inequality higher than their inequality footprint,” Alsamawi said.

Forty million of the 70 million workers from outside the USA who are responsible for many of the products Americans consume, come from countries with high inequality.

Despite this, America’s internal inequality is still higher than the inequality footprint representing its international trade. The same applies to the United Kingdom.

The United States showed an increasing inequality footprint during the Bill Clinton era and especially after the NAFTA treaty came into force. It has slightly decreased during Obama’s presidency.

In the United Kingdom the inequality footprint increased after Tony Blair left power and also jumped after the global financial crisis and recession.

Australia and Japan are the only countries with comparable levels of trade activity to the UK and USA. Forty percent of Australia’s international trade activity is with China, a country with relatively high inequality.

“But compared to America and the UK our internal inequality is still much less, giving us an overall footprint of relatively high equality - on a par with Germany but less equal than Japan or Canada,” Alsamawi said.

By contrast Russia has high inequality within its border but in 2010 it had the lowest inequality footprint in the world because approximately 62 percent of its international trade was with Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, where inequality is low.

That situation will have greatly changed since trade sanctions have been imposed by some of its trading partners in the context of the war in the Ukraine (more than 20 percent of Russia's external workforce came from Ukraine in 2010).

Commodities producing countries tend also to produce inequality

Commodities that are inequality-intensive, affecting the internal inequality of the nations producing them and the footprint of the nations they trade with, include electronic components, chemicals, fertilizers, minerals, and agricultural products.

“In the past it was assumed that globalisation would raise the income of almost all nations and help redress inequality but evidence suggests no obvious relationship between a country’s participation in globalisation and positive changes in inequality,” said University of Sydney’s Dr Joy Murray, an author on the paper.

“We do not argue whether trade between more and less equal countries is a social good or ill but have provided a robust, global account of inequality and trade upon which further economic analysis may be built.”

The authors of The Inequality Footprints of Nations are Ali Alsamawi, Dr Joy Murray, Professor Manfred Lenzen and Daniel Moran, all from the University of Sydney’s Centre for Integrated Sustainability and Keiichiro Kanemoto from Tohoku University.

What's different about this petition to tackle overpopulation in Australia? It is published on the Australian Wildlife Protection Council (AWPC) site. AWPC, it seems, is the only wildlife group that remains real and courageous when it comes to protecting our fauna. AWPC is entirely staffed by volunteers, is Australia-wide, and hasn't just become some kind of professional fund-raising organisation. This one comes from Matt Moran of Brisbane, Australia and is posted on the Australian Wildlife Protection Council site here.

Environment

We are all here for a limited time, but when we have to work harder and harder to stay in one place, that is not really living. Who is stealing our time? Were it not for the cost of housing, Australians would need to work only half the hours they have to and manufacturers would halve their costs! We have only to consider how, in two generations, Australians have gone from needing one income to purchase a house to a situation where both spouses must work and pay for others to bring up any children they may find a brief instant to produce. The writer reviews two works on time-poverty: one a heavyweight and the other a lightweight and remarks that time is money. Time is life. See the film or watch the trailer; feel the truth: spot the enemy.

Pocock et al Time Bomb book disappointingly shallow

I rushed out and bought Barbara Pocock, Natalie Skinner and Philiippa Williams' book, Time Bomb, NewSouth, NSWU Press, 2012, because it seemed like such a great title and subject. I should have been warned off by the fact that it was recommended by Geraldine Doogue, a great apologist for growth and economic neo-liberalism.

Disappointingly, Pocock et al's book fails to make some blindingly obvious points. It phaffs around the edges. I wonder if the authors simply did not see beyond the superficial or they thought that the publishing market could not take the heat. Are they somehow placed in the eye of the storm where all is quiet whilst the damage rages all around them. The book is published by the University of New South Wales, which makes me wonder again why universities these days turn out such dross. Is polite comment and a few boring graphs a prerequisite for a doctoral thesis these days? What's the market? The anguished New Class?

Could be.

