By Dick Nichols
Industrial relations minister Peter Reith is refusing to talk numbers, but the Coalition government is clearly planning massive redundancies in the public service. The Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) believes that at least 15,000 jobs are at risk, 10% of the whole public service. And that's without the cuts of up to 30,000 being threatened in Telstra.
The cuts will be deep, painful and destructive of services: 1300 in the Department of Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs, 440 in Customs, 200 in the Department of Industrial Relations, 500 in branch offices of the Australian Tax Office, 144 in the Department of Finance (all state offices closed), destruction of the Environment Protection Agency, 25% cuts to Health and Family Services, 30% cuts to the Department of Administrative Services, 40% to Prime Minister and Cabinet.
Final targets were supposed to be given by each department head by April 24, but these are only an initial round. If the government thinks it can get away with more cuts, it will try for more. If allowed to happen, this means compulsory redundancies, worse services and increased workloads for those who remain.
Before the election, Howard pledged that the only job losses would be 2500 from natural attrition. However, the $6-8 billion deficit was an open secret for months before the poll, and the Liberals were already planning to use it as the pretext to introduce what has always been their real policy for public services: privatising the profitable bits and leaving only the skeleton of a community service in public hands.
Public services were already shaved to the bone under the Labor government. Now what will happen?
When people are forced onto the dole queue, will there be a Department of Social Security or handouts from private charities as Howard privatises social services? When quarantine inspection loses all impact, will we be safe against contaminated salami and "mad cow" disease? Where will public tenants go as public housing stocks are sold off, as they were in WA?
Many public servants are already overstressed from their current workload; many want to get out as soon as they can. The cuts will only increase the workload and lead to an even more angry, frustrated, stressed and transient work force.
Union response
Fighting these cuts ought to be the highest priority for the CPSU. However, the only demand the CPSU has issued is that the government reveal the full extent of the cuts — as if it should make a huge difference to the union response whether 15,000 or 20,000 heads are to roll!
The longer it takes to start a real campaign, the greater the number of cuts that will be set in motion, and the easier it will be for the government to panic people into taking voluntary redundancies. The spectre of changed industrial relations law is already being waved about to scare people into "taking a package" while the going is good.
Also, as a recent resolution of the ACT CPSU branch executive notes, "delaying while cuts occur is likely to lead to a de facto agency by agency approach which will exhaust members and achieve far less than we can achieve by using our collective strength".
To stand any chance of success, a campaign against the cuts has to involve industrial action, but be more than just industrial. This fight is really about winning public support for a decent public sector. That is winnable, given the 60-70% support in the community for a publicly owned Telstra.
The campaign has to involve, and be democratically run by, CPSU members themselves. This means mass meetings where all the issues can be thoroughly discussed and CPSU members can take the measure of their potential collective strength, rather than the hundreds of isolated little workplace meetings presently in favour with the leadership.
The willingness to resist is indicated by actions that are already being taken on an agency basis, like the campaign of Australian Tax Office workers against the closure of regional offices. These actions should be linked to a campaign across the whole public service.
A serious union campaign could mobilise broader public support for a properly staffed and funded public service, and make it visible through actions like rallies in the major cities. The aim should be to get the message across that a reduced public sector means reduced living standards for the majority of Australians.
This would in turn put pressure on the ALP, Greens and Democrats to block the government's industrial relations legislation in the Senate.
Independence
The campaign also has to be kept independent of all those, like the ALP, who would want to manipulate it simply as a "campaign" to return Labor at the next federal poll.
Remember how disastrous this approach was in Victoria in 1992! There the ALP, ACTU and Victorian Trades Hall Council deliberately converted the huge mobilisations against Jeff Kennett into an exercise in boosting the ALP as the "responsible" party of government.
The fights that are coming up with Howard should be fought with the perspective of building the one thing Australian workers desperately need and lack — a party of their own, their own political voice.