WL exclusive! Centre page - for underage activists
Interview with arrested 12-year old freedom bus protestor (extended text of
interview in html, coming soon)
Australia:
EDITORIAL Gov't plans class war. What about the unions?
Asia Pacific International Solidarity Conference - a report
Imperialism and superpower wars - WL & ISO debate
Why aren't the unions socialist?
International:
From our correspondent in South America_
Italy's general strike
Palestine/Israel - Israel must withdraw to 1967 borders
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Stop the Workplace Relations Act!
"The big workplace relations breakthroughs need strong management as much as strong government" Tony Abbott told the March Conference of the anti-union H.R. Nicholls Society. At the same conference, Peter Reith lavishly praised Chris Corrigan whilst accepting a medal in honour of his union-busting efforts as a Minister in the Howard Government.
Abbott said that the Government would "focus as much on enforcing the law as on changing it".
There are five bills before parliament to change the already draconian Workplace Relations Act. They split up the bill dubbed the "Third Wave", which was defeated in the Senate before the last election.
These 5 bills would exempt small business from unfair dismissal laws, abolish union levies for negotiating work conditions that apply to non-union members, enforce secret ballots for strikes, ban pattern-bargaining, and give the IRC more power to order strikers back to work.
Pattern bargaining is particularly important, as it is the tactical response that unions such as the AMWU and CFMEU have found to maintain cross-industry solidarity since enterprise bargaining agreements replaced many awards. Unions lodge common claims for enterprise agreements with many employees simultaneously, and have won pay increases and shorter hours for workers from both weak and strong industrial positions.
John Howard justifies these plans to further weaken unions with the argument that it will create more jobs. If it is cheaper to employ workers, then more workers will be employed, the Government claims. This is a dubious argument. As unemployment statistics fall, inflation tends to rise. When unemployment falls, the bargaining power of unions tends to rise. The Reserve Bank will raise interest rates long before unemployment can fall below 5%, in order to slow the "overheating" economy. The Government only cares to appear to reduce unemployment in order to claim political credibility, and to save the welfare budget - but not so far as to make workers feel secure and confident enough to become industrially militant.
On the parliamentary front, Howard is challenging Labor and the Democrats to pass the Government's bills to change "outdated industrial relations laws". The Liberals are baiting Labor for its union connections, presenting them as an embarrassment. Abbott has flagged that he will be attacking the Victorian Labor Government if it doesn't pursue criminal charges against AMWU leader Craig Johnson to the fullest extent possible. According to the Australian Financial Review, "Government strategists believe that because of his background as a former trade union boss, the Opposition Leader, Simon Crean, is vulnerable to pressure over claims he is dictated to by the unions opposed to workplace reforms." Crean has already indicated that Labor will accept some changes to unfair dismissal laws.
The Government's other weapon against unions is the courts, and most specifically the extravagantly paid and fully funded Cole Royal Commission, dubbed by the CFMEU "The Royal Commission into Stuffing the Building Workers." The CFMEU is highlighting how much smaller the budget is for the inquiry into the HIH collapse, and has presented several cartons of documents to the Cole Commission which reveal "rorts, rackets and ripoffs" by building employers. The CFMEU's 24-foot high corporate rat is making the point that the Government and Cole Commission are both on the bosses' side. These publicity efforts of the CFMEU are not going to be enough to save the union from the expected attempt to deregister the CFMEU as the sequel to the Commission.
The other targets of the Government in its third term are to further develop trade with Japan and China, to significantly increase spending on the military and the prevention of refugees from reaching Australia, changes to superannuation and one environmental matter - combating dry land salinity (which threatens to ruin many farmers).
Since 11 September, 2001, the Government has steadily increased the powers and budgets of the military and police, and reduced civil liberties, justifying this with an anti-terrorist, anti-refugee fear campaign.
This helps set a climate, but attacking unions is the main point. Whilst aiming to provoke a decisive showdown with unions, Abbott also claims that the Government is "fully post-Marxist in that we understand that competition between enterprises is much more significant than the class conflict within them... the rival teams are the workers and bosses at one business versus the workers and bosses at another."
The Government, as the political wing of the bosses, is taking class conflict from the industrial to the political level and back again. If the union movement doesn't recognise this, and prepare itself to answer with the full weight of union solidarity, then the Government will be the winner, whether the war takes the form of a series of smallish battles or one enormous conflagration.
We stand with the CFMEU against threats of deregistration. We demand that the ACTU stands by any union threatened with deregistration, and that no affiliated union should take on members of a union facing deregistration, or sign agreements in its traditional areas of coverage. We call on State Labor governments to continue to recognise any deregistered union in State tribunals, and to refuse to take any action against the assets of a deregistered union. We also call on the ACTU to prepare an industrial campaign against the new round of penalties in the WRA, and not to count on Labor and the Democrats stopping them in the Senate.