Remember 12 months ago. The labour movement was about to withdraw our picket lines from Patrick's terminals around Australia. We came to the biggest May Day rallies in years - inspired and ready to fight, because of the wharfies' willingness to fight for jobs and union rights
Workers' Liberty asks readers to think about the contrast between that magnificent struggle and its poor results, most recently reflected in reports that P&O are close to getting agreement on a plan to cut nearly half their waterside workforce.
The union leaders set their sights so low that the High Court victory against Patricks in May last year soon came to feel very close to defeat. Wharfies have had to sign up to speed-ups and job losses, first at Patricks and now at P&O.
We believe that it was possible for the broader union campaign in support of the MUA to win much more - to smash Reith's anti-union laws. We could have saved jobs at all ports, in all companies, and galvanised a range of interests against the NFF, Howard and the GST for the Aboriginal land rights then being trashed by the Coalition government and for well-funded public services. If you agree with us on that, then we'd like to discuss with you how we could work together for a labour movement that will do such things in the future.
Damage limitation
The Patrick's deal was sold as the best "damage limitation" available in a ruthless global capitalist economy where damage is unavoidable. The same "damage limitation" philosophy has guided other strong unions in big conflicts, like the CFMEU at Gordonstone
Sometimes even the best and most militant trade unionists have no option but "damage limitation". That's indisputable. The problem in the Australian labour movement today is that union leaders of almost all stripes are taking "damage limitation" as their maximum goal in almost every battle. As if all we can do is slow down - never reverse - the race to the bottom as workers in different countries are set to compete against each other to be the most flexible, fastest, cheapest workforce in the world.
There is an alternative The Australian labour movement should be linking up with workers' movements like those in South Korea - who have won huge gains over the last ten years or so - and in Indonesia, for a fight to level up conditions and to set an international workers' programme against the logic of global capitalism.
Jobs. Unemployment is not an unchangeable fact of nature. It is a product of human action. With different human action we can have jobs for all. What's needed: a shorter working week by law, without loss of pay, to share the work among all those wanting it; restoration and expansion of public services; nationalisation with minimal compensation of big firms making mass redundancies, like Patrick's and BHP.
Public services In New Zealand a once-strong welfare state has been trashed in the space of a few years. In Australia public provision is being cut more gradually. In South Korea, Indonesia and Japan, in the current economic slump and mass unemployment, workers face the task of securing public welfare provision for the first time. The unifying demand is: proper health care, education, child care and support for the aged and disabled, publicly provided, free of charge, for all, without means-testing.
Union rights. Step by step Australian workers are being pushed back from a system where active trade unions could negotiate enforceable wages and conditions for almost all workers. Reith is developing a divide-and-rule system of each workplace group, or even each individual worker, getting the best deal they can from the capitalist marketplace, and unions being legally banned from doing much about it. There is no inevitability here - but the longer a decisive fight back is delayed, the harder it will be. Every worker should have the right to a union-negotiated agreement. Unions should be free to act in solidarity.
Socialism. Socialism means common ownership of the major accumulations of social wealth, democratic control of the means of life, and social equality. It means the right for all to a secure decent livelihood, coupled with the obligation to do a quota of labour for the common good and maximum individual freedom beyond that. It is not out of date or discredited. Stalinism, the counterfeit socialism of the USSR and its replicas, is discredited. But that was the polar opposite of socialism: bureaucratic elite ownership of social wealth, unfreedom, gross inequality, and making the majority labour to build the wealth and power of a few at the top. Socialism was the best answer to the horrors of Stalinism, and it is the answer today to capitalism, in Russia, in Eastern Europe, in Asia, in Australia, and elsewhere.
These aims can be achieved, but only by organised working-class action. The first step is to organise and educate, in rank-and-file organisations within the unions such as that set up by MUA activists opposed to the effects of the Patrick's deal. Those rank and file oppositions can democratise the unions, make them more effective industrially, and give them the confidence to have an independent and assertive voice politically.
Those are our perspectives. If you are interested in discussing them, or working with us to promote them, please get in touch.
We support the rights of the East Timorese to independence, we recognise Indonesia as the oppressor. We recognise the complicity of our own governments, Liberal and Labor, in aiding and abetting Indonesia. In the 1940s the Australian working class provided vital solidarity to the independence struggle of Indonesia against Dutch colonialism. Such solidarity could be provided again. A campaign by workers in Australia, including industrial action such as that suggested by the AMWU, could win our Indonesian sisters and brothers the freedom to organise industrially and politically, and open up prospects for East Timorese independence
Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic is conducting a racist and imperialistic war of genocide against the Kosovars. The Kosovars' only way to defend themselves right now is self-defence for independence. We are for Serbia out of Kosova, self-determination for the Kosovars, arms for the Kosovars.
The Kosovars, like the East Timorese, are driven to rely on the big powers by the desperation of their situation. For ourselves, we don't trust NATO. The big powers have supported Belgrade's rule in Kosova ever since the break-up of Yugoslavia started in the late1980s, and Bill Clinton declares that they support it still. After killing and pauperising many Serbian workers and peasants, NATO may then well impose a settlement on Kosova, which gives much of the territory to Serbia and imposes cruel constraints on the rest.
But NATO's enemy, Milosevic, is not our friend. He is the worst enemy of democracy and working class rights in Kosova. Independence for Kosova!
Your comments? E-mail to wlaus@ozemail.com.au
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