Eureka flag and union insignia banned by Sue Bolton, Melbourne

A lot of workers would have been shocked to read the report in the November 14 Melbourne Age about the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) ordering construction companies to remove union posters and signs and anything with the Eureka flag on it.

Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) Victorian assistant secretary Tommy Watson told Green Left Weekly that the ABCC is conducting an audit of building sites to make sure that they are abiding by the National Code of Practice for the Construction Industry.

The code was introduced by the Howard government in 1996 to force companies to reject union agreements that had clauses preventing subcontractors without union agreements from coming on site. If companies didn’t comply with the national code, they were excluded from bidding for federally funded jobs.

The freedom of association section of the code states that people have a choice to be or not be in a union and that people shouldn’t be discriminated against on the basis of whether or not they are in a union.

This section was revised in 2005 to include a section banning “no ticket, no start” signs and other notices such as posters, helmets, stickers or union logos or flags that imply that union membership is anything other than a matter for “individual choice”.

Watson said that the audit of building companies is to make sure that they “don’t display any union material to give the impression that it might be a union site, be that hats, stickers, jumpers, stickers on shirts, stickers on walls, union flags, any paraphernalia that’s to do with the union”.

The ABCC has even targeted training leaflets. It has told companies that CFMEU leaflets on training have to be taken down because the leaflets have a union logo and union phone number on them.

“They’ve also asked companies to take down anti-Howard and anti-Work Choices stickers”, Watson told GLW. “It’s freedom of speech provided you’re not a union member. But if you’re a union member you can’t explain that you’re a member of a union by displaying a union sticker because by doing that, the government says that you’re saying it’s a union site. So there’s only freedom of speech if you’re a not a union member, if you’re anti-union. If you’re a union member, there’s no freedom of speech.”

“This is happening on building sites all over Australia”, explained Watson. “Any building company that does any work for the federal government, or tenders for any work for the federal government, or builds a project where the federal government might be linked into some of the floors to put an office in, is covered by the code.”

At this stage, Watson said, the ABCC is mainly concerned about stickers on walls of sheds and the Eureka flag. But it’s also talking about hat stickers. He thinks that if PM John Howard gets re-elected, they will start talking about personal protective equipment and personal jumpers that have union logos on them.

“The companies find it hard to resist the ABCC”, said Watson, “because if they don’t comply, they get excluded from government projects and as you know those projects are worth hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars …”

“If companies don’t do as the ABCC says and the code says, then they get taken off projects, which is intimidation”, he added. “If the union did something like that, we would be charged with extortion and we’d be considered criminals, but the ABCC can bluff people and blackmail people and get away with it.”

Watson said that the CFMEU was asking members to put everything back up as soon as companies pull the material down. “We’re going to continue to fly the Eureka flag and union flags. We’re just going to carry on as normal.”

The ABCC is particularly targeting anything that displays the Eureka flag because they say it’s a union symbol. It claims that when a building site displays the Eureka flag it “conveys a message that union membership is not a matter of individual choice”.

Watson says that the Eureka flag is not a just symbol of trade unions, but a symbol of working-class struggle. “If someone is a union member and is proud to be a union member, and wants to wear a sticker on their hat or on their jumper, then they should be able to do that”, he said.

A protest against the banning of the Eureka flag will be held at 5pm on November 23 at the State Library, corner Swanston and La Trobe streets.

From: Comment & Analysis, Green Left Weekly issue #732 21 November 2007.

The origins of the ALP by Pat Donohoe

With a federal election imminent, many working people are placing their hopes of defeating the Howard government in the ALP. Many have hoped that a future ALP federal government will indeed “tear up” Work Choices and other reactionary legislation introduced by the Howard government, such as the “anti-terror” laws.

However the Kevin Rudd-Julia Gillard ALP leadership has already made countless back-flips on industrial relations policy and has clearly displayed its lack of disagreement with the Howard government on a range of issues, from the invasion of Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory to the mandatory detention of asylum seekers. Why is the ALP acting this way? Why is it backing away from commitments to working people, the very people it claims to represent?

In reality, the ALP has from its formation always been prepared to back the interests of capital over those of the working class. In 1913, Russian revolutionary V.I. Lenin accurately characterised the ALP as a “liberal bourgeois party”, and this assessment remains true 94 years later. Lenin wrote: “The leaders of the Australian Labor Party are trade union officials, everywhere the most moderate and capital-serving element, and in Australia altogether peaceable, purely liberal.” The kind of trade union officials who came to dominate the ALP — with the significant influence of the Australian Workers Union (AWU), with its base in rural itinerant workers rather than the industrial working class — and the alliance they made with petty-bourgeois ALP parliamentarians came to cement in the ALP an ideology based on populist aspirations and ideals. After the betrayals of internationalism by European social-democratic parties at the outbreak of WWI, Lenin recognised such parties as the seemingly contradictory “bourgeois labour parties” — organisations of the capitalist class that functioned “to systematically dupe the workers”.

