Socialist unionists say: 'Make Howard history!'

The following are comments by Socialist Alliance trade union activists on some of the key questions facing the union movement.

1. How can we limit the damage from Howard’s IR laws?

Tim Gooden, secretary, Geelong Trades Hall Council: By resisting the bosses’ attacks every day up until the next election - and beyond. Community picket lines against any firm that tries to enforce Work Choices will warn the bosses off and keep up our strength.

By actually organising, solidarity community-union groups in Victoria, WA, NSW and the ACT are defeating anti-union laws when the bosses try to use them.

Community picket lines have already won at Alcoa (Pinjarra, WA), Thompson’s Roller Shutters (Sydney) and Finlay Engineering, Toyota, Amcor, Hawker de Havilland and Tronics (Melbourne).

Seafarers on the MV Stolt also defied the law, occupied their ship and saved their jobs.

Community pickets and protests are also the best “election campaign” we can run against Howard. They keep IR in the spotlight and the government on the back foot - more than the ALP-ACTU’s marginal seats campaign can do by itself.

It wasn’t until the union movement started organising mass protests that Howard’s rating dropped in the polls. Our movement has the power to make Howard history!

We need more national protests combined with industrial action - to keep the sending the message that the movement to defend our rights at work isn’t going away.

2. Beazley promises to rip up Work Choices. What replaces it?

Mary Merkenich, branch councillor, Australian Education Union, Victoria: Workers’ rights are human rights. So why not rip up all the anti-worker laws? We’re all sweating to throw Howard out, but if Labor wins will it do enough? There is a whole raft of anti-worker laws that the ALP hasn’t even talked about. So let’s hear Beazley and the state Labor premiers commit to:

Repeal the anti-union building industry laws and abolish the Australian Building and Construction Commission;

Abolish the right of the Office of Workplace Services to take legal action and of the ACCC to use its anti-monopoly power on unions;

Abolish the 1996 Workplace Relations Act and sections 45 D and E of the Trade Practices Act that ban secondary boycotts, ban the use of essential services legislation against unions, and repeal the anti-terrorism laws that can be used against unions for speaking and acting “seditiously”;

Repeal the welfare-to-work laws that force people on benefits to accept any job, at below-award pay and conditions.

3. How do we make Labor keep its promises?

Susan Price, University of NSW branch president, National Tertiary Education Union: Who can forget that it was the Hawke-Keating government that introduced enterprise bargaining, starting the rot that led to Work Choices?

Of course, a Labor government is preferable to Howard. But even if the ALP wins we’ll need to pressure it all the way. That’s even more true because the ALP is currying favour with big business by as good as promising it a seat at Labor’s cabinet table.

Beazley didn’t promise to rip up Work Choices until the second national union protest. He didn’t promise to abolish AWAs until the third national union protest. Even then Labor promised Rio Tinto that it could keep common law individual agreements.

The best ways to get Labor to stick to its promises are to:

Get active in the union-community solidarity movement by taking part in picket lines and protests;

Take part in our unions and make sure they keep up the pressure on Labor as well as the Liberals to repeal all anti-worker laws;

Vote Socialist Alliance at the next election. The bigger our vote, the clearer the message to the ALP that it ignores working people at its peril.

4. How can we stop bosses breaking down conditions by bringing workers from overseas?

Raul Bassi, NSW Transport Workers Union delegate: The bosses have always tried to use un-unionised workers from “out of town” to break down wages, conditions and union organisation.

The importing of workers on 457 visas is just more of the same.

These workers are employed in bad conditions and on miserable wages. If they complain or join a union it’s the next flight out.

The answer is clear - bosses need to be forced to provide industry-standard pay, and full award conditions and full citizenship rights for these workers.

We must fight for their rights just as we do for everyone’s.

Whenever Howard and the bosses know their policies are unpopular they whip up the media to distract and divide us by demonising people over their religion, race, nationality or gender.

The bosses want workers to fight among themselves while they get away with blue murder. Discrimination and prejudice are their weapons.

Whatever our differences, workers need to stick together.

5. What do we do if Labor loses? What’s ‘plan B’?

Jamie Doughney, Victorian division president, National Tertiary Education Union: There’s an argument doing the rounds of the union movement at the moment: “If the ALP loses the next election we’re all fucked.”

If this idea takes off, it could turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy by convincing workers to give up the struggle in the event of a Coalition victory.

The Australian union movement has defeated much worse attacks than this. Unionists have been jailed and unions reduced to nothing - only to rise again because of the courage of working people.

In France this year, a massive campaign of strikes and protests killed off the government’s anti-worker laws - in a country with a lower level of unionisation than here!

Whichever party wins the election, the union movement must keep campaigning for the repeal of all anti-union laws.

The movement should be going on the front foot and organising a nationwide mass protest and stoppage for straight after the election.

That way Howard and the bosses will get the message that we will never give up until Work Choices is scrapped. And we will put Labor on notice to keep its promises.

[This is an abridged version of the Socialist Alliance leaflet prepared for the November 30 national day of action against Work Choices. Socialist Alliance members with official union positions speak in a personal capacity.]

From: Comment & Analysis, Green Left Weekly issue #692 29 November 2006.