Unions and community groups resolve to have the Fair Work Australia Act become ILO compliant to protect the right to strike.

First is a broad based education campaign to highlight the necessity of Australians to have the right to strike.

PM Gillard retained the restrictions and penalties on industrial action in WorkChoices and these sanctions must be removed.

The push is on Minister Bill Shorten to remove all of the penalties against withdrawing your labour power.

We want a right to strike – full stop.

We want a right to strike firewalled so the employers’ corporate lawyers cannot get an injuction to stop the industrial action.

Please prepare your own arguments.

Here are some sugestions; eg letter

Dear Friend,
The National Right to Strike Campaign (NRSC) is writing to ask you to support the campaign’s aim to have all Australian law
comply with International Labour Organisation (ILO) Conventions.
Contained in this correspondence are a 10 Point Proposal and model resolution. We ask that your organisation adopt the resolution.
Currently a number of unions, union branches, peak union bodies, as well as community organisations from neighbourhoods,
faith-based, environmental and social movements are considering similar resolutions.

If your organisation agrees to support this most fundamental of human rights, as defined by the ILO, you will be formally added
to the national list of supporting organisations, in an effort to
build the confidence and unity necessary if Australians are to achieve these rights:

MODEL RESOLUTION FOR ALL TYPES OF UNION MEETING
“That this meeting of (Name and status of union meeting) supports the National Right to Strike Campaign and declares that all
Australian law must comply with ILO Conventions 87 & 98. In particular with the guaranteed right to organise and strike at the
time chosen, and for the purposes decided upon, by union members.
Further, our organisation demands that the ILO Conventions pertaining to workers in unions being free to take solidarity action with other workers by striking, be complied with.”

Please see articles on the right to strike on this blog.

Here are TEN POINTS CONCERNING THE RIGHT TO STRIKE
AUTHORISED: NATIONAL RIGHT TO STRIKE CAMPAIGN VICTORIAN TRADES HALL:

1. All Australian law must comply with the UN’s International Labour Organisation (ILO) Conventions.
2. The ILO Conventions state that the right to withdraw labour under-pins our democratic rights.
3. The ILO Conventions state that the right to strike is one of the es-sential means available to ‘seeking solutions to economic and social policy questions and to labour problems of any kind which are of direct concern to workers,’ and en-sures that working people and their unions can show solidarity with each other and with their communi-ties.
4. Australian law must uphold the ILO Convention to guarantee the rights of unions to negotiate about anything that is deemed to be in their interests. This is the same right that employers already have when they determine the price and conditions of sale for the goods they sell.
5. The ILO Conventions guarantee the right of entry for unions to enter in workplaces. This must be respected by Governments and employers, so that workers can exercise their freedom of association.
6. If unionists had the right to strike in solidarity with one another, we could have stopped pri-vatisations, casualisation and the offshoring of Australian jobs.
7. Australian workers should be equal before the law with employers. When employers use an alternative workforce (scabs), they are using second parties to achieve an industrial outcome. The law is unequal where workers cannot support each other with solidarity actions.
8. The ILO states that the right to strike protects all other human rights. Only unions with the freedom to act, in the same way as employers are free to act, can redress the imbalance of power.
9. Workplace flexibility has gone too far. This has led to casualisation, insecure employment and sham contracting. An unfettered market, not contained by the workers right to strike, re-duces conditions and the take home pay of working people.
10. Only through the right to strike will restrictions on their ability to trade freely be lifted on workers, allowing them to operate as freely as employers in the pursuit of their interests within the economy. In this way unions will be able to live out their purpose in the protection and advancement of all working people and their communities.

NRSC

NRSC letter to all types of of union meeting

http://securejobs.org.au/

I recommend two changes for more secure work.

1. Amend the Fair Work Act to have an effective right to strike.

2. Amend the Fair Work Act to restrict casual and other forms of precarious work to a limited period and apply more secure contracts of employment. Fair Work Australia is to have the 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 beginning to enable employees and their unions to respond to dire precarious work of existing capitalist labour relations.

The international capitalist crisis daily worsens putting more pressure on business to further move to precarious and exploitative work.

In response, there is a driving imperative for employees to have the FWA balance the more powerful corporate and government forces by amendments that protect the right to strike.

I have written on this blog for a right to strike, firewalling industrial action for protection for employees and their unions.

I argue the right to strike is vital for employees in all the forms of non-standard work.

Arguments are strong for amendments to the Fair Work Act to protect the right to strike. I urge as necessary the repeal of the Australian Building and Construction Act, and the ABCC functions and powers.

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.

