By Pip Hinman and Peter Boyle
MELBOURNE — In a move calculated to tailor the ongoing campaign against the Kennett government's draconian Employee Relations Act to Labor's federal re-election bid, the Keating federal government announced on November 3 that it would use its external relations power to allow Victorian workers to move into federal awards. Prime Minister Paul Keating promised that his legislation would also provide for the maintenance of minimum pay and conditions for workers forced under individual employment contracts.
Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett retaliated with a threat to challenge the legislation in the High Court and has gathered support from the Coalition governments in NSW and Tasmania. He also threatened to speed up and deepen his attacks on public sector jobs, public transport, health and education.
Recent polls are showing a swing to federal Labor but ALP strategists are concerned that prolonged industrial action in Victoria may turn the tide. The federal Labor government wants the campaign of industrial actions in Victoria to stop but Victorian Trades Hall Council (VTHC) secretary John Halfpenny says the campaign, including a power and public transport strike on December 9, will continue until Kennett is prepared to negotiate.
Campaign falters
However, even before the Keating initiative, the Victorian unions campaign was beginning to falter. Miners, metal, gas and building workers, public servants state and federal, health workers and vehicle builders were among the tens of thousands who walked off the job on November 30 as part of the ACTU "National Day of Action" against Kennett's laws and the similar system that the federal opposition has promised to introduce if elected next year. But the turnout, even in Victoria, paled beside the November 10 strike and rally and was dismissed as a "fizzer" by Liberal politicians and the big business press.
Refusing to comment on press claims that the National Day of Action had been a failure, ACTU assistant secretary Jennie George, who co-chairs the ACTU-VTHC campaign committee has said that the campaign would soon move from industrial action to "workplace education". Barbara Lewis, an industrial officer with VTHC said that the fight next year would concentrate on ensuring that a Hewson-Howard team was not elected.
The VTHC-ACTU special campaign committee did not organise a concerted effort and promoted instead a series of separate sector strikes, rallies and stop-work meetings around the state. There was widespread confusion among most unionists about the plans for the National Day of Action in the weeks leading up to it. VTHC officials put all their effort (and about $80,000) into a "Fair oncert on the Sunday before. It too only attracted a few thousand people to a seemingly endless number of union stalls dishing out cheap or free "sausages sangers" and material on Kennett's attacks and union services.
There was a good response by the members of the few unions that organised actions on the National Day of Action, but numbers at some of the rallies and meetings in regional cities rivalled those held in Melbourne where four medium-size rallies and marches were kept apart.
A rally of 2000 in the Treasury Gardens called by the newly formed Construction, Mining, Forestry and Energy Union (CMFEU) were still listening to speeches by their officials on the evils of the Kennett legislation on industrial relations and workers compensation while 500 metres away another 2000 building trades and vehicle building industry unionists were arriving outside Parliament House. By the time the officials at the CFMEU meeting had processed a motion to march to Parliament House, the latter had been dispersed.
Sloganeering
Few speakers strayed from the predictable sloganeering against Kennett and the line about what to next was "Vote Labor". One exception was John Maitland, President of the Miners Federation and Joint Deputy President of the CMFEU told the second rally that simply getting rid of Jeff Kennett and the other "boneheads" in his cabinet would not be enough to win this campaign. We are in a much more fortunate position than workers in South America and South Africa, he said. But since capital knows no boundaries in its search for profits, the Australian workforce is now being forced to defend its hard-won rights and conditions. In these difficult times Maitland urged workers to become internationalists. If we are to win this fight, he said in closing, "we must keep having rallies and strikes — even if it means forcing union leaderships to do so".
The mood at these rallies was very different from the November 10 action. "This is very small", said several dismayed workers as they left the rally. "This won't worry Kennett, but November 10 — that was different".
Later in the afternoon, public servants — federal and state — held their meetings at different times across the road from each other. After endorsing a 24 hour stoppage for all federal award members at a date to be determined, a mass meeting of about 1400 Public Service Union members marched to Parliament House. Two hours later, about 700 of an estimated 3000 State Public Services Federation members, who had met just across the road from the PSU meeting, followed suit. The rest had drifted out of the nearly two and a half hour-long mass meeting. The SPSF meeting also endorsed a 24-hour state-wide stoppage on December 15.
Education fight
Later the Victorian teachers' unions decided to call off all industrial action in the wake of the Industrial Relations Commission granting an injunction against the processing of teacher's voluntary redundancy packages until December 22, to allow an action to move Victorian teachers under a federal award. While union officials hailed this as a "victory", the 56 schools facing closure have been left to struggle on without the backing of centralised industrial action by teacher unions.
Teacher and Victorian Secondary Teachers Association councillor Norrian Rundle told Green Left Weekly that teachers in the Western (and inner city) region — where most of the school closures are to take place — were furious at this decision.
Meanwhile most of the schools facing closure are running popular local community campaigns to keep their schools open, including public meetings, rallies and marches. Some schools will attempt to remain open for community activities throughout the holidays although government funding will end and school council funds have already been frozen.
In a street demonstration which successfully paralysed peak hour traffic on Melbourne's busiest intersections (Hoddle and Bridge streets) on November 3, supporters of Richmond Secondary College decided to occupy their school between December 1 and January 25 and prevent the removal of equipment wit passive resistance. Students in some schools have organised their own strikes and parents and teachers associations are organising a rally on December 13.
In this climate, Victorian Labor strategists have seen fit to try and reintroduce former Premier Joan Kirner back into the spotlight. In a remarkably hypocritical move Kirner has been making guest appearances at schools facing closure and at education rallies and meetings, acting as if her government had never attempted to hive off $83 million from the education budget only last year.
As if on cue, T-shirts sporting the slogan "Fair go Jeff. Who's the guilty party now?" and worse, "Don't blame me, I voted for Joan" are now being flogged at every rally and march. At the "Fair Go Jeff Fair" Kirner graced the ALP stall, offering her autograph and polka-dotted show bags emblazoned with the slogan "Spot on, Joan!".