The Guardian 30 April, 2008
May Day 2008
From the win of the very first industry-wide 8-hour day claim in Australia by the Stonemasons Society in 1855 the workers of Australia have struggled for — and won — victory after victory in their fight for better wages and conditions. In more recent decades trade unions, on behalf of their members, have focused on equality for women, Indigenous and migrant Australians. One of the greatest of all these victories came on 24 November 2007 when Australians nation-wide — workers and non-workers, unionists and non-unionists — delivered one of the greatest defeats to a government in Australia’s history.
The 12 years of John Howard’s reign will be forever marked as one of the darkest periods for workers in this country.
Even before the ink had dried on the "Work Choices" legislation workers were being stripped of every single one of their previous rights, conditions. Loss of pay was inevitable, as was that 150-year-old holy grail of an 8-hour day.
The jubilant grins on the faces of Howard’s corporate puppet-masters appeared night after night on national television.
However, the workers of Australia and trade unions banded together. Using campaign tactics from local concerned residents groups holding stalls and door knocking to a broader campaign of heightening trade union activity Australians took to the streets in their hundreds of thousands to kill that legislation and restore workers’ rights.
Howard’s conservative government was stripped of 22 seats at the 2007 election, an emphatic testament to the slogan: "The workers united will never be defeated!"
Keep power in the hands of the people!
However many important struggles for Australia’s workers lie ahead.
An ongoing struggle over recent decades has been the fight to stop governments selling off public assets to private corporations.
The theme of May Day this year in Sydney the year is the "Power to the People" campaign against the privatisation of the NSW electricity supply. The NSW State Labor Conference is being held and the March will begin with a rally outside the conference hammering home the message that the people of NSW oppose this move.
The Communist Party of Australia has vigorously taken part in the campaign to force the NSW State Labor Government to abandon its plan to ditch its responsibility to provide the state’s electricity service.
The Iemma Government claims the $15 billion it expects to get from the sell-off of community assets is needed to pay for infrastructure projects. But these large infrastructure projects are based on a high degree of borrowings. So why privatise profitable electricity generation and sales?
Privatisation of profitable public enterprises deprives government of ongoing income. Governments should operate profitable public enterprises to ensure they have the funds to cross-subsidise public services, such as education, health and public transport.
Big business is delighted. Since the massive taxpayers’ investment needed to establish State Electricity has been made and the service is up and running and generating profits, of course they want to buy it. The international credit rating organisation Moody’s has enthusiastically endorsed the scheme.
The South Australian experience
Giving dire warning of what may lie ahead, Bob Briton, State Secretary of the Communist Party in South Australia said: "Don’t let it happen. If electricity is allowed to fall into the hand of private operators, prices for households will soar and supply will become chaotic".
SA became the national guinea pig for privatisation of public electricity when the ETSA utility was broken up and sold off in 1999 by the former Olsen Liberal Government. Prices to households were left to float on the National Electricity Market in 2003 and the experience of the state’s consumers since then has left them shell-shocked.
"Charges jumped 25 per cent in the first year of the Rann Government and for several years, summer was the season for lengthy rolling blackouts and fridges full of spoiled food.
"Foreign-owned private operators have taken turns at running the state’s generation and distribution infrastructure but none have measured up to the standards set by the utility when it was publicly owned.
"No-one in SA is happy with private electricity but privatisation is an enormously difficult thing to reverse. We should have moved earlier and more resolutely in SA to nip the thing in the bud. Our advice to the people of NSW would be to get behind the community campaign against the sale of one of your crucial assets before it becomes the plaything of price-gouging transnational corporations", Bob Briton concluded.
Even public transport
The NSW State Labor Government has also earmarked Sydney’s ferry services for privatisation. This move was identified this move as necessary after consulting a "think-tank" of Australia’s 200 most prestigious corporations. This valuable public asset has been labelled as nothing more than a "tourist attraction" and therefore should be operated as such.
The loss of jobs and downgrading of services in privatising that service will force more workers into their cars and onto privately-operated motorways.
Wherever this is happening these wins for corporations at the workers’ expense must not be allowed to happen. Trade unions have vigorously taken up the struggle of these campaigns on behalf of the people and must be supported.
Take to the streets this May Day. Celebrate the workers’ wins and let the corporations know you will defy any attempt to strip them away.
You have the world to win, and nothing to lose but your chains!