Workers' Liberty

Australia's conservative coalition government, in power since 1996, has called a federal election for 24 November. The latest opinion poll in Fairfax newspapers shows Labor with an 18-point lead.

Sharan Burrow, president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), commented:

“This election is the first chance for the Australian public to tell John Howard and Peter Costello what they think about their unfair WorkChoices IR laws.

“WorkChoices has already hurt hundreds of thousands of working families, including:

* Workers in small and medium sized businesses that have lost protection from being sacked unfairly (nearly 4 million workers).
* Low skilled employees on AWA individual contracts that earn on average $106 a week less than workers on collective agreements.
* Workers in cafes, shops and restaurants including large numbers of young workers that have been hit hardest by WorkChoices and have lost up to a third of their take home pay (1.7 million workers).
* Low paid workers that have experienced a cut in real terms to their minimum award wages under the Howard Government’s new pay commission (1.5 million workers).
* Women who now earn less, on average, compared to men than they did when John Howard was elected eleven years ago.

“This election is a very important opportunity to stop the Coalition from going further on industrial relations if it gets re-elected.”

At a rally in Brisbane a few months ago, Ms Burrow declaimed: "I tell you what I'm always telling trade unionists: you don't have to strike, you don't have to picket, you just have to vote".

Now she does not claim that voting Labor will positively rid workers of the evils of WorkChoices (and the even harsher Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act, specifically targeting building workers, which she does not mention). All she claims is that voting Labor will stop the conservative coalition staying in power and doing even worse than WorkChoices.

New Labor leader Kevin Rudd (elected to replace Kim Beazley on 4 December 2006) has been pursuing his effort to emulate Tony Blair's destructive work in the British labour movement. Rudd has trashed most of what few commitments the Australian Labor Party had to restore workers' rights.

The new individual worker contracts legislated under WorkChoices, AWAs, which have recently overtaken agreements reached by union collective bargaining in new worker coverage, will stay for some years. After that, common-law individual contracts overriding collective "award" conditions will still be legal for workers above a certain wage level, and individual "flexibility" to trade away collectively-won conditions will be possible even below that level.

WorkChoices restrictions on union organisers' access to worksites will remain. Only the sketchiest legal protection will be provided for union collective bargaining.

The ABCC, the ferocious special police force set up for the construction industry, will continue until 2012, and then be replaced by an ABCC-lite.

Kevin Rudd's opening statement in the election campaign was: "I’m elected to become the next Prime Minister of Australia I will ratify Kyoto, I will prohibit the construction of nuclear reactors in this country. I will abolish Workchoices. I will end the blame game between Canberra and the States. I will invest in an education revolution and I will build a world class broadband network for this nation, city and country".

But "abolishing WorkChoices" means keeping most of it under different names. And the alleged "education revolution" certainly does not mean changing the system in Australia whereby huge amounts of taxpayer money go to private schools (which draw in fully 38% of secondary students), and the state schools depend heavily on dunning parents to pay for textbooks, other school materials, and any school improvements or repairs.

The Australian labour movement is not in confident mood. A rally called by the Victoria Trades Hall Council - the most combative and strongest of the state Trades Councils - in Melbourne on 26 September, with a (good) turnout mainly of construction workers and metalworkers, was mostly confined to the "Howard out" message.

Even left-wing trade unionists will say: "Yes, Rudd is bad. But now is not the time to criticise him. The first thing is to get Howard out. Then we can put pressure on Rudd".

Even the militant Union Solidarity network in Melbourne classifies its demand for the right to organise and to strike as a "long-term" aim. It is left to groups such as the Workers' and Civil Rights Coalition to hammer away at the message that "the waiting game is a losing game". But that is the message that needs to be got across.