by Rob Durbridge

The crisis besetting the Federal Government looks like a rising Queensland flood, while Abbott and Co watch and wait for the Government to drown.

It’s a crisis with multiple causes, linked by the failure of a leadership without a sense of identity or direction.

The undoubted achievements of the Government are submerged by short term opportunism, capitulation to the powerful at the expense of progressive support and an inability to communicate effectively.

However, this is all its own doing as the Abbott Opposition does not command much popular support either; from them there are no big ideas for reform, just more neo-liberal slogans and anti-union plans.

The one positive in this is that despite everything, Labor and the Greens could still win a majority next year.

It’s a long shot but,building on the blocks of the Carbon Price and its progressive compensation package, the NBN, and the Equal Pay commitment to community workers, a platform of social, environmental and economic reforms could still defeat the Coalition’s plans for greater inequality and disadvantage.

Instead of making concessions to corporations who will never repay the favour, take the concessions away from them so they pay their way like the good citizens they claim to be.

If the ALP wants the electorate to start listening, start saying things the majority wants to hear; public nation-building projects to stimulate growth, create jobs and protect the environment protection like fast rail, renewable energy sources and a publicly-owned and modernized energy sector.

Instead of becoming fixated on the budget surplus, how about building quality public services like education and health with the taxation base to do it? The increasing fragility of the prospects for growth may well demand further economic initiatives after May.

The ALP needs internal reform to allow adopted policies and members’ views to prevail and the restoration of caucus democracy so that isolation of the Government from the community can be addressed. Instead of blaming the Greens for the plight of the ALP, ask why it is that the Greens have won the progressive constituency where ideas count and swing votes.

The Greens have found articulate and knowledgeable leaders who are able to communicate the issues effectively while the ALP lurches from crisis to crisis alternating between denial and ultimate policy concessions which win no new support.

Withdrawal from the war-without-mandate in Afghanistan is an example; costing billions, lives and life-long disabilities for purposes never explained and then ended, but not ended with SAS units to continue indefinitely. US bases that are not bases but ‘joint facilities’, drones being launched from Australian territory and billions to be spent on submarines and aircraft for the privilege of the US alliance just don’t add up. Who are we arming against again?

The Carbon Tax is another – something which could be a key building block for the new economy which is now being downplayed and blamed on the Greens while renewable energy is downgraded in favour of more coal and gas exploitation. When it is known that the compensation is real, the costs are minimal for households and the sky has not fallen in, the Coalition’s scare campaign could be neutralized.

Instead of sulking about the success of the Greens, and prophesying doom with Bob Brown’s departure, the ALP should accept that Milne’s team will be vital to regaining government and act accordingly. One way would be to make Bandt the Minister for Energy, replacing the corporations’ favourite son.

Short of that, a reform program which distinguishes Labor from the Coalition and joins the Greens in building a coherent vision for a more just and sustainable Australia would reach traditional and new ALP voters. Leaders who can articulate and reach voters who are sick of spin and manipulation is another necessity. The ALP of all parties knows that its first duty is to win elections and to find the people who can do it.

The Greens new leadership in Christine Milne and Adam Bandt will see the party maintain its vote and reach out to more traditional labour voters in unions and social movements beyond the environment. Marriage equality and all the issues which relate to it, rights for workers to organise beyond the half-finished repeal of Work Choices, ending the demonization of refugees, the unemployed and Indigenous people are all part of the Greens future.

Christine Milne began the leadership of the Greens with a stellar performance which illustrated her command of the economic and environmental issues facing the nation. With a background as a community activist and state politician she has experience in government with both major parties as well as their hostility and ruthlessness.

Of all Federal politicians she has shown her knowledge and ability and is respected internationally for her political and community campaigns against harmful emissions. The Greens’ near 20% primary vote in the recent Queensland by-election shows that predictions of the party’s demise are premature.

Both the Greens and the ALP will continue to compete, particularly in inner-city electorates, but both parties also need to recognize that sitting on cross benches does not achieve much in the way of reform; together they can win government but apart they will be on the sidelines.

The immediate challenge for the two parties is whether or not to exchange preferences in Deputy Leader Bandt’s seat of Melbourne. For its part the Coalition is likely to not preference the Greens as they showed in the 2011 Victorian state poll.

This is a challenge to both the ALP and the Greens, but it is also symbolic of the wider challenge for the two anti-Coalition parties.

- Rob Durbridge, SEARCH President

http://www.search.org.au/archives/3112

Unionists need to organise for the right to strike, for the effective strike and for workers’ control.

1. Unions’ right to strike campaign is to repeal all Fair Work Act penal powers and for a ‘firewall’ protection for workers in their unions taking industrial action.

ILO principles can prevail:

‘The right to strike is one of the essential means available to workers and their organisations for the promotion and protection of their economic and social interests. These interests not only have to do with obtaining better working conditions and pursuing collective demands of an occupational nature but also with seeking solutions to economic and social policy questions and to labour problems of any kind which are of direct concern to the workers.’

The ACTU argued ILO principles with the 1993 Keating reforms for the first enterprise bargaining protected action regime, but we did not achieve all our the aims. This protected action limited right to strike was weakened under Reith’s 1996 WRAct.

‘Repressive tolerance’ of strikes under corporate legal attack moved to repression of strikes under WorkChoices – the most severely regulated anti-strike regime in the OECD world – still retained in FWA. Howard’s WC spin says ‘we are not taking away the right to strike’ but in practice unionists are not free to strike.

Still no one argues against the principles. ALP MPs and Rudd in 2005 criticised WC and supported the ILO right to strike. But the Rudd and Gillard government flouts such a right to strike.

In ACTU policies there remains scope for the endorsement of ILO principles, based on an appreciation of the right to strike as a civil, political, and socio-economic entitlement.

In 2012 right to strike amendments can go through this Parliament.

Minister Bill Shorten can first delete all of the FWA/WC strike provisions. Then insert the above ILO principles and a section to ensure no one can take a legal case against any industrial action, full stop.

Employer legal sanctions to stop strikes and fine striking workers and union officials are not available. Corporate law firms are out of industrial relations. The right to withdraw our labour-power is legally paramount over all corporate law.

