An interview with Tim Gooden, secretary of the Geelong and Region Trades and Labour Council.
How effective has the Australian Council of Trade Unions' advertisement campaign against Work Choices been?
The ACTU ads have been very effective, touching a real nerve and convincing many people that the laws were wrong. This raising of awareness helped to mobilise support. But even the best propaganda can be lost overnight if workers don't see a fight and some runs on the board.
It appears that the penny has finally dropped for the ALP that opposition to Work Choices - including massive protest rallies - is actually a vote winner. How do you read Labor's change of line?
They know that if they don't respond to this attack then huge parts of the ALP's support base will wonder what the point of the party is. The challenge is how to defend workers and support a mass action campaign without upsetting their friends in the big end of town. Tricky!
The response by employer groups and individual companies to Work Choices and the November 15 protest has been varied. Some corporations say that they won't be making any use of its provisions: others are looking to move in for a quick kill. How do you read the general "battlefield situation"?
In Geelong some employers are waiting to see. But it is clear the others have battle plans drawn up and ready to implement. The first couple of battles will be crucial to the whole campaign. If the bosses win, then other employers will have to follow suit, copying the gains made by their rivals to stay competitive.
To what extent has the ACTU's turn to mobilising workers created expectations that this fight can be won?
There's now a widespread expectation that this fight can be won, and that the ALP and the unions are committed to it. But many still think that a "fightback" is just getting the ALP back into office.
This type of thinking has to be defeated and a majority won to the concrete alternative of protest and industrial action. That's the only way workers and unions will survive in a reasonable condition, and - ironically - it's probably the only way the ALP can win the next poll.
The turn to mobilising workers in protest must create tensions between the ACTU and the ALP and within the ALP itself. For example, Queensland premier Peter Beattie has said that there are only two ways to win this fight, constitutionally (by High Court challenge) and at the ballot box. Will the ALP try to contain an ACTU prepared to implement industrial action? Or is ACTU secretary Greg Combet, pushed by the mass movement, dragging a reluctant ALP in his wake?
The focus of the campaign is on marginal seats and all the plans are only up to the next federal election. I hope that unionists in the ACTU put workers' interests first, but there has been a lot of co-option over the years and the ALP is the dominant influence in the ACTU.
The ALP would not be keen to come to office on the back of a mass workers' campaign to which they would then be accountable. But the actual battles with the bosses over the next year will determine the election campaign strategies: the ALP will have to go along with that reality even if they try to roll back on their promises later on.
The struggle to date seems to have followed the pattern outlined in our last roundtable - the militant unions, acting through the Victorian Trades Hall Council and Unions WA, increased pressure on the ACTU, which in turn put pressure on its more conservative affiliates. Can this momentum be maintained?
I think the momentum will at least carry through to the first lot of battles on the ground. It is then that we will see whether the last lot of rallies were the beginning of a long fightback or just a lot of chest-beating.
Where does the struggle have to go from here?
First, there needs to be a strong message sent to employers when the new laws come into force around the end of March: "Unjust laws on the books are one thing, but you still have to implement them." This should begin with a mass show of force on the streets and start to step up the campaign to a higher level of industrial action aimed at the government and their supporters.
Then all possible resources must be thrown behind any picket line or lockout that occurs. Without this raising of the campaign to a new level, workers will begin to think that the fight cannot be won.
The fight against Howard's anti-union agenda has already given rise to new initiatives in cross-union and union-community organisation, such as the June 2005 Fightback Conference and Union Solidarity. How important is rank-and-file and cross-union organising?
This is not a fight that any one union or peak body can win on its own. The rank and file needs to be fully involved in the campaign and community support mobilised. It is important to use non-traditional methods of organising to meet the new tactics by the bosses and government.
[Abridged from a roundtable discussion on the fight against Howard's industrial relations laws published in the latest issue of Seeing Red magazine. Reprinted with thanks.]
From Green Left Weekly, March 8, 2006.
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