What really got to me was the fact that the authors don't ever link the ridiculously rising cost of living to the time-poorness of Australians. They don't even mention the cost of housing, which is easily the greatest thief of time. Okay, they give two pages (pp. 130-131) to the idea that 'for a minority of young people, housing is a significant issue.'

Housing is the Number One issue! Were it not for the cost of housing, Australians would need to work only half the hours they have to and manufacturers would halve their costs! We have only to consider how, in two generations, Australians have gone from needing one income to purchase a house to a situation where both spouses must work and pay for others to bring up any children they may find a brief instant to produce. And then there are the other Australians, who live on the streets, sell drugs and beg on trains to survive.

Why do people publish this kind of much ado about nothing? Are they just marketing titles at airports which people buy, read the first chapter of, and bin on their way out of the arrivals door?

In Time - the movie - very deep, very true, very intelligent

In contrast, the movie In Time was a (for lack of a new word) brilliant dramatization of how the parasitic rich are thieves of time and that life is measured out in money. In Time is about a world just like ours where the poor die young and spend their precious lives hanging around begging for work or for credit from a rarer class of landlords by any other name that owns the means of production and all the assets.

"Four minutes for a cup of coffee? Yesterday it was only three!" a customer exclaims in a down-market take away shop.

Time is money. Money is time. Time is life.

People might recognise the metaphor more easily if the short-lived class were from the traditional poor and overcrowded countries but the poor in this film are mostly unremarkable by their colour or their accent. They could be Americans, Australians, Canadians, British. The wealthy live almost indefinitely in this film, while the poor must pay by the hour for their lives after the age of 21. Most people accept an ideology called the Demographic Transition where peoples of 'undeveloped countries' are supposed to normally not live past 35 or so, until 'we' bring development to them. So if the film had been made on the edges of the Ganges River, perhaps no-one would have been startled. But this was a film about the future that many candobetter readers would recognise as Now. In Australia.

This is a short article because I don't have much time - frankly. Maybe readers can add to this with their experiences and their responses to In Time.

It is surprising to pick up a book about wealth statistics and find that it segues so readily into another about psychopathology in young girls. The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone takes a revealing look at how wealth is distributed within different developed countries and Reviving Ophelia illustrates the decline of women's rights in the face of aggressive pornography and its effect on girls. Children and the general public were not widely exposed to explicit pornography and sexual sadism in the ‘traditional’ mass media of the industrial age, although these notions were commonly implicit in images and concepts used for marketing all kinds of things. Between that time and now, in 2011, the depiction of women almost exclusively as victims and objects of violence and pornography, explicitly and for that sole reason, has become a global business which operates 24/7. The implicit violence and sexualisation of women in ordinary marketing has also continued. At the same time, the official message is that western women don’t need Feminism anymore because equality has prevailed.

Some people are more equal than others, especially if they are not women

In the Australian Financial Review, September 13, 2011, Deidre Macken writes, “After a week when economic statistics made a lie of our feelings of being worse off, it seems like an opportunistic time to check how good we are at reading ourselves. Obviously we are not good judges at assessing our economic well-being. Repeat after me – we are a lucky people, living in a country that’s never been luckier.”[1]

Without going into the adequacy of the indicators she used but does not reference, was Deidre talking about averaged statistics or was she talking about the way they are distributed throughout the nation?

I chose a quote from a female financial journalist to introduce the feminist implications of the theories of two books. One was published nearly two decades ago and the other was published last year. The earlier one is by Mary Pipher, with the title of Reviving Ophelia: Saving the selves of adolescent girls. It was published by Riverhead Books, New York, 1994. The second book is by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. It’s title is The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, and it was published by Penguin in 2010.

Both books are about the impacts of inequality as you and I experience it, rather than the global economics of inequality between different countries by which the first and the third world are often defined. I found these books interesting particularly in the light of the recent inquiry into human rights in Australia, which ignored Australian citizens’ rights by concentrating on international rights. Citizens’ rights require active democracy and laws to facilitate this, whereas global human rights are relative abstractions, requiring recognition by national governments in hard-to-enforce treaties.

