Union leader condemns anti-Muslim racism

Geelong Trades Hall Council secretary Tim Gooden sent the following statement to Green Left Weekly in response to the Howard government's recent attacks on Muslims.

It's a classic tactic of the Australian ruling class that, at a time when it is about to implement massive economic attacks against the majority of the population through the new industrial laws, it attempts to divide workers with claims that Muslim migrants don't fit into the Australian community.

This sort of racist slander has been used in the past against Aborigines and Islanders, against the Chinese goldminers and against migrants who arrived in the 1950s.

Working people should remember that what binds us is not the Australian flag, but the fact that workers — including Muslim and non-Muslim workers — will always have more in common with other workers than we will ever have in common with the ruling class.

It's not Muslims or foreign workers who are taking away our right to organise collectively. It's not foreign workers who are jailing trade unionists. It's not foreign workers who are attempting to reduce wages and conditions through individual contracts.

It is quite clear that the Howard government has managed to stay in office — despite massively unpopular policies like the GST and privatisation — by waging racist fear campaigns against refugees or Muslims when it needs to distract the working class from organising against anti-worker policies. I believe that the government's "counter-terrorism" campaign, with its targeting of the Muslim community, is another phase of its racist, divide-and-rule tactic.

It's imperative that trade union members and leaders give solidarity to the Muslim community and any ethnic community being picked on by the Howard government. We need to continue to fight against the government on economic and social issues.

There is a small minority of the population that is a threat to workers, but they are not Muslims. That dangerous minority is the capitalist class, which wants to use the new industrial laws to destroy trade unionism and destroy the expectation that all workers should have rights.

From Green Left Weekly, March 8, 2006.

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From GLW issue 659