The ALP has always seen its role as that of mediator between labour and capital; as a party that can moderate the class struggle and civilise capitalism through mediation between the conflicting interests of workers and bosses. From the beginning, there was a confidence that the state was neutral (rather than an instrument of class rule by the capitalists) and could be used by workers to extend and defend their rights and conditions. From the very beginning, even many of those within the ALP who regarded themselves as socialists had a purely reformist vision of a parliamentary road to socialism.

This is the basis for the distinctive ideology of the ALP: Laborism. Labor’s origins The origins of the ALP lie in the defeat of the great strikes that occurred in the Australian colonies in the 1890s. The Australian union movement had emerged particularly among the craft unions and grown strong during the economic boom of 1860-90. It had swelled to double its size in the 1880s when increasing numbers of unskilled and semi-skilled workers joined the movement. The condition of permanent labour shortage that existed in this period in Australia also strengthened the movement. Though the trade unions had entered the struggle in the 1890s with confidence, the defeats they suffered (such as the maritime strike of 1890 and the shearers’ strikes of 1891 and 1894) led the labour movement to the correct collective realisation that industrial action was not enough — that workers needed to organise themselves politically to extend and defend their rights and conditions.

However, the historical circumstances of the time led to the establishment and entrenchment of a leadership of the party based in the union bureaucracy and petty bourgeois parliamentarians, whose interests lay in the maintenance of their own positions within the “labour aristocracy” maintained by capitalism. These labour leaders clearly collaborated with the forces of Australian capital, and though there were sectional interests allied with protectionists or free-traders in the early days, the Labor leadership ultimately came to collaborate with the new rising industrial and commercial capital against the free-trading pastoral “squattocracy”. This conditioned Labor’s priorities of promoting confidence in the capitalist state and a mild reformism as defenders of working class interests. The collaboration of the labour movement and the industrial capitalists was based on the perception that the protectionism industrial capitalists were seeking offered the best opportunity for creating jobs outside the rural sector, particularly as many diggers were leaving the land after the initial gold rushes.

This focus on protectionism in turn promoted the belief that the state could be used to defend working class interests. In Australia, liberal-democratic reforms were granted to working people at quite an early stage — particularly after the democratic demands of the rebels at Eureka in 1854. The secret ballot for the lower house and male suffrage were granted in Victoria in 1856 and 1857 respectively, and in the other colonies by the end of the decade (though the undemocratic basis of wealth qualifications for the colonial upper houses remained a campaign issue for years). The early strength of the union movement also meant early democratic rights to organise in trade unions.

These circumstances fostered strong illusions in the ability of parliamentary democracy to defend workers’ interests, and linked up with the mythology of Australia as a new, egalitarian place where the class struggle might actually dissolve in harmonious resolution of conflict between labour and capital, particularly in the absence of any feudal or semi-feudal land-owning class. Another aspect of the early labour movement in Australia is the importance of rural workers within it. The “small men” of the bush — the itinerant workers such as the shearers who made up the backbone of the AWU, who directly faced the enemy of the pastoral capitalists — were a central force in the formation of the ALP. But importantly, many of these rural workers were also small landholders themselves (or at least aspired to be). These small landholders were too small and impoverished to be able to compete in any meaningful way with the pastoral capitalist class of the squattocracy, and were forced to supplement their life on the land with months each year in itinerant rural wage labour.

After brief leadership of the Labor Party by more class-conscious industrial working class trades and labour councils, it was an alliance of utopian socialists and rural AWU-style populists who came to win the struggle for the party’s leadership. Unfortunately, the base of militant, industrial working class leadership was decimated in the struggles of the 1890s and failed to come up with an alternative program to Laborist populism. Raymond Markey, in his book The Making of the Labor Party in New South Wales 1880-1900, clearly demonstrates the influence of this rural populism, expressed through the AWU, on the development of the Labor Party in NSW. The inclusion in the ALP’s early make-up of substantial numbers of rural workers who were also small landholders meant that a significant base of Labor’s support was a group of people who held petty-bourgeois aspirations of becoming independent of wage slavery (even if this was rarely achieved) — of life as a “small man” on the land — as distinct from the aspirations of the urban, industrial working class.

In turn, the ALP’s populist ideology meant the party happily admitted all kinds of members and leaders from middle-class backgrounds with associated aspirations: small businesspeople, liberal lawyers and journalists. Such people, generally better educated and with more resources than the party’s working class base, have generally made up the parliamentarians of the party, and in alliance with the union bureaucracy quickly took over the leadership of the ALP. Populism Populism is an ideology that stresses the struggle of the “small men” versus the interests of the “big men” — in the Australian context of small landholders and workers versus those of the rich and powerful (particularly the squattocracy in the early years of the Labor Party).

It stresses the supposed similarities of such “small men”, as opposed to the real, material similarities shared by all working people that is the basis of a Marxist analysis. Populism actively works to downplay the real class struggle. In fact, the utopian socialists and populists who came to dominate the Labor Party abhorred the class struggle and actively promoted the myth that Australia was well on the way to becoming a classless, egalitarian society. This populism was readily incorporated into the mythology of the rugged, egalitarian “mateship” of the bush, and tied in with the parallel nationalist ruling class ideology.