The Spirit Level: Why Equality is better for everyone

Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, Penguin 2010 beg the question of defining countries as rich or poor according to their average wealth. The book points out that, although Australia or the United States might have relatively large GDPs for their total populations, large sections of those societies are politically, materially, socially and physically disempowered and disadvantaged by their relative poverty. The authors imply that these differences drive seriously negative outcomes in almost any area you care to think of. The more unequal you are with the people geographically close to you – in your neighbourhood, your state, your nation - the more anxious and dysfunctional you are likely to be. Inequality is actually an indicator of relative unhappiness and that unhappiness is linked to many social and physical ills, including violence and obesity.

Further on we will relate the lesser condition of women as a subclass within these unequal nations.

Wilkinson and Pickett suggest that, rather than comparing “rich countries with poor countries” we should compare rich countries and then look inside them to see how well they are actually looking after their people.

Within countries like Japan and some of the Scandinavian countries … the richest 20 per cent of people are less than four times as rich as the poorest 20 per cent of people. At the bottom of the [scale] are countries in which these differences are at least twice as big, including two in which the richest 20 per cent get about nine times as much as the poorest. Among the most unequal are Singapore, USA, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. (p.16-17)

The book makes no attempt to explain why Portugal should stand out in such a contrast to its continental European neighbours, which almost invariably outperform English speaking countries on equality and social conditions. I would suggest however that one reason lies in Portugal's inheritance laws, which reflect a tendency to disinherit children in favour of spouses, similar to English-style laws. In the other European countries roman-style civil codes provide for children before spouses equally, therefore men and woman come to adulthood with similar wealth.

Wilkinson and Pickett find that the countries with the worst social inequality have the worst social outcomes overall in health, violence, obesity, illiteracy, mental illness, addiction, and rates of teenage pregnancy.

The official message is that developed western countries have done their duty by their own populations in fulfilling their material needs, leaving a remaining task of bringing the poor of other countries up to the same material standard. It seems churlish of people in those first world populations to reproach the rich in their countries for ostentatious and dishonest living, while the poor in the third world suffer malnutrition and disease. The official message is really that the poor of the developed world need to put the needs of the poor of the undeveloped world ahead of theirs, rather than to exert their own rights locally. The normalization of competitiveness over cooperation and social trust is a strategy to justify the growing vast internal inequalities in the first world.

Importantly for Feminism, within these unequal nations there is a further sub-class, and that is the women of those nations.

Female obesity linked to inequality

Most women would be interested to know that the authors, Wilkinson and Pickett, are able to find a clear association between inequality, obesity and the female sex.

The World Health Organisation has found, from a study begun in the 1980s, that in the 26 countries it surveyed, rates of obesity have increased more among poor women than rich women. The countries with the worst inequalities – Australia, the United States, Portugal and the UK, also have the worst rates of obesity. The countries with the lowest rates of inequality have the lowest rates of obesity.(p.98)

Observing a relationship between anxiety and material and social inequality, the authors note that chronic stress stimulates the hormone, cortisol, of which high levels are associated with deposits of fat around the middle.(p.95) People with this kind of fat are at higher risk of other illnesses – notably diabetes. Diabetes is itself associated with depression.

The authors also refer to the concept of the ‘thrifty phenotype’ where birth weights are lower in women who have experienced stress during pregnancy. Are low-birth weight babies likely to squirrel away extra calories because the stress they encountered in utero led them to prepare for a harsh society, where they would expect to struggle for food? Instead, although they do grow up in a harsh society, it is a non-traditional variety where food remains plentiful but love and approval are at a premium. (p.98)

The book also notes that food may stimulate the brain in the same way as addictive drugs do in people who use food addictively. That is, that food may be used as a pain-killer. (p.96)

It is probably obvious that food marketing may also have a role in obesity, but what is that role? The authors find associations between eating for comfort and homely foods which remind people of childhood, but they note that fast food outlets aim to reassure and to provide the lower classes with a feeling of social mobility. They reassure through their reliability and clean surroundings, but they also provide an affordable opportunity to dine out, which was once the province of the rich. Of course when you dine out on fast food, you are taking in huge amounts of calories in the form of fats and sugars, to a degree not found in haute cuisine restaurants.(p.96)

The book also refers to a study which related obesity to people’s subjective sense of ranking low in the social pecking order. That is, how you feel you compare is more important than your absolute living standard.(p.101)

To recapitulate, this book is about how, once the basics are present, absolute living standard is outweighed by social ranking as measured by relative living standard.

