Graham Matthews, Sydney
"I was inspired by the July 1 [Unions NSW organised Sky Channel] meetings because of the people around me", John Kaye, former Greens Senate candidate and National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) activist told a July 12 Green Left Weekly public forum. "And not just the people, but the number of young people. It was like the Accord had never happened and that sense of solidarity was back again."
The campaign against the federal government's anti-worker industrial relations "reforms" had "galvanised workers against the Howard government's attacks", Kaye said. "The next three years are going to be a test for [the progressive movement]. For instance, how we deal with the ALP. And it must be something between dealing with a delinquent child and an ex-partner."
He emphasised the need for activists to relate closely to the broader community as the only way to win the campaign.
Susan Price, vice-president of the NTEU branch at the University of NSW and a Socialist Alliance member, also emphasised the importance of the June 30 and July 1 nationwide rallies, attended by least 300,000 workers.
Price, however, criticised the lack of focus on industrial action in the ACTU and Unions NSW campaign against the government's planned anti-union laws.
"Up until late April the only call from Unions NSW was for a picnic on August 7", Price explained. "Only in early May did Unions NSW concede the need for a cross-union delegates' meeting. It was only with the success of the May 27 delegates' meetings across NSW that many unionists began to realise what was possible."
"The ACTU strategy is now being contested by a range of unions, including those who have not had a militant tradition", Price said.
She reminded the forum that the federal government was attempting to push Australian Workplace Agreements onto the federal public service and the tertiary education sector, even before the legislation has been passed by parliament.
Price called for a strategy of "concerted action, but only if these actions are backed up by cross-sector mobilisations and action in defence of any union that is attacked".
"We need to support the ACTU education campaign, but if we don't tie this to action, both industrial action and mass action, then the campaign will not move ahead", she argued.
Shane Bentley, a member of the Maritime Union of Australia, recounted some of the lessons of past struggles where concerted union and community action had defeated anti-union attacks, particularly the 1998 campaign in defence of workers sacked by Patrick Stevedores.
Bentley, who is also a member of the Socialist Alliance, concluded by calling for the formation of a new workers' party — to defend working people's interests — as a political alternative to the ALP.
Garry Preston, a delegate to Unions NSW from the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, who was an organiser for a New Zealand construction union in the early 1990s briefly recounted the lessons of the defeat of organised labour there. Preston, who is also a workplace delegate, particularly cautioned against action by individual unions isolated from a generalised campaign against the legislation, which he argued allowed the government to pick off unions one at a time.
From Green Left Weekly, July 20, 2005.
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