Ripping up Work Choices or tearing at the edges? by Margarita Windisch

Labor’s new Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill 2008, tabled in federal parliament on February 13, will most likely come in to effect early April. The bill is the first in a raft of legislation to be introduced to parliament and is promoted by the federal government as the first step in the dismantling of Work Choices.

However, the new bill will not reverse many of the unfair laws introduced as part of Work Choices. In a February 13 speech to parliament, Julia Gillard, Labor’s workplace relations minister, emphasised that the bill will abolish all Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) and “rid Australia of all statutory individual agreements”. However, this is only half of the story.

Andrew Stewart, law professor at Adelaide University, confirmed that AWA’s can continue indefinitely under this new legislation. He told Green Left Weekly that under the transitional bill, employers cannot offer or enter into new AWAs from the date the new legislation comes into effect. However, any existing AWAs could still run their course. “Even though they [AWAs] have to have an end date, it is a nominal end date only. In practical terms this means that once an agreement reaches the expiry date it keeps going, it just becomes easier to terminate. AWAs can be unilaterally terminated, but some older AWAs that are still in existence can only be terminated by the Industrial Relations Commission”.

Stewart added that many people on AWAs are not union members and are unaware of their rights, including their ability to terminate the contract and enter into a collective agreement. Many employers have used statutory individual contracts (such as AWAs) to restrict unions from entering workplaces and reduce union influence. In a submission to the Senate inquiry on the transitional bill, mining giant Rio Tinto welcomed the legislation on the basis that it will not fundamentally alter the status quo and would allow contracts to continue well beyond 2013.

Only 8% of Rio Tinto’s work force is on union agreements — 22% are on AWAs and 55% are on common law contracts. According to Stewart, AWAs can override collective agreements in the new legislation. “If a collective agreement is voted up at a workplace, employees who are still covered by an AWA, even if it’s expired, cannot be bound by that collective agreement”, he said.

The new bill will also make it possible to offer wage raises via common law agreements in order to leave expired AWAs in place for years. Stewart told GLW that the federal government’s new IR policy was essentially built on a series of compromises that the ALP decided to make in the lead-up to the election. “Labor was aware of the community backlash [as a result of] Work Choices but was concerned not to look anti-business, so they essentially committed to these transitional arrangements in order to placate major business groups — especially the mining industry.”

Common law agreements will play an increasingly important role. Common law individual contracts have been used by some epmployers to lure workers out of unions by initially offering higher wages for signing individual contracts, which were generally accompanied by trade-offs in conditions. Common law agreements can be made in writing or verbally.

“There will be a greater capacity to enter into common law agreements that vary the operation of award provisions when the new award system takes effect in 2010 in ways that are not possible now”, Stewart told GLW. “Labor is saying to business — we will abolish statuary individual agreements after 2010, but on the other hand we will give you greater flexibility in terms of what you can do with common law contracts.”

Labor’s plans for award “modernisation” are to take effect by 2010. While some minimum standards will exist, there will be ample space for individual agreements through the introduction of “flexibility” clauses into awards. Stewart explained, “There is no doubt that there is a significant qualification to the abolition of AWAs [through flexibility clauses].

Labor is going to give business the capacity to do through common law agreements what they could previously only do through AWAs. Past experience tells us that if those flexibility provisions are included they will be used predominately by employers for the benefit of their business. But there will also be benefits for some workers such as flexible work hours arrangements that suit their particular needs.”

The Australian Industry Group, representing 10,000 employers, has given Labor’s bill the thumbs up. A February 13 AAP reported quoted the Ai Group’s Heather Ridout as commenting that although bosses “would have preferred to keep AWAs as an employment option”, the new bill’s “Award Modernisation Request” to the Industrial Relations Commission “clarifies that the award modernisation process is not to be used by unions to increase the scope of awards or achieve general improvements in minimum standards … we are pleased that industry’s concerns have been addressed.” “An enormous number of people in the labour movement are not happy about this, even some people in government are not happy about it and would like to take a different view on transitional arrangements. Even the chair of the Senate committee, Senator Gavin Marshall, has been quoted as wondering if the transitional period is too long”, Steward commented.

From: Comment & Analysis, Green Left Weekly issue #744 19 March 2008.

Victorian unionists: More to be done for workers' rights by Margarita Windisch, Melbourne

Five days after the November 24 federal election, outgoing industrial relations minister Joe Hockey admitted, in a rare moment of political honesty, that Work Choices contributed to the Coalition government’s defeat. He declared that the new Labor government was given a mandate by the people to abolish the Work Choices legislation.

However, contrary to Labor’s election promise to “tear-up” Work Choices, PM Kevin Rudd’s government has indicated it will retain many of the former Howard government’s draconian anti-worker laws as part of its “interim” bill. Individual contracts, restrictions on union representatives’ right of entry and on the right to strike, and the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC), set up to curb the industrial muscle of building workers, are set to stay until at least 2010.