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

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

Similarly, labour law critical analysis by Shae McCrystal ‘The Right to Strike in Australia’. I recommend Keith Ewing’s research on the right to strike and Tania Novitz (see this blog).

There is much criticism of the failure of the current FWA to have an effective right to strike in writings by industrial relations specialists, labour lawyers, the ACTU and unions.

Firewalling the right to strike I submit is essential 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 at many levels in the Australian community requires Fair Work Act amendments for job security. Here are some 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 and allows employees the transition from existing casualisation to 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 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 is an existing employee with 10 years before retirement. Other non-standard employment sectors could 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 against 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 from 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 Peter Reith’s press secretary and is repeated ad nauseum in the media, but is to be rejected.

Even precarious workers ‘dismissed’ ought to have an opportunity to state their case about why they were unreasonably dismissed before a user friendly FWA conciliator then arbitrator for reinstatement or not.

2.6 For strengthened redundancy provisions in a new minimum entitlement that has a provision for one month’s pay for each year of service for redundant employees. This new minimum 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.

As the many issues of insecure work in Australia has overseas the same issues this Inquiry will investigate other countries attempts to deal for greater protection for their employees. I recommend China’s attempt (see this blog).

I urge support for the Independent Inquiry into Insecure Work in Australia

Review by Howard Guille

This is the second book of Humphrey McQueen’s research into builders’ labourers and their unions.

Read it, as the author says, with the earlier volume ‘Framework of Flesh: Builders’ labourers battle for health and safety.

This book is a history of builders’ labourers and their work from colonialisation onwards. More especially, it is an account of the formation and operation of the Australian Building Labourers’ Federation from 1910 to the amalgamation of its residual bits into the CFMEU in 1991.

The book cannot be summarised in a review that is two words for each of the years McQueen covers.

One impressive aspect is the weight given to the outlying states as well as to Victoria and New South Wales. Another is the section on the ‘money flow’ within unions; put plainly, a union will fold if it fails to collect and bank members’ dues. McQueen also looks past ‘a cult of individuals in the Jack and Norm show’ (p12). Even so, his account of the genesis of green bans and his analysis of the conflicts between Norm Gallagher and Jack Mundey will raise controversy.

McQueen tells how workers tried to control what was happening to them – in practice, what bosses were trying to do to them – in the face of economic and social forces and changing technology.

There are fascinating insights – for example, other things being equal, concrete gave labourers’ opportunities and increased their relative power and work value but scissors lifts reduced them. He makes subtle use of Marxist political economy weaving ideas of surplus value, socially necessary labour and the like into understanding the actual economic forces pressing on workers.

Unionised labourers fought with trades, with judges, arbitration commissioners and other unions as well as with bosses.

The Arbitration system was a site for almost constant contest about which union covered which jobs and how these fitted into award coverage – for example was a plasterers’ labourer a trades’ assistant or a labourer; is a bridge or a communications tower a ‘building’. There was, especially in Queensland, an incessant coverage battle with the AWU. This went beyond the Builders’ Labourers and was a general fight from 1915 to 1996 between the AWU as Labor Government ally and the unions affiliated with the Trades and Labour Council. This was reprised after 1989 with Goss ALP Government.

I finished reading the book just as Alan Joyce gave Qantas shareholders ‘certainty’ by grounding the entire fleet of planes. The Qantas dispute and media shrieking about unions came after a period of ‘official quiet’ about industrial disputation that McQueen’s book helps to put into perspective. Disputes fell off in 1990s and 2000s apart from a few unions including the CFMEU, CEPU (ETU) and NTEU that adopted disciplined pattern bargaining. This has a clear lineage from the Victorian Building Industry Agreement of the 1950s onwards led, as McQueen documents, by the Builders’ Labourers. This was ‘collective bargaining’ on an industry basis designed by unions. It is far cry from today’s ‘enterprise bargaining’ designed by the Business Council of Australia and their legal and academic advisers as a second best if individual contracts could not be achieved.

McQueen says his book is about ‘defeats as well as victories, drunks and thieves as well as militants and revolutionaries’.

More importantly, as he says, it shows ‘why a union should be a school for the working class’ (p11).

The book should be compulsory reading for new and old union officers and organisers: it will certainly challenge them to decide whether they are workers representatives or ‘workplace relations practioneers’.

This review appears in the magazine Australian Options no 67

They will appear in court on Tuesday 10 January 2012 to face charges that could see them jailed for up to five years.

They were protesting against part of the Greek austerity measures – the cutting off of power to people unable or unwilling to pay a new, swingeing property tax, levied regardless of income or wealth. Greek trade union confederation GSEE, is calling for the charges to be dropped.

