Dick Nichols
The fourth issue of Socialist Alliance's quarterly magazine Seeing Red, now out, focuses on the federal Coalition government's plans to break the back of the Australian trade union movement through its "reforms" to industrial relations law.
The issue aims to provide a useful dossier for a critical fight. It begins with a round-table discussion with three unionists who are in the frontline of the struggle for militant, democratic unionism — the sort needed to defeat the war on organised labour unleashed on behalf of corporate Australia.
Valuable insights come from Joan Doyle, the Victorian state branch secretary of the postal and telecommunications union, Tim Gooden, secretary of the Geelong and Region Trades Hall Council, and Sam Wainwright, the editor of the Maritime Worker, journal of the West Australian branch of the Maritime Union of Australia.
Former arbitration court judge Jim Staples has his own take. He points out that PM John Howard's intended use of the corporations power of the constitution is a two-edged sword for the Coalition, opening "the floodgates to a general Commonwealth legislative power to determine ... social conditions throughout Australia on matters now closed by the phrase 'industrial disputes' in the arbitration power".
Further discussion comes from longstanding Melbourne union activist Dave Kerin (on tactics), Gippsland Trades and Labour Council Secretary John Parker (on alliance building) and Queensland National Tertiary Education Union organiser Ross Gwyther (on union organising). Bristol University's Mario Novelli gives insight into Colombian unionists' struggle against privatisation of public services in the city of Cali.
The critical importance of workers' ability to organise runs through many other contributions. Against the background of James Hardie's criminal treatment of its asbestosis victims, labour historian Rosemary Webb tells the story of struggles against respiratory diseases in workplaces as different as Mt Isa mines, printing plants and Sydney construction sites. Carole Ferrier reviews Jean Devanny's classic of Queensland sugar workers' struggles, Sugar Heaven.
On other themes we introduce readers to US Marxist Bertell Ollman's powerfully lucid "Letter of Resignation from the Jewish People", war historian Les Louis's reminder of the Soviet contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany; and Mark McKenna's forceful argument that an Australian republican movement that isolates itself from the movement for Indigenous rights is doomed to extinction.
The issue is rounded off by a lively exchange over Humphrey McQueen's claim in the third issue of Seeing Red that Socialist Alliance was wasting its timing standing in elections and a "Stirrer" column by Brian Sketchley and Ron Price on "learning for socialism from social movements".
Also in this issue, our revolutionary cryptic crossword series begins, kindly provided by crossword maestro "Gramsci"!
[Dick Nichols is managing editor of Seeing Red.]
From Green Left Weekly, June 29, 2005.
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