The federal government has also embarked on a campaign for wage restraint in the face of rising inflation. In a February 25 CNBC Asia interview, deputy prime minister Julia Gillard urged restraint, warning that workers would make no real gains if they ended up “fuelling a wages inflation cycle”.

Michele O’Neil, Victorian secretary of the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union, rejects the notion that wage restraint is necessary to keep inflation low. She told Green Left Weekly that TCFUA members were low-waged workers struggling to meet the demands of daily living, and that they had a right to improved wages and conditions — and that the union will fight for them. The Victorian president of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), Ralph Edwards, agrees. He told GLW that wages had been restrained for a very long time, and that bad economic policy was to blame for inflation, not workers.

“Our national divisional secretary Dave Noonan made it clear in the media that we won’t take responsibility for inflation and that we have dealt with the employers of our industry on a rational basis”, Edwards said. “However as a consequence of that he has come under criticism from the new Rudd government, which is all a bit hard to understand.”

Labor’s transitional IR bill will scrap Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs — individual contracts), a key Labor election promise. However it will replace them with a new variety of individual contract, the Interim Transitional Employment Agreements (ITEA).

Julie Bishop, the Liberal Party’s deputy leader, announced on February 19 that the Coalition would not oppose the abolition of AWAs and would back Labor’s ITEA scheme.

O’Neil told GLW that the TCFUA would be campaigning to end all forms individual contracts, arguing that workers need collective rights and collective union agreements underpinned by strong industrial awards.

Steve Dargavel, Victorian secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU), expressed concerns to GLW about the “flexibility” clause in awards — introducing individual contracts via the back door — that will be part of the federal government’s awards policy.

He explained that these flexibility provisions — inserted by the Industrial Relations Commission into awards after the first round of award stripping that began with the Howard government’s 1996 industrial relations legislation — allowed employers to stand over workers and require them to agree to give away certain conditions. He said that “the CFMEU, AMWU, Electrical Trades Union and a range of other unions were very successful in excluding the operation of these provisions through their past enterprise bargaining agreement [EBA] negotiations. It is unclear whether this tactic will be available to us in the new legislation.”

The ABCC, established in 2005 and funded to the tune of $32 million a year, was set up to police the militant construction unions. Edwards told GLW that the ABCC has been used against construction workers in disputes with bosses over enforcing EBA provisions and health and safety issues. In November, Peter Ballard, an elected union representative in WA, was sacked for insisting on maintaining safe working conditions.

Edwards said that the CFMEU 2008 national conference “made it clear that we are totally opposed to the continuation of the ABCC and we also don’t see why there should be a special section of the Fair Work Australia [which the ABCC will be incorporated into in 2010 under Labor’s plan] for construction workers. We are not criminals, we go to work, we do our work and productivity and profits in our industry have never been better; there is no need for any inspectorate, whether it is called the ABCC with their coercive powers or Fair Work Australia.”

Edwards also told GLW that the CFMEU will be negotiating a new EBA this year. “We will be pursuing an EBA at a time to suit ourselves and we will be talking to employers the same way as we have always talked to them. We have to talk to them about an industry because on any site you can have 20-30 subcontractors and if we were enterprise bargaining for 20 or 30 people at different times that would be an absolute disaster for the employers.

“We will be having a very interesting year as the federal government is trying to work out what they really are going to do and I hope they will tell us in advance.”

Dargavel called on the federal government to bring Australian industrial relations law in line with International Labour Organization standards, that allow for the right to strike, organise in the workplaces and collectively bargain. O’Neil also supported Australia meeting ILO standards, explaining to GLW that “the real issues that are making a difference to the daily lives of my members are the fact that they have no unfair dismissal rights and are being penalised for active unionism and are not able to collectively bargain across the industry legally.

“Also difficult are the prohibited content restrictions; workers need unfettered right to strike with out fear of fines and jail. We need to remove all aspects of legislation that criminalise basic union work.”

On February 21 the Victorian Trades Hall Council passed a resolution to continue the “Your Rights at Work” campaign. The resolution was modeled on a motion unanimously endorsed at a Victorian AMWU delegates’ meeting. Dargavel said that there was still a significant distance to go for the campaign, both in eliminating Work Choices and defending workers from further attacks on their rights.

“We envisage large delegates’ meetings, public rallies, demonstrations, petitions, and lobbying — the full cacophony of a campaign. One of the biggest challenges for progressives will be to try to work to keep a sense of cohesion and solidarity but keep the campaign going.”

From: Comment & Analysis, Green Left Weekly issue #742 5 March 2008.

