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Trades and Labour Council and a union activist for 30 years, told the meeting that all penal powers needed to be repealed, including “all restrictions in Fair Work Australia that were adopted word-for-word from Work Choices”.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 ACTU Congress declares its full support for the 4,000 mineworkers who have been attempting to negotiate a new Enterprise Agreement at BHP’s seven Central Queensland coal mines for over 18-months now.

We note that the while the CFMEU, AMWU and the ETU have been negotiating in good faith BHP has refused to do so, a point made clear by its chief of global coal operations Marcus Randolph who declared in an email to staff leaked to the media that the company’s demands were “not negotiable now, next month or next year”.

This is not in the spirit of good faith bargaining.

We fully support the mineworkers in their campaign to protect their rights at work and defend vital safety, workplace and other conditions such as rosters and accommodation that would damage families and hurt mining communities if BHP has its way.

We condemn BHP’s pursuit of safety deregulation that would transfer vital safety roles from qualified workers on the job to management. We note that this was the key factor that led to the recent Pike River Disaster in New Zealand in which 29 coal miners perished. We further note that the last three big coal mine disasters in Australia all occurred at BHP mines.

We condemn BHP’s insistence on clinging to
WorkChoices provisions imposed on BHP coal mineworkers in the last EA reached in the Howard era in 2007, particularly the provision that stripped contract and labour hire workers of equal pay and conditions and have allowed them to become a source of cheap labour to undermine permanent employees.

We note that this dispute has occurred in a period when BHP has made the greatest profit in the history of Australia – $23 Billion and find it repugnant that at a time when the company has never had more it has never done less.

We call on BHP to start listening to its workforce and respect their right to bargain.
We declare the full support of the ACTU for the BHP mineworkers.

In the event that the company continues to refuse to negotiate in good faith and inflicts further harm on its workers, their families, mining communities and investors in its coal operations, we will mobilise support throughout the trade union movement in Australia and internationally.

This 85 page report is well worth reading and studying, but more importantly campaigning with unions for the implementation of its recommendations too detailed to record here but covers major changes to our Fair Work Act for secure work orders.

The resolution is:
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.

“Unions have a responsibility to represent, grow and organise the next generation of workers and union members. Unions need to actively focus on growth, organising and education strategies for young workers.

Investigate offering fee structures based on hours worked, classification of work or a “no work means no fee” policy to enable young workers to take out union membership;

Appoint a Youth Contact Officer in each branch who is responsible for encouraging activism amongst young members.

…offering legal support and advice;

Having policies around allowing young workers to join when they call for support if they are in a non-unionised workplace and have not previously been asked to join a union.

Young workers often frequently change jobs and industries. Affiliates are encouraged to develop specific strategies to encourage the retention of young workers within the union movement.

Consider young workers in communication strategies to ensure that young people can relate to their message; improved uses of modern technology, i.e. social media and SMS, to better update members on Union activities; and

…education should focus on the essential role that unions play in both the workplace and in society, the importance of workplace rights, and should educate young people on how collective action can lead to positive change and better lives. …working with teachers and education representatives to ensure that students are educated on the role and importance of unions; and organize in Universities, youth community organisations, National Youth Week.

….educate young people on their industrial rights, safety and positively promote the roles unions play.

Unions need to engage in leadership development of our young union officials, with union Summer, Organising Works;

…for career development, training and mentoring within the movement.

…young people are more likely to be injured at work and are often unfamiliar with workplace hazards, safety procedures and their rights.

Regulators enforcing the current laws to ensure employers are meeting their obligations to workers young workers for education and training and providing a safe, hazard free workplace;

The education of young workers about health and safety issues in their own policies and encourage the involvement of young workers in their own health and safety committees and programs;

The investigation into the adequacy of the current health and safety legislation and its enforcement with particular focus on bullying and harassment and protecting workers from bullying and harassment and the associated injuries…

…Include young people specifically in union campaigns, and EBA campaigns and negotiations, to promote ongoing involvement and skill development.”

As this blog has advocated that in empowering workers at work planning for the unions’ last resort means of advancing claims with effective industrial action does not feature in the Youth policy, but does so in the Better Bargaining policy.

Go for the full draft policy http://www.actucongress.org.au/site/

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.

The statistics are chilling. In a country where workers have no real right to organize a union, they face an ever falling standard of living. The workers’ attempts to organize independent unions are faced with repression – 25% of the companies illegally fire workers who try to organize; active union supporters indeed have a 1 in 5 chance of being fired; over half of the companies threaten to have undocumented, foreign laborers deported during organizing campaigns; over half of the companies threaten to close the plant if it is organized; and nearly half of companies that are unionized never reach a labor contract with the union. Of course, this country is not China, but rather, is, according to the AFL-CIO, the United States.

Notwithstanding this dismal situation for labor rights in this country, the U.S. labor movement is fixated on vilifying China and its human and labor rights situation as a cover for protecting U.S. workers from competition from albeit much lower paid Chinese workers. Of course, U.S. labor has every right, and indeed a duty, to protect the workers it represents. However, the obsession with China as an economic rival – an obsession which sometimes devolves into a racist stigmatization of the Chinese people themselves — is a distraction from the real and most pressing problems of U.S. workers: the ever growing economic and power disparity between capital and workers in this country, and a legal regime in the U.S. which only encourages this disparity.

This was brought home for me by a recent meeting at my union with visiting labor law professors from China. Very tellingly, it was our Chinese guests who were much more candid about the problems facing their working class than their American hosts.

The master of ceremonies (MC) who led the discussion for the U.S. trade unionists – a quite typical labor leader who harbors profound anti-Chinese resentments — met in advance with all of us who would be attending the meeting to go over the ground rules, the primary rule being that, notwithstanding the shortcomings we know to exist in U.S. labor law, we were not to share those openly with our Chinese visitors lest they go back home and use this as propaganda against us. Read the whole article here

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/27/the-us-labor-movement-and-china/