The Guardian 13 June, 2007
Liberals seek political gag on trade unions
Anna Pha
The Liberals are certainly feeling the heat from the ACTU’s highly successful Your Rights @ Work Campaign advertisements. So much so that they want to put a halt to trade unions taking action against the government.
The TV and other ads prior to the introduction of WorkChoices warned of the consequences of the legislation. The Howard Government responded by getting stuck into the ACTU, accusing the union movement of lying.
Workers would be "protected by law" said the government. Penalty rates, overtime payments, public holidays, maternity and other leave provisions specified in the award would be "protected by law". Wages would not fall. Workers would be better off under WorkChoices, the government claimed.
WorkChoices came into operation in March 2006 and many hundreds of thousands of workers are worse off, much worse off, particularly those forced onto Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs).
It was the government that was lying, not the ACTU, and life itself was telling this to workers and their families as employers imposed AWAs.
As far as workers having a "choice", it is legal to sack or refuse to employ a worker who refuses to sign an AWA. As of March 2007, over 300,000 people had been put on individual contracts (AWAs).
The government’s own agency, the Office of Employment Advocate OEA), found in a survey of AWAs that every single AWA removed at least one of the "protected by law" conditions.
ACTU advertising moved on from warning what would happen under WorkChoices to exposing what had happened. Not surprisingly the government has taken a hiding in the opinion polls.
Desperate to hide the truth and protect the government and employers, the OEA no longer makes public surveys of the contents of AWAs. A new, and as has become standard practice, misnamed "Fairness Test" is being promoted as protecting employees. This test, according to the government, "will guarantee that protected award conditions, such as penalty rates and public holiday pay, are not traded off without adequate compensation."
This latest "guarantee" is worth as little as the previous guarantees to protect award conditions — nothing. It applies to AWAs lodged after May 7 and is a watered-down version of the old "no disadvantage test" that the government abolished.
In effect, it acknowledges the legality of the removal of the "protected by law" conditions and its offer of compensation is virtually meaningless. How, for example, do you compensate for the loss of paid maternity leave?
Any monetary compensation would be quickly eroded by wage cuts (in dollars or by inflation). The new test does not even pretend to provide compensation for all the unprotected conditions that were also removed from awards.
Still desperate in the face of ACTU campaigning and the realities of workers’ lives, the government is considering ways of stopping the ACTU and unions from campaigning against it or supporting the ALP.
At its meeting on June 1-3, the Liberal Party Federal Council adopted a resolution calling on the Federal Government to "immediately enact legislation requiring registered industrial organisations of employers and employees to obtain the consent of a majority of their members prior to distributing members’ funds for political purposes".
The Council called "for registered trade unions to be prohibited from contributing to political causes and organisations whether financial or in kind, except when authorised by a majority of union members to do so, such majority to have been determined in a secret ballot".
Such legislation would affect the ACTU, trades and labour councils as well as individual trade unions — either directly or indirectly as the peak bodies are funded by trade unions. It is yet another attack on the rights of those organisations to represent their members and to make decisions on behalf of those members through their democratic processes. In addition, it would be unwieldy and exorbitantly expensive to implement.
To be effective, the work of trade unions in defending the interests of their members cannot be limited to economic and other workplace issues. These issues are important and central to the day-to-day struggle, but without political activity, this work is severely weakened.
Without political struggle trade unions, which are the largest mass organisations of the working class, would not even be able to fight the WorkChoices legislation or fight for their right to exist.
The type of government, its policies and actions affect every aspect of workers’ lives — health, education, housing, safety, transport, petrol prices, environment, rights of women, Indigenous rights, etc — as well as the workplace.
Trade unions have every right to be involved in the political processes of society, to support political parties and causes and even run candidates in elections if they so choose.