ACTU: we're not feeling neglected-TV interview, 'Insiders' with Barrie Cassidy, ABC TV

ACTU secretary Jeff Lawrence

Remember Work Choices and the campaign that was generated to oppose it? Remember? Here ACTU secretary Jeff Lawrence delivers that body's post election preferences in regard to Work Choices and the ALP government's 'lite' version of same.

But heres' a suggestion: if you are sour on Work Choices and want it torn up completely, don't go holding your breath if you are waiting on Lawrence and co to to facilitate the tearing up.

Watch the interview on the ABC website.

Dave Riley from LeftClick

BARRIE CASSIDY, PRESENTER: Well, the trade unions dominated the debate during the election campaign, and they spent a lot of money in tandem with Labor on the WorkChoices issue. Joining us now is the Secretary of the ACTU, Jeff Lawrence.

(to Jeff Lawrence) Good morning, welcome.

JEFF LAWRENCE, SECRETARY, ACTU: Morning, Barrie.

BARRIE CASSIDY: You spent $30 million or so on advertising, that must have been a significant boost to Labor, what's the dividend from all of that?

JEFF LAWRENCE: Well I'm not sure about that figure, Barrie, but there was a significant trade union spend, that's true. And the election was really important, because we think it meant the rejection of WorkChoices, I think that's absolutely clear, and what we want to see now is fair industrial legislation put in place, and I'm confident that will happen.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Was part of the dividend simply survival, because that in itself would have been an issue if the Coalition had won?

JEFF LAWRENCE: I don't think that the trade union movement would not have survived, the trade union movement would have survived, but we do have an opportunity now, we've got an opportunity to build a fair society in Australia and we've got an opportunity to work with the Government, and for that matter, to communicate with employers.

So there is a real opportunity to change our country for the better.

BARRIE CASSIDY: I want to ask you about that communication a little later on, but what do you want from the Government on WorkChoices? If Kevin Rudd does no more than what he says he will do, is that okay by you?

JEFF LAWRENCE: Well we have a policy, and it does have some differences to Labor. We will continue to argue of course for our policy, but Labor has made its decision fairly clear, and I do believe that they have a mandate for that policy, and I'm sure they will proceed with it.

The legislation of course will contain all sorts of issues, and deal with all sorts of issues in detail. So there will be a process of discussion with the Government over the next six months or so.

BARRIE CASSIDY: So you except their mandate, but what's the greatest irritant to you? What area would you like to see changed?

JEFF LAWRENCE: It isn't so much areas to be changed, I think there is a need to talk about the implementation of various issues, there are all sorts of matters that surround the key areas of policy where discussions are necessary.

The central issue for us, though, is the future of collective bargaining. The question of collective bargaining and how it operates in Australia and its relationship with freedom of association, those two really key international rights, they're the things that we'll be talking about most during next year.

BARRIE CASSIDY: And you're satisfied you can do that within the framework that the Government has spelt out?

JEFF LAWRENCE: Absolutely, yes. One of the really central commitments that Labor has made is the whole system of good faith bargaining, the way in which Fair Work Australia will work in the implementation of that system, to help it actually operate. So collective bargaining, freedom of association, are central parts of Labor's policy, and will be central parts in the new system.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Do you have any problem with the two-stage process that Julia Gillard has outlined? That's something that she didn't outline until after the election, and of course the second stage doesn't come into effect until 2010.

JEFF LAWRENCE: Well the two-stage process was announced in August, when Labor announced its implementation plan. So we've known that was going to occur for some time, we knew that there would be a transition Bill. Clearly, we want to make sure that both parts of that legislative package are in place as soon as possible; that's a priority, and that's what we'll be working towards.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Now, the restrictions on union rights to enter workplaces will stay, restrictions on strikes will stay, are you comfortable with that?

JEFF LAWRENCE: We would like to see some discussion about some aspects of those policy areas, as I say, there are lots of details to work through there, but we believe we can work with the Government, we believe we can talk to employers to get a practical method of implementation in place.

BARRIE CASSIDY: You say your confident you can work with the Government, but there is no formal relationship or formal dialogue put in place as yet. In fact, Kevin Rudd was asked about it in the Press Club, and he said he hadn't given it any thought at all. Do you need some sort of formal working relationship with the Government, or are you just going to wing it?

JEFF LAWRENCE: Well, no, we're not going to wing it. There will be, and there should be, I'm confident, a formal relationship. The Australian Labor Advisory Council - ALAC - is actually part of the Labor Party's rules and constitution, so there will be a process of consultation. But there will also be consultation with employers, so we just need to work on that, there are lots of issues that will be dealt with in the next six months.

BARRIE CASSIDY: But you're not feeling a bit neglected, Julia Gillard has already spoken to the Australian Industry Group, and there is a consultation group in place to allow for dialogue between the Government and business?