What does this ‘firewall’ protection for the strike mean? Such a new FWA guarantees freedom for workers in unions to collectively bargain with strikes. Unionists are free to determine the strike processes, the timing, the negotiations, the notices etc and free to determine how we take industrial action democratically in paid workers’ meetings. Free to pursue our demands not in anyway legally constrained, not restricted by old legalities of ‘matters pertaining to employment’ or so-called ‘not allowed’ matters. Free to put on industrial pressure for claims not only for wages and conditions in collective agreements but over so-called management prerogative decisions, over industry development strategies, for job protection provisions, environmental demands etc.

The right to strike on occupational health and safety is absolute.

The employer right to lockout is repealed. No Minister has the discretion to stop industrial action.

Industry and pattern bargaining industrial action is lawful as the industrial parties are free to determine at what level to bargain.

The Building and Construction regime now in FWA is abolished. Restrictions in trade-related industries, such as the waterfront are repealed.

The lawful strike extends internationally – essential for unions to organise globally in response to powerful multi-national corporate interests.

This right to strike politically is a last resort response to bad government policy affecting workers’ interests. Workers, as citizens in a democracy, have legal protection for political protest assemblies e.g. against WorkChoices; no penalties against workers taking time to attend ‘No War’ rallies or on foreign affairs protesting against dictatorships e.g. in Fiji and fascist acts such as Indonesian TNI genocide against the East Timorese. The lawful strike supports human rights struggles. Provisions in the Crimes Act and anti-terror laws are repealed. No exceptions such as ‘for damage to persons or property’.

Union officials organising the strike have legal protection against ancient British master and servant common law actions in tort, contract and in equity – no possibility of crippling damages. Industrial disputes are settled by the parties or in the FWA system and not in the courts.

Picketing is protected industrial action not subject to injunctions. Employers cannot employ ‘replacement’ labour to break a strike, as this is a violation of our freedom of association. The individual on strike is protected: no return to work orders, no threat of dismissal, no victimization, no fines.

Competition law outlawing solidarity strikes and secondary boycotts is removed.

2. The question is then reviving the strike so working people can regain power and transform Australia.

Unions know the strike is the essential means for the power to win our demands, e.g. secure jobs. How workers organise a winning strike is a priority. Historically in this era strikes are essential to respond to the capitalist and environment crisis and in response to the political attacks on workers’ rights. Democratic control by workers in their unions of their industrial action is central to defeat the employers’ decisions, defeat the corporate attack and defeat right-wing ‘austerity’ cuts.

The effective strike now is very difficult because of the repressive regime and corporate/government lawyers taking legal actions against unions. Employees in their unions in enterprise bargaining have to win ‘protected’ strikes as best we can.

Recruitment succeeds when integrated into successful strike action.

We can criticize past union leaders shifting resources to organize the un–unionized sectors, as this has failed to revive unions. We cannot resolve our crisis simply by adding new members – without a powerful strike in place.

Planned lengthy strikes are necessary to organise. Australian unions are good at the one-day protest publicity strike. But this gives the illusion of struggle, distracting from our real problem, which is the lack of an effective traditional lengthy strike. Secondary bans, boycotts and solidarity strikes are a powerful means of union strength and need to be again back in practice if unions are to succeed.

Mass general strikes in many countries are organised as the global capitalist order is in another chronic crisis period with corporate and state austerity attacks on workers. Occupy activists call for a general strike on May Day. But look back through history about how general strikes happened. They are organized in the workplace by union delegates and organizers organizing their co-workers and can be done again.

Our YRAW campaign proves our capacity strategically to win in civil society and politically. We defeated Howard, but failed to secure key rights at work.

We organise outstanding social unionism struggles with community support. But to win requires the power of collective strike action. Social unionism is not a replacement for direct struggle against employers. Social unionism where the strike is abandoned loses the central role of workers at work, at the point of production.

Co-ordinated strikes against the repressive anti-strike regime requires union members organising across industries, a mass strategy to defeat the penal powers, learning from the 1960’s anti-penal powers organising model resulting in mass national ‘Clarrie O’Shea’ strikes. Working class principles justify the refusal to follow unjust and illegitimate restrictions and for the principled defiance of judicial orders to win the right to strike.

“Labour is not a commodity”, “our labour power creates wealth”, “the right to strike is a basic freedom that distinguishes us from the slave or bonded labour or from fascism”, “ freedom from corporate and HR rule” etc.

3. But the strike is only a means. We return to work with more power. Workers’ struggles can then develop with democratic self-management agendas. Workers’ control over our work to counter employers’ control is the challenge. Tactics historically are sit-ins and occupations when workers facing redundancies took over factories and ran them cooperatively. We can learn about workers self-management cooperatives. We can study workers control developments.

As unionists we can listen to the history of militant workers who acted believing we can control our work and the economy without capitalist rulers.

Chomsky on May Day

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/04/29-4

Photos May Day
http://boingboing.net/2012/05/01/may-day-2012-big-photo-galle.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2012/may/01/may-day-rallies-pictures

Leo Panitch on May Day
http://www.socialistproject.ca/inthenews/MayDay.html
The claiming of May 1 as a day for political protest grew out of the particular nature of working-class activism of Europe and North America in the late 19th century. During that time labourers were encountering ferocious industrial capitalists who sought to limit workers’ control over their jobs; working people in turn fought back by demanding shorter hours and better conditions. New May Day graphic novel retells old stories of struggle
“May Day has symbolized the common struggles of workers around the globe”.
Read here
http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2012/04/may-day-graphic-novel-retells-old-stories-struggle

From the US May Day and Occupy
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/04/30-9

Monday is May day Public holiday in Darwin

Unions NT May Day Magazine
with articles including mine on the right to strike for secure jobs.
Unions_NT MayDay 2012

And in one of the poorest nations Timor Leste the unions are now allowed to exist from 2002, so good struggles to the KSTL.

In the US, the AFL-CIO

http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Global-Action/May-Day-Workers-Rights-Must-Be-Universal

In Adelaide

http://s-o-b.posterous.com/may-day-dinner-outstanding-success#

here it is

AO (68) autumn 2012

26 March, 2012 | Media Release
Almost 1000 delegates representing workers from every industry and sector in Australia will attend the ACTU Congress at the Sydney Convention Centre from 15-17 May.

