The following statement has been signed by many Australian union leaders and activists. To add your signature to this statement, email <unitedfightback@gmail.com>.]
PM John Howard has declared all-out war on our unions and right to organise. Now's the time for a united fightback!
With control of the Senate on July 1, the Howard government will begin an all-out attack on the rights of working people in this country. The Coalition's plan is to destroy our unions and their ability to defend our wages and conditions.
If Howard and his big business backers get away with their plans, many employment conditions such as our awards, redundancy pay, penalty rates and breaks will be shredded. Anti-union penalties will be massively increased, and our unions' ability to organise for us will be massively restricted. We will see the sort of attacks that Howard has launched against the building industry unions extended to all unions.
The strength of the combined union movement should unite to resist Howard's anti-worker, anti-union agenda and must campaign in our members' interests to protect our gains and improve our lives. The less we resist these attacks, the bolder Howard will be about making new, wide-ranging anti-worker legislation.
If we don't show leadership in resisting these attacks on working people, we will find it harder to convince millions of Australians — most of them workers — that the Coalition's laws are an attack on the democratic rights of us all. We must call on all unions to fight long and hard against these attacks.
That's why we, the undersigned, say that the union movement can't hold its fire until after Howard gains control of the Senate — the fightback must begin straight away!
Defeating Howard also requires combined action and a long-term, strategic approach by all unions. And although unions will need to take industry-specific action, restricting our resistance to a union-by-union response may allow Howard to pick us off one by one.
Remember it was the combined solidarity delivered from all sections of the union movement and the community at large that enabled the Maritime Union of Australia to fight off the Reith/Patrick attack in 1998.
We therefore call on state, territory and regional trades and labour councils and the Australian Council of Trade Unions to convene mass delegates' meetings of all unions, with the aim of building mass union protests and nationwide stoppages against Howard's anti-union laws before the Senate changes hands in July.
Signed Martin Kingham (CFMEU state secretary, Vic); Dean Mighell (ETU state secretary, Victoria); Jack Mundey (former BLF state secretary, NSW), Chris Cain (MUA state secretary, WA); Hughie Williams (TWU state secretary, Qld); Tim Gooden (assistant secretary Geelong TLC); Andrew Vickers (CFMEU mining & energy division state secretary, Qld); Howard Guille (NTEU state secretary, Qld); Joan Doyle (CEPU communications division postal & telecommunications branch state secretary, Vic); Bob Carnegie (CFMEU construction labourers division organiser, Qld); Rae Frances (Australian Society for the Study of Labour History federal president); Greg Mallory (Brisbane Labour History Association president); and Bob Anderson (Aboriginal elder, Qld).
From Green Left Weekly, March 23, 2005.
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