JEFF LAWRENCE: No, we're not feeling neglected. We'll be there, we'll be there expressing very strongly and very firmly our views and our values, and we'll be expressing that to the Government, but as well as that, we'll be in a public sense arguing for our position.

And so our campaign, the Your Rights At Work campaign, will continue, we've made that very clear, and what that will be about is us talking about the role of unions but also the role of unions in society, why it is important that there are strong unions, why it's important that the trade union movement grows. One of the reasons is we just don't want to see a repeat of WorkChoices.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Brendan Nelson and Julie Bishop have indicated that they are willing to talk with the unions, now I don't think John Howard had a meeting with Greg Combet, or with the secretary of the ACTU, in 11 and a half years, I don't think Joe Hockey did. Is this new?

JEFF LAWRENCE: Let me say Barrie, we are prepared to talk to anybody, at any time, to advance the interests of Australian workers. So I'm not sure what happened in the past. There is a consultative mechanism, and certainly since I was elected as secretary, there was one meeting, which Joe Hockey was at which I attended.
BARRIE CASSIDY: Yes, but this might be a one-on-one arrangement. Are you curious to why they might be doing this?

JEFF LAWRENCE: I'm not too keen on one-on-one arrangements, Barrie, I think there needs to be broad discussion with all parts of society, and clear the role of the Senate and Parliament in terms of getting legislation through is important, so we want to engage in that.

BARRIE CASSIDY: I think it's fair to say Kevin Rudd is no trade unionist. Do you expect the likes of Greg Combet and Bill Shorten to look after the interests of the unions within the caucus?

JEFF LAWRENCE: I don't expect anybody to look after the interest of unions, unions will look after their own interests, and we'll be standing up for the things that we think are important.

I do think that it is a very good thing that we have, in the Federal Parliament now, people who have been in the trade union movement quite recently, because lots of changes have happened with the trade union movement, lots of changes have happened with the economy, and it is a good thing that there are people who have gone into the trade union movement, into Parliament, like Greg, Bill Shorten and others, who've got very recent experience of the sort of challenges that unions have confronted.

BARRIE CASSIDY: What's their brief? What are their riding instructions?

JEFF LAWRENCE: They haven't got any riding instructions, they will carry out their role in the Government, in accordance with the position of the Government. What we'll be doing is talking to the Government, and those people who are responsible, and of course Julia is the responsible minister, and she's the main person that we'll be talking to, and the main person we've talked to.

BARRIE CASSIDY: What do you do now, about your image? The Coalition, they may not have won the election, but they knew enough about community attitudes to make unions and their connection with the Labor Party a huge issue.

JEFF LAWRENCE: Well, that issue and that campaign have been rejected by the Austrailan people. There has been the most vicious anti-union campaign that I have ever seen, all of those TV ads in red and yellow and black that we saw every night, and in fact, in electorates, marginal electorates. That campaign has been rejected.

So the role of trade unions has actually been recognised by the Australian people. Australian people know that unions have stood up to the interests of all Australian working families.

BARRIE CASSIDY: But we can't be certain why people voted the way that they did, do you think that perhaps you need to modernise to broaden your image? The image that we saw during the election campaign with people like Kevin Reynolds and Joe McDonald, the thuggery was there, for everybody to see. Are you worried about that, and do you think you need to tackle that issue?

JEFF LAWRENCE: Barrie, those sorts of diversionary campaigns focused on a couple of individuals, not at all representative of the broad Australian trade union movement, just did not work.

The union movement will be continuing to articulate what we stand for, and what we stand for is the protection of Australian working families. That's been shown in the election campaign, what we're about is getting rid of WorkChoices, we've done that now.

We will be continuing to talk about our role in the public sense. We will talk about why it's important that there are strong unions, why it's important that unions grow. So we'll continue to put out that public message, as we have, the trade union movement covers a very broad spectrum of industry in society, and it is representative of these industries.

BARRIE CASSIDY: But do you still need to be alert to people like Joe McDonald, into the future?
JEFF LAWRENCE: Look, individuals don't matter here, what we're about is making sure that Australian working families are protected.

BARRIE CASSIDY: So is there a place for say, Dean Mighell, do you have some sympathy for him and do you think perhaps that he should return to the ALP one day?

JEFF LAWRENCE: The question of Labor Party membership is matter for the Labor Party, and it's a matter for Dean. The ACTU will stand up for officials and for unionsts who have their rights infringed, and we will continue to stand up and argue for all workers and all unions who have been attacked.

BARRIE CASSIDY: And just finally, how do you feel, then, about the prospect of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard? You've now seen them develop an industrial relations policy, and they'll now be running the country for at least three years, are you comfortable with that, or do you think that they might now draw a bit of distance between the Government and the unions?

