Sue Bolton
For two months, students and workers across France have been striking and protesting against a new law allowing employers to sack young workers for no reason within their first two years of employment.
Around 3 million people poured onto the streets in 135 cities and towns on March 28. Then, on April 4, more than 3 million mobilised across the country.
The French government has offered compromises, rejected by the students and trade unions who are organising another day of action on April 11. They are demanding that the law be withdrawn or the campaign will be escalated.
Meanwhile, the mass civil disobedience is ongoing. Hundreds of schools and universities are being blockaded, closed or occupied, and there are blockades of motorways, railway stations and other public places.
Contrasting France and Australia
In France, the government has introduced a law affecting young workers. In Australia, a whole raft of anti-worker and anti-union laws have been introduced that affect every single worker.
In France, the student and union movements have responded with two months' of mass mobilisations, causing a split in the French government over whether to compromise or tough-out the situation. In Australia, two nationwide actions have occurred in 16 months, with the next one not due until June 28.
In France, the union and student movements have set a deadline for the total withdrawal of the legislation, which has already been passed through parliament. The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) secretary Greg Combet appears to be accepting that a future Labor government would not even restore all that the Howard government has taken away.
Fortunately for Australia's working people, a section of the union movement does want to take Howard on. This group of unions initiated the two national days of action last year, on June 30-July 1 and November 15. The same unions have now convinced the ACTU to call the June 28 protests, although some of the more conservative union leaderships are trying to scuttle plans for a national mobilisation on that day.
In France, the government is under serious pressure from the protests and strikes. In Australia, majority public opposition to the new IR laws, and the protests held so far, have made the government nervous, but a significant stepping up of action is needed before the Australian government feels the sort of pressure that the French government is responding to.
Can we repeat the French example?
Some people argue that the decline in the rate of unionisation of the Australian work force — now 23% — means that union struggle is impossible. But less than 10% of the work force in France is unionised. The difference is that the union leaderships in France joined the student protests and helped lead a united campaign for the repeal of the law.
The were two union demonstrations in Australia last year were massive. On June 30-July 1, 300,000 protested, despite no support from some unions. The November 15 protest was around 546,000 strong. People protested in regional cities and towns, as well as in the capital cities, including students, pensioners, and un-unionised and unemployed workers.
Poll after poll demonstrates that public opinion is running strongly against the government on this issue, and there is no evidence that workers in Australia are not prepared to take action to defend their fundamental rights. There is, however, plenty of evidence that the majority of the ACTU executive doesn't want to organise workers to do so.
Some union leaders have opposed mass mobilisations because they really don't believe that such action achieves anything, and because they think that governments are all-powerful. They argue that the only way to get rid of the laws is to vote in a Labor government in the next election.
Other union leaders oppose the mass mobilisations because they have their eye on a parliamentary career in the ALP. They know that if Labor is elected on the back of a big, militant workers' movement, as it was in 1972, there will be massive pressure on it to abolish all anti-union legislation. As a pro-big business party, the ALP doesn't want to do that.
However, a growing number of union leaders do recognise the value of mass struggle, not just waiting for the next election, and do recognise that working people want to resist.
Howard's attacks on workers and their unions can be stopped, but doing so requires unionists and others committed to abolishing the laws urgently need to come together to build a campaign of mass mobilisations, localised actions and industrial action against Work Choices. The French example should be an inspiration.
From Green Left Weekly, April 12, 2006.
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