Women as a sub-class within unequal first world nations

Importantly for Feminism, within these unequal nations there is a further sub-class, and that is the women of those nations.

In Mary Pipher’s Reviving Ophelia: Saving the selves of adolescent girls, (Riverhead Books, New York, 1994) the subject is also about inequality and anxiety within high GDP, purportedly progressive societies. Despite the rhetoric, she argues, girls receive a consistent message that they don’t deserve equal treatment and must go to outlandish lengths for mere acceptance. For this reason the whole basis of their identities become at risk as they identify as women rather than as children. They learn that their psychological identities depend on the approval of men. This explains the very high rates of anorexia and risky lifestyles among young women seeking some control over their social and personal environments.

Harking back to Shakespeare’s Ophelia in Hamlet as a young woman who lost the approval of the important males in her life and then suicided, this book observes the increasing difficulty since the 1980s that adolescent girls and the women they become have in preserving a sense of self and self-worth as they transition between childhood and maturity. It finds that they are victims of an increasingly sexualized and pornographic society that defines them almost exclusively as sexual objects, despite the official rhetoric of women’s rights. The girls feel the need to justify themselves against these media popularized and reinforced social standards and, in doing so, to suppress their real feelings and ambitions.

The author observes that, whilst her 1960s generation grew into a western society where the Women’s Liberation movement had overturned official institutional barriers to women’s rights to career, property and political candidacy, the mainstream media preserved, then enhanced over the next decades, a picture of women as inherently less-deserving of these rights than men. Unglamorous, older women (the majority) rarely receive attention in the mass media, and beautiful women often seem only to deserve violent attention, as victims of elaborate predator screenplays. Women are increasingly bombarded by this kind of view at younger and younger ages.

This book, Reviving Ophelia, was published in 1994, at a time when the pervasiveness of the internet was in its relative infancy. Children and the general public were not widely exposed to explicit pornography and sexual sadism in the ‘traditional’ mass media of the industrial age, although these notions were commonly implicit in images and concepts used for marketing all kinds of things. Between that time and now, in 2011, the depiction of women almost exclusively as victims and objects of violence and pornography, explicitly and for that sole reason, has become a global business which operates 24/7. The implicit violence and sexualisation of women in ordinary marketing has also continued. At the same time, the official message is that western women don’t need Feminism anymore because equality has prevailed.

How does a girl, as her sexual personality awakens deal with the saturation marketing of femaleness as moronic and deserving of punishment and death? Mary Pipher argues that girl’s personalities die and that they often die with their personalities.

”Ironically, bright and sensitive girls are most at risk for problems. They are likely to understand the implications of the media around them and be alarmed. They have the mental equipment to pick up our cultural ambivalence about women, and yet they don’t have the cognitive, emotional and social skills to handle this information. They are paralyzed by complicated and contradictory data that they cannot interpret. They struggle to resolve the unresolvable and to make sense of the absurd. It’s this attempt to make sense of the whole of adolescent experience that overwhelms bright girls.

Less perceptive girls may miss the meaning of sexist ads, music and shows entirely. They tend to deny and oversimplify problems. They don’t attempt to integrate aspects of their experience or to ‘connect the dots’ between cultural events and their own lives. Rather than process their experience, they seal in confusion.

Often bright girls look more vulnerable than their peers who have picked up less or who have chosen to deal with all the complexity by blocking it out. Later, bright girls may be more interesting, adaptive and authentic, but in early adolescence they just look shelled.

Girls have four general ways in which they can react to the cultural pressures to abandon the self. They can conform, withdraw, be depressed, or get angry. Whether girls feel depression or anger is a matter of attribution – those who blame themselves feel depressed, while those who blame others feel angry. Generally they blame their parents. Of course, most girls react with some combination of the four general ways.” (p. 43.)