The ALP populist base was ripe for the furthering of such middle-class aspirations and nationalism rather than class consciousness and struggle, and this populism was a key factor in why the ALP came to an ideological position of defence of capitalist property relations. The alliance of these petty-bourgeois elements with the labour aristocracy that came to dominate the ALP leadership is the vital factor in why the ALP from its early years saw its role in pro-capitalist terms, as a mediator of the class struggle, as an organisation that could use the capitalist state in the interests of the working class and the other “small men”, and importantly, as a promoter of the most favourable conditions for the accumulation of capitalist profits — promoted as the best way to facilitate the growth of secure jobs and the economic well-being of working people.

It is also a vital factor in the history of ALP sell-outs of working class interests, from the role Labor played in smashing the 1949 coal strike to the treachery of the Prices and Incomes Accord in the 1980s. The ALP’s view of parliament as the only legitimate arena of democratic political struggle has led it to actively work to limit working-class, grassroots organisation, despite the affiliation of so many trade unions to the party. The ALP has a long history of attacking militants in the trade union movement, including the smashing of the Builders Labourers Federation in the 1980s and the more recent attacks on Victorian Electrical Trades Union leader Dean Mighell and WA Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union leader Joe McDonald.

The ALP has been entrusted by the Australian bourgeoisie with leading the country through significant crises. It was the early Andrew Fisher Labor government that set up the federal requirements of a national currency, army, navy and postal and railway services. The ALP has also been relied upon to provide leadership through wars, such as the Fisher and Billy Hughes governments during the first half of WWI and the John Curtin government during WWII. The ALP has also often been entrusted with the introduction of labour and industrial relations reforms — reforms that would have been harder to introduce if the conservatives had attempted to do so. The classic example here is that of the Bob Hawke and Paul Keating years and the Accord. The Australian bourgeoisie knows that it can rely on the ALP to ultimately safeguard its interests in these matters.

From: Comment & Analysis, Green Left Weekly issue #727 10 October 2007.

Howard's IR inquisition causing increased deaths and injuries by Emma Clancy, Perth

As the October 24 hearing approaches for the Perth-Mandurah railway tunnel construction workers — who are being prosecuted by the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) for taking “unlawful” industrial action in February 2006 against the sacking of the health and safety union representative — new research has exposed “critically high” levels of injury in the construction industry.

The October 2 West Australian reported that following negotiations with the Construction Forestry Mining and Engineering Union (CFMEU), the ABCC is dropping charges against 15 workers who were “not involved or only distantly involved” in the strike, and downgrading charges against a further four workers. Full charges are proceeding against the remaining 92 workers in the Federal Court. The 92 were employed by Leighton Kumagai, and face fines of up to $22,000 each for allegedly contravening the Howard government’s 2005 Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act, which restricts the rights of workers and unions in the construction industry. Eighty-two employees are also being charged with breaching an Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) order instructing the CFMEU and all the workers employed on the rail project “to not take industrial action”, for which they face further fines of up to $6000 each.

The case is the first under the Howard government’s IR reforms in which workers are being prosecuted individually for taking collective action. The 12-day strike by 400 workers was demanding the reinstatement of elected shop steward Peter Ballard, who was sacked by Leighton Kumagai for insisting that workers should not be forced to work excessive hours, in bad weather or in dangerous conditions. In the eight months preceding the dispute, the union reported injuries resulting from the collapse of reinforcements in the tunnel, and that 13 workers had received electric shocks requiring hospitalisation. A new report by the Australian Safety and Compensation Council (ASCC) examining work-related injuries between 2002-04, showed that 10% of work-related hospitalisations were in the construction industry.

A September 25 media release from the CFMEU states that the deaths and injuries of construction workers are likely to have increased since 2004 following the October 2005 establishment of the ABCC, which restricts the ability of unions to ensure safe working conditions. CFMEU national assistant secretary Martin Kingham said, “We suspect the number of work-related hospitalisations for construction workers from 2005 onwards will be much higher. It is the unions who do the enforcing, so if you have laws that are designed to weaken workers’ rights, then it follows you weaken health and safety and have an increase in death and injuries as workers cannot refuse to work on unsafe jobs”. According to the CFMEU’s records, from January to June, 33 reported deaths occurred in the building industry, an increase from 27 people in 2005-06 and 19 people in 2004-05.

From: Comment & Analysis, Green Left Weekly issue #727 10 October 2007.

Cops assault McArthur Express workers by Rachel Evans, Sydney

On September 26, angry workers picketed the Seven Hills offices of national trucking company McArthur Express, which has collapsed owing 700 workers across Australia an estimated $2.5 million in pay and entitlements.

David Johnston, a permanent employee of McArthur Express for two-and-a-half years, told Green Left Weekly: “At 10am on Tuesday there were 18 cop cars inside the yard, four riot squad units, one dog squad and loads of undercover cops parked outside the yard. The cops were over the top — two women were pushed and shoved around.”

Jackie Moore, one of the women pushed to the ground by police, said: “We weren’t here to start riots, we were here from early morning peacefully chatting. One worker all of a sudden had a cop grab onto his neck — he moved away and then an undercover cop dived on him. I went in to help him and then cops jumped on me and him. My son heard my cries for help, came to help and all of a sudden he was arrested as well. The police shoved my pregnant friend around as well.”