This is the largest and most important gathering of Australian unions. Delegates will debate and vote on policies regarding the workplace, rights, and campaigns to improve wages, conditions and quality of life for Australian workers and their families. This process sets the union agenda for a further three years.

The Congress will also elect a new Secretary to lead the ACTU, along with other office-holders.

The theme of ACTU Congress 2012 is Secure Jobs. Better Future. With about 40% of the Australian workforce employed as casuals, in labour hire, on short-term contracts or in other forms of insecure work, improving their rights, entitlements and protections is a major priority of Australian unions.

All media are invited to this important event in Sydney from 15-17 May.

Congress highlights:
High profile national and international speakers
Public release of the report of the Howe Inquiry into Insecure Work
Youth Congress (14 May)
Spotlight on union campaigns and special focus on secure jobs
Congress dinner with special guests
Policy sessions and debates: industrial relations, economic and social policy
Fringe events
Speakers will include:
The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard
The Minister for Workplace Relations, Bill Shorten
Incoming ACTU Secretary-elect
ACTU President Ged Kearney
Outgoing ACTU Secretary Jeff Lawrence
Chair of the Independent Inquiry into Insecure Work, Brian Howe
Director of the Economic Policy Institute (USA), Lawrence Mishel
General Secretary of the Fijian Trades Union Congress, Felix Anthony

More announcements will be made soon. Visit www.actucongress.org.au for more information.

Media can register their interest in attending the ACTU Congress 2012 by contacting Michelle Ryan on (03) 9664 7379 or mryan@actu.org.au

A speech Kerin gave at a 200-strong rally on February 17 appears below.
* * *
Up at the vigil, it’s a conservative precinct, the finance sector. And someone like me turning up with a megaphone and speaking every hour on the hour — it was new. It was different for those workers and those communities.

By the end of nearly three weeks we had members of the Melbourne Club coming over and agreeing with us. I’d never had that experience in my life.

We’ve pulled together a community organisation called Enough for two reasons. One, we believe that ordinary working Australians have had enough, and on the other hand we believe we have enough here to make this country work for all of our citizens.

Because we are citizens of this nation, and what’s being pushed at the moment is that a minority of shareholders in this country actually have more rights than we as citizens do.

We keep pointing out the Telstra sign on the building. If you look at the shadow on the wall, it used to say Telecom. And we used to own it. And nobody, no government, ever held a conversation with its own people — not from either side of the parliament — nobody came to us with a referendum and asked us if we wanted our national assets sold.

They went ahead and they sold it. And they made some promises. They promised that our jobs would be held.

We’ve lost 55,000 jobs out of the telecommunications industry. That is a crime against this nation, and we the citizens of it.

We should be able to determine the corporations that come to this country and the conditions under which they come. No corporation has the right to act in this country, other than in our interest.

Yet laws allow corporations to act against our interests.

So we have casualisation running at over 40%. Our young people are all casuals — where will they be able to borrow to buy a home?

We have sham contracting and Telstra is one of the worst offenders. They have workers going around with a van and they call them independent contractors. And they have to be available 7am to 7pm, seven days a week — what’s independent about that?
Read more

http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/50227

This interesting extract from Humphrey McQueen’s new book reminds us how important trade unions have been in protecting Qld coastline and the Barrier Reef in the 1970s -
and also how current Fair Work laws and Building laws same as WorkChoices makes green bans unlawful.

Send this on to your enviromental friends and support reforms for the right to strike over the environment.

Coral battleground 1970

After tenders to drill for oil on the Great Barrier Reef went out during 1969, the Queensland branch levied its members to bring a US expert to testify about the threat to the Reef. In speaking for the proposal, secretary Delaney pointed out that the Queensland Trades and Labour Council (T&LC) and the ALP were the ‘only working-class organisations to interest themselves in the [Royal] Commission’ into the Reef. In July, the T&LC placed a total ban on drilling. Until then, poet and activist Judith Wright had feared that the conservationists had lost. She declared the union action ‘spectacular and unprecedented’. That ban remains spectacular. It also set a precedent. Henceforth, environmentalists hoped that unions would win their battles for them.

Fraser Island – 1975
In 1975, the Bjelke-Petersen regime allowed mining on the world’s largest sand island. The damage was inflicted by the US construction giant, Dillinghams, the foe of BLs around the world. When Federal Council debated how to save this natural wonder, Queensland secretary Dobinson feared the loss of its perched lakes. Victorian assistant secretary Norm Wallace recalled enjoying the ‘crystal clear lakes above sea level which had outlets but no inlets. There is pure water, clean white sand, good rain forests and beautiful timber. Fraser Island must be preserved’. From Tasmania, Morgan pictured Fraser as the southern anchor of the Reef. All delegates opposed Dillingham’s vandalism. Gallagher urged them to gather support from other unions. The Federation joined the BWIU in banning all Dillingham projects until an official assessment had reported. After visiting the island late in May, Gallagher observed: ‘Experience has taught us that when the pressure is off, companies usually go for maximum profit’.

Extracted from Humphrey McQueen, ‘We Built This Country, builders’ labourers and their unions’, Ginninderra Press, 2011, pp. 290-1 and 293.

1. Amend the Fair Work Act to have a real right to strike.

2. Amend the Fair Work Act to restrict casual and other forms of precarious work to a limited period. Provide the requirement for on-going work, more secure contracts of employment. Fair Work Australia is to have the power and discretion to conciliate and arbitrate the transition to the more secure employment contracts.

1. The right to strike

I submit the lawful strike is essential for collective bargaining. WorkChoices’ repressive provisions with unnecessary and unfair sanctions against industrial action were retained in the Fair Work Act and all have to be repealed for effective collective bargaining system.

Only with employees’ ability to bargain with protected action without being ordered back to work and suffering penalties can employees and their unions be able to respond to the dire precarious work of continuing capitalist labour relations.

The international capitalist crisis daily worsens putting more pressure on business to move to precarious and exploitative work. In response, unions have the Secure Jobs campaign.

What is essential is for employees to have the FWA amended to protect the right to strike in order to balance the more powerful corporate and government forces.

I have written on my recommendations for a right to strike. I reference articles on the arguments for amendments to the Fair Work Act to protect the right to strike.

I argue for the fire walling of industrial action for protection for employees and their unions so that sanctions are removed.

I argue such an amendment is vital for employees in all the forms of non-standard work.

