Will you join us to Stand Up for the Burrup?

WE RECALL the Pilbara Strike of 1946-49, when 200 Pilbara LawMen asked three leaders – Clancy McKenna, Don McLeod, and Dooley Bin Bin – to organise a strike and walk-off by Aboriginal workers and their families for land – our Own Land – and for wages, not rations.

WE RECALL that our people won that strike after Waterside Workers Federation and Seamen’s Union members refused to load or transport the pastoralists’ wool until they settled with our strike leaders.

WE RECALL also the Great Strikes of the 1890’s, beginning with the Shearers Strike of 1891, when the Shearers Union members, like our people, struggled against pastoralists backed by police and courts.

IN 2012, OUR DEMAND is for UNESCO World Heritage Listing for our ancient sacred rock art at Murujuga/the Dampier Archipelago, the world’s oldest and largest rock art landscape.

ON SATURDAY 2 JUNE AND SUNDAY 3 JUNE 2012, we ask trade unionists throughout Australia to once again Stand Up with us and help us win our just demand.

Please circulate.
First join the Facebook campaign https://www.facebook.com/StandUpForTheBurrup

Then in Darwin we will be assembling for photos outside of Parliament House. Stand by….
More information

http://tracker.org.au/2011/09/the-contrarian-leading-the-way-the-pilbara-strike/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1946_Pilbara_strike/wiki/1946_Pilbara_strike

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

Unions will seek a $26 a week pay rise for Australia’s lowest paid workers in 2012, whose wages have fallen well behind average income earners over the past decade and are not keeping pace with the cost of living.

The ACTU will today lodge its submission to Fair Work Australia’s annual wage review to increase the award wage for the lowest paid workers to $615.30 per week.

This would mean a 68c/hour increase from $15.51 per hour to $16.19 per hour. For other award-reliant workers above the benchmark tradesperson’s rate, unions will seek a 3.8% pay increase.

ACTU Secretary Jeff Lawrence said it was time for an increase that stopped the gap between low-paid workers and other workers from growing further.

“The 1.4 million workers on award wages – one in six workers – can barely meet the cost of living let alone live comfortably in an economy that is the envy of the developed world,” Mr Lawrence said.

“It is grossly unfair that minimum wages have fallen further and further behind average wages. The purchasing power of minimum wages is now also below the level it was in 2005.

“The wage increases awarded in 2010 and 2011 have stopped minimum wage workers from falling further behind. It’s time to make up the ground that was lost under WorkChoices.”

Mr Lawrence said that while the National Minimum Wage had more or less kept pace with overall wages growth in the early 2000s, low-paid workers had lost ground under Work Choices.

Since mid-2005, overall wages have risen by 27.5%, while the NMW has gone up by 21.7%. The benchmark tradesperson’s award rate has risen by only 18.7% over the same period.

Mr Lawrence said that if the National Minimum Wage had kept pace with overall wages growth since 2005, it would now be $617.50 per week. Instead it’s just $589.30 per week.

Mr Lawrence said unions were seeking a $26 a week increase in the National Minimum Wage and in other award minimum wages up to the benchmark tradesperson’s rate, equal to a 4.4% increase. Unions are seeking a 3.8% increase for other award workers.

“Minimum wage workers are the backbone of the economy. They are the people who clean our schools and shopping centres, serve us in hotels, who take care of our elderly and our children. These are people we cannot live without, yet their value is not reflected in their pay packets. We must ensure they are not forgotten.

“An extra $26 a week is modest and affordable, but will make a difference to the lives of minimum wage workers and their families. Over the past year they have shouldered large price rises for fruit and vegetables, fuel, electricity, water, and education and childcare.

“This is money they will spend on food, clothes, fuel and other necessities in the main streets of every Australian suburb and town.”

Contact Details
Rebecca Tucker
Ph: 0408 031 269

About 100 unionists packed the Unions NSW Atrium on May 14 to discuss the right to strike campaign, at a fringe event of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) Congress that began the same day.

Titled “Advance Australia Fair? Australian jobs and the right to strike”, the forum was sponsored by the Victorian Trades Hall Council. VTHC secretary Brian Boyd said it had not generally sponsored or organised ACTU fringe events, but this campaign warranted it.

The VTHC launched the Right to Strike campaign after it was first raised at the December 2010 Union and Community Summer School.

