The Guardian 29 June, 2005
The looming conflict
The trade union/Howard confrontation is building up to a major conflict says Vic Williams
We need to look at the whole picture, the possibilities, the need for allies, the danger of sell-outs and the continuing steps in a long-term struggle with capitalist forces and their governments.
The leading union bodies in each capital have begun organising to strongly oppose Howard’s laws. The ACTU has issued their Community Action Kit; to get out information, to approach the public and to put pressure on politicians.
Although only 24 per cent of the workforce belong to a trade union, most workers directly or indirectly come under some form of award protection. It may be direct with awards specifying their wages and working conditions or indirectly through enterprise agreements or individual contracts which are supposed to offer at least the equivalent of what is in the relevant award.
The proposed laws cutting federal awards to the bone and dismantling the state award systems would directly affect them. All wage workers would be hit by the removal of powers from the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC), and by the government-appointed Australian Fair Pay Commission, which would determine minimum wages.
Businesses want the AIRC to have the power to fine unions and workers, but not companies.
Anyone in a workplace with under 100 workers could be sacked without the right of appeal. The government is aiming to force more workers to accept its AWAs (individual work contracts), so that individual workers are left to front the employer on their own. Strikes will be virtually illegal.
The alarm and anger of millions of workers is the fuel for a powerful campaign to keep what they have gained.
Who is pushing Howard?
The ACTU gave the title "wish-list" for demands from business that are the basis of the proposed laws. These demands have come from Australian Industry Group, Australian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Australia, National Farmers’ Federation, Australian Mines and Metals Association and from Chris Corrigan of Patrick Stevedoring, notorious for its 1998 attack on the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA).
They have come from foreign transnationals with plants and mines in Australia.
Rio Tinto, fined for the death of miners, wants safety laws in industry to be ruled unconstitutional.
They have paid for Howard to be elected and they want action.
The Bush administration in the US wants to ban Australian workers on racial grounds from working on US defence projects being built on Australian soil. They would want unions that objected to such racism to be brought to heel. Bush wants his deputy sheriff John Howard to give these projects a ride free of union interference.
Howard is gambling by taking on the whole trade union movement.
Has he forgotten when he took on the MUA, trying to put scabs on the wharf through Patrick? With union and rank and file and public support, he was defeated.
Labor’s role
ALP leader Kim Beazley has offered to negotiate with Howard on the laws, no doubt with minor amendments that could be accepted by Howard.
But then the ALP would be committed to passing the rest, and so help Howard as control of the Senate could hang on one or two rebel Senators. Such a move by Beazley could also swing some ALP-minded union officials and members towards partial acceptance of the laws.
State Labor Premiers have objected to the proposed laws that would wipe out state industrial relations legislation, and that would bring all industrial relations under federal authorities.
The Australian Greens, the third strongest party, is campaigning against Howard’s proposed industrial relations acts.
Greens Senator Kerry Nettle labelled the Industrial Relations Law as a blueprint for exploitation and condemned the changes to unfair dismissal laws as a licence to sack at workers at will that will affect many workers.
Secret ballots and new right of entry rules will marginalise unions. The Greens are lining up with union speakers in the campaign.
Unions in other countries have working relations with Australian unions, and will want to see those unions win this battle with Howard and be in a strong position with them against the transnationals.
While this coming struggle is about the economic issue to defend wages and conditions, it will also be a political action, a testing of force.
Vic Williams is a poet and veteran trade unionist and Communist Party member.