Send your protest

http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/solidarityforever/show_campaign.cgi?c=1231

Read more here
http://www.tuc.org.uk/international/tuc-20449-f0.cfm

As argued on this blog, here is another reason why the lawful lock-out ought to be denied to the more poweful employer. Workers and their unions have such a limited right to strike that our so-called “fair” bargaining system is weak.

With protected action by workers in collective bargaining, here resisting Schweppes’ attack to reduce existing conditions, the employer has to be put in a position to respond with an agreement with its workforce and not be allowed the lawful lock-out.

See earlier posts on the Qantas lock-out and put ‘right to strike’ in this search.

Read about the lockout here
http://unitedvoice.org.au/news/locked-out-workers-defy-schweppes-as-stocks-dwindle

20 December, 2011 ACTU Media Release

Next year’s review of the Fair Work Act must not become a forum for employer grandstanding, and unions will take a strong interest to ensure the voices of working Australians are heard and that their rights are strengthened.

ACTU Secretary Jeff Lawrence said unions would actively participate in upcoming review, which would serve an important role in dispelling employer-generated myths about the Fair Work Act.

He said the review of the Fair Work Act will be among a number of important issues on the table for unions as they focused on improving workers’ rights at work into the new year, including through the modern award review and the ACTU’s ongoing Secure Jobs. Better Future campaign.

“The employer-led campaign against workplace rights has been building all year, but the review of the Act will expose their self-interested campaign of misinformation for what it is,” Mr Lawrence said.

He also welcomed the Government’s appointment of Reserve Bank Board Member John Edwards, former Federal Court Judge Michael Moore and prominent academic Professor Ron McCallum AO to conduct the review.

“Each of the three experts selected are highly respected in their field and have a mix of experience and expertise that should stand them in good stead to conduct a fact-based review and not be misled by employers,” Mr Lawrence said.

“The Fair Work Act has re-established fairness and rights in the workplace, which WorkChoices took away.

“The Labor Party has shown it is committed to ensuring workplace rights are at the core of its policy agenda, through the development of the Fair Work Act and beyond, including by the decision recently to amend its platform to strengthen the collective bargaining system and ensure workers had enhanced rights to bargain for secure jobs.

“But the outbreak of employer militancy since the grounding of the Qantas fleet shows the Liberal Party and its mates at the big end of town are gearing up for a new attack on rights at work.

“We need better rights at work, not a return to WorkChoices, so the Government must hold strong against this employer militancy. This review of the Fair Work Act will allow employer claims to be tested and we are confident they will prove to be groundless.

“Good, secure jobs matter to all workers and only enhance the economy, which is why the ACTU is now running our Secure Jobs, Better Future campaign.

With 40% of the workforce in casual, contract or labour hire employment, unions are determined to campaign for a better future for these workers.”

Workers have an extra month to tell their story to Inquiry into Insecure Work

15 December, 2011 | Media Release
Workers, unions, community and other representative groups have an extra month to contribute their experiences to the Independent Inquiry into Insecure Work in Australia, with the deadline for submissions now extended until late-January.

ACTU President Ged Kearney said 317 workers, community organisations, unions and academics had already lodged submissions by Tuesday.

“Submissions were due to close this Friday, but the inquiry panel, chaired by former Deputy Prime Minister Brian Howe, has extended the deadline until 20 January 2012, in recognition of the amount of preparation needed, particularly for organisations, and the pressures to complete other work before the Christmas-New Year break,” Ms Kearney said.

“The submissions received have already provided valuable evidence for the Inquiry to consider the impact insecure work has on people’s ability to plan for their future, to make ends meet and to spend time with family and friends.

“We know that insecure work – casual, fixed or short-term contracts, labour hire, and contracting – has almost doubled in the last two decades to make up about 40% of the workforce now.

“We know from research we have conducted, that for workers, insecure work often means lower pay and fewer rights and entitlements at work. It makes it harder for them to manage their household finances, to spend time with their family and friends, and to plan for the future.

“This inquiry intends to examine the impacts of insecure work and propose policy actions.”

Ms Kearney said once submissions closed, the Inquiry would then conduct hearings around the country in February and March next year, before preparing a report for the ACTU.

The ACTU recently prepared for the Inquiry an options paper, The future of work in Australia: dealing with insecurity and risk, which found half of all casual workers would prefer to have a standard, secure job.

“The paper acknowledges that solutions to the growth of job and income insecurity in Australia will be complex and diverse, but should aim at improving the rights and conditions of all work for all workers,” Ms Kearney said.

“Approaches to insecure work should also ensure that non-standard forms of employment are used for their legitimate purpose and not as a cheap substitute to ongoing employment.”

