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

Doug Nesbitt

A wage cut of fifty per cent. An elimination of pensions. Cuts to benefits. These demands have inevitably led to a major showdown
at a locomotive factory in London, Ontario between the 700 unionized workers of Electro-Motive Diesel (EMD) and Caterpillar,
a massive U.S.-based corporation.

The workers, members of Canadian Auto Workers Local 27, responded to the employer’s
demands with a positive strike vote of 97 per cent. The employer, Progress Rail, a subsidiary of Caterpillar, locked out the workers on New Year’s Day.

In addition to facing down a notorious anti-union employer who
hammered the American United Auto Workers in the 1990s, there are plenty of rumours about Caterpillar closing the London plant and
moving operations to Muncie, Indiana. EMD workers in London make $36/hour while their counterparts in Muncie are paid only
$12.50-14.50 (Cdn). Indiana is also on the cusp of becoming the first rust-belt state to introduce a “Right to Work” law, a
notorious form of anti-union legislation made possible by the even more infamous Taft-Hartley law of 1947, the long-standing
crown jewel of American anti-union legislation.

Click here to continue reading:
http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/586.php#continue

Sit-in strikers at General Motors’ Fisher No. 1 plant.

By Don Fitz

[See also With Babies & Banners, the classic 1977 documentary about the 1936-37 Flint sit-down strike, and the role of women in it.]

January 3, 2012 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — The year 2012 marks the 75th anniversary of the great sit-down strike wave of 1937. It also begins the second year of the Occupy movement, which has more than a few similarities to the time when hundreds of thousands of Americans occupied their workplaces.

The first recorded sit-down strike in the US was actually in 1906 among General Electric workers of Schenectady, New York. When three organisers for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or Wobblies) were fired, 3000 of their fellow workers sat down and stopped production.

By the 1930s, the IWW was on the wane, but many of its organisers were active and workers across the US had seen its tactics first hand.

In 1933, workers in the Austin, Minnesota, Hormel plant had many complaints against the company: raises habitually went to foremen’s friends; workers were fired and then rehired in other departments at lower pay; before election day, foremen would threaten layoffs if Farmer-Labor Party candidates won, and employees who challenged the practices were told that they could quit. The final straw came when Jay Hormel, who fancied himself to be a “benevolent dictator”, attempted to impose a weekly pay deduction for an insurance plan.

When a worker in Hog Kill was pressured to sign up, other workers shut down the floor for 10 minutes, until his insurance card was torn up. News of the brief sit down spread throughout the plant. That July night, workers met at Austin’s Sutton Park to form a union.

The union charter followed the IWW pattern of grouping all workers into one big union regardless of craft. It invited membership from labourers throughout Austin and the surrounding area. The workers named themselves the Independent Union of All Workers (IUAW).

Jay Hormel promised to recognise the union, grant seniority rights and arbitrate grievances. But for six weeks, Hormel refused to put anything in writing and on November 10 workers voted to strike. The Farmer-Laborite Minnesota governor made public speeches backing the strikers while he secretly mobilised the National Guard 30 miles from Austin.

Support for the strike was overwhelming. Since the IUAW had endorsed farmers’ efforts to raise their prices, the Farmers’ Holiday Association patrolled roads leading into Austin to halt livestock and scabs. Strikers occupied the plant and, as Stan Weir recounted the story,

food, bedding, cigarettes, reading material and playing cards were brought to them by family and friends. They came out of the plant several days later with one of the first industrial union contracts in mass production history.

Great Goodyear Strike

The best-known early sit-down strikes were in Ohio. Jeremy Brecher described their humble beginnings in his book, Strike! Sometime in the early 1930s, two factory baseball teams in Akron, Ohio, objected to the umpire because he was not in the union. They stopped playing and sat in the field until a new umpire was found.

A few days later, a supervisor at a rubber factory insulted several workers. Remembering the ball game, they turned off their machines and sat at their work benches. The work stoppage spread throughout the plant and, in less than an hour, the company had given in. Between 1933 and 1936, the practice of sit-down strikes grew among Akron rubber workers.

Read the whole article here
http://links.org.au/node/2685

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

http://labornotes.org/2011/12/occupy-wake-call-caps-remarkable-year

By Michael Moore

On this day, December 30th, in 1936 — 75 years ago today — hundreds of workers at the General Motors factories in Flint, Michigan, took over the facilities and occupied them for 44 days. My uncle was one of them.

The workers couldn’t take the abuse from the corporation any longer. Their working conditions, the slave wages, no vacation, no health care, no overtime — it was do as you’re told or get tossed onto the curb.

So on the day before New Year’s Eve, emboldened by the recent re-election of Franklin Roosevelt, they sat down on the job and refused to leave.

They began their Occupation in the dead of winter. GM cut off the heat and water to the buildings. The police tried to raid the factories several times, to no avail. Even the National Guard was called in.

But the workers held their ground, and after 44 days, the corporation gave in and recognized the UAW as the representative of the workers. It was a monumental historical moment as no other major company had ever been brought to its knees by their employees. Workers were given a raise to a dollar an hour — and successful strikes and occupations spread like wildfire across the country. Finally, the working class would be able to do things like own their own homes, send their children to college, have time off and see a doctor without having to worry about paying. In Flint, Michigan, on this day in 1936, the middle class was born.

But 75 years later, the owners and elites have regained all power and control. I can think of no better way for us to honor the original Occupiers than by all of us participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement in whatever form that takes in each of our towns. We need direct action all winter long if we are to prevail.

You can start your own Occupy group in your neighborhood or school or with just your friends.

Speak out against economic injustice at every chance you get. Stop the bank from evicting the family down the block. Move your checking and credit card to a community bank or credit union. Place a sign in your yard — and get your neighbors to do it also — that says, “WE ARE THE 99%.” (You can download signs here and here.)

Do something, anything, but don’t remain silent. Not now. This is the moment. It won’t come again.

75 years ago today, in Flint, Michigan, the people said they’d had enough and occupied the factories until they won. What is stopping us now? The rich have one plan: bleed everyone dry. Can anyone, in good conscience, be a bystander to this?

My uncle wasn’t, and because of what he and others did, I got to grow up without having to worry about a roof over my head or medical bills or a decent life. And all that was provided by my dad who built spark plugs on a GM assembly line.

Let’s each of us double our efforts to raise a ruckus, Occupy Everywhere, and get creative as we throw a major nonviolent wrench into this system of Greed. Let’s make the politicians running for office in 2012 quake in their boots if they refuse to tax the rich, regulate Wall Street and do whatever we the people tell them to do.

Happy 75th!

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/75-years-ago-today-first-occupy

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