Girls deal with painful thoughts, discrepant information and cognitive confusion in ways that are true or false to the self. The temptation is to shut down, to oversimplify, to avoid the hard work of examining and integrating experiences. Girls who operate from a false self often reduce the world to a more manageable place by distorting reality. Some girls join cults in which others do all their thinking for them. Some girls become anorexic and reduce all the complexity in life to just one issue – weight.” (p.61)

Mary Pipher observes that the loss of confidence in themselves that girls experience as they mature sexually occurs just at the time when more confidence is required to tackle increasingly complex work in the later years of school. Because of this socially-induced lack of confidence, even some highly intelligent girls will give up at the first sign of difficulty, where less bright male students will persist.

The book contains many succinct case histories and concludes with useful ways to approach these problems.

Male treatment of this subject - Turning Angel

How do men deal with these realities that affect their daughters, mothers and intimates so badly? In conclusion, I will mention a book by a man exploring these themes. spirit-level.jpg by novelist, Greg Iles, (Hodder and Stoughton, 2006) is a highly readable thriller that dramatises the stresses of the normalization of sexism and pornography on young girls [and men] in their last years of high school and the particular vulnerability of highly intelligent young women from dysfunctional homes. Iles looks at the temptation for upwardly mobile professional men to exploit such young women. It is also well worth a read and testifies to the continuing usefulness of the novel as a medium for social comment as well as entertainment.

NOTES

[1] Deidre Macken, “I’m starting with the man in the mirror,” Australian Financial Review, September 13, 2011.

I mean, why exactly do we have self-serve checkouts? Can anyone think of 1 good reason for them? They don’t increase efficiency because as my Kmart experience demonstrates, self-serve machines don’t create more service providers as the stores simply hire less staff.

Unhelpful machines

I felt compelled to write this article after a recent eye-opening experience I had at Kmart. During the busy late afternoon shift the store had one attendant on checkout – that’s right, one. I specifically joined the attendant’s queue instead of the 5 self-serve checkout machines as my item was discounted and may have required further assistance. As I joined the queue the customer being served was experiencing difficulties with her credit card so there was a considerable hold-up. While this problem was slowly being resolved the self-serve checkout supervisor indicated for me to join the aforementioned queue instead. I gestured that it was fine; I would remain in the queue for the attendant. As another 5 minutes went past with no further progress in the queue because the credit card issue was still unresolved, the self-serve checkout supervisor once again advised me to change queues. Once again I explained, this time at length, that I couldn’t use the self-serve machines as my purchase specifically required an attendant. Don’t get the wrong impression – the supervisor meant no harm, he genuinely thought he was assisting me by recommending the self-serve, sparing me the time and boredom of waiting in the long queue for the attendant. Eventually I was served by the attendant and the sale was processed without a problem but the whole experience left a lasting impact on me in questioning the role and function of self-serve checkout machines.

Creepy Self-service machines

I mean, why exactly do we have self-serve checkouts? Can anyone think of 1 good reason for them? They don’t increase efficiency because as my Kmart experience demonstrates, self-serve machines don’t create more service providers as the stores simply hire less staff. In fact, self-serve machines are responsible for even greater delays as they are more likely to malfunction and customers are slower completing their transactions than a qualified checkout operator. It is almost as if the people are warring against the machines for employment, like some sort of James Cameron sci-fi epic.

On top of these issues there’s something quite creepy about self-serve checkouts. Is anyone else unsettled by the booming computerised voice?

‘WELCOME TO [INSERT COMPANY NAME HERE]!’
‘PLEASE SELECT YOUR PAYMENT METHOD!!’

Is this supposed to constitute for a conversation? Some may sneer at this point, but a lot of shoppers genuinely value the polite ‘Hi, how are you?’ checkout operators are required to ask customers. At least it’s not a one-sided exchange. Companies invest millions of dollars in their customer service training programs for the very reason that customer loyalty is largely influenced by employee behaviour. Hence human servers are required for checkouts not only in the case of potential transaction problems like my Kmart experience but also in compliance with the friendly, helpful image of the company central to customer satisfaction.