I urge as necessary the repeal of the Australian Building and Construction Improvement Act, and the ABCC functions and powers and not replace it with the current amendments before Parliament that have no merit.

All of the existing provisions from the earlier Workplace Relations Act and Work Choices still in the current repressive regime against strikes are to be deleted, as well as those in other laws such as the Trade Practices Act and the Crimes Act.

Instead, a broad legal protection for all forms of industrial action is inserted.

At a minimum, commonly accepted ILO principles as required protecting the right to strike are to be implemented. The history of such ILO principles and their non-application by Australia is well known in the industrial relations and labour law community.

Furthermore, as a result to the Qantas lockout, the employer is to be denied this bargaining weapon of the lockout and the provisions in FWA deleted.

Much criticism has occurred about the failure of the FWA to have an effective right to strike by industrial relations specialists, labour law academics, the ACTU and unions. In particular, see the critical analysis in Shae McCrystal’s book ‘The Right to Strike in Australia’. I recommend Professor Keith Ewing’s research on the right to strike and Tania Novitz on the ILO’s protection for the right to strike.

Fire walling the right to strike is necessary for parliament to accept as essential for workers to have some power in this capitalist crisis and to assist strategies for secure jobs.

2. Job Security in the Fair Work Act

The overall merit evidence from employees’ adverse experiences in precarious work and the unjust impact socially in the Australian community requires Fair Work Act amendments for job security. Here are key recommendations.

2.1 One amendment is to clearly restrict casual employment to only short periods, such as 4 hours daily and no more than fortnightly.

Then a provision that compels employers to move to on-going and more permanent employment and allows employees the transition from existing casualisation to these more permanent on-going employment contracts.

Such a provision has bargaining rights for precarious workers to change to secure employment with the terms to be negotiated and agreed. The clear right exists when not being able to reach an agreement for the employee(s) to access conciliation and arbitration from FWA to gain orders for process steps for more permanent work.

The same applies to ending many short-term contracts. After two short term contracts, then the employer is required to move to more permanent, on-going contracts.

Special attention is to support any employee with service e.g. more than seven years who is to be on a permanent contract. As well, an existing employee with 10 years before retirement is to be on a permanent contract. Employees in other non-standard employment sectors are to be protected such as in the disability sector.

2.2 The next new section is to ensure that labour-hire contract provisions are not attractive
to employers for lowering costs. The aim is have protections dealing with precarious work in the labour-hire industry. Such provisions are to ensure the same wages and conditions
in the user firm in similar work. Employees must be hired permanently for not less
than two years. There is a formal written contract with the same rate and benefits. The
worker may join the user firm’s union. Labour-hire is to be implemented generally for
short-term, supplementary and substitute positions. Provisions for transition and
compliance need to be put in place.

2.3 Strengthening enforcement provisions by employees and unions to ensure that employers pay legal wages and comply with all employment conditions of the contracts of employment, with speedy measures for exploited workers to recover wages. Increased penalties and damages against non-complying employers.

2.4 A provision that deems for compliance that legal minimums exist in contracts of employment so that those entitlements can be enforced even if there is no evidence of a written contract of employment.

2.5 Amend the unfair dismissal section so that the right applies to all employees, irrespective of the employee’s status or contract of employment or the size of the employer’s workforce. The big lie that employers may not employ was made up by Ian Hanke Peter Reith’s press secretary and is repeated by Liberals and Nationals ad nauseum in the media, but is to be rejected. Precarious workers ‘dismissed’ ought to have the lawful right to argue their case about why they were unreasonably dismissed before a user friendly FWA conciliator then arbitrator for reinstatement.

2.6 I urge strengthened redundancy provisions in a new minimum entitlement that has a provision for three months notice and one month’s pay for each year of service for redundant employees. Such a job security measure as a national entitlement deters employers from making employees redundant and assists redundant employees in this recessionary period.

2.7 A specific process provision for precarious workers with non-standard work arrangements to have the legal right to union representation and to be able to organise in unions.

I support the ACTU campaign for Secure Jobs.

I attach reference articles. I attach a brochure from the National Right to Strike campaign to have the FWA ILO compliant.

Insecure work issues in Australia are similar to those overseas. I urge investigation of other countries attempts to provide greater protection for their employees. As well, I recommend China’s labour relations and laws grappling with insecure work.

I have an arts/law degree from the University of Adelaide. I worked in SA for the AWU, the LHMU and then was elected as Assistant Secretary and later Secretary of the UTLC of SA. I then in Canberra worked for ASMOF and the NTEU and at the ANU teaching in Politics.

I have posts on the right to strike on my blog http://chriswhiteonline.org

I now live in Darwin and am a Senior Research Fellow at The Northern Institute Charles Darwin University.

References
Cameron, C. (1970) ‘Industrial protest: the Right to Strike’ University of Adelaide, WEA ‘Social order and the right to dissent’ 27/11/1970. (Australian Parliamentary Library).
Ewing, K. (2004) ‘Laws Against Strikes Revisited’, in Barnard C, Deakin S and Morris G editors ‘The Future of Labour Law’ (Hart Publishing, Oxford, 2004).
Ewing, K. (2008) ‘Restoring rights at work Lessons from the UK.’ Professor of Law, Kings College London (Published 10.11.08 by Catalyst http://www.catalyst.org.au)
Glasbeek, H. (2009) ‘Rudderless in a Sea of Choices: The Defeat of Your Rights At Work—Analysis and a Possible Response’ Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar Osgoode Hall Law School, York University,Toronto and Visiting Professorial Fellow, Victoria University, Melbourne. Dissent Autumn/Winter 2009, p33 and posted http://chriswhiteonline.org
Peetz, D. (2005) 151 Industrial Relations and Labour Law Academics Senate WorkChoices No 175. http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/eet_ctte/wr_workchoices05/submissions/sublist
Roberts, T. (2005) ‘Civil Disturbance’ Workers Online June 2005, http://workers.labor.net.au/features/200506/c_historicalfeature_tom.html; ‘Into the Industrial Dark Ages: the civil liberties implications of the Federal Government’s Industrial Laws for the Australian Construction Industry’ in Civil Liberty, the Journal of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties Inc. June 2005
Romeyn, J. (2008) ‘Striking a balance: the need for further reform of the law relating to industrial action’ Published by the Australian Parliamentary Library

http://parlinfoweb.aph.gov.au/piweb//view_document.aspx?TABLE=PRSPUB&ID=2789.

