Readers are invited to submit letters to The Guardian.
Letters may be e-mailed to guardian@cpa.org.au.
Letters of 300-400 words are preferred.

Letters to the Editor:

If we don't fight we lose!

In last week's Guardian, Editor Anna Pha highlights the 
very dangerous decision handed down by the High Court on 
September 2. The decision involves union claims for bargaining 
fees to be charged to free loaders who enjoy union benefits in 
the workplace. 

This dispute goes back to 2001 when several unions negotiated a 
new enterprise agreement with Electrolux. The log of claims 
included a fee to be paid by non-union members for the right to 
enjoy benefits hard won and negotiated for by the unions.

The case was taken by employer groups to the Federal court where 
it found in favour of the unions. At that time letters to the 
editor in The Guardian and the general press discussed the issue 
of bargaining fees. At that time it was thought that bargaining 
fees could be dangerous for unions that use the servicing model 
as a way of building the union movement.

It was also highlighted at that time that unions needed to 
involve members in the organising and building of unions. The key 
task and role of unions was to organise the workplace to minimise 
the number of free loaders.

Since the coalition took office, working conditions and the right 
of workers to organise had been eroded. The introduction of 
right-wing legislation like the Workplace Relations Act and 
further amendments have made it legal for employer groups and the 
government to savage hard won conditions.

Anna's analysis of the recent court decision is in my opinion a 
serious warning for the Trade Union Movement in the country. Her 
views that somehow the Act must be defeated should be taken 
seriously by progressive forces and the unions. The only way to 
defeat the Act is by the trade union movement taking action 
pressing a new government to repeal these draconian laws.

The pressure should be now on the ALP to commit itself in the 
case of winning the federal elections on October 9 to deliver a 
more democratic industrial relations law. Smaller political 
parties, in particular the Greens and other progressive forces 
should join the claim for the repeal of the Act.

As it was shown during the MUA dispute and more recently with the 
Royal Commission into the Building and Construction Industry, the 
attacks on workers have been up-front. Class struggle in which 
the owners of capital will not rest until they see working class 
organisations destroyed. If we do not fight we lose!

V Molina
Perth, WA 

This letter has been written in response to another letter 
written in a previous issue of The Guardian called 
"Schools in need" [August 25] and also to point out how ignorant 
some of today's youth are.

The first thing I'd like to say is I too am a student in Duncraig 
Senior High School and that I agree Duncraig is in bad shape but 
some of it has been exaggerated. Some of the staff complain about 
the conditions in the school as well and that the government 
doesn't give enough money for public schools.

Another point I'd like to address is how the administration does 
not give the students much say with what happens with the funding 
and doesn't really allow students to express their political 
beliefs. Even though we have a student council they too don't 
really have much of a say as the two "dominant" councillors put 
down most of them.

They don't do much that benefit the other students only them and 
their friends, for example when they organise a school event they 
don't use the other councillors' ideas only theirs. How do I know 
all this, my friend is apart of that council and he has 
complained about it to me and feels the same way I do about the 
school. When he tries to bring up important issues with them they 
just ignore him or tell him that his idea is "stupid".

The other issue I'd like to address is how ignorant today's youth 
are. I've been trying to get students to sign a petition to allow 
us to have more say with what happens with the funding and 
perhaps start a student union in our school. I've been able to 
get 40 signatures so far to support this idea, but when I try to 
explain the idea to other students they call me a "hippie" or a 
"dirty commie" and yet they still complain about the conditions 
in the school and maybe it could be fear of expressing 
themselves.

Today's youth just don't care and are closed minded. Another 
example of this, when you show you care about something or your 
views differ from theirs they'll put you down and continuously 
bother you about it, and I find it disgusting how racist they 
are.

I'm not to say that the youth are to blame for this kind of 
behaviour but that it's most likely society, and a solution that 
I think may work better is if we open up their minds a bit more 
to what's around them and let them understand more about others.

Ian Bryson
Sorrento, WA

The recent article TV Shows Worth Watching had a very 
worrying review of Soundtrack To War.

The review makes a variety of fait accompli conclusions on the 
"mentality" of the US army based on the dozen or so interview 
"bites" from a half-dozen or so wackos that were dug up, mostly 
in the first 10 minutes of the program, before the interviews and 
discussions proper.

We don't know if these soldiers were a typical cross-section or 
not. We aren't told how many soldiers in total were interviewed 
for the feature to give us an idea how prevailing any mindset 
shown was, and for the "horrifying" bites we don't see the full 
interviews.

The show should have been taken for what it was, a heavily edited 
highlight reel of the more interesting or controversial 
interviewees dug up, whether were guitar-playing introspectives 
or borderline psychopaths.

The feature itself doesn't purport the conclusions drawn by the 
reviewer. The final supposed insight about the "dichotomy" is 
lazy and fatuous; the "dichotomy" presented is good television, 
not an objective survey.

Chris

How can we calm a young man who shakes uncontrollably? What 
was it? How can we sooth his mind so he can get some sleep. His 
head feels like it is exploding.

There are terrors racing through his every thought. He cannot 
even speak coherently. All we hear is gibberish. Is this the same 
bright eyed teenager who sought safety from Australia?

Three years later, he is not a teenager and we do not recognise 
him. In Australia the thousands of Aussie "mums" are trying to do 
that via emails and faxes to the people in our Nauru detention 
camp.

I wonder if DIMIA [Immigration Department] were trying to "start 
a fire" in the detention camp on Nauru when they went there this 
week to coerce people into returning to their places of 
nightmare.

Was it a veiled hint when they spoke of deportation with "binding 
hands"? Was this just to cause distress or is it a real threat?

Elaine Smith
West Haven, NSW