A 30-year-old worker was charged by police with intimidation and resisting arrest and Moore’s son was charged with affray and resisting arrest.

On September 27, Transport Workers Union (TWU) vice-president Mark Crosdale said: “Up to 700 employees have been left stranded. Many employees felt the heavy presence of police and the riot squad at the McArthur site yesterday was out of proportion with any potential threat and that the police were heavy handed in their dealings with them. McArthur Express has been aggressively anti-union for many years.”

Federal employment minister Joe Hockey announced the next day that McArthur Express workers would receive up to 14 weeks redundancy payments along with other entitlements such as holiday leave, lost pay and long-service leave.

From: Australian News, Green Left Weekly issue #726 3 October 2007.

Defiant Victorian unionists put politicians on guard by Nicole Hilder, Melbourne

At least 20,000 Victorian unionists defied the federal government’s anti-worker laws and risked fines to show their opposition to Work Choices and the Australian Building and Construction Commission on September 26.

They marched from Trades Hall to swamp Melbourne’s main intersection at the corner of Swanston and Flinders Streets. When the rally stopped to occupy this major intersection and listen to speakers, the crowd stretched back over several city blocks to Little Bourke Street.

The rally was called by Victorian Trades Hall Council’s (VTHC) building industry group of unions after the Australian Council of Trade Unions executive refused to call another national day of action. There were four unions involved in the building industry group: the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU), the Electrical Trades Union and the plumbers’ union.

Although the rally was initiated by this group of unions, other unions ended up endorsing the rally and sending contingents. These included the Maritime Union of Australia, the National Tertiary Education Union, the Australian Workers Union, one division of the Australian Services Union, the United Firefighters Union and the Australian Education Union.

Placards read “Work Choices — Not my choice” with the lead banner reading “Don’t give Howard another shot — protect your kids’ future”. The rally was scheduled for the school holidays in order to involve workers’ families. Many workers took the opportunity to bring their children.

Young workers

VTHC secretary Brian Boyd said that “young people were whacked very badly by individual contracts and AWAs”, because there was nowhere for them to go. “As workers’ kids leave school, they get ripped off straight away by AWAs — individual contracts. That’s what we’ve found over the last 12 months.” Boyd said legal challenges cost thousands of dollars of manoeuvring just to get a hearing.

Sacked apprentice carpenter Paul Bost told the protesters that he was sacked after he queried his wages and conditions and refused to sign an AWA. He had to call police to retrieve his tools from his boss.

When he addressed the AMWU contingent prior to the main rally, Victorian secretary Steve Dargavel outlined cases where companies had been referred to federal agencies after serious breaches of the law by bosses. Despite millions of dollars spent on government advertising campaigns, the federal agencies had not acted.

This included the cases of Mechanical Engineering Services and Huon Corporation. In one case, a boss put $11 million of workers’ entitlements into his own personal trust fund. “Only the union is going to do anything about it. In many cases the agencies can’t do much because the parliament has legislated many of those rights away,” said Dargavel.

AMWU assistant state secretary Gary Robb highlighted the role of the Australian Building and Construction Commission when he addressed the AMWU contingent. “People need to be aware [of the ABCC] because what’s happening in the construction industry is well and truly on its way to our industry, manufacturing and other areas. The more people are aware of this, the more people will be angry.”

When the new ACTU secretary Jeff Lawrence addressed the rally, he only vaguely alluded to the ALP’s recent backflip on abolishing the ABCC: “I know some people are not happy with recent Labor policy … in the end we all have to focus on the fundamental choice that’s in front of us at this election between Work Choices and the alternative, which restores all those conditions that have been taken away,” he said.

Intimidation

The day after the rally, workplace relations minister Joe Hockey and employer groups predictably claimed that the protest was a fizzer. Two anonymous union leaders were also quoted in the Melbourne Age, criticising the rally for being too close to the federal elections and too small.

Boyd responded to criticism saying that he was happy that so many thousands of workers had defied the laws and attended the rally.

In the lead-up to the rally, many bosses tried to intimidate workers into not attending. In some cases, this made workers more determined to strike for the day. In other cases, the intimidation meant that only a delegation attended the rally instead of the whole work force.

Seventy workers at Meritor Heavy Vehicle Systems Australia in Sunshine had an injunction taken out against them by their boss to stop them from attending the rally. Thirty construction workers at Austral Bricks in Craigieburn voted reluctantly to work as usual instead of attending the rally after they were told that the company planned to bring in the ABCC.

Despite the intimidation from employers and the ABCC, and despite the fact that the rally had been called by the building industry group of unions without the support of the ACTU or even the support of all Victorian unions, the attendance of at least 20,000 workers was a major success.

The hypocrisy of employers and government is revealed when you compare the threats against workers for attending the September 26 rally with the support employers gave to Tasmanian timber workers striking to attend a rally in support of the Gunns pulp mill. In that instance, the federal government didn’t criticise the timber bosses for paying timber workers strike pay to attend. The government clearly applies the law differently for different groups of workers.

Debate

There is no doubt that if all of the Victorian unions had supported the protest, the rally would have been double or triple the size. Several workers at the rally told Green Left Weekly that their whole workplace would have walked out to attend the rally if their union had endorsed the protest.