JEFF LAWRENCE: No, I think that Kevin Rudd has run a fabulous campaign, I think Julia has been and will be a really able Deputy Prime Minister, we're really looking forward to working with this Government. I think there is now a tremendous opportunity for the trade union movement, but more so, there's a tremendous opportunity for Australia, if there's more communication between unions and employers, we can address some of the skill deficiencies and some of the other areas where we've lagged behind over the last 11 years.

BARRIE CASSIDY: So do you plan to talk to the employers about that? About boosting the dialogue between unions and employers?

JEFF LAWRENCE: Absolutely, and that will start before Christmas. So what we're about is just trying to make sure that we sit down with everybody in society, and of course employers are an absolutely key part of society to make sure that we get the legislation through, and that we have an industrial system which is one which provides for the sort of rights that exist all around the world, and they're the sort of rights, particularly collective bargaining and freedom of association, that have been suppressed and denied during the Howard years.

BARRIE CASSIDY: It won't be easy, because you went at each other fairly aggressively during the campaign, with your advertisements on both sides?

JEFF LAWRENCE: Look, people are professionals, people have got their own points of view, what needs to happen is that we sit down in a room, we put those points of view, and we come up with a position that is for the benefit of all parties.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Thanks for your time this morning.

JEFF LAWRENCE: Thanks, Barrie.

Unionists call for Work Choices' complete abolition by Graham Matthews & Sue Bolton

The November 24 rout of the Howard government owed much to the work of the organised labour movement. Of the marginal Coalition seats targeted by the Your Rights at Work (YRAW) campaign, 20 of 24 have fallen to Labor (including John Howard’s own seat of Bennelong); the other four remain in doubt. Most of those who voted for Labor did so believing that Labor would abolish Work Choices, as promised by Kevin Rudd on October 14, the official start to the election campaign. Yet Labor’s industrial relations policy — Forward with Fairness — promises only minimal changes, replacing the Coalition’s legislation with “Work Choices Lite”.

In Rudd’s November 24 victory speech, the PM-elect said that he wanted “to put the old battles aside — the old battles between business and unions”. His only commitment on workers’ rights was to “get the balance right” between fairness and productivity at the workplace.

As the Liberal Party scrambles to recover from its electoral massacre, some Liberal politicians publicly toyed with dumping some Howard-era policies. Former minister for industrial slavery Joe Hockey told the November 28 Sydney Morning Herald that “Work Choices is dead … Labor has an undeniable, overwhelming mandate to abolish Work Choices.”

However, new Liberal leader Brendan Nelson signalled that the Liberal Party may block Labor’s changes to Work Choices if it deems they are likely to “decrease jobs”.

However, the ALP’s policy is to retain much of Work Choices. It has pledged to maintain the ban on strikes outside of bargaining periods, to keep mandatory secret ballots before strikes, to keep the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC), and to keep AWAs (individual contracts) until the end of 2012.

Many unionists are unhappy with Labor’s policy shortcomings. Unions NSW secretary John Robertson has called for Labor to retrospectively abolish AWAs immediately and has called for YRAW groups to push for this, according to the November 26 Australian.

Many businesses, including Telstra, are attempting to hastily sign up employees to AWAs or to renew them for a further five years before the laws are changed, the Australian reported. While this is legal under Labor’s so-called “transitional arrangements”, Labor’s IR minister Julia Gillard “warned” companies against following Telstra’s lead. Stephen Jones, national secretary of the Community and Public Sector Union, was quoted in the November 30 SMH calling for Labor to ban new AWAs from January 1.

Union leaders from Victoria have backed Robertson’s call for the retrospective abolition of AWAs. Electrical Trades Union state secretary Dean Mighell, Geelong Trades Hall secretary Tim Gooden and Communication Workers Union postal and telecommunications branch state secretary Joan Doyle all told Green Left Weekly that they back this call.

Derek Belan, NSW state secretary of the National Union of Workers agreed that AWAs need to go — now. “The union movement needs to make it clear to the government that working people have voted that they no longer want AWAs to be a part of the workplace … If Rudd doesn’t listen he may not be around in 2012 to find out that it was a bad policy. There’s a couple of elections between now and then”, he told GLW.

In any interim period while AWAs still formally exist, “the main way to stop the spread of AWAs is with an aggressive industrial campaign”, Belan said. “Any employer who implements them should be taken to task immediately. As a union movement, no longer as individual unions, we have shown that if we work together we can achieve great things. Even without using our biggest force, which is our industrial fight, we removed a government.

“Labor has to honour their commitments and allow workers to go to work without threat. If you go on strike, you’ll get fined. If you say the wrong thing to the boss you’ll get sacked. That should all be removed: anything that’s a threat to the worker should be removed.”