The forum was opened by Unions NSW secretary Mark Lennon, who said that in NSW “there is no right to strike … and with Barry O’Farrell’s new laws, there is no right for unions to even affiliate to a political party of their choice any longer in NSW”.

Victorian Electrical Trades Union secretary Dean Mighell discussed what was happening to jobs of his members while their ability to take industrial action was restricted. “Jobs are being offshored to Mexico, where capital can get cheaper labour costs … Free trade is cut-throat.” He said the current mining boom was concerning: “We need to think beyond the quarry.”

ACTU president Ged Kearney discussed the union movement’s campaign around insecure work, and said the right to strike is a fundamental right.

Len Cooper, Victorian secretary of the Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union said: “We live in a country that is described as democratic – yet the basics of international labour laws are excluding both federal and state law.

“This is not a small issue – this affects 11 million workers. This is about the right to strike, the right to picket, the right to take solidarity action.”

Cooper said that in the capitalist crisis, many militant unionists were being sacked or seeing their jobs outsourced or offshored.

We need to defend the right to strike. And the right to strike will only be won by striking,” he said to cheers from the crowd.

Chris White, former secretary of the South Australian Trades and Labour Council and a union activist for 30 years, told the meeting that all penal powers needed to be repealed, including “all restrictions in Fair Work Australia that were adopted word-for-word from Work Choices”.

“The right to strike should not mean having to go to a commission, giving three days notice so that employers get forewarning to make contingencies to undermine workers’ industrial action. It should just be about a meeting of workers making a decision collectively.”

White also called for the abolition of the Australian Building and Construction Commission completely, not just in name.

White said the importance of striking should not be limited to economic interests: “Unions should be able to take solidarity strikes. In the past, when Indonesia was committing genocide in East Timor, we used to be able to strike to support the people of East Timor.”

He also said the question of workers’ control and self-management needs to be on the agenda. “Workers can control our own economy without capitalists.”

In discussion, South Coast Labour Council secretary Arthur Rorris spoke strongly in favour of the campaign, saying it shouldn’t be a fringe event, and “the right to strike is the main game. Capital can strike, and we should be able to as well. If you don’t have the right to withdraw labour, you are a slave.”

Geelong Trades Hall Secretary Tim Gooden said the campaign needed to spread. He said unions should not be allowed to be picked off, but build a fighting alliance together to push the right to strike.

Gooden said the experience of unions in the Clarrie OShea case in 1969 showed that the battle to free O’Shea, who was jailed for striking, was not a short one, but a campaign built over years.

Susan Price, branch secretary of the National Tertiary Education Union at the University of NSW, said attendees should sign on to a joint statement in support of the right to strike campaign that was initiated in NSW. Many rank-and-file and union leaders had pledged support.

Initial NSW signatories to the statement include veteran trade unionist Fred Moore; assistant national secretary of the MUA Warren Smith, deputy branch secretary of the MUA in Sydney Paul Keating, NSW state secretary of the CFMEU Brian Parker, University of NSW branch secretary of the NTEU Susan Price, Sydney University branch secretary of the NTEU Michael Thomson, and state councillor of NSW Teachers Federation John Gauci.

The ACTU Congress voted on a 釘etter Bargaining Policy・ that included “restoring an effective right to strike”. This policy notes that the International Labour Organisation has described Fair Work Australia’s regulation of industrial action as 兎xcessive・ and calls for industrial action to be available without a secret ballot. The policy also calls for bosses to have to give three days notice for lockouts and not be able to use replacement labour during industrial action. It also demands an end to the outlawing of pattern bargaining, and for an end to workers or their unions facing coercive or punitive court orders from industrial action, unless Fair Work Australia has ordered an end to the industrial action.

[To sign the right to strike statement or for more information, contact Susan Price on 0400 320 602 or pricesusan9@gmail.com.]
From GLW
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/51070

The campaign is called Better Jobs 4 Better Chicken and you can follow it here

http://www.betterjobsbetterchicken.org.au

The ashes of Joe Hill

Let’s start from three interlocked expressions of the IWW’s approach to educating, organising and agitating: its humour, its slogans and its songs.

In comparison, today’s grouplets, including the IWW, seem po-faced.

The first aspect is the power of IWW satire, sarcasm and irony. We remember jokes and repeat them in ways we don’t with the best argued ideas. On slogans, ‘Fast Workers Die Young’ is still going the rounds when not many Marxist scholars can define universal labour-time.

Tom Barker was gaoled in 1915 for a headline in Direct Action to counter wartime recruiting: ‘Your Country Needs You: Workers, Follow Your Masters.’

