Tim Gooden, Geelong
Following the success of the ACTU's first propaganda battle for the hearts and minds of workers with TV ads and an education campaign explaining the injustice of the new workplace laws, the Howard government has hit back with two new pieces of legislation — the Building Construction Industry Improvement Act (BCII) and the Better Bargaining Bill. The first will come into effect on October 1.
The BCII sets up a new industry police force, the Australian Building and Construction Commission, to enforce the new law. It will prevent workers from being able to stop work for a meeting, for safety reasons, or to attend protest rallies, or take a sickie if it is thought to be connected to industrial action. Construction workers who do not cooperate with the building inspectors can be jailed for six months.
The so-called Better Bargaining Bill, still before the Senate, prevents workers under protected action from doing almost anything. New, secret ballots must be held before any industrial action, which can only last for a maximum of 14 days. Almost anyone who complains about the industrial action can have it stopped. The new law will also make it difficult to carry out enterprise bargaining.
Howard intends using the new laws to attack unions before he releases his main changes to the Workplace Relations Act. The Building Industry Task Force will start taking action against building unions, and it's Howard's hope that unionists will react violently, allowing him to make out that they are a bunch of thugs. The government is desperate to halt growing public sympathy for the ACTU's workplace campaign, hoping to launch a hysterical campaign about "reining in" union "excesses" and protecting small business.
Unions are, however, preparing for the government's counter-attack. In the lead-up to Australia-wide mass union meetings and rallies on November 15, the ACTU is launching a new claim in the Australian Industrial Relations Commission for wage increases for low-paid workers to offset the increase in petrol prices. It is also seeking a ruling in the High Court against the federal government misusing public money for its IR propaganda campaign.
The encouraging turnout at two recent state-wide delegate meetings — in Victoria (1500) and WA (700) — shows that unionists understand the issues at stake and support
the November 15 nation-wide protests, and the Construciton, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), against the new BCII Act.
At the Victorian meeting, Socialist Alliance unionists successfully moved amendments to the official motion to call for solidarity for any union under attack, to oppose AWAs (Australian Workplace Agreements — individual contracts) and call on the ALP to oppose them too. When Victorian Trades Hall Council secretary Brian Boyd tried to lower expectations about winning the campaign against the new laws, arguing that they would inevitably be passed, some delegates called out that a national strike was needed to defeat the new laws.
Many rank-and-file delegates are keen to take more mass action against the federal government's agenda. However apart from the November 15 national day of action, round two of the ACTU advertisements and some marginal seat campaigning, there is little coordinated protest around the new laws currently going through the Senate.
The CFMEU is holding planning meetings with delegates to better position itself to respond to the BCII. But with no mass action being mooted between now and November 15, Howard may just get the break he is so desperately looking for.
[Tim Gooden, Secretary of the Geelong Trades and Labor Council, is a member of the CFMEU and a member of the Socialist Alliance national executive.]
From Green Left Weekly, September 28, 2005.
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