BY GEORGINA DAVIES & SUE BOLAND
MELBOURNE — Just as Melbourne service stations were beginning to run out of petrol on September 26, Labor Premier Steve Bracks' state government stepped in and persuaded truck drivers to end their 48-hour blockade of Melbourne's Mobil-BP, Shell and Caltex oil refineries.
Under heavy pressure from the federal government to use its essential services legislation, and with oil giant Caltex preparing to take legal action against individual blockaders, Bracks brokered a deal with the Victorian branch of the Transport Workers Union (TWU), which had not joined the protest for fear of litigation.
The Premier has agreed to the tanker drivers' demand for the implementation of a state code of conduct which will guarantee a minimum freight delivery charge of $1.47 per kilometre, a 47c increase on the current rate, as well as safety protocols.
The drivers' demand for a full royal commission into fuel pricing was dropped after Bracks promised to raise the issue at the next commonwealth heads of government meeting, scheduled for November.
Pressure
Like the recent blockades in Europe, the Melbourne actions were initiated by owner-drivers without the support of their unions. Bracks, federal Labor leader Kim Beazley and the Victorian TWU said they sympathised with the blockading truck drivers' concern but could not support their blockades.
In the weeks before the blockades, federal and state TWU officials threatened blockades and go-slows unless the federal government agreed to guaranteed minimum freight rates and a reduction in, or the freezing of, the fuel excise tax.
The owner-drivers who took the initiative to blockade the Melbourne fuel depots were frustrated that there was a lot of talk from the unions but no action. Understandably, considering the Victorian TWU had been the first to raise the idea of a blockade, the blockading drivers expected support from the union.
While the potential for legal action against a union is a serious issue and should not be taken lightly, many of the rights which workers take for granted were won as a result of militant union campaigns which defied threats of legal action.
Given the potential to win massive public support for truck blockades demanding cheaper petrol, fear of litigation sounds like a cop-out by the Victorian TWU. It is unlikely that the government or the oil monopolies would continue with legal action against the union or individual drivers had public support been mobilised for the blockades.
Affiliations
Working people are hurting from increasing fuel prices. Motorists' organisations and the National Farmers Federation are lobbying the government for fuel excise tax relief and the peak organisation representing farmers in Queensland, Agforce, has indicated that it could be interested in joining TWU blockades.
Although the federal government is trying to ride out the pressure to reduce fuel prices, its backbenchers are extremely nervous. If the government does nothing, it could lose the next election.
A more likely explanation for the Victorian TWU's unwillingness to support the drivers' blockades is its political affiliation to the ALP and, in Victoria and New South Wales, its alignment with Labor's right-wing faction — the factions of the Victorian and NSW premiers.
With pro-capitalist Labor state governments in all the eastern states — Australia's most industrialised — there was immense pressure on the Labor-aligned officials of TWU to end their threats of blockades and militant action, in return for vague promises. It is rumoured that the Victorian TWU helped Bracks broker the deal which defused the Melbourne fuel blockades.
So soon after the September 11-13 protests outside the World Economic Forum in Melbourne, Bracks needs to reassert the credentials of the state Labor government as a reliable servant of big business. The last thing he needed was another round of protests that would impact on corporate profits.
However, Bracks preferred to defuse the blockades in a way that made him appear to be the workers' friend. In this case, he wanted to avoid sending riot police to violently break up the blockades, in case it alienated the ALP's traditional voters. To achieve that, Bracks needed the co-operation of the TWU.
The state government succeeded in persuading drivers to lift the blockade before they had time to garner widespread public support and place real pressure on the Howard government.
No answers
While the Coalition should be targeted by protesters for high fuel prices (it could cut the price of fuel by 47.2% simply by removing the fuel excise tax), the state Labor governments and the federal Labor opposition are not offering any solutions. Most state governments impose taxes on fuel, in addition to federal taxes, but none are offering to remove or decrease state taxes.
Labor premiers have not proposed that the federal government abolish, or even significantly reduce, the federal fuel excise tax. They are limiting their demands to a federal government cancellation of the next scheduled indexation of fuel excise, and to the reduction of fuel excise by the amount necessary to cancel out the effect of the GST on fuel prices.
These limited demands are designed to score points against the federal government, without embarrassing the federal ALP for its refusal to commit a future ALP government to decreasing fuel tax. The federal ALP has not supported calls for the freezing of the fuel excise, but it has called for the next scheduled excise increase to be reduced in order to compensate for the GST's impact.
On the issue of a code of conduct guaranteeing minimum freight rates for truck drivers, the Queensland and Victorian governments have said that they would accept the findings of the inquiry into the trucking industry that is being conducted by the NSW Motor Accidents Authority.
The Victorian and Queensland Labor governments do not need to wait for the results of the inquiry. If they were genuinely concerned about the welfare of truck drivers, they would immediately introduce a minimum rates system similar to that which exists in NSW.
The NSW minimum rates system was won by a big truck drivers' blockade 20 years ago. The French truck drivers won a decrease in the price of fuel as a result of their blockades. No government, whether Coalition or Labor, will relieve the pressure on truck drivers unless they are forced by the actions of truck drivers and their supporters.