Similarly, we remember snatches of IWW songs because they are witty and because we sing them together.

The whole of a May Day march should be a massed choir. ‘Bump me into parliament’ to ‘Pie in the Sky’ circulated long after speeches and manifestos were forgotten.

The second weapon in the Wobblies’ armoury was ‘Propaganda by deed’.

My father and his workmates at a Brisbane tannery joined a union in 1917 after a Canadian seaman Wobbly king-hit the foreman. The workers had never seen anyone stand up to the boss. Of course, the effectiveness of that blow was increased because it took place during a revolutionary upsurge around the world.

Propaganda by deed is not just the one-off punch but involves building up strength in the workplace by initiating a campaign for a winnable demand that has broad support, for a shithouse or potable water on site.

That is the way to recruit and to keep those who join active once they pay their union dues.

Read the whole article here

http://workersbushtelegraph.com.au/2012/05/11/iww-then-and-now/

joe hill

Australian unions have been central to the advancement of progressive economic and social policy in the past.

Unions have fought for, and secured, vital elements of the social wage, like pensions, superannuation, Medicare, and income for the unemployed.

Australian unions have always had a vision for a fair and prosperous Australia that starts with rights at work, and looks outward beyond the workplace. Congress recognises the challenges and opportunities that Australia faces over the coming decades and commits to the development a new union agenda for the future of the economy.

 While the Australian economy has outperformed most other advanced economies since the global financial crisis (with low public sector debt, a low unemployment rate and solid real growth in average wages) the benefits of prosperity have not been shared broadly enough.

 Key areas of the economy are under pressure – the multi-speed economy is real. Some sectors, particularly trade-exposed industries such as manufacturing, finance, and tourism, are struggling with the dramatic and sustained appreciation in the exchange rate.

Jobs have been lost and more are under threat. Australia needs a comprehensive plan for sustaining employment and economic development beyond the mining boom.

 Secure jobs are becoming rarer, with precarious work on the rise. Income, job and working time insecurity have profound negative implications for workers, their families, and their communities.

 Inequality has risen, putting at risk the long-standing norm that Australian should remain a relatively egalitarian place.

 A form of corporate inequality has developed. A greater share of corporate profits are being taken by a handful of the largest companies while many smaller enterprises struggle. An enormous share of national wealth is being captured by a handful of mega-rich individuals who also seek to dominate policy making and public debate.

 Public services are under threat, with the rise of a radical ‘small government’ ideology threatening the health, education, and other vital community services that Australians take for granted.

 There has been a decade long under-investment in infrastructure and skills, leaving Australia under-equipped to grow and compete in the Asian Century.

Unions seek a strong Australia that is fair and prosperous, with secure employment for all who want it, social assistance for all who need it, and truly equal opportunities for all.

Unions seek dialogue with political parties, civil society, and business leaders on this agenda.

Consistent with the policies adopted at the Congress the ACTU will urgently convene experts from across Australian unions to develop a plan to make sure workers and their families, no matter where they live or work, benefit from a prosperous economy. The union agenda for the Australian economy will be centred on the following issues.

 Jobs & Employment: Ensuring that Government policy does everything possible to create and sustain good jobs;

 Productivity: The human and physical capital necessary to secure sustainable productivity growth that lifts real wages and workers’ living standards;

 Public Services: Securing adequate and sustainable revenue to provide high-quality public services; and a response to the ideological attacks on public services.

 Macroeconomic Policy: The appropriate framework for managing macroeconomic policy, (including the inflation target, fiscal rules, and exchange rate policy) and the possible role for policies such as the creation of a sovereign wealth fund.

 The Mining Boom: The best ways to ensure that the benefits of the current mining boom are used to benefit all Australians, including future generations of Australians;

 Inequality: Rising inequality, especially inequality of earned income, and the need for intergenerational equity;

 Personal Tax & Transfers: An equitable personal tax that will help promote social inclusion and jobs and a welfare system that does not create or entrench poverty; and

 The Social Wage: Ensuring that the components of Australia’s social wage keep pace with the evolving needs of the needs of the community;

 Corporate Tax: A corporate tax system that promotes productive investment, infrastructure development and employment, and ensures that taxes fall most heavily on sectors and companies extracting economic rents.

This is critical for Australian unionists as Abbott and Liberal Premiers take their anti-unionism from the US Republicans.
Solidarity with US unions and workers are demonstrated here with rousing applause.