International Centre for Trade Union Rights ICTUR (1999,2002-2007) Senate Submissions into WR Act and WorkChoices submission no.185. http://parlinofoweb.aph.gov.au ILO 1983, 1998, 1999 – 2003 Reports of the Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendation www.ilo.org
McCrystal, S. ‘Shifting the balance of power in collective bargaining: Australian law, industrial action and WorkChoices’, The Economic and Labour Relations Review, 16(2), May 2006, 210;
McCrystal, S. ‘Smothering the right to strike: WorkChoices and Industrial action’, 19 (2006) Australian Journal of Labour Law, p. 201
McCrystal, S. 2009 ‘A New Consensus: The Coalition, the ALP and the Regulation of Industrial Action’ in Fair Work The new Workplace Laws and the WorkChoices Legacy edited A. Forsyth and A Stewart (Federation Press, Sydney).
Novitz, T. (2003) International and European Protection of the Right to Strike A Comparative Study of Standards Set by the International Labour Organization, the Council of Europe and the European Union (Oxford University Press).
White, C. (2010) ‘Firewalling the right to strike in Australia?’ chapter 8 in G Radhika
Anand (ed). ‘The Right to Strike’(Amicus The Icfai University Press).
White, C. (2009) Senate submission the Fair Work Bill No 122 http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/eet_ctte/fair_work/submissions.htm
White C (2008) ‘The right to strike’ chapter in Evatt papers Sheil, C (ed) ‘The State of Industrial Relations’, Vol. 5, No. 1, Evatt Foundation, Sydney, 2008, pp. 91-102.
White, C. (2005) ILO Protection of the Right to Strike: ‘Inside the ILO Tent’ Evatt Foundation http://evatt.org.au/news/336.html.
White, C (2005) ‘The right to politically strike? The case for re-evaluation’. Evatt Foundation on-line13/4/2005: http://evatt.labor.net.au/publications/papers/139.html
White, C. (2004). ‘Right to strike issues in the October 2003 Universities national strike’ AIRAANZ 2004
White, C. (2005) ‘The Right to Politically Strike?’ AIRAANZ 2005 Conference Sydney Universityhttp://airaanz.econ.usyd.edu.au/papers.html
White, C. (2005) Senate Submission on the Building and Construction Improvement Bill
White, C. (2005) Senate Submission on WorkChoices Bill (2005) Senate Inquiry submission No. 129;www.aph.gov go to Senate submissions
White, C. (2005) ‘WorkChoices: Removing the Choice to Strike’ Journal of Australian Political Economy No56, 66. www.jape.org.
White, C. (2005) ‘Howard makes the ‘blue’ unlawful. The right to strike is down the WC’, Evatt Foundation on-line 2 November 2005, http://evatt.labor.net.au/news/358.html
White, C. (2006) pamphlet on ‘How Howard is taking away the right to strike.’
White, C. (2005) ‘Howard’s IR plans’ ICTUR International Union Rights Journal
White, C. (2006) ‘Provoking Building and Construction Workers’ 20th Conference AIRAANZ 21st Century Work: High Road or Low Road? http://www.aomevents.com/conferences/AIRAANZ/papers.php.New Matilda 7th July 2006 http://www.newmatilda.com
White, C. (2006) ‘The Perth 2007 and the right to strike’ ICTUR International Centre for Trade Union Rights magazine International Union Rights. Volume 13. Issue 3.
White, C. (2006) ‘The Perth 107 Right to Strike Contest’ the Australian Institute of Employment Rights www.aierights.com.au
White, C. (2006) ‘Right to strike contest. Provoking Building Unionists’ http://www.aeufederal.org.au/E07/FR/Perth107.pdf
White, C. (2006) ‘The right to strike removed’ Dissent, No. 21 Spring 2006.
White,C.(2007).‘What limits the right to strike?’ Blog: Larvatus Prodeo http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/05/21/guest-post-by-chris-white-what-limits-the-right-to-strike/
White,C.(2007)Criticism of Kevin Rudd’s limitations on the Right to Strike.www.aeufederal.org.au/E07/election
White,C.(2007) Howard’s Prohibited Content on strikes http://solidarity.redrag.net/2007/05/03/prohibited-content/
White, C. (2007) ‘Restore the Right to Strike’ www.greenleft.org.au/2007/711/36927
White, C. (2007) ‘From Penal Colony to Penal Powers’, www.greenleft.org.au/2007/715/37126
White, C. (2007) ‘The Right to Strike to Save the Environment’
www.aeufederal.org.au/E07/election.html
White, C. (2007) ‘China Labour Law’ International Union Rights Journal,
International, 14(1), p17
White, C. (2007) ‘China’s New Labour Law The challenge of regulating
employment contracts. China moves beyond WorkChoices,’ Evatt Foundation,
Sydney http://evatt.labor.net.au/publications/papers/193.html.
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Australia’, Evatt Foundation, Sydney, http://evatt.org.au/news/451.html
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http://bushtelegraph.wordpress.com/2007/08/29/%e2%80%98constructing-fear-australia%e2%80%99s-secret-industrial-inquisition%e2%80%99/

White, C. (2004) Review Jim Marr, ‘First the Verdict The true story of the Building Industry Royal Commission’ Australian Options, No. 35, Summer 2004 www.australian-options.org.au.
White, C. (2004) ‘Howard Threatens the Right to Strike’ Australian Options, No. 38

By Michael Albert
Friday, February 10, 2012 from Z magazine

“But remember that if the struggle were to resort to violence, it will lose vision, beauty and imagination. Most dangerous of all, it will marginalize and eventually victimize women. And a political struggle that does not have women at the heart of it, above it, below it, and within it is no struggle at all.”
- Arundhati Roy

Chris Hedges has written a very aggressive attack on what is called the black bloc element of the current occupy movements. There have been a number of replies and reactions. The issues are actually not new, but have a long lineage. How do we evaluate matters of violence and non violence? What even characterizes obstruction, property damage, or aggressive or violent options, and how might folks reasonably argue their preferences?