The union movement has been split on the question of whether or not there should be a mass protest against Work Choices this year. The majority of the ACTU and a large number of unions in Victoria are opposed to a mass protest in the election year because they regard it as a distraction that will take resources away from the ALP’s marginal seats campaign.

The building industry unions have a different view, believing that a mass protest not only puts pressure on the government and the employers, but also on the Labor Party. They know that the ALP never committed to abolishing AWAs or ripping up Work Choices — even making Work Choices a central issue in the election campaign — until the union movement organised the big nationwide protests against Work Choices.

A major impetus for the rally was the ALP’s decision to keep the ABCC until 2010. However, there was no criticism of Labor from the platform at the rally.

Boyd had argued in support of calling the rally at the building industry delegates’ meeting in August, saying that unions shouldn’t rely on political parties to speak on behalf of the union movement and that if the union movement accepted that it shouldn’t mobilise in an election year, then it would have lost its independent voice.

The more than 10,000 workers from outside the building industry who joined the building workers give an indication that many workers wanted another rally, even if their unions didn’t support it.

The mood of most building workers at the rally was different to previous union protests when there has been an expectation that the Labor Party would abolish the ABCC and abolish Work Choices. Many building workers at the rally told GLW that “we have to get rid of Howard, but we’ll still have to fight if Rudd gets elected”.

From: Australian News, Green Left Weekly issue #726 3 October 2007.

Melbourne workers to take to the streets again by Sue Bolton

Melbourne workers have decided to take to the streets again. A meeting of around 500 shop stewards and job delegates from the building, construction, manufacturing and related industries on August 22 endorsed a proposal to hold a pre-federal election mass rally and march at 10am on September 26. The rally and march will begin from the Victorian Trades Hall building.

Support for the protest was unanimous. The meeting agreed that the protest would highlight the negative impact of Work Choices and other federal government policies on thousands of families. There has been a considerable debate in the union movement this year about whether or not to hold another protest. A motion for a national day of protest was put to the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) executive earlier this year but was overwhelmingly voted down. One of the arguments put forward for not holding a protest is that it would damage the Labor Party’s chances of getting elected because it would project the wrong “image”. Other unions say that a mass protest against Work Choices would take resources from the ACTU’s marginal seats campaign. A similar debate occurred among Victorian unions.

However, some unions are convinced that a mass protest of workers is needed before the federal election. The delegates’ meeting and the proposal for a mass protest was an initiative of the Victorian Trades Hall Council’s (VTHC) building industry group of unions. Independent movement In his speech in favour of the motion, VTHC secretary and VTHC building industry group convener Brian Boyd told the delegates that the union movement needed to mobilise again in another rally. If it didn’t mobilise and relied purely on the parliamentary parties and the elections, then the movement would be giving up its independence.

He reminded delegates that the fight would need to continue after the elections. Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union assistant state secretary Tommy Watson told Green Left Weekly that every anti-Work Choices rally that had been called by the ACTU had been initiated in Victoria before the ACTU agreed to come on board. “Workers need a public forum where they can publicly protest against Howard’s Work Choices, AWAs [individual contracts] and 457 visas. Unions can do press conferences and press releases, but the media doesn’t print half the things that we say or do so I think it’s important that we see members walking around the streets of Melbourne voicing their protest”, he said. Delegates from Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo and the Latrobe Valley also attended the meeting.

Geelong Trades Hall secretary Tim Gooden told GLW that Geelong workers were very committed to holding another mass protest, and had in fact spent months campaigning for one to be organised. Gippsland Trades and Labour Council secretary John Parker told GLW that there will be a meeting of Gippsland building industry stewards on August 29 where they will vote on a recommendation to endorse the September 26 rally and march in Melbourne. He said that the mass protest is a way of forcing “both the Liberal and Labor parties to understand that these laws allow workers to be intimidated and [they] disempower our young people”.

Parker said it is the role of unions and activists in society to politicise our work force and set the benchmark for people’s rights. “We need to engage ordinary working men and women to get more active and start to take up the leadership role and make sure that the next generation is going to be just as well off as we are. I’m one of the baby boomers' generation and I never envisaged that we would be leaving a world in so bad a condition as we’re leaving [it] today.”

While the rally has been initiated by the building industry unions, other unions are starting to come on board and encourage their members to join the protest. So far, the Maritime Union of Australia; the United Firefighters Union; the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union; and the Australian Services Union have agreed to support the protest. The rally has been scheduled in the school holidays so that workers can bring their families. Australian Manufacturing Workers Union secretary Steve Dargavel pointed out that it is the partners and children of building industry workers who are suffering under AWAs and Work Choices.

