BY
SUE BOLTON
Over the past four weeks, several trade unions have passed motions
to take stop work action against the threatened war on Iraq. Mobilising
the ranks of the unions, the largest organisations of working people, will
be crucial to building a truly mass anti-war movement.
The Western Australian unions were the first to seriously consider taking
industrial action against the threatened war. A working group of Unions
WA affiliates on February 4 voted to recommend to the Unions WA executive
that affiliates work together with other community groups to organise mass
protest action once the war on Iraq begins. Protest action could range
from stopping work through to local workplace protests and attendance at
marches and rallies.
The West Australian publicised an exaggerated report of the meeting
to whip up a frenzy of opposition to the possibility of industrial action
against the war.
When the media attack began, Unions WA assistant secretary Dave Robinson
said: “You don't lead public opinion by being mute and silent. There will 
be
people who won't agree, but at least you'll prompt that debate and we're
not afraid of that debate, unlike [Prime Minister John] Howard.”
The first union to seriously build support for industrial action against
the war was the WA branch of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy
Union. This union's actions showed leadership and encouraged other branches
of the CFMEU to consider industrial action if war breaks out.
The CFMEU's WA branch adopted its position prior to the February 14-16
weekend when the massive peace rallies proved how extensive the anti-war
sentiment is.
CFMEU WA secretary Kevin Reynolds told Green Left Weekly: “If
the US declares war on Iraq, our members will be walking off major jobs
in protest... We certainly don't have unanimous support among our members
for this position. There has been wide-ranging debate on the building sites.
The meetings have not been quick meetings.
“It is very interesting to see the views of the young workers opposed
to the war. It is more common for the young workers to be concerned about
where the war is leading us. It's easier for older workers to be gung ho
about going to war when they won't have to fight the war, and in most cases,
they have never had to fight a war. It's young people who are sent to fight
wars.”
Despite the debate, Reynolds said that “on all of the jobs where it
had been discussed, the motion to walk off the job as soon as bombing starts,
regardless of UN support for the war, has been overwhelmingly carried”.
The WA branch, the Victorian branch, and the national executive of the
CFMEU construction division all oppose the war, regardless of the UN position.
The Victorian Trades Hall Council also opposes war on Iraq, regardless
of UN support for such a war. VTHC secretary Leigh Hubbard reports that,
overwhelmingly, unions in Victoria support this position because “the impact
is the same on innocent civilians whether the war is UN-sanctioned or not”.
The Geelong Trades and Labor Council; the Melbourne-based Workers Against
War group which is officially recognised by the VTHC; the Victorian branch
of the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union (TCFUA); the Wollongong-based
South Coast Labor Council; the Australian Education Union (AEU) national
conference and the National Tertiary Education Industry Union (NTEU) national
council also oppose the war regardless of the UN position.
AEU federal secretary Rob Durbridge said his union was currently discussing
what sort of action to take if war starts. “We have a lot of members who
will take protest action whenever they can, and similarly, that will apply
to a lot of students. We encourage teachers to join in protest action called
by anti-war coalitions but we are not calling on schools to stop because
we have a particular responsibility for children in those schools.”
The AEU federal conference resolution on January 15-17 was amended “to
include non-cooperation with the war effort”, Durbridge said, “but teachers
don't actually contribute to the war effort.”
NTEU assistant national secretary Ted Murphy explained that it is “a
political trap” to link opposition to war to the position of the UN Security
Council, because “there's a very good prospect that some countries represented
on the UN Security Council with veto power, for reasons of their own political
and economic interests vis-a-vis the United States, could decide to abstain
rather than veto”.
The three main education unions — the Australian Education Union, the
Independent Education Union and the NTEU — have taken out newspaper advertisements
in the Australian to profile their anti-war position and anti-war
activities.
Murphy said they will finance larger advertisements in the event of
a US military strike being imminent or if “the UN Security Council appears
to support the strike or passes a resolution that is ambiguous but that
can be claimed by the US to endorse a war”, adding: “We think that's an
important time for more consistent opponents of the war to present the
argument that there is no case for war even if the security council appears
to legitimise a military intervention.”