Pacifism often comes from a religious or a philosophical stance and says violence, or even property damage, is a bad personal choice – no exceptions. Many pacifists argue publicly on behalf of political nonviolence using evidence, values, and experience. They usually respect and interact positively with those holding different opinions. In my experience, perhaps the best exemple of this type of stance was by David Dellinger, someone whose work is worth revisiting today. There are some other pacifists, however, who don’t primarily use evidence, logic, and experience to argue for nonviolence, but instead assert that to reject nonviolence is immoral. Their morality/religion trumps political debate.

When adherents of a political view assert that all other actors must agree or be irrelevant, it is often called sectarianism. Agree with me or you are a political infidel. In philosophy or religion, similar rigidity is often called fundamentalism. Agree with me or you are a moral infidel or mental midget – or worse, an ally of one type of devil or another.

Here’s the hard part: When a pacifist says that everyone must be a pacifist because all other options are immoral, it is fundamentalism.

Lifestyle, philosophical, or religious pacifists have every right to argue that the movement should always be nonviolent. But if they do it by proclaiming they have greater morality and dismissing those who have different views as morons or badly motivated, they can’t expect to be taken seriously. The same also goes for those who assert the limits of nonviolence and the merits of militancy from atop a high moral horse. Those who say disruption and violence are essential to building movements and winning change, and add that anyone who thinks otherwise is a tool of the state, are also sectarian.

So what characterizes obstruction, property damage, or aggressive or violent options, and how might folks reasonably argue for their preference?

With any tactic we can usefully ask:

What are its effects on those who utilize it?
What are its effects on those it seeks to pressure?
What are its effects on the those protestors seek to reach out to?
What are its effects on enduring movement organization and culture?

The “black bloc” side of this debate claims that tactics “exceeding” nonviolence tend to be good in that they delegitimate authority; reduce tendencies to obedience; uproot accommodationist habits and culture; inspire participation among working people and minorities; enlarge courage; graphically pinpoint protestor’s anger; promote increased media coverage that communicates the movement message more widely; and also raise social costs for elites, pressuring them to relent. In their view, “cannibals prefer those who have no spines.”

The “pacifist” side claims that tactics “exceeding” nonviolence tend to be bad in that they help authority rationalize its legitimacy; increase tendencies to thoughtless individualism, amorality, and paranoia; put off unorganized working people and minorities (not to mention those unable or unwilling to participate in violent settings); curtail open discussion and democratic decision-making; obscure the focus of protestor’s anger; distort media coverage from substance to bricks and fighting thereby disrupting communication to broader audiences; and also give elites an excuse to change the rules of engagement to their advantage. In their view, violence is suicidal.

The point-by-point contrast highlights the complexity of judging tactics.

Is having teach-ins, marching, rallying, doing civil disobedience, and obstructing large numbers of people the best way, or is destroying draft card files, a missile nose cone, a war-making facility, or targeted windows, trespassing, rioting, resisting arrest, or even escalating to pro-active aggression against police, scabs, or other sectors, a better choice?

To know, we have to decide which claims by advocates of different stances are true and which false, and how we regard the overall tally. A complicating factor is that we have to consider each case on its own merits. We can’t we have an across-the-board, always-binding judgment, as convenient as that might be, because in some situations aggressive tactics yield all the positive affects their advocates expect, yet in other situations aggressive tactics fail to deliver any potential benefits. Likewise, in some situations aggressive tactics yield all the debits their critics anticipate, yet other times aggressive tactics minimize or even eliminate the debits. Thus there are no universal rules about abiding or exceeding non violence, and the best we can do is to assess each tactic people might opt for in each situation, seeking to maximize potential benefits and minimize potential ills. Thus, with this mindset, a person is neither black bloc or pacifist – but, instead, open about the options, careful to choose good ones, and then to implement them in worthy ways, case by case.

For example, proponents and critics of aggressive tactics need to pay priority attention to not providing authorities a rationalization to obscure the government’s wrong-doing. Proponents and critics must be sympathetic to those disagreeing with them and work hard to increase democratic participation and reduce tendencies to anti-social individualism, paranoia, or passivity. They must try to find ways to increase the possibility of wide participation and open discussion and decision-making, and particularly to prevent their tactics from alienating sought-after constituencies. They must put a high onus of evidence on themselves on behalf of avoiding adventurism or endangering others or otherwise weakening the balance of power between the movement and elites, whether by action or inaction. They must raise social costs today consistently with being able to do better tomorrow. They must undertake or refrain from actions in ways that don’t fracture the movement, reduce sympathy for the movement, or obscure its message among constituencies it seeks to reach. And both advocates and opponents of any particular tactic must avoid pressuring movement participants into hostile stances toward one another, rather than battling only opposed elites.

Pursuing violent tactics by disdaining participation and democracy or by wildly imagining non-existent conditions appears to be macho play-acting rather than seriously seeking maximal impact. Opposing violent tactics by equating minor disruptions or destruction with the catastrophic violence of elites looks like fundamentalism rather than seriously seeking maximal positive impact.

On the upside, when groups pay serious attention to strategic concerns so that others are aware of their motives, logic, and attentiveness – as well as of how they take into account the views and agendas of their protest partners – then while folks may still sharply disagree about choices, the dialog can be one of respect and substantive debate.

Surely we can all agree that respect and substantive debate are worthy goals. Then doesn’t it also follow that having protest norms that facilitate differing groups communicating usefully is much better than having protest norms which pit differing groups against one another in ideological death matches? “Different strokes for different folks” is a good slogan, as long as we add that the different folks need to also pursue mutual concern, understanding, and empathy.

There are demonstrations in which trashing, for example, grows organically from the event’s logic and intentions. An example might be clearly enunciated assaults on particular draft boards or ROTC buildings. There are other demonstrations where trashing is counter-productive and irresponsible due to endangering innocent folks and diluting the message and solidarity of the event.

Consider a massive event where those who tirelessly organized it were committed to legal marches and rallies and also to illegal but nonviolent civil disobedience. Imagine 100,000 people attend. Imagine in the first days success is overwhelming and mutually respectful ties develop between usually fragmented constituencies, (for example Green disobedients and Teamsters, Lesbian Avengers and steel workers). Imagine developing optimism is contagious. Movement participation is climbing and, targeted meetings or events are effectively disrupted.

