Sue Bolton
Spotlight became a lightning rod for mass discontent with the Howard government's anti-worker laws when one of its Coffs Habour employees, Annette Harris, went public about the pressure put on her to sign an individual contract. If Harris had signed the Australian Workplace Agreement (AWA), she would have lost penalty rates, incentive-based payments, overtime pay, rest breaks, annual-leave loading and public-holiday pay in return for a pay rise of 2 cents per hour.
Craft workers and dressmakers in several states called for a boycott of Spotlight's 86 fabric and craft stores, and protests were organised in Brisbane, Sydney, Newcastle, Geelong, Melbourne and Adelaide. Feeling the heat, Spotlight withdrew some of its AWAs, including the one it attempted to foist on Harris.
The Esselte stationary company also backed off after it was named in federal parliament for trying to force its employees onto an AWA that would have reduced their incomes by $65 per week. Unions NSW has revealed that the Howard government's Office of Workplace Services was in cahoots with Esselte's campaign to force workers onto the AWA.
It appears that OWS officers secretly interrogated workers who had refused to sign the AWA. The officers drove workers, in pairs, to a meeting at the Campbelltown Art Gallery where they were asked if union officials had advised them not to sign the agreements. The workers were told they would be subpoenaed to appear in court if they refused to answer the questions. Following the bad press, Esselte withdrew the AWA.
These examples show that a stepped-up campaign of mass rallies, community pickets and industrial action led by unions could stop employers from using Howard's anti-worker laws. If this were to happen nationwide, the government could be forced to withdraw its rotten laws.
Evidence of the pressure the anti-Work Choices campaign has had to date has come from some surprising quarters. It seems that some Coalition MPs are becoming nervous about the likely electoral backlash. NSW National Party leader Andrew Stoner told a meeting of the Macleay River Teachers' Association in Kempsey that federal workplace relations minister Kevin Andrews was "a dickhead" for abolishing the no-disadvantage test for AWAs. And Unions NSW's tour of regional NSW is unearthing hundreds of angry National Party voters who are vowing they will not vote for the party again.
Having seen the extent of the public outrage, at last year's November 15 rallies and in response to Spotlight and other companies' individual contracts, Labor Party leader Kim Beazley has finally pledged that a future Labor government would abolish AWAs.
This has spurred Australia's wealthiest corporations and employer groups, such as Rio Tinto and the Business Council of Australia, to lobby Beazley to back down. Rio Tinto is hoping for a repeat of what happened after the 2004 election, when Beazley, under pressure from Rio Tinto, dropped former Labor leader Mark Latham's pledge to abolish individual contracts.
Beazley would not have promised to abolish AWAs if not for the unions' campaign against Work Choices and the daily media exposure of its blatant injustice. So unions need to maintain the pressure on Labor to keep its promise, as well as on the Howard government. This is the only way to counteract the big capitalists like Rio Tinto.
However, unions must also demand that Labor will guarantee workers' rights to organise. These include: the unrestricted right to strike and to take all forms of industrial action; the unrestricted right of entry to workplaces; unions' right to engage in industry-wide or pattern bargaining; and no restrictions on what can be included in enterprise bargaining agreements.
Calling for the withdrawal of Work Choices isn't enough to ensure a decent standard of living for workers. Other vicious anti-worker legislation must also be withdrawn.
That includes the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act, which forces workers to answer questions about union activities under threat of a mandatory jail sentence. Workers who reveal any of the content of the interrogations to a third party also face jail. This law is being used to terrorise building workers, with investigations being undertaken with the same level of secrecy as court cases involving terror suspects.
The Welfare to Work law, which will force welfare recipients to accept below-award jobs on pain of having their payments completely cut off for eight weeks, also has to go. The independent contractors legislation, which prevents workers employed as "independent contractors" from having the same rights and protections as other employees, including access to union conditions, has been tabled but not yet passed. That has to be stopped.
The back-downs by companies — and the federal government — in response to community and union pressure demonstrates that we can win, providing the pressure is increased and maintained. Mass street protests and industrial action are the only way that union members and the wider community will stop Howard from turning back the clock 100 years.
[For details of the June 28 rallies, visit <http://www.socialist-alliance.org>.]
From Green Left Weekly, June 28, 2006.
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