By James Vassilopoulos
The victorious 15-day strike of the US International Brotherhood of Teamsters against the United Parcel Service is an inspiration. It is great to see a union celebrating a real victory and the company with its tail between its legs. This week, the week of the ACTU congress, it is timely to reflect on some of the lessons of that struggle for Australian workers and unions.
The teamsters' campaign was not just about defending the status quo; it was a bold offensive. They didn't do a rotten deal and justify it by blaming members' apathy, but confronted the big corporation. One of their key demands was the creation of thousands more full-time jobs.
The unionists won because they were prepared to use industrial muscle and organisation to back up their demands. As the teamsters' president, Ron Carey, said, "Members involvement throughout our contract campaign [and] teamster unity on the picket line" forced UPS to capitulate.
The union also won over public support; other US workers supported the strike 2:1. The union consciously pitched its propaganda to all workers. It didn't have a limited "work with the community" perspective with a token action accompanied by glossy brochures. It's perspective was to mobilise communities to stand with the workers on the picket line.
Very importantly, the strike was led by the union leadership. A militant rank and file group, Teamsters for a Democratic Union, democratised the union and threw out the old, corrupt leadership.
Unions in Australia can learn much from this victory. The workers' movement here is in a crisis: union membership has spiralled down from 49.5% of the work force in 1982 to 31% today (it dropped 4% in the last two years); awards and conditions are in the process of being stripped back; hundreds of workers are signing individual contracts; and workers are working harder, longer hours with added stress.
The union movement is in a state of retreat, with a smug Peter Reith already talking about a third wave of federal anti-worker legislation.
Much of the blame for this mess lies with the ACTU's disastrous alliance with the ALP in government, in the form of the Accord. It delivered real wage cuts, non-union enterprise bargaining, individual contracts and, worst of all, decaying workplace delegate structures.
The strategy of getting Labor re-elected won't work. Why re-elect a party which has undermined workers' interests? The Liberals must be fought now.
Where unions have put up a fight, they have won large wage increases and maintained award conditions — such as at the ACI Spotswood plant, against Citipower, in the construction industry and at some universities.
Since the election of the Howard government, unions have not waged a consistent fight against the Liberals' anti-worker industrial relations legislation, austerity budgets and attacks on social services.
Last year's 30,000-strong August 19 mobilisations promised so much, but ignoring workers' anger, not just at the Howard government but also at their own leaderships, the ACTU went ahead with a rotten deal with the Democrats that enabled most of the Liberals' vicious IR bill to become law.
The ACTU's "steak knife" services unionism, its focus on super-unions and the living wage case have all failed to boost union membership.
Unions should stop wasting their energy poaching each others members and put their efforts into organising the un-organised. The "Organising Works" program, whilst recruiting thousands of workers, can not substitute for an all-in, militant, union campaign which fights the Liberals and turns the membership slide around.
If it is to survive and grow, the union movement needs to be rebuilt from the bottom up. With official unemployment at 8.7% and full-time workers working on average 42.2 hours per week, unions would do well to campaign for a 35-hour week, with no loss in pay. This would create over a million jobs.
The Liberals punitive anti-union laws must be fought — like they were in the late 1960s in days of Clarrie O'Shea. The anti-secondary boycott laws must not be used as an excuse for the unions not fighting and not extending solidarity to others. This means other unions need to extend solidarity, including industrial action, to the Hunter Valley and Curragh miners.
To date the ALP remains coy about repealing all of the Liberal's anti-union laws. Only a strong, independent labour movement will have the necessary clout to force it to do so.
So what's the next thing the teamsters are going to do? They are going to join with the United Farm Workers to organise 40,000 fruit pickers. This is exactly the type of unionism we urgently need in Australia today.