But then the police begin to employ gas, clubs, and rubber bullets. At this point, highly organized trashers break off and attack windows and police. Afterwards they celebrate that due to their mobility and organization none of them was arrested or harmed. Perhaps these militant dissenters taunt and otherwise provoke police and then disappear, leaving others, often utterly unprepared families, to bear the brunt of the response. Do we admire more the courage of knowing folks who could easily see what was coming and escape if they wished to, but who instead used their talents to help protect their less well prepared co-demonstrators, or those who brought down escalated repression and then fled the scene?

Imagine that various contingents who provided energy, song, creativity, and militancy at the rallies and civil disobedience, had then also, on top of that, not gone off breaking windows when the police got violent, but remained with other demonstrators, shielding them, assisting those who were hurt, helping those suffering from gas. This would have capped their otherwise positive involvement with exemplary behavior on behalf of their fellow demonstrators, rather than tailing off into counter productive window breaking. The image of dissent and activism conveyed by this would have been creative militancy plus humanity and solidarity.

Does this mean, however, that there cannot be a time and place for confrontation and property damage? No, it doesn’t mean that, at least not to me. Instead, the time and place for such behavior is when it will meet widespread approval and increase the power of protest rather than providing an excuse for folks to tune out or to become hostile to protest. Up to the trashing, in the above example, the most militant contingents likely added energy, creativity, art, music, and often greatly needed militancy, courage, and steadfastness to many demonstration venues. They uplifted participants’ spirits and otherwise played a very positive role within the rubric of the demonstration’s guidelines. It was only when some went off breaking windows against the demonstration’s norms, in this example, that a problem arose. And we should note that it isn’t just trashing that is sometimes warranted and sometimes not. Sometimes civil disobedience is out of place, too. It too can be at odds with the mindsets of people’s planning so that spontaneously undertaking civil disobedience would violate an event’s logic and the expectations and plans of most people present. It would then, at least in part, alienate people who were moving toward dissent, and not spur new insight and solidarity. Other times, however, employing civil disobedience makes excellent sense and is even pivotal to success. For that matter, sometimes even a march can be adventurist; other times it can be the ideal tactic.

In other words, what tactics at an event are warranted and will help a movement grow and strengthen, and what tactics at an event are unwarranted and will hurt a movement and its cause, is very rarely a matter of unyielding principles but instead depends on how the event has been portrayed and organized, who is at the event, what their expectations are, what the event’s prospects are for impacting social outcomes, and how the event and the tactics are likely to be perceived by constituencies beyond the border of the event.

Regrettably, though, this is not inevitable. It has often typically been the case that once activists enter a trashing mindset, they most often don’t care about such calculations. At that point their inclination becomes a feeling that to trash is good because, after all, the targets are criminal corporations and damaging them is a step toward demystifying and destroying them. Anyone against that must be pro-corporate, they announce. Their mental energy no longer tries to determine the impact of possible tactics, but only what target to hit. They begin to think it is the height of wisdom to deduce that McDonalds and Nike are better targets than random passersby or a family grocery store. For a relatively minuscule number of participants to impose on a massive demonstration tactics that are contrary to the demonstration’s definition is not only unwise for its effects, but also undemocratic in a way that should never typify movement activism.

Of course, the above hypothetical example is largely real. The anti corporate globalization uprising that took place in Seattle, Washington, in the U.S. – which is just one among a great many similar cases – had, before any trashing occurred, already hamstrung the WTO. They had evidenced militant creativity, organization and knowledge. They had begun to generate new allegiances and ties among diverse constituencies. They had combined many levels of creative and militant tactics in a mutually supportive mix. Speeches at rallies, in many instances, made the obvious leaps from opposing free trade to opposing free markets, and from opposing global profiteering to opposing capitalism, per se. The ground work was laid for gains to multiply. Then, the addition of trashing, however emotionally understandable it was, predictably did not win useful visibility that would otherwise have been absent. It did not enlarge the number of folks participating or empathizing with the demonstration. It did not cause more substantive information to be conveyed either in the mainstream or on the left – on the contrary it replaced substance about globalization with an endless litany of noise about police and activist tactics. It did not respect much less enlarge democracy. What it did do, instead, was (a) divert attention from the real issues, (b) provide a pretext for repression which would otherwise have been unequivocally seen as crushing legitimate dissent, and (c) and, arguably most important, cause many to feel that dissent is an unsympathetic undertaking where some feel that they have the right to undemocratically violate the intentions and desires of most others.

Again, the issue is not whether trashing or other aggressive actions per se are good or bad. Suppose that back during Seattle the black bloc hadn’t embarked on breaking windows but had become a support group for those suffering police assaults, rallying spirits and protecting bodies. Suppose that hundreds and then thousands more students and workers had joined the civil disobedience efforts because of the sense of community they embodied and the clarity of their aims. Suppose that support actions had occurred all over the country, spreading like Occupy spread more recently. Suppose that the state had used gas and charging cops repeatedly to break up such efforts. And suppose, in this context, a good part of the city’s population, the “audience” around the country, and a huge majority of the constituencies that had gone to Seattle, or wherever, to demonstrate felt solidarity with the demonstrators. Now imagine, after a long pattern of totally non violent response, including efforts to actually talk with police troops, that the police charged some peaceful convocation or march yet again, and folks finally had had enough and didn’t accept a beating, but instead suddenly stood their ground. Suppose they then turned and decided it was time to push back. Imagine that this led to battles, and then even to cars turned over, barricades built, and so on. The property damage by protesters in such a melee would dwarf anything committed by the trashers in Seattle and it would no doubt exuberantly (though not wisely) extend beyond corporate targets and damage even some property of innocents. Some would say this couldn’t possibly be good but in fact, instead, as described, this could have had a completely different flavor and logic from the trashing in Seattle – and could have expanded, rather than diminished, the involved movements and constituencies. There is always a judgment call in the use of tactics.

Sometimes a tactic is wise, other times the same tactic is mistaken.

What was wrong about the political folks who trashed in Seattle or in our hypothetical first case, above, or in some non violent Occupy events and engagements, was that (1) despite their other genuine and valuable contributions to the events, their judgment was horribly faulty. And (2) they egocentrically thought that their judgment alone was sufficient justification for them to dramatically violate norms accepted by hundreds, thousands, and sometimes tens of thousands of other demonstrators.

