Democratic Socialists: time to put the unions on a war footing
"Corporate Australia sniffs a decisive victory at Webb Dock", Dick Nichols, the Democratic Socialist Party's industrial convenor said last weekend. "That's why the union movement has to get itself on a war footing to thwart them."
Nichols said that all the signs pointed to a "final offensive" by Patrick boss Chris Corrigan, the National Farmers Federation and the Howard government.
"There's the break down of private talks between Corrigan and the MUA; the Industrial Relations Commission decision to allow Corrigan access to common law damages against the union and its return-to-work order; and Corrigan's allegation in the weekend Financial Review that MUA national secretary, John Coombs, offered him a deal in which he [Corrigan] would dump the NFF in exchange for a Coombs' promise to weed out Webb Dock 'troublemakers'." (Coombs described Corrigan's allegation as "a libellous attempt to embarrass me and to embarrass the union".)
"There are hundreds of thousands of workers out there itching to help the MUA stop Peter Reith and the rest dead in their tracks", Nichols said. "But they need to be organised and organised fast. The movement is well behind where it needs to be."
Nichols listed three immediate priorities:
- turning the Brisbane March 4 day of solidarity with the MUA into a national day of action;
- holding mass meetings throughout other industries to prepare workers for the need for industrial action; and most importantly,
- setting up broadly representative and democratically run campaign committees to build what the MUA recognises as a key aspect of the campaign — winning the battle for hearts and minds.
"How else are we going to get the hundreds of people needed out into the shopping centres of a Saturday morning to put the MUA side of things?", Nichols said.
He described the decision of the ACTU (Queensland) to set up a volunteers committee to help build the March 4 Brisbane action as "a small step in the right direction", adding, "Everyone has to have their say. It's not good enough to say this is the MUA's fight and we will just follow. This is a battle that concerns all workers. Every tactic of industrial action, media campaigning, use of the IRC and international solidarity will come in handy, as long as they form part of a strategy to mobilise the broadest possible support for defence of the maritime workers' conditions."
Nichols concluded: "The union movement wouldn't be in such a difficult situation if the ACTU hadn't conducted such a token 'campaign' against the Reith-Kernot Workplace Relations Act. Now it's a noose around the neck of the MUA and all other unions marginally serious about defending their members. We have to make sure by any means necessary that the struggle to defend the MUA doesn't end up in a similar, but 10 times more dangerous defeat."