BY
SUE BOLTON
Over the past four weeks, several trade unions have passed motions to take stop work action against the threatened war on Iraq. Mobilising the ranks of the unions, the largest organisations of working people, will be crucial to building a truly mass anti-war movement.
The Western Australian unions were the first to seriously consider taking industrial action against the threatened war. A working group of Unions WA affiliates on February 4 voted to recommend to the Unions WA executive that affiliates work together with other community groups to organise mass protest action once the war on Iraq begins. Protest action could range from stopping work through to local workplace protests and attendance at marches and rallies.
The West Australian publicised an exaggerated report of the meeting to whip up a frenzy of opposition to the possibility of industrial action against the war.
When the media attack began, Unions WA assistant secretary Dave Robinson
said: You don't lead public opinion by being mute and silent. There will 
be
people who won't agree, but at least you'll prompt that debate and we're
not afraid of that debate, unlike [Prime Minister John] Howard.
The first union to seriously build support for industrial action against the war was the WA branch of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union. This union's actions showed leadership and encouraged other branches of the CFMEU to consider industrial action if war breaks out.
The CFMEU's WA branch adopted its position prior to the February 14-16 weekend when the massive peace rallies proved how extensive the anti-war sentiment is.
CFMEU WA secretary Kevin Reynolds told Green Left Weekly: If the US declares war on Iraq, our members will be walking off major jobs in protest... We certainly don't have unanimous support among our members for this position. There has been wide-ranging debate on the building sites. The meetings have not been quick meetings.
It is very interesting to see the views of the young workers opposed to the war. It is more common for the young workers to be concerned about where the war is leading us. It's easier for older workers to be gung ho about going to war when they won't have to fight the war, and in most cases, they have never had to fight a war. It's young people who are sent to fight wars.
Despite the debate, Reynolds said that on all of the jobs where it had been discussed, the motion to walk off the job as soon as bombing starts, regardless of UN support for the war, has been overwhelmingly carried.
The WA branch, the Victorian branch, and the national executive of the CFMEU construction division all oppose the war, regardless of the UN position.
The Victorian Trades Hall Council also opposes war on Iraq, regardless of UN support for such a war. VTHC secretary Leigh Hubbard reports that, overwhelmingly, unions in Victoria support this position because the impact is the same on innocent civilians whether the war is UN-sanctioned or not.
The Geelong Trades and Labor Council; the Melbourne-based Workers Against War group which is officially recognised by the VTHC; the Victorian branch of the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union (TCFUA); the Wollongong-based South Coast Labor Council; the Australian Education Union (AEU) national conference and the National Tertiary Education Industry Union (NTEU) national council also oppose the war regardless of the UN position.
AEU federal secretary Rob Durbridge said his union was currently discussing what sort of action to take if war starts. We have a lot of members who will take protest action whenever they can, and similarly, that will apply to a lot of students. We encourage teachers to join in protest action called by anti-war coalitions but we are not calling on schools to stop because we have a particular responsibility for children in those schools.
The AEU federal conference resolution on January 15-17 was amended to include non-cooperation with the war effort, Durbridge said, but teachers don't actually contribute to the war effort.
NTEU assistant national secretary Ted Murphy explained that it is a political trap to link opposition to war to the position of the UN Security Council, because there's a very good prospect that some countries represented on the UN Security Council with veto power, for reasons of their own political and economic interests vis-a-vis the United States, could decide to abstain rather than veto.
The three main education unions the Australian Education Union, the Independent Education Union and the NTEU have taken out newspaper advertisements in the Australian to profile their anti-war position and anti-war activities.
Murphy said they will finance larger advertisements in the event of a US military strike being imminent or if the UN Security Council appears to support the strike or passes a resolution that is ambiguous but that can be claimed by the US to endorse a war, adding: We think that's an important time for more consistent opponents of the war to present the argument that there is no case for war even if the security council appears to legitimise a military intervention.
Despite Washington's blatant blackmail of the Security Council member countries, the ACTU has stuck to its position of only opposing a unilateral war on Iraq. A national meeting of left unions on March 11 will discuss putting a stronger position to the next ACTU executive meeting on March 25-26.
Both the Queensland Council of Unions (QCU) and the NSW Labor Council previously had the ACTU position of only opposing a unilateral war, but have now modified their positions to opposing war without any qualifications.
QCU general secretary Grace Grace regards the resolution that went to our executive today [February 26] is one of opposing any declaration of war with Iraq regardless of the United Nations.
However, both of the updated QCU and NSW Labor Council resolutions accept the pretext used by the Howard government to back a war against Iraq the fraudulent claim that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.
The Community and Public Sector Union national council has adopted a position expressing its support for our members in fulfilling their duties as public servants, that is, obediently implementing the Howard government's planned aggression against Iraq.
Hubbard, while noting that it had taken a lot of work by left unionists to bring the broader union movement into opposition to Australian involvement in the Vietnam War, this time around, we start with a much stronger base of unions opposing the war, and unions do have an important position because we are the biggest mass organisations outside the churches.
CFMEU Victorian secretary Martin Kingham pointed out that peace is union business because it's working-class people who end up as the soldiers on both sides. And it's generally working-class people who make up the majority of casualties when they start dropping bombs, because they always bomb the industrial suburbs first, where all the factories are.
For the first time in many years, most labour councils around the country are actively involved in anti-war coalitions in their local cities in Brisbane, Sydney, Wollongong, Melbourne, Geelong and Perth.
However, the on-the-job debate among workers is at an early stage. Many union leaders contacted by GLW have only recently begun the process of systematically organising on-the-job discussions about the war.
These discussions are most advanced in unions where the leadership is proposing that workers engage in concrete actions to oppose the war. The proposal for Perth building workers to stop work when bombing begins and the proposal to Melbourne and Geelong building workers for site-by-site discussions and votes on displaying anti-war banners on building sites has provoked rich debate.
The decision of Sydney CFMEU delegates on February 25 to put a recommendation to the union's members to stop work to participate in anti-war rallies has also begun a process of discussion among Sydney building workers.
Now carrying that doesn't mean it automatically happens, said NSW CFMEU secretary Andrew Ferguson. We've actually got to do a lot of work amongst our rank and file on the issue. I'm not confident of large sections of our membership stopping work during working hours on the issue. It's not easy losing wages to participate in a rally.
We have done it in the past. We stopped a number of sites during the struggle in East Timor. At one stage we had about 1000 workers come to a rally at the airport against Garuda.
TCFUA Victorian secretary Michele O'Neil said: I suspect that quite a number of unions are in the same position as us where we've got the union leadership out there saying that we're part of the anti-war movement but we're conscious of the need not to leave the rank and file behind.
O'Neil said that TCFUA organisers and delegates are now trying to organise systematic discussions and meetings with members about the potential war and about the union's position.
The Melbourne-based Workers Against War was founded as a group of union officials and rank-and-file members to help in this process. One of the group's founders, former Australian Manufacturing Workers Union state secretary Craig Johnston, told GLW: The idea of the group is to assist the leaderships of the unions to get the message out to rank and filers that this war is a US imperialist war about oil...
We want to get out and explain that and empower and activate workers, so that workers become much more involved in opposition to the war through demonstrations, marches and protests, and hopefully industrial campaigns to oppose the war.
Hubbard was hopeful that a union-sponsored protest on the day after war began could become an international protest action, perhaps promoted through the US Labor Against War network.
One action which is being discussed by some unions in the eastern states is a cavalcade to Canberra against the war on March 24 to coincide with the last sitting of federal parliament before the May budget session.
From Green Left Weekly, March 5, 2003.
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