Next generation One delegate argued strongly in support of the rally, saying that it needed to be as big as possible, not for the current generation but for the next generation. He said that people’s current working conditions don’t belong to the current generation of workers, because they had been bequeathed to us by a previous generation. Electrical Trades Union secretary Dean Mighell agreed, telling GLW: “We felt strongly that this rally is about building workers caring about the working conditions for their kids. We care about what we’re handing over to the next generation … We don’t want to hand over to them less than what we have now. This is a rally about our kids.” The intention is that the rally involve community groups outside the union movement. Union Solidarity convener Dave Kerin told GLW that the community groups that are networked into Union Solidarity will support the protest. “It’s quite clear that in a time when people are feeling under-confident industrially, that by coming together with others of like minds, that confidence will increase. As confidence increases, people will be better positioned in their workplace to go the next step beyond protest to take industrial action.” A second resolution passed unanimously called on Labor-affiliated unions to pressure Labor to negotiate a preference deal with the Greens for the Senate. Dargavel supported the motion, saying that conservative elements within the Labor Party would use a hostile Senate as an excuse to water down its commitments on industrial relations. Labor has rejected a national preference swap with the Greens. Mighell told GLW that he was “absolutely delighted” with the level of support for that motion. He said that “what workers don’t want to see is Family First in the Senate eroding their conditions, and Labor put them there in the last election. Workers are saying they don’t want any more shifty preference deals. They’re saying, if you’re going to prefer anyone, prefer the Greens because their industrial relations policy is fantastic.”

From: Australian News, Green Left Weekly issue #722 29 August 2007.

Are the unions in crisis? by Graham Matthews

On July 23, the Australian published extracts from a leaked internal Australian Council of Trade Unions report that described unionisation in the private sector as being at “crisis levels”. The report, authored by ACTU assistant secretary Chris Walton, warns unions against any expectation of a “golden age” should Labor be elected at the forthcoming federal election, and proposes continuation of a levy on all members to build a war chest with which to rebuild the movement.

The ACTU report estimates that union membership is at 15.2% in the private sector and warns unions against expectations that a federal Labor government would re-regulate the labour market. “There will be no return of closed shop, secondary boycotts or compulsory arbitration”, the Australian quoted the report as saying. “We still face decentralised bargaining, employer hostility and international competition. Our industries and sectors will continue to change, and the workforce trends towards casual and part-time work do not look likely to reverse.” The ACTU’s sober internal assessment of the promise of a returned Labor government contrasts starkly with its resolutely uncritical attitude to Labor in public. The ACTU has taken every sell-out by Kevin Rudd of Labor’s industrial platform in its stride — from restrictions on the right to strike, to bans on pattern bargaining, to Labor’s promise to keep the draconian Australian Building and Construction Commission and allow individual contracts (AWAs) to run to 2013. In a statement released during the ALP national conference on April 28, the ACTU’s president, Sharan Burrow, said: “The industrial relations policy announced by Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard today will give great hope to working families because it means that under a Labor Government basic rights at work will be protected.”

This was despite the ALP’s refusal to commit to the complete reversal of PM John Howard’s Work Choices laws. Rather than fight for the removal of legal proscriptions on union activity such as solidarity actions (so-called secondary boycotts), industry-wide bargaining or the right to strike, the ACTU leadership is in fact arguing that unions need to adapt to changed circumstances, including to greater casualisation of the work force. In 1986, union membership nationally stood at 45.6%. By 2006, the rate of union coverage had more than halved to 20.3%, although as a result of an increase of almost 3 million in the work force, the number of unionised workers still remains significant at 1,786,000 according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). However it is a fact that the rate of union coverage of the work force has declined sharply. The reasons for the relative decline of union membership over the last 20 years or more must be found in social and political factors.

The most catastrophic fall in union coverage occurred during the years of the Hawke and Keating governments (1983-96). Under the Prices and Incomes Accord that began after Labor PM Bob Hawke took power in 1983, real wages fell by up to 28% and the profit share of the economy ballooned. The union movement was firmly tied into the central wage-fixing system and unions that attempted to campaign for a better deal for their members (notably the Builders Labourers Federation and the Australian Federation of Air Pilots) were smashed by the federal government. By the election of the Howard government in 1996, union membership had declined to 31%. The Hawke and Keating governments also presided over an extensive restructuring and deregulation of industry. Large numbers of jobs were lost in manufacturing, and casualisation and the number of part-time jobs increased massively. The part-time portion of the work force grew from 17.3% in 1984 to 24.7% in 1996. The proportion has continued to grow under the Howard government — to 28.5% by 2005. Unionisation among part-time workers — many of whom work in the service and retail industries — is low. In 2006 it was only 15.5% according to the ABS, considerably below that of full-time workers.

In many cases the union movement has failed to make union membership attractive to this growing part-time work force and has been unable to stem the tide of casualisation, leaving much of this work force unorganised. A notable exception is the work done by the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union among cleaners with its Clean Start campaign, which takes up the cause of the lowest paid. Similarly, unions such as the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union have successfully campaigned for the rights of casual workers — winning some increases in casual loadings and the right for casual workers to convert to permanent work after a set period of employment. The proportion of the work force employed in better-organised manufacturing industries has also rapidly declined since the mid ’80s.

