Tim Gooden
The national day of action called by the ACTU for October 25 will help shift the IR campaign to the next level. The government’s legislation is going to affect everyone and makes a national response essential.
It’s imperative that unions get the message out that this day of action is a national strike, not just a gathering of union delegations. Such a protest will send the message to the government and employers that the union movement is not going to back down.
Victorian workers lost their state awards under the Jeff Kennett Coalition government. For the last 10 years, 560,000 workers have been surviving on the five minimum conditions set out in Schedule 1A of the Workplace Relations Act.
The campaign against Kennett’s anti-worker laws was cut short when the union movement shifted away from mass mobilisations to focus on Labor PM Paul Keating’s re-election in 1993. This took the pressure off and allowed the bosses to implement those laws. We can’t afford to allow the same thing happen again.
The message we need to send in the lead-up to October 25 is that the trade union movement will fight anyone who tries to implement these laws; that the bosses won’t be taking on just their workers, but the entire union movement.
The best way to build this cross union solidarity is to bring delegates together to plan the national campaign. Geelong Trades Hall has organised such a meeting on August 17, and the Victorian Trades Hall Council for September 7.
Mass delegates’ meetings will be especially important when the government starts up its propaganda campaign in earnest, as it starts singling out for attack particular sections of the work force. We’ll be launching picket-line kits at our mass delegates’ meeting and people who’ve had experience on picket lines will explain the tactics involved.
The bosses will know we’re not only putting time into lobbying politicians and organising mass protests, but also preparing workers to fight attempts to sack workers or lock them out. That may persuade them to continue under collective agreements and negotiate with workers and their unions.
Geelong Trades Hall is also organising a public meeting in late September to discuss the impact of the government’s industrial relations changes on unions and the community. We’ll also be launching a union solidarity group to assist unionists in our region fight the new laws.
[Tim Gooden is secretary of the Geelong Trades Hall Council.]
From Green Left Weekly, August 17, 2005.
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