Cheap mechanical slaves but purchase prices stay high

The widespread implementation of self-serve checkouts has significantly increased company profits. Although initially expensive to buy and install, in the long run a heavy duty self-serve machine is much cheaper to maintain than a checkout operator’s salary which comes with additional costs such as holiday and sick leave, workers’ compensation and time-and-a-half. A self-serve machine does not stop working over Christmas. It does not need time off because it caught the flu. Cemented to the ground means it can not slip on a wet floor and claim compensation. It does not demand extra pay for working on Australia Day.

Yet this reduction in service has not equaled a reduction in purchase costs. Australia has the most expensive groceries world wide. One wonders how much further consumers can be passed on the costs the store once provided. Customers aren’t even entitled to free plastic bags anymore and although this initiative has helped reduce waste, it hasn’t been without the additional store profit resultant from charging for canvas bags.

Unreasonable corporate profits

So what is the purpose of self-serve machines besides increasing the profit margins of already thriving multibillion dollar companies? Evidently, not much. However the ramifications have been significant for part-time employment, affecting the livelihood of university students and low skilled workers. Tertiary students rely on checkout work because of its flexible shifts. Balancing around different timetables from one semester to another means students need accommodating part-time work, something difficult to find in office jobs. Low-skilled workers rely on checkout for the different reason that it’s within their limited skills capacity. This condition serves a particularly important function as it provides work for disadvantaged employees who would otherwise likely be on welfare.

Call to boycott self-serve machines

Unfortunately for most customers it’s a ‘if you can’t beat em join em’ attitude on account that if self-serve checkouts aren’t used, queues for staff would be longer and after a hard day’s work or busy weekend few people are prepared to wait more than they have to and fair enough. However this situation unreprimanded will only get worse in the future as far as decreasing customer service, employment opportunity and workers’ rights. So I publicly call now for a boycott of self-serve check out machines because ultimately if no one uses them stores will be forced to remove them and employ more staff. This action would exclude self-serves that don’t reduce the total number of staff like at libraries. I am confident that if enough people take part in this stand we can make a difference.

Eureka Rebellion anarchist ceremony 2009

The 3 December Spirit of Eureka celebrations will be a 12 hour extravaganza. Congregate at 4 am at the corner of Eureka and Stawell Street at the Eastern End of Ballarat. Dawn ceremony goes to daybreak. Those present will form a large circle. And, whilst waiting for dawn to break, everyone present will have the opportunity to say why they are there. The celebration ends at 4pm.

Joe reminds us that Eureka was about direct democracy, with mass meetings of 10,000 people, delegates appointed with specific mandates, direct action and, that great thing, Solidarity.

Eureka 2004 - 150th anniversary. (More details and history here.)

Anarchist invitation to Eureka Rebellion anniversary ceremonies

"The Anarchist Media Institute is inviting everyone who is interested in reclaiming The Radical Spirit of the Eureka Rebellion, to join us on Wednesday 3rd of December at the Eureka Stockade site in Ballarat, in Victoria, to celebrate the 148th Anniversary of the Eureka Rebellion.

JOIN US

Friday 3RD DECEMBER 2004
EUREKA STOCKADE SITE
EUREKA HALL - (CORNER EUREKA & STAWELL STREET, BALLARAT)

4AM to 4PM

* 4AM ­ 6AM Gathering at Eureka Park to mark the 150th anniversary of the battle on the site and at the time it occurred
* 6.00am ­ 10.00am ­ Breakfast Eureka Hall (Bring own food & drinks)
* Further details to be announced

JOIN US - Celebrate the Past by Reclaiming the Present and creating a new future. Join us at Eureka Park /Eureka Hall (cnr Stawell and Eureka Streets, Ballarat)

It's time we reclaimed our history."

People for a Royal Commission into Corruption in Victoria

Email or snailmail for correspondence and petition:
E: [email protected]
A: P.O. Box 5035, Alphington 3078
M: 0439 395 489

Listen to the podcast for more or go to the Anarchist Media website