Andrew Ferguson, NSW state secretary of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), told GLW, “Our first priority is to get Labor to agree to those parts of the workplace relations policy that they were elected on to be implemented. Many thousands of workers were forced on to unfair individual agreements which undermined their wages and their conditions, and we don’t believe that we have any responsibility to those employers that coerced workers into unfair labour contracts.”

Gooden told GLW that the Labor government “has a mandate for one thing — and that’s the abolition of Work Choices”. “Abolishing AWAs is an important place to start, but the whole rotten structure of Work Choices has to be torn down. And if Labor won’t do it without a push, then it’s up to the union movement to push them.”

Belan said the union movement needed to fight to force Labor to overturn all of Work Choices. The union movement “should take whatever action necessary to put working people into the position that they voted they wanted to be in”, he said.

Mighell noted that “without the support of the Greens and without the support of the union movement, Labor wouldn’t have won government”. The election outcome represented a “total rejection of Work Choices”. “Not only should it be binned, but it should be replaced with something much better than has been talked about to date [by Labor].”

Mighell agreed that unions shouldn’t give the new government a honeymoon period before pushing for changes. “The key issue is that we need to get the most extreme laws revoked quickly. And the most extreme laws exist in the building and construction industry and they are the laws that put in place the ABCC. The ABCC has hideous and undemocratic coercive powers. It’s a political police force that holds no place in a fair and democratic country.

“The next thing we should say is that Labor voted at its [2007] national conference that it would abide by [International Labour Organisation] conventions …

“Australians have known that big business has had it way too much in its favour. Big business has been worker-bashing and Australians want that to stop. So let’s not replace [Howard’s laws] that with more individual contracts, more secret ballots, more building industry task forces, more restrictions on union officials entering workplaces — they’re the things Australians reject.”

Doyle agreed that the union movement should immediately argue for all of Howard’s laws to go. She hopes that the YRAW campaign isn’t dismantled because it has been very effective and “we need to put pressure on the new [ALP] government. To have our voice heard, we need something like the Your Rights at Work campaign, but not just in marginal seats. We need both Your Rights at Work groups and Union Solidarity [a community solidarity group]. Union Solidarity is more about showing solidarity with workers through direct action. YRAW is more about educating people. There’s a role for both these organisations acting on a grassroots basis.”

When asked what the key aspects of Work Choices are that her union wants changed, Doyle said that “collective bargaining [needs] to change so that you can have any content you like in an enterprise bargaining agreement, such as job security and a stop on contracting out work”. Currently, Work Choices prohibits unions from including a wide range of conditions in enterprise agreements.

Union leaders were also unfazed by Labor’s threats to treat political protests during work hours (such as the 2005-06 YRAW rallies) illegal. Belan argued that unions must continue organising demonstrations against injustice at work “even at the risk of jail”. “The union movement should never concede its right to take action against unfair laws … regardless of which government is in power. The workers’ right to withdraw their labour is something that shouldn’t even be questioned.”

Ferguson agreed. “We’ve always believed that democracy shouldn’t stop at the workplace”, he told GLW. “We don’t believe that democracy is where you just cast a ballot every three or four years. Workers should have democratic rights to protest, to campaign for their rights.”

“Unions must never give up the right to democratically assemble and protest”, Mighell said. “We should never give up the right to fight against bad laws. Things like going to a public demonstration or rally are a real expression of a nation’s democracy … when Labor came out at its national conference saying that workers stopping work to attend a rally would be illegal under its government, well that’s a breach of the ILO convention. It breaches a fundamental human right.”

Gooden said that “the YRAW campaign forced the anti-Work Choices campaign onto Labor’s agenda in the first place”, so “only by continuing the campaign, including the street demonstrations, and solidarity with workplaces under attack, will the union movement be able to maintain pressure on Labor …”

In the final week of the election campaign, Rudd said that his government would not tolerate wage campaigns demanding wage increases above inflation — despite housing costs, child care, petrol prices and grocery prices all rising faster than inflation. “If Mr Rudd wants enterprise bargaining, he should leave [wage rises] between the union and the enterprise”, Belan responded. “He has to accept the dog-eat-dog world that he’s promoting. You can’t come out and say that you can’t make a claim above inflation and then say that we don’t want a centralised wage fixing system.”

There should be no question that Labor’s election on November 24 was on the back of many thousands of hours of campaigning by working people in defence of their rights at work. Now that the government has been changed, the task is to also change the laws. Labor will not act quickly enough, nor will it go far enough, without sustained pressure from below. While the YRAW campaign has one victory in unseating Howard and his government, the greater victory of winning fairness at work still needs to be fought for.

From: Comment & Analysis, Green Left Weekly issue #734 5 December 2007.

