BY TIM STEWART
More than a few Brisbane unionists added their name to the S11 campaign, inviting speakers to address delegate meetings and pitching in money towards sending buses to Melbourne for the blockade of the World Economic Forum meeting, September 11-13. But S11 activists set off to protest against corporate power without the support of most of our so-called leaders in the union hierarchy.
Some of the S11 activists — mainly students — spent time talking to unionists about the campaign against corporate globalisation, and most union officials were familiar with the issues.
But most had been influenced by union leaders like Doug Cameron, the national secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union. He'd been in Brisbane to speak at a manufacturing workers' demonstration — and argued in favour of "Australia first" protectionism.
When the Brisbane S11 committee approached the Queensland Council of Unions to endorse S11, there were all sorts of technical hitches put in the way.
First, QCU officials said that the motion had to come from an affiliated union. Then they said it had to be referred to the executive — but wouldn't allow S11 committee members to attend to provide background or explanation.
In the end, the QCU executive refused to endorse any S11 activities, not even the main solidarity rally in Brisbane. The QCU didn't even bother to send the S11 committee a letter to explain or justify its decision. At much the same time, Claire Moore, the state secretary of the Community and Public Secretary Union and a member of the QCU executive, stopped attending S11 meetings.
The officials said they didn't want a repeat of the August 19, 1996, protest, when workers stormed Parliament House in Canberra. That our plans were non-violent didn't seem to matter; they didn't want anything to do with it.
While union officials back in Brisbane were timid, the mood at the blockade in Melbourne was just the opposite. Thousands of people, from all sorts of backgrounds, were itching to take it up to the world's capitalist leaders.
Workers stood alongside students, unionists alongside environmentalists, and there was a strong feeling that we were standing with people all over the world, especially in the Third World.
It was also an inspiration for many workers, who've been denied much experience of picket line solidarity and struggle by fearful union officials, to get a taste of mass peaceful, united protest — protest that was effective in that it seriously disrupted the summit.
I returned to Brisbane on September 12 to join the solidarity rally. We marched through city streets to the stock exchange. It was the same story: there were plenty of unionists and great solidarity, but a glaring lack of union leaders or "official" union contingents.
I think S11 has given militant trade unionists even more cause to get up and say, "Whose side are these union officials on? Are they working for us or for them?". The new union movement starts here.
[Tim Stewart is a workplace delegate in the Community and Public Sector Union and a member of the Democratic Socialist Party.]