An honest and proud man devastated by his ordeal. This was how ACTU secretary Bill Kelty described former Coles Myer boss Brian Quinn found guilty of defrauding the company of several million dollars. Kelty joined with Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett and transport boss Lindsay Fox to give glowing tributes to Quinn.
Kennett, Fox and Quinn: anti-worker union bashers, every one of them. Bill Kelty, a so-called workers' leader, in a sickening display of sucking up to his employer mates -- enough to make any self-respecting unionist's stomach churn. As the Australian understandingly explained, Kelty and Quinn were “former Reserve Bank colleagues”.
Sickening, but not a totally surprising tale of betrayal of working people's interests. It is very symbolic of where the real sympathies of the central leaders of the Australian labour movement lie.
The betrayal of working people by the leaders of the ACTU has been going on for some time now. The Accord years under Labor delivered the union movement bound and gagged, like a lamb to the slaughter, to the ALP-big business neo-liberal agenda.
Now with the Coalition government waging an even more nakedly brutal attack on jobs and conditions, there is no real opposition from the ACTU.
When thousands of workers indicated their willingness to fight the Liberals' attacks around the August budget cuts last year, this resistance was quashed by the ACTU leaders frightened by Howard's phrases about “un-Australian” behaviour.
Would Bill Kelty be a character witness for the workers who are being charged for trying to march into Parliament House last August? Not on your life. Kelty and the rest of the ACTU gang have hounded these militants and delivered them to the cops.
Green Left Weekly campaigns for the revival of a genuine, militant, pro-worker unionism. This requires rebuilding the union movement and replacing its rotten leadership. We need a union movement based on strong rank-and-file organisation, industrial campaigns based on our collective strength and -- above all -- union democracy.
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