BY CHRIS CAIN
Many rank-and-file trade unionists, officials and others are now turning their backs on Labor, because they see that much of that party is no better than the Liberals. And I have to say quite honestly that they wouldn't be far wrong. The Labor Party deserves everything it gets from the working class and more.
It is not my intention just to pay out on the ALP (the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) can have a serve as well), but to put forward some type of solution to where unions go from here.
Firstly, let's look at the ALP's form since the 1983 Prices and Incomes Accord. Although there were many trade unionists against the accord none more prominent than Builders Labourers Federation federal secretary Norm Gallagher the ALP surged forward with the accord. The ACTU hierarchy made it easier for the ALP to do what it wanted. The deregistration of the BLF in Victoria and NSW was a massive blow to the trade union movement.
In 1981 union membership was 51%. It fell to 39% in 1992 and now it is down to 24%. Let's take a serious look at why.
It was the ALP government led by Bob Hawke that smashed the pilots' dispute by bringing in scabs and the military. Hawke then actually told Sir Peter Abeles, on television, to sue the pilots under sections 45D and E of the Trade Practices Act. Hawke, who used to be the secretary of the ACTU, firmly cemented his footing with the wealthy end of town. I resigned from the ALP after that and I have not been in it since.
It seems outrageous, but it is true, that it was the ALP that went half-way to destroying the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA). Under the leadership of former prime minister Paul Keating, it got rid of and sold the ANL. The Australian blue-water shipping industry declined from 72 ships to 46. Many jobs were lost nearly half.
Yet the MUA, my own union, never seems to learn. In the last federal election the members were levied $100 each to fund the ALP.
When, in the early 1990s, the Greens moved to repeal sections 45D and E, the ALP opposed it even though this was in the ALP's national platform.
Privatisation of national assets, including the Commonwealth Bank and domestic air services, the introduction of individual agreements, and the GST were all proposed by a so-called labour government. Under an ALP government, wage increases were paid for by losses in conditions and jobs and casualisation really started to run riot in many industries.
In NSW last year, ALP Premier Bob Carr broke a trade union picket line of some 3000 people in order to vote away the rights of workers who had been injured and maimed.
Here in WA, ALP Premier Geoff Gallop and employment minister John Kobelke have done absolutely nothing around workers' compensation legislation so much for the promises before they got in.
In Victoria, the ALP government headed by Steve Bracks sent police on horseback to belt and break up striking workers' pickets.
Labor has no policy. Because whatever conference, whatever ALP meeting you go to to make policy, the party's hierarchy can change it anyway.
Infiltrate the ALP? Well you'd all need to be prime ministers to do that, as history shows.
There is a way forward. As ALP member Neville Wran said, "No union movement [support], no Labor Party". The Socialist Alliance has an exciting platform for trade unionists and I urge you all to look at where your particular union donates to in forthcoming elections.
I want to ask, who are terrorists: Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) Victorian secretary Craig Johnston, who is fighting scabs that have taken workers' jobs? Unionists [fighting] the royal commission into the building industry, and maintaining a militant union? Victorian secretary of the Electrical Trades Union Dean Mighell, whose union's membership size has doubled through increased rank-and-file participation? If they were terrorists, I would willingly join them, for without militant leadership, the union movement is finished, dead in the water.
There will be [those who say] that we should fight from within the ALP. Well, I don't see too many ALP politicians lining up to support the AMWU in Victoria. I don't see ALP leader Simon Crean and his cronies coming out to defend the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union at the royal commission. I see the opposite.
Don't get angry. Don't whinge. Get active!
The Socialist Alliance was formed last year. Nine left-wing organisations came together at a three-day conference, out of which came a political platform, which is readily available on the alliance's web page.
Now we have more than 2000 members from a broad section of the community: union officials, [activists in] left-wing community groups, disgruntled ex-Labor supporters are very active around the alliance. When you consider that the ALP would only have 4000-5000 registered members nationally, then for a party that is in a very early stage we have come a long way.
With your help, the Socialist Alliance will dare to struggle, and dare to win, because workers united, will never be defeated.
[Chris Cain is a maritime union activist and member of the Socialist Alliance. This is an edited version of a talk given to a July 6 Perth Socialist Alliance seminar.]
From Green Left Weekly, August 7, 2002.
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