The proportion of the work force employed in manufacturing industries fell from 17.8% in 1984 to 11.5% in 2005, while those employed in the less organised service sector grew substantially. The Accord years led to a serious decline in the combativity of the union movement as measured by working days lost to strike action, illustrating a move away from a more militant unionism that fights for members’ wages and conditions, to one that relies more on arbitration and other legal processes. Statistically, the decline in days lost mirrors the decline in union membership, falling from 269 days per 1000 employees in 1988 to 28.8 days per 1000 workers in 2005. Nevertheless, the union movement, although weakened by 13 years of Accord politics and 11 years of Coalition attacks, continues to exert a large influence. Despite the Howard government’s claims that unions are irrelevant to workers, since its election in 1996 it has gone out of its way to try to push them out of the workplace.

The Howard government has wanted to nobble the union movement, through the introduction of Work Choices and the liberalisation of AWAs in particular, in an effort to practically exclude unions from the workplace. The unions that have taken up the fight against the government and defended their members’ rights most energetically in this period have grown in strength and size. The success of the Your Rights at Work campaign in mobilising hundreds of thousands of workers for every rally staged since June 2005 demonstrates that unions still hold broad appeal for working people and retain a level of organisational strength.

There is, however, an underlying truth in the warning that Walton made in his leaked ACTU document about declining union influence, though perhaps not exactly as he intended it. Whichever major party wins the next federal election, the union movement faces a struggle if it is to retain and build its strength. The corporate, ALP-backed model of unionism fashioned during the Accord years has only led to decline and weakness. If the movement is to regain its lost size and influence, a more militant and more responsive model, championed by a range of newer union leaderships nationally, has to be generalised.

From: Comment & Analysis, Green Left Weekly issue #719 1 August 2007.

AMWU elections: the left cleans up by Ben Courtice, Melbourne

In last month’s elections in the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU), the Workers’ Rights team took all positions against a ticket led by an alliance between the union’s print and vehicle divisions. Some Workers’ Rights candidates received over 80% of the vote. In the Victorian branch, where most positions were strongly contested, 40% of members voted.

The unsuccessful New Directions team emerged after AMWU national secretary Doug Cameron announced his retirement to run for ALP preselection for a Senate position in NSW, which he subsequently secured.

The Workers’ Rights team formed as a result of an alliance between the ruling National Left caucus and the Workers First leadership of the Victorian branch when Workers First agreed to support National Left candidate and former Victorian secretary Dave Oliver for AMWU national secretary.

Despite years of conflict between the Workers First and National Left groups within the union, they agreed to put aside their differences and merged to form the Workers’ Rights team so that the AMWU could better combat the federal government’s anti-union laws.

New Directions fielded candidates for national and state positions in an attempt to deliver the Victorian branch of the AMWU to the conservative vehicle division national secretary Ian Jones.

The Workers’ Rights team stood Victorian metal division secretary Steve Dargavel for the state secretary position, the most hotly contested in the campaign. Dargavel was opposed by New Directions candidate and vehicle division organiser David Nunns.

Many in the Workers’ Rights campaign were initially doubtful they could win the state secretary position against the vehicle division’s solid block of support from the huge car plants. The possibility of losing the Victorian branch to a more right-wing ticket was a serious worry for Workers’ Rights campaigners and union members, resulting in a higher than usual return.

An indication that a victory for the New Directions team would have resulted in a right-wing shift in the union is the vehicle division’s campaign for unions to withdraw support for the activist group Union Solidarity and the community picket lines that it organises. In 2006, the vehicle division leadership instructed its members to cross a community picket line that was established in support of a shop steward at Toyota in Melbourne.

Jones was implicated in a court case that found a police officer guilty of misconduct for an illegal investigation of another AMWU metal division steward at Toyota, Tony Carvalho.

Carvalho and occupational health and safety representative Shane Blackney were sacked on trumped up charges the day that Carvalho nominated to stand for Victorian state secretary in the election. Carvalho challenged Nunns over the vehicle division’s victimisation of himself and directed preferences to Dargavel. Carvalho and Blackney are maintaining a protest outside Toyota to demand their jobs back.

Dargavel won the Victorian state secretary position with 55% of the vote, which means that a significant number of members of the vehicle and print divisions would have voted for the Workers’ Rights team.

Other positions fell more easily: Workers’ Rights candidate Gary Robb won assistant state secretary (metal division) with over 82% of the vote, metal division organiser Lou Malgeri won with over 79%, and Oliver won national secretary with over 60% of the vote against Victorian print division secretary Jim Reid.

The last hurdle was in the Victorian food division, where New Directions supporters challenged the legitimacy of the initial vote. While the allegations were not substantiated, the vote was conducted again and Workers’ Rights candidates Tom Hale and Angela McCarthy won the positions of food division secretary and food division organiser.

The Workers’ Rights team won with mail-outs of campaign material and leafleting by supporters outside factory gates. The Workers’ Rights team produced a poster with the names of more than 100 delegates and activists supporting the team, beneath a photo of a large crowd of supporters. By contrast, the New Directions’ material only included a photo of the candidates and the officials supporting them.

The incumbents who formed the Workers’ Rights team have led the Victorian AMWU in the most militant defence of workers’ rights of any union under the federal government’s anti-union Work Choices. The AMWU nationally has been responsible for 42% of protected strike action since Work Choices became law on March 27, 2006. The majority of AMWU industrial action has taken place in Victoria.

