By Dick Nichols
intro = If the Maritime Union of Australia stands on the brink of a great victory, it is because workers, union activists, community campaigners and those who recognise a threat to basic democratic rights have responded to the call to picket Patrick's operations.
This explosion of support has immobilised the police in Melbourne, reduced cargo flow through Patrick sites to a trickle and even driven ALP politicians to the picket line. It certainly hasn't been lost on the Federal and High Courts.
The political mood has turned against John Howard and Peter Reith: only 8% of those surveyed in the latest Bulletin poll want to see the pickets broken up and the scabs remain. If an election were held now, the Coalition would lose.
The last three weeks have put an end to some cherished myths: that industrial action and trade unions are "out of date"; that working people have made their peace with the system; and that struggle puts off "middle Australia".
Corrigan on the ropes
The MUA has Chris Corrigan and Howard on the ropes because, irrespective of ongoing court battles, the MUA and the union movement have relied on and organised mass support at the picket lines and in industrial action. The unions will lose if they discard their most powerful weapon: the commitment, solidarity and spirit of sacrifice of working people.
The final decision of the High Court is to be brought down on May 4. What will be important is the terms on which the wharfies go back to work. This will have a lasting impact on the wages and conditions of all workers.
If Patrick's 1400 full-time and 600 part-time workers get their jobs back with no loss in pay and conditions — including in Burnie, Bell Bay, Port Kembla, Newcastle and Adelaide — it will be a tremendous victory for all workers.
It would change the balance of political forces and set the scene for working people to return to the offensive after 15 years of grinding retreat under Labor's Accord, then Howard's Coalition.
A decent wage rise, a shorter working week and repeal of the Reith-Kernot Workplace Relations Act would then be directly attainable goals for a continuing struggle.
However, if a return to work leads to a sharp reduction in the permanent work force, cuts in pay and conditions, an increase in casualisation and the acceptance of non-union labour, the win will be hollow — a battle won but the war lost.
There will be little stopping corporate Australia from pressing ahead with its unending agenda of job cuts, speed-ups and threats to employment security.
Unions must press forward
On April 16, 4000 delegates of the Victorian Trades Hall Council pledged to campaign "until all Patrick workers are fully and rightfully reinstated in their jobs with no loss of wages or entitlements".
Due to the success of the pickets, there is not the slightest reason to demand less. This is especially true since Howard and Corrigan, anticipating a High Court loss, are already cobbling together "Plan B" to deny the Patrick administrators any of the $250 million earmarked by the government for "waterfront reform".
The trade union movement must force Corrigan and his fellow super-rich Lang Corporation director Peter Scanlon to cough up the money to start up Patrick's four puppet labour hire companies immediately. If they refuse, the pickets must be maintained and expanded, court injunctions notwithstanding.
It is impossible for the police to break the picket lines without resorting to violence, and violent attacks on pickets carry a terrible political price for any government ordering the attacks.
The NSW trade union movement should demand that the state Carr Labor government, which has adopted a hands-off attitude to the pickets, put pressure on Patrick.
Labor could immediately legislate to cancel Patrick's port leases in NSW if Corrigan refuses to employ the workers under the conditions that prevailed before April 7. The Carr government should take over all Patrick operations in NSW and run them as public utilities.
The ACTU should immediately call a national day of action in solidarity with the MUA. This should have been held on May 6, to coincide with the VTHC day of action against the Workplace Relations Act. It should still be held while there is momentum for a campaign against this legislation that cripples the unions' ability to fight.
What tactics?
Throughout the waterfront struggle, there have been inevitable differences over what tactics the unions should follow. The overwhelming majority of union officials, especially in state and regional trades and labour councils, say that tactics in the present fight should be decided by the MUA.
While it's true that it is up to the MUA to decide its own tactics and how to run its own picket lines, this argument has become an excuse for the ACTU and the TLCs to refuse to mobilise workers who want to support the MUA but cannot get to the picket lines.
There is no excuse for the ACTU not generalising the VTHC day of action to the entire country. The MUA struggle has implications for all workers; an MUA loss would be a loss for all workers.
A democratic discussion on tactics is the best way of ensuring that the movement as a whole gets them right. No-one in this fight has a monopoly on tactical wisdom, least of all the ACTU executive, which has been inactive over issues such as the 77,000 jobs lost in the federal public sector and the privatisation of Telstra.
Where there has been open discussion among picketers about how best to organise picket lines, as in Fremantle, the struggle has benefited.
What alternative to Howard?
Even if the MUA wins, it still faces the bigger problem of developing a viable alternative policy for the waterfront. The immediate alternative — the Labor model — promises more restructuring of the sort that took place in 1989-1991, when thousands of jobs were eliminated and a regime of forced overtime was introduced.
Nor should we forget that in 1994 the Keating Labor government flogged off its 25% holding in Patrick (then Australian Stevedores) to Corrigan. A Beazley government will bring more of the same because it shares the Coalition's and big business's goal of increased "productivity" — code word for bigger profits through greater exploitation.
The only socially responsible alternative to both Liberal and Labor variants of waterfront "reform" is to have all stevedoring concerns run as a single public utility, administered by a democratically elected board. It would mean that the price of progress on the waterfront would not be paid by the workers but by millionaire asset-strippers like Corrigan, Scanlon and their incompetent managers.
If the NSW Labor government was serious about solving the waterfront problem in the interests of the workers and society as a whole, it would immediately implement such a policy.
Even if we achieve victory in the Patrick struggle, it will be little more than a lull in the Coalition's war on the unions. A prolonged truce with the unions is ruled out because that would mean that the Coalition had lost its special usefulness for big business as a union-busting government.
In this situation, the last thing the union movement should do is relax and bask in its victory. Following the last three weeks' magnificent demonstration that working people can organise and win, the time could not be more ripe to launch a campaign to recover what we have lost in wages, conditions and jobs over the last 15 years.
[Dick Nichols is national coordinator of trade union work for the Democratic Socialist Party.]