Ms Kearney said there was a range of views on job security, and the inquiry wanted to hear from as diverse a representation of the Australian community and economy as possible.

Submissions can be lodged on the campaign website, securejobs.org.au, by email to inquiry@securejobs.org.au, or by phoning a special hotline on 1300 362 223 (toll free).

Contact Details
Rebecca Tucker
Ph: 0408 031 269

Workers have just one week left to tell their stories to the Independent Inquiry into Insecure Work

12 December, 2011 | Media Release
Workers across the country have less than one week left to contribute their experiences to the Independent Inquiry into Insecure Work in Australia, with submissions set to close this Friday.

ACTU President Ged Kearney said an overwhelming number of workers had already lodged their submissions, with 265 received at the end of last week.

“The submissions from workers will provide valuable evidence for the Inquiry to consider the impact insecure work has on people’s ability to plan for their future, to make ends meet and to spend time with family and friends,” she said.

“We know that insecure work – casual, fixed or short-term contracts, labour hire, and contracting – has almost doubled in the last two decades to make up about 40% of the workforce now.

“We know from research we have conducted, that for workers, insecure work often means lower pay and fewer rights and entitlements at work. It makes it harder for them to manage their household finances, to spend time with their family and friends, and to plan for the future.

“These submissions from Australian workers will provide further valuable insights directly from those who are impacted the most.”

Ms Kearney said the Inquiry would also be collecting submissions from unions, employers and other workplace representatives.

It will then conduct hearings around the country in February and March next year, to prepare a report on solutions to insecure work for the ACTU.

The ACTU recently prepared for the Inquiry an options paper, The future of work in Australia: dealing with insecurity and risk, which found half of all casual workers would prefer to have a standard, secure job.

“The paper acknowledges that solutions to the growth of job and income insecurity in Australia will be complex and diverse, but should aim at improving the rights and conditions of all work for all workers,” Ms Kearney said.

“Approaches to insecure work should also ensure that non-standard forms of employment are used for their legitimate purpose and not as a cheap substitute to ongoing employment.”

Ms Kearney said there was a range of views on job security, and the inquiry wanted to hear from as diverse a representation of the Australian community and economy as possible.

The Inquiry, chaired by former Deputy Prime Minister Brian Howe, will hold a series of regional hearings across the country in February, before preparing a final report, expected by May.

Submissions can be lodged on the campaign website, securejobs.org.au

by email to inquiry@securejobs.org.au, or by phoning a special hotline on 1300 362 223 (toll free).

Contact Details
Rebecca Tucker
Ph: 0408 031 269

by GRAEME ORR

We are told industrial action is flaring across the nation.

In truth, what is flaring is that elements of the media are reheating well-worn claims by opportunists in big business, who want a rewrite of the 2009 Fair Work Act.

Industrial action in Australia is rare, by both historical and developed world standards.

Take the last financial year. 166,000 working days were lost to industrial action, whether strikes by employees or lockouts by employers.

Is that a lot or a little? Let’s picture it in absolute terms.

Imagine sitting outside a factory gate for a whole year.

In an employed workforce of over 9.5 million, last year’s level of action equates to seeing just one employee in every 57 emerge, for just one day of the year, to miss work.

Industrial action in Australia remains near record lows.
…
Stopping employees striking against an employer who refuses to meet with a union bargaining agent is pure WorkChoices, a la the Boeing dispute. The implication is that unions should have to fight, US style, to win a majority recognition ballot, firm by firm. But there’s nothing liberal about that system: it is a free kick to employer consultants to bust unions and scare employees against joining.

Protecting employers from agreeing to unenforceable terms about how businesses are staffed assumes an overbearing union.

And there lies the real thrust of big business’s complaint.

Despite the overall weakness of the union movement, business resents the surviving pockets of viable unionism, notably in transport and parts of mining, construction and manufacturing.

Wipe out unions and industrial action, and productivity may or may not rise.

What we do know is that over time, the ratio of wages to profits – the sharing of wealth in society – is likely to blow out further.

Unimpeded managerial fiat, and the drive for profitability above all, become the singular logic of not just our economy but society.

The truth is that industrial action, like unions, is in a twilight rather than a renaissance.

Paradoxically, we have grown so used to minimal levels of industrial action, that instances of it appear to be aberrations, rather than legitimate exercises of industrial democracy.

Graeme Orr is an Associate Professor at the University of Queensland, teaching labour law and the author of The Law of Politics (2010).

Read the whole article here
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3720658.html

joe hill

Also posted on the new Evatt website
http://evatt.org.au/news/reviving-strike.html

joe hill