Howard is Gone But What About His WorkChoices? by John/Togs Tognolini

Howard has plummeted into the rubbish bin of history, where he belongs. And of course, much of the reason for his political dive into the historical void was his WorkChoices. It was Howard and the Liberal/Nationals own born to rule conceit with WorkChoices that largely cost them the election, there were a few other major issues such as Climate Change but this was the main issue.

Howard and his ilk are out? That freight train that hit the Liberals/Nationals on 24/11 was the Your Rights At Work Campaigns across the country, and Rudd hitched a ride on it. People who turned out in their thousands for 06 & 05 Your Rights At Work rallies, and this years Victorian Trades Hall September 26 Victorian mobilisation of 30,000 workers against the IR legislation in Melbourne and the Rockin For Workers Rights Concert at Sydney’s SCG. And there was the 12,000 to 15,000 people at the 8/9 Stop Bush/Make Howard History demonstration during APEC in Sydney.

My mate Liam Mitchell and I were told at the massive Your Rights At Work/ALP election party (300 people where present, mostly unionists who had all been involved in YRAW and a few Greens) in the Katoomba Family Hotel,‘’That I don’t need to tell you guys that the real fight starts now.’’ In regard to WorkChoices and Rudd’s WorkChoices Lite, by a leading activist Phil Doyle in the Blue Mountains YRAW campaign. No one was talking like that about the ALP/ACTU Accord when Bob Hawke was elected in 1983. By the way this pub was decked out in heaps of YRAW corflukes and one corfluke each from the Greens, ALP and Socialist Alliance.

We are now at the start of our own Blair/Brown New Labour period, with Rudd taking up the prime ministership. But there is no where near the amount of illusions in Kevin Rudd in 07, as there was for Hawke in 1983, when Malcolm Fraser was defeated. One thing I noticed in the Family Hotel that night was how many people quickly turned their backs on Rudd during his victory speech, saying things like, ’’Needs another speech writer.’’ People see Rudd as a career politician; even the Liberals said he was a younger John Howard.

I have no doubt there will be ALP ‘’historians’’ writing bullshit about how great the Accord years were under Hawke and Paul Keating. How these years were a Golden Age for workers and the economy. For the writing and production of history is after all, another battleground of the class struggle. And on this I’ve come across a 20 minute film I made in 1992 called, Working Class Representation in the Aftermath of the ALP’s Outlawing of the BLF.

It’s a good, brief, historical doco featuring interviews with Dave Kerin and Dennis Evans and has footage of the Victorian police attacking the BLF picket line at 417 St Kilda Rd in 1991, where they targeted John Cummo/Cummins with a police horse and got Dennis Evans instead. It’s excellent for the political era that we are now entering. As well as explaining the class nature of the state and the political nature of the ALP.

I've started a new lable on Togs's Place.Com, Howard is Gone But What About His WorkChoices? It's time for the new ALP government to deliver or Rudd is going to become a new four letter word.

Rewriting History by Phil Doyle

"It's time for a new page to be written in our nation's history." Kevin Rudd, November 24, 2007.

In the lead up to the 2007 Federal Election tens of thousands of ordinary Australians mobilised into a concerted campaign to change a government. These people re-wrote Australian history.

Yet, as soon as that victory was achieved, their efforts were all but ignored by, not just vast swathes of the media, but also by the ultimate beneficiaries, the incoming government.

The strength of the Your Rights At Work campaign comes from its acknowledgement by the defeated Liberal Party - federal director, Brian Loughnane, told media on the Sunday after the election that Work Choices had cost the Coalition key support, a statement echoed by Liberal MP and campaign spokesman, Andrew Robb.


ALP campaign director Tim Gartrell described WorkChoices as “the most important issue of the campaign”.

“It would have been more difficult to win without it.”

I mean look at these young guys at the gate - you'd have been dragging them in here to vote last time,” said Graham Perrett, ALP Candidate for Moreton, while visiting a polling booth on election day. "This time they're here handing out cards on the rights at work issue.”

In the marginal seat of Eden-Monaro big swings were recorded in communities west of the great divide where WorkChoices was seen as a threat.

Polling done for the ACTU showed a 5.7% shift from Howard to Labor motivated by industrial relations as the key issue.

None of this would have happened without a concerted grass roots campaign - this was no astroturfing exercise - that saw the ACTU gather an email database of 180,000 addresses, from which a popular localised word of mouth campaign spread.

For over two years the Your Rights At Work campaign has been beavering away, under the radar, in 24 targeted coalition held seats.

Whether leafleting, letterboxing, doorknocking, forwarding emails, holding a street stall or collecting signatures, an army of campaigners braved everything from Darwin’s tropical storms to the snows of the Great Dividing Range to make sure that the impact of WorkChoices became issue number one across a vast swathe of middle Australians in marginal seats.

