Workers & unions

Supporters of the National Campaign for the Right To Strike initiated the sign-on statement below. * * * Australian law has never provided for the unrestricted right to strike. The first Australian industrial law, the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Act of 1904, penalised Australian striking workers with fines and jail sentences. Before that, Australian workers had to comply with the British Master and Servants Act of 1837, which meant that a worker could face jail if they were absent from work for an hour without permission.

Fair Work Australia’s findings into the Health Services Union (HSU) have revealed serious breaches of the union’s rules, as well as federal regulations governing registered organisations.

About 40 unionists protested outside the annual meeting of mining giant Rio Tinto's board meeting on May 10 against the company's involvement in the London Olympic Games. Rio Tinto is manufacturing medals for the games. At the same time, the mining corporation has staged a lock-out of 800 mine workers at the Alma smelter in Canada. Unions say the lock-out began after the Canadian workers refused contracts that would cut wages of new workers by half.

Green Left Weekly hosted a forum at the Brisbane Activist Centre on May 8 called “Challenges facing the Queensland labour movement: Where to now for the unions under a Liberal National Party government?” The meeting heard from Mark Taylor, a workplace delegate for the Together union in the Brisbane City Council and a state council delegate for the Queensland Greens. It also heard from Marg Gleeson, an Australian Services Union (ASU) delegate in the community housing sector and Socialist Alliance activist.

It used to be that when you got a job, it was a job you could count on. Over the past 30 years, that's been changing. More and more workers feel insecure in their job. The National Union of Workers' campaign aims to reverse this trend.

May Day was celebrated in Adelaide on Saturday May 5 with a march through the city streets. A sizable Left Unity block marched down together from the Adelaide Activist Centre. They marched under a Left Unity banner, but also carried individual banners representing the participating groups. The Left Unity contingent included Socialist Alliance, Resistance, the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies) Adelaide branch, along with other independent members of the left.

Sydney May Day march, May 6. Photos by Peter Boyle

As Rocky Mountaineer’s lockout of award-winning on-board staff enters its 10th month, ads are once again being placed to hire more scab workers. Rocky Mountaineer is Canada’s luxury tourist train that takes tourists throughout the summer months from Vancouver to the scenic Rocky Mountains. Nearly 40% of these visitors to Canada come from Australia. On June 22 last year, as the Rocky Mountaineer pulled into Kamloops for its overnight stop, regular staff were ordered off the train and sent back to their homes in Vancouver. One hundred and eight staff were locked out.

At May Day rallies it organised or took part in throughout Pakistan, the Labour Party Pakistan (LPP) highlighted the cases of members and supporters facing “anti-terror” courts. These include the Faisalabad 6, serving long sentences for leading a 2010 power loom workers strike and 12 power loom workers currently facing the Anti-Terror courts in Karachi for union organising.

Jackie Kriz, an Australian Nurses Federation delegate from Geelong, will be the special guest speaker at Sydney’s annual Green Left Weekly May Day dinner, where she will share her experiences of the Victorian nurses’ remarkable victorious campaign and some of the lessons we can learn from it.

The Occupy movement in the United States relaunched itself on May 1 when thousands of people rallied in more than 130 cities across the country to mark May Day — the international day to mark working people's struggles.

About 350 members of the Health And Community Services Union (HACSU) attended a state-wide meeting and marched to Parliament House on May 2. The event was held in defiance of the state government’s attempt to shut down the union's campaign against government attacks by using legal processes in Fair Work Australia. The HACSU has been campaigning to defend jobs and ratios in the mental health system that will be slashed under proposed government cuts.