Toll truckies went on strike today, and all the Lying Press outlets are colluding to frame the story around working conditions and casualisation of the work force.
The transport unions are playing along in order to maintain some variation on the following narrative:
Why are they are on strike?
The drivers are members of the Transport Workers’ Union (TWU) and they are negotiating over their new enterprise bargaining agreement, which determines pay and conditions.
Toll is offering a 2 per cent pay rise for the next two years and a $1,000 sign-on bonus after the workers agreed to forgo a pay rise last year because of the coronavirus pandemic.
But the TWU, which is negotiating on behalf of the workers, is calling for a 3 per cent pay rise and job security.
Negotiations broke down because Toll wants to cut overtime for permanent staff and use short-term contractors and workers from labour hire firms on lower wages.
It’s garbage. Aussie truckies have released video after video pointing out the idiocy of the lockdowns, the danger of the vaccines, and stating their refusal to accept mandatory vaccination for so-called “essential workers” crossing the Queensland border.
It started as a border/vaccine passport issue but it has quickly escalated, as truck drivers all over Australia are concerned about not just the vaccines but also increasingly stupid Covid restrictions throughout the country. Drivers in NSW have been held up and turned back for not having their papers in order.
In NSW truck drivers are not allowed to use bathrooms at service stations, ostensibly to protect grandma from the sniffles.
We can see that the Lying Press have been doing their best to disguise the issue as a dispute over pay and conditions but the root cause affecting working conditions for truckies is Covid restrictions. Thus this bloke reveals the number one purpose of the strike:
To bring down the “shit government”:
They have international support. Here a trucker in America advises his colleagues in Australia how to disable their trucks.
It could escalate further.
As this guy who we saw earlier explains, this isn’t just about truckies, and it certainly isn’t about just “blowing their horn around Parliament House”. It is about blocking all the major transport routes, and uniting with other professions around the nation to bring the system to its knees and force them to end the lockdown.
@skippyboy01♬ original sound – Aussie trucker
And they are all over how to disable their trucks if necessary. As he says, there isn’t much the army can to do to clear a blockade if 40 guys disable their trucks.
Short of an A-10.
I don’t think we have any of those.
The nationwide strike is scheduled for Tuesday 31 August.
The way things are going things could shut down much sooner. The massive protests last weekend and last month could be developing into a nationwide movement of ordinary people determined to end the lockdowns.
Could be time to stock up.