Despite Washington's blatant blackmail of the Security Council member
countries, the ACTU has stuck to its position of only opposing a unilateral
war on Iraq. A national meeting of left unions on March 11 will discuss
putting a stronger position to the next ACTU executive meeting on March
25-26.
Both the Queensland Council of Unions (QCU) and the NSW Labor Council
previously had the ACTU position of only opposing a unilateral war, but
have now modified their positions to opposing war without any qualifications.
QCU general secretary Grace Grace regards the “resolution that went
to our executive today [February 26] is one of opposing any declaration
of war with Iraq regardless of the United Nations”.
However, both of the updated QCU and NSW Labor Council resolutions accept
the pretext used by the Howard government to back a war against Iraq —
the fraudulent claim that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.
The Community and Public Sector Union national council has adopted a
position expressing “its support for our members in fulfilling their duties
as public servants”, that is, obediently implementing the Howard government's
planned aggression against Iraq.
Hubbard, while noting that it had taken a lot of work by left unionists
to bring the broader union movement into opposition to Australian involvement
in the Vietnam War, “this time around, we start with a much stronger base
of unions opposing the war, and unions do have an important position because
we are the biggest mass organisations outside the churches.”
CFMEU Victorian secretary Martin Kingham pointed out that “peace is
union business because it's working-class people who end up as the soldiers
on both sides. And it's generally working-class people who make up the
majority of casualties when they start dropping bombs, because they always
bomb the industrial suburbs first, where all the factories are.”
For the first time in many years, most labour councils around the country
are actively involved in anti-war coalitions in their local cities — in
Brisbane, Sydney, Wollongong, Melbourne, Geelong and Perth.
However, the on-the-job debate among workers is at an early stage. Many
union leaders contacted by GLW have only recently begun the process
of systematically organising on-the-job discussions about the war.
These discussions are most advanced in unions where the leadership is
proposing that workers engage in concrete actions to oppose the war. The
proposal for Perth building workers to stop work when bombing begins and
the proposal to Melbourne and Geelong building workers for site-by-site
discussions and votes on displaying anti-war banners on building sites
has provoked rich debate.
The decision of Sydney CFMEU delegates on February 25 to put a recommendation
to the union's members to stop work to participate in anti-war rallies
has also begun a process of discussion among Sydney building workers.
“Now carrying that doesn't mean it automatically happens”, said NSW
CFMEU secretary Andrew Ferguson. “We've actually got to do a lot of work
amongst our rank and file on the issue. I'm not confident of large sections
of our membership stopping work during working hours on the issue. It's
not easy losing wages to participate in a rally.
“We have done it in the past. We stopped a number of sites during the
struggle in East Timor. At one stage we had about 1000 workers come to
a rally at the airport against Garuda.”
TCFUA Victorian secretary Michele O'Neil said: “ I suspect that quite
a number of unions are in the same position as us where we've got the union
leadership out there saying that we're part of the anti-war movement but
we're conscious of the need not to leave the rank and file behind.”
O'Neil said that TCFUA organisers and delegates are now trying to organise
systematic discussions and meetings with members about the potential war
and about the union's position.
The Melbourne-based Workers Against War was founded as a group of union
officials and rank-and-file members to help in this process. One of the
group's founders, former Australian Manufacturing Workers Union state secretary
Craig Johnston, told GLW: “The idea of the group is to assist the
leaderships of the unions to get the message out to rank and filers that
this war is a US imperialist war about oil...
“We want to get out and explain that and empower and activate workers,
so that workers become much more involved in opposition to the war through
demonstrations, marches and protests, and hopefully industrial campaigns
to oppose the war.”
Hubbard was hopeful that a union-sponsored protest on the day after
war began could become an international protest action, perhaps promoted
through the US Labor Against War network.
One action which is being discussed by some unions in the eastern states
is a cavalcade to Canberra against the war on March 24 to coincide with
the last sitting of federal parliament before the May budget session.
From Green Left Weekly, March 5, 2003.
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