Union organising

The crisis in Australian unionism is one of great concern to all working-class activists. In a series of articles I will criticise some of the current trends and try to show that there are ways out. The main tools I have at my disposal are nearly 40 years of militant trade union and working-class activism and wide (but not deep) reading of socialist theory. I hope these articles are of interest. Whether they are insructive and helpful, that is for others to decide. If a union movement’s societal influence is primarily based on relative union density, the current state of unionism in Australia...

Before the tragic discovery that she has a brain tumour, Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis, the public figurehead of the CTU’s 2012 strike against the city’s Democratic mayor Rahm Emanuel, was preparing a mayoral campaign for next year’s election. Lewis’s national union, the American Federation of Teachers (the country’s biggest), had pledged $1 million. A Chicago Tribune poll from August 2014 put her ahead of Emanuel by 43 to 39%. Her victory, or even, perhaps, her campaign, would have been the most significant act of self-assertion by US labour in the political sphere for decades...

My first two articles dealing with attempts to organise defence base workers in Australia attempted to highlight the problems with on the ground organising, union arguments over which unions should cover these workers, the workers’ battle for jobs and redundancy payment and most important of all, the horrorible effect of contracting out of services has on the wages and conditions of those workers concerned. I can report that there has been some movement on a couple of these issues. Defence workers in the Northern Territory formerly employed by Serco/Sodexo (SSDS), through their unions, have...

In my last article I wrote about the horrors of contracting-out of civilian work on Australian defence bases, and the drive to force down the wages and conditions of the workers. Similar processes are at work everywhere else, be it the private or the public sector. Just recently my partner Melissa and I did a factory tour of the XXXX brewery in Brisbane, Australia, where I worked some 35 years ago as a young man. In 1979, XXXX had a permanent crew of painters, carpenters and plumbers, and a full time work force of 850. It is still a huge factory, maybe producing more than in 1979, but now has...

On Friday 10 October Care UK workers will be striking for the 81st day in their campaign for a Living Wage. Stewards David Honeybone and Diane Marsden spoke to Solidarity . What led to you taking industrial action? It started in 2012 when Doncaster Council put our service [supported living for adults with learning disabilities] out to tender. Care UK won the bid and took over in September 2013. Under the NHS we were paid a basic rate and an enhancement for anti-social hours and sleeping over. Care UK tried to cut this and vastly reduce sick pay, maternity leave and annual leave. We rejected...

On average workers' real wages fell 8.2% between 2008 and 2013. The median (middling) worker lost £2000 a year. But for many workers it has been much worse. For the 18-25 age range, the average drop was 14%; for 25- 29, it was 12%. Public sector wages have fallen by 15%. Overall price inflation over the last five years has been 19.0% (RPI); 16.4% (CPI). But the income required for a defined minimum living standard has risen, during the period of tiny or zero pay rises since 2008, by amounts ranging from 33% for a couple with an infant child through 28% for a single person to 17% or 18% for...

In the mid 1990s, Paul Keating's Labor government in Australia decided to outsource work on defence bases to private contractors. This work was overseen by that great excuse for a conservative in hiding, the leader of the Victorian right wing of the Australian Labor Party, Senator Robert Ray. Formerly jobs which had a high degree of stability became insecure ones. Workers, nearly 4,000 of them, whose jobs were cleaning the toilets, the rooms, and the barracks of defence bases, serving up the meals and pouring the drinks in mess halls, mowing the grass, and doing the gardening, and those...

On 4 September, thousands of fast food workers and other service industry employees (including home healthcare workers), backed by both the SEIU (Service Employees International Union) and UFCW (United Food and Commercial Workers), held strikes and protests in cities in California, Missouri, Wisconsin, New York, and elsewhere in the United States, for respect, improved benefits, the right to organise, and for a $15 minimum wage. Hundreds of workers and supporters were arrested. The “Fight for 15”, a movement by fast food and other low-paid workers across America, began in November 2012...

After just a single day's strike over pay by workers local government, education, and the civil service, the press and the Tories are on the offensive against unions, highlighting the low turnouts in ballots, and pushing for new anti-union legislation. We are right to highlight the hypocrisy of these calls coming from a government elected by a minority of voters with low turnouts in many constituencies, but in our own movement, we cannot be complacent. We have to honestly assess how we are organising for action and how best it can win. Turnouts and getting strong yes votes for industrial...

POLICE spying, infiltration and manipulation of opponents of the Establishment is older than Guy Fawkes, whose celebrated early 17th Century "Gunpowder Plot" to blow up the Houses of Parliament was in part manufactured and manipulated for their own ends by state agents. The latest example is the case of former police constable, Janet Lovelace. Janet Lovelace says that she was offered money (£200 a month for starters, plus expenses and "special help" with any pressing bills) to infiltrate and spy on the Catholic peace action group, Ploughshares, four of whose supporters were recently acquitted...