I assume their speeches will be up on YouTube soon.

“Australia must pursue universality in labour law. Doing this effectively requires:

Expanded definitions of employers and employees;

Reforms to better capture indirect employment arrangements like labour hire and dependent contracting;

A firmer definition of casual work; and
Expanded National Employment Standards that create a set of inclusive minimum standards that protect all employees.

We have also provided recommendations on how our industrial relations system can be reformed to provide stronger legal pathways from insecure work to ongoing employment.

However, as I have said simply refining labour market regulation won’t limit the growth of insecure work.

To provide decent work for all, we also need to ensure that an effective safety net is in place for people who fall out of work and invest more in our workforce – especially the most disadvantaged.

We have called for a number of reforms aimed at achieving a more skilled workforce, including:

A broader focus on work-life transitions, rather than the narrow preoccupation with the transition between employment and unemployment that has given led to an emphasis on ‘Welfare-to-Work’ initiatives.

A commitment to lifelong learning, including a call for the ACTU to investigate learning accounts as a model for investing in the capability of workers over the lifetime.

Reform to Australia’s tax and transfers system to provide a stronger safety net by:

Addressing the inadequacy of the Newstart Allowance;

Simplifying income declaration systems;
and
Abolishing the Liquid Assets Waiting Period.
Changes to the way Job Services Australia interacts with forms of insecure work such as labour hire.

Read the whole speech here

http://www.actucongress.org.au/site/congressmedia/speeches-and-opinion/1623-address-by-brian-howe-address-to-actu-congress-2012

Wednesday, 16 May 2012
Secure Jobs. Better Future
Preamble
Despite strong and sustained economic growth, recent decades have seen a worrying and dramatic rise of insecure work in Australia.
Today, only about 60% of workers are in full-time or part-time ongoing employment; the rest – some 4 million workers – are engaged as casuals, on short-term contracts, in labour hire, or as independent contractors.
Insecure work leaves a large section of the workforce not sharing in our national economic prosperity. They have inferior rights, entitlements and job security to their counterparts in ongoing employment. It makes it tough for working families to plan for their future when they cannot rely on regular incomes, but have rising household costs and are shouldering more and more household debt.
The rise of insecure work in Australia is the result of a business model that shifts the risks from the employer to the employee. Australian unions do not believe a strong, prosperous economy must come at the expense of quality jobs, of respect for workers’ rights, and of workers exercising some control over their working lives.
Resolution
Congress welcomes the report of the Independent Inquiry into Insecure Work in Australia and thanks the Inquiry panel for their work.
The report we have heard today demonstrates that this issue is not confined to the margins of the Australian labour market. Insecure work can affect any worker – blue collar, white collar, private sector, public sector. It affects younger and older workers and, disproportionately, women, indigenous workers and workers from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.
It affects the high skilled as well as the low skilled.
But there is no reason why we should accept that a modern economy must drive insecurity at work.
Congress commits to a properly resourced Secure Jobs. Better Future campaign.
Congress recommends that the report be properly considered with appropriate recommendations incorporated into a detailed campaign plan to be submitted for approval at the next meeting of ACTU Executive.
The campaign will work actively to diminish the incidence of insecure work in the Australian labour market and will be aimed at actively and effectively involving the ACTU, Trades and Labour Councils, National and State unions and community partners.
The campaign will be multi-layered and will involve workplace, industrial, political, and community strategies to tackle the issue. It will include a clear framework for legislative changes and will outline a high profile communications strategy.
We believe reliable workers should have jobs they and their families can rely on with:
 Fair and predictable pay and hours of work;
 A say about how, where, and when they work, and to be consulted about change;
 Access to important conditions like annual leave, paid sick leave, overtime, penalty rates and long service leave;
 Protection from unfair dismissal;
 Quality skills and training and career opportunities; and
 A healthy and safe work environment.
To achieve these aims, Congress determines, as part of the Secure Jobs. Better Future campaign, to pursue an industrial and legislative agenda that includes:
 Improved regulation of the labour market that provides all workers with a universal set of protections and entitlements;
 Reducing and removing the ability of employers to shift economic risk onto their workforce;
 Measures to provide better protections to workers employed indirectly through labour hire and agency arrangements, and eliminate disguised employment arrangements like sham contracting; and
 Measures that empower workers in insecure work to build a working life based on dignity, respect and fair recognition of their work.