BY SEAN HEALY
& MELANIE SJOBERG
MELBOURNE — Victorian Trades Hall Council has confirmed that its labour rights rally, scheduled for September 12, the second day of protests against the World Economic Forum, will march to the WEF's Crown Casino venue.
Trades Hall secretary Leigh Hubbard told Green Left Weekly that the union rally will finish outside the casino, but will not attempt to blockade the site. "We're encouraging all unions to participate and to protest", he said.
Hubbard has also signed a joint "declaration of support", with National Union of Students president Lisa Johnson, Friends of the Earth national liaison officer Cam Parker and S11 Alliance spokesperson Karrina Nolan, which endorses non-violent protest against the WEF summit. The statement, published in Melbourne newspapers on August 30, said: "Globalisation led by corporations is not our choice, but the choice of an exclusive and undemocratically appointed few ... We invite those who are concerned about the WEF to express their dissent in a peaceful and constructive manner."
Previously, the labour rights rally was to end on the north side of the Yarra River. The Trades Hall Council has been under significant pressure from the state Labor government to distance itself from the blockaders, but militant unions, including the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) and the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, made it plain that they would be march on Crown Casino regardless.
The S11 Alliance's Jorge Jorquera said that Trades Hall Council's decision was "a significant boost for the blockaders. Not only our numbers but also our morale will be lifted when we see workers joining this struggle against the big corporations. It will strengthen the alliance at the grassroots between unionists, environmentalists and socialists." Jorquera is also the Melbourne secretary of the Democratic Socialist Party.
Walker told Green Left Weekly that after Trades Hall representatives informed police officials that its rally would be marching to the casino, permission was given to the S11 protest organisers to assemble on the casino side of the river. The unions' decision "changed everything", he said. "Before that, police were being very difficult, they were not willing to allow a stage to be erected outside the conference site."
However, the S11 protests against the WEF are polarising union officials. In many unions, the S11 protest plans have been favourably received by the rank and file. Construction and manufacturing unions are planning to tour S11 representatives around work sites in Melbourne to explain the protest and seek unionists' support and in Sydney on August 31, 200 construction union delegates unanimously endorsed visiting Indonesian union leader Romawaty Sinaga's urgings to support the demonstrations.
The Victorian branch of the AMWU has endorsed the blockade, the only union to do so. It plans to pull its members off work sites for the labour rights rally. The union's national secretary, Doug Cameron, has expressed support for the protest and for people's right to rally.
The federal secretary of the Australian Education Union, Rod Durbridge, also supported the protesters, pointing out that the WEF supports attempts to privatise public services.
However, the NSW Labor Council secretary Michael Costa told the Sydney Morning Herald "... the [S11] protest has been initiated by the more extreme groups in the community. There is the danger that the actions of a minority could reflect badly on the broader trade union movement.".
Labor's federal parliamentary wing agrees. Former ACTU president Martin Ferguson, now on Labor's front bench, urged young people to stay at home and study. He told the Melbourne Age, "The community has to accept that there are some losers" from globalisation.
[Visit Green Left Weekly's Global Action Against Corporate Tyranny web site at <http://www.greenleft.org.au/globalaction/s11>.]