The Workers’ Rights team put forward a program for expanding the union, for active campaigns for members and against Howard’s Work Choices, and for developing the AMWU into a more active and involving union — through an apprenticeship officer, an expanded health and safety unit, and new structures for members’ participation.

The Victorian branch of the AMWU is one of a group of unions in Victoria that is pushing for a mass protest against Work Choices.

From: Comment & Analysis, Green Left Weekly issue #717 18 July

"Australians want a real Opposition leader, not a pale imitation of Howard." Dean Mighell

Dean Mighell

DEAR Kevin,

Watching your overreaction to comments made by NSW Labor Council secretary John Robertson at a private meeting, I’m left wondering whether you really understand the harsh reality of industrial relations. Surely the test of a robust democracy is the quality of the dissent. What is so odd about a union leader promising a push to win changes to an industrial relations policy under a Rudd Labor government? Yet instead of greeting Robertson’s colourful comments with a smile, you resort to pious bullying while accusing union leaders of being bullies .

It has been four weeks since I reluctantly agreed to resign from the ALP, after also making colourful comments at a private meeting. I was in shock at the swiftness and savagery of my forced removal from the party.My resignation followed the publication of comments made in November last year at a private mass meeting of Electrical Trades Union members.At that meeting I recounted the union’s recent history of bargaining outcomes and I skited about outmanoeuvring employers in negotiations way back in 1993. During the meeting I made some disparaging comments about officers of John Howard’s Australian Building and Construction Commission taskforce. I concede my description of them was in poor taste.I was not aware my address to union members was being taped by a media company. Nor was I aware the tape had been sold to the ABCC. I only know that it found its way to Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph, which duly published its contents.

On the day these comments were published you sought my immediate resignation, giving me a mere five minutes to make my decision. Reluctantly, I resigned from the ALP because I did not wish to see the media and the federal Government engage in a beat-up that detracted from the community’s focus on the Work Choices legislation. At the time, I made it clear that in coercing my resignation, you were making a damaging mistake.First, you meekly submitted to a government-engineered scare campaign, allowing the policy focus on Work Choices to be derailed.

Second, you established a standard of behaviour that very few people, whether in boardrooms, union meetings or political life, can meet: swearing and boasting to colleagues about outmanoeuvring another in a negotiation is now a hanging offence.This stance is difficult to reconcile with your attitude to comments made by Sydney broadcaster Alan Jones in the wake of the Cronulla riots. On December 7, 2005, Jones expressed his approval of the following email, sent by a listener: “My suggestion is to invite the biker gangs to be present at Cronulla railway station when these Lebanese thugs arrive, the biker gangs have been much maligned but they do a lot of good things ... and wouldn’t it be brilliant if the whole event was captured on TV cameras and featured on the evening news so that we, their parents, family and friends can see who these bastards are ... Australians old and new should not have to put up with this scum.”When Jones’s comments were found to have breached broadcasting laws by inciting racial hatred and violence, your only response was to state that nothing Jones had done would cause you not to continue to appear on his radio show.The decision you took four weeks ago is now coming home to roost in the form of a government-sponsored anti-union scare campaign. The scare campaign focuses on outmoded images of “union bosses”. The only thing missing is a few pictures of communists hiding under beds.

If only the ALP was holding the Government accountable and offering the electorate the choice of Howard’s worn-out ideas or real Labor values. Instead of falling for Howard’s trick and allowing him to deflect attention from Work Choices, you should be reminding Australians of the good things trade unions and their members do every day.Trade unions represent nearly two million people who make an enormous contribution to this country.In the hands of a talented and committed Opposition, Work Choices is political gold.

This is legislation that destroys job security, enshrines non-negotiable Australian Workplace Agreements that have cut remuneration for hundreds of thousands of vulnerable employees, and overwhelms employers, unions and employees in a suffocating mass of red tape.When you spoke passionately about how Work Choices was devastating family life and redistributing power from the weak to the strong, the polls went with you. But in recent weeks you and your colleagues seem to have had second thoughts about promoting a fairer alternative. If it weren’t for the narrowing in policy difference between the parties, the ALP’s lead in the polls would be even greater.There is no shortage of material for you and your colleagues to work with. You surely haven’t forgotten how unpopular Work Choices is? A recent ABC Four Corners report exposed 18,000 employees working on identical AWAs in a workplace culture that has systematically and methodically stripped them of their humanity. Even their toilet breaks are monitored. The report suggested that such a culture contributed to the suicides of two well-regarded employees.What is the ALP’s position on this issue? Neither I nor the Australian people, have a clue. The silence is deafening.Once again, as an election looms, I fear we are looking at an Opposition that chokes and lapses into defeatist, navel-gazing at the first sign of controversy. Instead of falling for Howard’s tired and discredited wedge politics, Labor should trust the people. Look at how the Australian people have scorned Howard’s invasion of indigenous communities as an election stunt. Look at how they’ve rejected Work Choices in one opinion poll after another. It’s time for you to grasp the nettle, Kevin. Australians want a real Opposition leader, not a pale imitation of Howard.


Dean Mighell is the southern states branch secretary of the Electrical Trades Union.

The Australian Thursday, July 05, 2007