Emma Clancy
In the wake of the 1600-strong national student strike on June 1 against PM John Howard's anti-worker laws, young people are now preparing young workers and students contingents to the June 28 protests against Work Choices called by the Australian Council of Trade Unions.
A June 1 protest organiser in Sydney, Simon Cunich, told Green Left Weekly that the student strike was the first step in a campaign to involve young people in the broader fight against the Work Choices legislation. "The student strike helped bring public attention to the exploitation that young workers suffer and how Work Choices will make this worse."
At the June 1 rallies, students pledged to walk out again and join youth contingents on June 28. Cunich said: "We're organising to join our teachers, parents and the community as a whole to make June 28 the strongest possible demonstration of opposition to the government."
Fred Fuentes, national coordinator of Resistance, the socialist youth organisation that initiated the June 1 actions, told GLW that those protests were built through organising collectives, using websites, email and text-messaging, and by students organising others on their schools to join the strike. "Now there's a good network of high-school students who are keen to organise their friends and other students to get involved. In the lead-up to June 28, some students are organising lunchtime meetings at their school about the impact of Work Choices on young people."
Fuentes explained that these meetings will also serve as planning sessions for building the youth contingents at June 28. Activists will also be holding workshops and banner-painting sessions in Resistance Centres to prepare for June 28.
Kimberley Bernays from the James Cook University Cairns campus student association, who helped organise the student strike in Cairns, told GLW: "We got a lot of media attention and public support up here for the June 1 action, and now students are meeting with trade unions and taking responsibility for helping to build the June 28 protest. We're expecting more young people to come out this time, now that we have established these networks and come across people who are excited about taking action again."
As well as organising young people to join the trade union day of action, a national network of militant young workers will be set up through the Up Yours Howard young workers' conference in Geelong on June 17. The conference, initiated by Resistance and endorsed by a range of trade unions, will discuss the issues facing young workers and how to most effectively fight for their rights.
Conference organiser Justine Kamprad told GLW that this involves not only organising young people in their workplaces, but also "encouraging them to join the broader political struggle against the legislation that is making their exploitation worse". She added that, in the lead-up to the conference, activists in Geelong will be picketing the Spotlight store to draw attention to the unfair employment contracts that the company is trying to impose on new employees.
Cunich told GLW that despite some media and state government education departments condemning students for walking out on June 1, "on the whole, we received great public support". He explained that "in most states, June 28 is during the school term, so if students want to join the rallies they will have to walk out. We want the state education departments, the teachers' unions and the broader community to publicly support our right to take action for our rights."
To get involved in the campaign for young workers' rights, contact your local Resistance branch (details on page 2) or visit <http://www.resistance.org.au>.
From Green Left Weekly, June 14, 2006.
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