By Ray Fulcher
MELBOURNE — A meeting of 1500 union delegates on February 4 voted unanimously for a March 1 stoppage and rally in Victoria against the Kennett government's reactionary policies.
The meeting was considerably smaller than the last such shop stewards' mass meeting, held prior to the successful November 10 general strike and 250,000-strong mobilisation across the state.
The mood was also very different — subdued due to a growing demoralisation in the ranks because of continued attacks by the Kennett government and the lack of an effective response by the union movement since November 10.
Victorian Trades Hall Council secretary John Halfpenny spoke of the wave of enthusiasm which ran through the union movement and community following November 10 and of the need to begin rebuilding that enthusiasm. He claimed that, contrary to media reports, the ALP and ACTU had put no pressure on Trades Hall to "run down" its campaign.
This conflicts with charges in a discussion paper by Trades Hall industrial officer Brian Boyd that the campaign had been "interfered with". Boyd, who was on the platform, made no comment. Halfpenny said that the industrial aims of the campaign were to protect awards, the workers' compensation system and the public service, utilities and state assets.
After the report, Halfpenny put Trades Hall's motion which called for a union-community rally on March 1, at 11 a.m. in Treasury Gardens and for all unions to endorse stop-work actions for their members on the day. The duration of the stop-work is to be determined by individual unions.
Rallies will also be held in provincial and country areas.
Officials accepted an amendment moved by Bill Deller, vice-president of the State Public Services Federation, calling for immediate 24-hour stoppages and delegates' meetings if Kennett's vicious penal clauses (fines of up to $1000 for individuals and $50,000 for unions) are used against workers.
Initially a sentiment of criticism of the union leadership's scuttling of the campaign last year percolated through the meeting. But after a number of long-winded speeches in favour of indefinite general strikes, daily rallies and daily delegates' meetings, the officials regained control of the meeting.
Jan Armstrong of the Health Services Union rose in a self-righteous defence of the "so-called union bureaucracy". "We have been working our butts off for you", she said. "We entered this campaign knowing it wasn't going to be won with one stoppage. We knew it was going to be a long fight to beat Kennett; that it would take four years to get
Armstrong put the Trades Hall position that all actions in this campaign will be directed towards the re-election of Labor federally in a few months and in the state elections due in four years' time.
Not for the first time, Halfpenny manipulated the meeting's annoyance with the antics of the ultraleft, managing to sound militant by saying that all unionists had the freedom to take any action on the job they saw fit. He said that Trades Hall had no disagreement with the ALP or ACTU over the conduct of the anti-Kennett campaign.
Later that night a VTHC meeting received a report from John Della Bosca from the NSW Trades Hall Council on the "national ALP/trade union activities for the forthcoming federal election". Della Bosca, who is coordinating the campaign nationally, said a strong union campaign for the re-election of the Keating government was a fair return for all the Labor Party had done for the trade union movement over the last few years. This was greeted angry interjections from workers in the gallery.
John Cummins, the delegate from the Builders Labourers' Federation, warned that after a decade of "hard Labor" under the Accord it was high time that the union movement got back to independent struggle for workers' interests instead of being a "cheer squad for the Labor Party".