A coalition of activist groups from around the country came together to offer support for the Retail and Fast Food Workers Union (RAFFWU) which is under attack from the Victorian Labor government. Twenty five people joined the action on September 5.
New Premier Ben Carroll is planning laws to thwart unions registered as incorporated associations. RAFFWU, which has provided a workers with a fighting alternative to the tame-cat Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA), is the main target. Carroll is supported within the Labor factional system by the SDA.
Teo from RAFFWU told the crowd that if this bill becomes law it “would affect all RAFFWU members nationally, not just in Victoria”.
They said that the SDA’s “power hoarding” prevented RAFFWU registering as a national union but that “that didn’t stop us from building a union that actually takes real action ... Now they’ve seen what even a limited RAFFWU can do, they want to get rid of us completely!”
They recounted their history of poor treatment by fast food and retail employers and said that this isn’t just a case of isolated employers but that “these are large corporations, that are supposedly highly regulated”.
The SDA leadership has a “vested interest” in keeping the bosses happy, Teo said. By contrast, RAFFWU is “not the union that that collaborated with bosses to keep workers trapped in sub-award EBAs, and we’re not the union that would prefer to keep slobbering on the ALP’s boots than to keep fighting for its members”.
Speaking on behalf of Socialist Alliance, Jonathan Strauss said it “supports RAFFWU full stop”. He said that as the bosses’ class struggle sharpens, “the essence of neoliberalism is revealed to be repression ... [and] we need to support workers to have unions that they organise and control.”
Strauss said workers have every right, and every reason, to organise outside of “tame unions” like the SDA even if that means confronting federal anti-union industrial laws which “have principally been put in place by Labor governments”.
Others speaking out for RAFFWU were Unionists for Palestine, Queensland Socialists and Solidarity.