Changing society isn’t a matter of breaking windows, obviously. It is a process of developing consciousness and vehicles of organization and movement, and of then applying these to win gains that benefit deserving constituencies and create conditions for still further victories, leading to permanent institutional change.

Cultivating movement coherence, trust, and solidarity – not just in a small affinity group but far more widely – is a big part of this agenda. Coherence, trust, and solidarity are typically not furthered when small groups undemocratically violate the agenda of massive demonstrations to pursue their private inclinations, even when the small group has a plausible case for its preferences.

The fact that corporations are so vile that attacking them is morally warranted if it will do good, doesn’t mean they are so vile that attacking them is morally warranted if it will do harm. Organizing against the Vietnam War, I often used to appear in front of very large and animated audiences, give long talks, and then field questions. It was a tumultuous time and the most prevalent question was often, “Would you burn down the school library if it would end the war?” My reply always took more or less this form, “who wouldn’t burn down a library to save a million lives? Of course I would, in an instant. But there is no connection whatsoever between burning a library and helping the victims of U.S. imperialism in Indochina, nor is there any connection between burning a library and altering the fabric of our own society so that the U.S. no longer engages in such pursuits. Worse, such behavior would have exactly the contrary impact, benefiting those committing the vile bombing. Can we now please get on to something serious such as how to communicate effectively to new constituencies about the ills of the war, and how to build sustained and serious resistance to it, and leave the posturing and baiting behind?”

Back then, it was often very brilliant, well-trained, and highly capable minds that drifted into the Weathermen and other such formations bent on violence as a kind of tactical and strategic priority. What was always quite notable was that these individuals could engage carefully, critically, and caringly in many domains, but reverted to odd leaps of faith and fancy regarding their out-of-touch lifestyle and tactical choices. Our movements must do better.

The events in Seattle, for example, were stupendously successful in bringing the WTO into the awareness of people in the U.S. – and adding to awareness and hope all over the world – in making clear to tens of millions that there was great opposition and in laying seeds for further effective activism of many diverse and powerful constituencies willing to respect and relate to one another, to pursue multiple agendas, and to use diverse tactics. This was all achieved, however, not via the trashing, but in spite of it.

I think it is fair to say that the Occupy phenomenon is an extension of, and owes much to, the anti corporate globalization movement, among others, and is now dramatically extending the impact of activism, though also entering a very rocky period. And the same issues keep arising. Some of the pronouncements of defenders of contemporary trashing recall a very brilliant and eloquent friend of mine, who came to my apartment one 1969 night, about 2 AM, and with a bunch of others snuck in and said “We are the Vietcong, we need a place for the night…the revolution is imminent, we are underground, don’t mind us, go back to sleep. Wake to a new society.”

They had as an excuse for their delirium that they hadn’t done just one demonstration, but had been enmeshed in full-time activism for years. Their environment was almost exclusively their friends in Weatherman and they had all lathered themselves into a well motivated but utterly out of touch turmoil of hope, rage, desire, paranoia, anticipation, and abstract rationalization that was so divorced from reality as to render them, so long as the mindsets persisted, very nearly useless as positive agents of social change.

These were in many cases the best minds and best hearts of the sixties generation. So we need to please note that those who find themselves angry at young activists who trash should not make the callous and ignorant mistake of thinking trashers are by nature all anti-political, uncommitted, insensitive, or unsympathetic – much less police agents. Life is not so simple. It isn’t the case that those you disagree with are always in some way abhorrent. Militants – even those who violate non violence agreements thus subverting the vast majority of voices – are overwhelmingly movement people, indeed some of our best movement people.

For those who are involved in or who have supported trashing to sharply disparage and even pose as enemies of change those who don’t support trashing, or vice versa, isn’t going to get anyone anywhere useful. There is misunderstanding on both sides, but the distance to unity and progress is much less than many other chasms we need to traverse, if only we don’t unnecessarily widen it. We all should be able to carefully bridge the gap and agree on the broad logic of how to assess tactics – though not to always agree on every judgment about every single specific tactic, of course – and especially to agree on how to abide collective norms at our demonstrations.

Hopefully those who have trashed, at times – which includes me – won’t take these words as disparagement of your potential and aspirations. Hopefully, instead, you will seriously consider that perhaps with the best intentions you have, at times, mistakenly repeated one flawed part of sixties movement history – indeed the saddest and least functional part – and will in reaction to this insight rise above the temptations and confusions that bedeviled many of the best in that generation.

The simple fact is that we live in a world, particularly in highly industrialized societies, where the means of violence are almost entirely the province of states. The prospect for any dissident force to overcome military and police violence with counter violence is zero. Watch any video of any conflict between police – much less military – and activists, in any such society – and it is obvious that the military aspect of the conflict is entirely one sided, and would only get much worse if escalated. The only real mitigating factor is growth in the numbers of those dissenting and refusal by the military elements to follow orders. These are the aims those concerned about violence need to focus on.

Sometimes self defense is essential. Sometimes even aggression is desirable. But for the most part, and certainly in the large, violence is the turf of the status quo, not of change, and certainly not of a new world. Little forays into violence – which is all anyone on the left in industrialized countries can do – typically curtails broad participation, justifies repression, diverts consciousness and focus to the inessential, promotes attitudes and mannerisms and habits that are contrary to healthy movement building, all to engage in a battle on turf that is without any doubt theirs, not ours. There is, therefore, a very high burden of proof on exceeding non violence because in the world we inhabit violence typically neither works to win gains, nor, even more, to build support.

What would be sensible is choices aimed at turning cops and military away from their commanders, on the one hand, and increasing the numbers and committed awareness of dissenters so much that we can’t be intimidated by shows of force, and the use of force will only add to our ranks and entrench our commitment.

So, on balance, on the question of violence and non violence, such choices are contextual and should be made in light of the whole panoply of effects we can predict. More, choices by a few should not be made in ways that trump choices of the many, imposing violations of non violence on those favoring it by deeds undertaken against agreed norms. Those favoring any tactic that others reject should undertake their own separate efforts, not piggyback on larger ones that do not accept their views. And finally, in any event, at the very least in highly industrialized countries, choices to utilize property damage, much less great violence, have a very high burden of proof, precisely because we know that typically their negative effects are great, and their positive benefits minor, if real at all.