The Your Rights at Work bumper stickers, T-shirts and later house signs, became eponymous. These people were shifting voter sentiment where it mattered. Some media dismissed it as a cynical Trade Union scare campaign or stunt at best. The rest ignored it.

But the people involved in the campaign came from an extraordinary array of union and non-union backgrounds. There were the usual suspects, but there were more, many more, that became involved in a community campaign for the first time in their lives.

Many of these people took to it with a gusto lacking in the rank and file of both major parties. This is a newly politicised group of Australians, and they threw up some amazing champions.

One such example was Jo Jacobson, an articulate and savvy health worker who became the public face of the opposition to WorkChoices in the Penrith based seat of Lindsay long before the ALP had even settled on a candidate.

Many campaigners took to one-on-one conversations with their peers. In marginal Macquarie a ripped off hotel worker named Steve Eisenberger made a habit of wearing his Your Rights At Work T-shirt around his blue-collar mates - winning over a small coterie who had previously backed Howard over what are euphemistically referred to as ‘security’ issues.

There were thousands of Steve Eisenburgers operating across all sorts of groups - social, sporting, civic and cultural - to get the message out.

The word of mouth message cut through to an increasing number of Australians while Howard and Barbara Bennett remained as background white noise, drowned out by the wise words of their Your Rights At Work neighbour and their own experiences.

The community campaign was backed up by a shoestring (compared to the Federal Government’s) advertising campaign that re-enforced the word-of-mouth message.

Despite (or possibly because of) widespread support, many Your Rights At Work signs were stolen or defaced, as well as threats and acts of vandalism aimed at Your Rights At Work activists.

Still, the thousands of volunteers didn’t complain - instead they handed out their own How To Vote card on election day, separate from the major parties - in the rain, the sun, the heat, the wind. They made sure that WorkChoices was on the forefront of voter’s minds where it mattered.

Of the 24 targeted coalition held seats, the ALP won 20 and 3 are currently too close to call.

It’s an extraordinary achievement in anyone’s reckoning - so where is the acknowledgement to these Australians by either the media or the man holding the trophy, Kevin Rudd?

There was no direct mention of either WorkChoices or the Your Rights At Work campaign in the Hawker-Brittonesque pfaff that passed as Rudd’s acceptance speech.

Not much of a run in the media either. A bit of a go over at the SMAge, with Andrew West providing a bit of background in the SMH and a puff piece on the ACTU’s spin-doctors in the Age, while Mark Bahnisch and Wayne Errington in Crikey both nominated WorkChoices as a killer issue for the Coalition.

The last time a Prime Minister lost his seat - Stanley Melbourne Bruce in 1929 - it was to the secretary of the Victorian Trades Hall in a foretaste of the Your Rights At Work Campaign.

One of the key issues in 1929 was Bruce’s dream of smashing the union movement and regulated working arrangements based on fairness.

Australia said no to individual contracts in droves, and there was a landslide win to Labor. The depression hit and two years later Scullin’s Labor Government dissolved into dissent, panic and scandal.

The Rudd Government will now be faced with a plethora of conflicting policy objectives - one of which will be to screw down the price of labour. We all know that this will be borne by those least able to afford a cut in their living standards.

As early as the Sunday morning after the election Australian Business Council head Greg Bailey dismissed “fears” the union movement may hold sway over a Rudd government.

“If you listened to Kevin Rudd last night that is not an impression you would have got,” Bailey told the ABC, while over at Forbes Magazine CommSec chief equities economist Craig James said the Australian business community had been prepared for a Labor victory.

“In terms of economic policy, nothing really changes too much,” said James, in an observation that would have been news last week.

Rudd was on the 7.30 report blaming the Liberals “from day one” for threatening to be obstructive over repealing WorkChoices. They’ve already set up the fall guy and an alibi - the Senate.

Labor is said to be keen to recall Parliament to introduce its legislation to change the Howard Government's Work Choices laws, but just how keen remains to be seen.

"I hate to say it, but Costello was right when he said the new government will start rewriting history," Unions NSW secretary John Robertson told the SMH on Monday. "It's already begun and Rudd and company are out there saying it was health or education or climate change. Sure, it was a bit of all those, but the biggest issue was Work Choices."

I got a nice email from Sharan Burrow and Jeff Lawrence at the ACTU for my support for the Your Rights At Work campaign.

”Well done,” they said. “You have helped make history.”

Just like those who took on Stanley Melbourne Bruce did nearly eighty years ago.

Yes, Kevin Rudd - and the media - appears to want to write a new page in Australia’s History - a page where it is as if the tens of thousands of ordinary hard working Australians, who banded together as the Your Rights At Work Campaign and changed a government, never existed.

But after the success of our campaign so far, we are highly unlikely to go away.

Phil Phuckin Doyle