Tim Gooden
The new anti-worker laws have been in place for only a month and in that time the horror stories the ACTU warned us about have come true.
Workers have been sacked for "operational requirements", Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs - individual contracts) are increasingly being forced onto workers, union representatives are being refused entry to workplaces and union delegates are being sidelined or sacked. The Howard government's attempt to convince workers that the new laws would make workplaces better is now completely exposed.
With the shadowboxing out of the way, it's time to mobilise and fight back - like the French have just done. To date, the unions' campaign, led by the ACTU, has consisted of two successful nationwide rallies, a media ads campaign and preparations for a marginal seats' campaign focused on getting Labor back into power federally in 2007.
After much haggling at the beginning of this year, the ACTU finally called another national protest for June 28. But not all states are heeding its call for a week of action and a protest on that day.
The union movement cannot afford to wait for a "watershed" confrontation with the bosses, or for federal Labor to get elected. Beazley's ALP has not even committed to scrapping AWAs, re-establishing the full unfair dismissal provisions, giving unions full right of entry and the right to strike, so we shouldn't hold our breath for any great changes under a Labor government.
Howard was forced to hose down some bosses after the new laws were enacted when unfair sackings caused a public outcry, most notably around the Cowra Abattoir sackings. But we'll need a rigorous industrial campaign to put this government on the skids and overturn its laws. This can only really begin with mass stop-work meetings, suburban rallies and city-wide protests, leading to a mass demonstration outside Parliament House in Canberra.
For the campaign to have any effect on employers and their MP mates it has to be sustained. This was the tactic of the French unions and student organisations, which overturned the youth employment laws in that country last month. Anything less here will only lead to defeat or, at best, a compromise in which workers' conditions and unionism will go backwards as they did in New Zealand during the 1990s.
[Tim Gooden is the secretary of Geelong Trades Hall and a member of the Socialist Alliance.]
From Green Left Weekly, May 3, 2006.
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