We’ve heard it all before — “the larger the cake, the larger each slice”. The bigger the economy gets, the more productive we are, the more we should expect to share in the wealth.
Trouble is it’s not true: while the economy grows and profits rise, bosses are cutting jobs and attacking our conditions. While they clean up, we lose out. And unless we fight to stop it, the imbalance will only get worse.
BHP Billiton, the largest mining company in the world, announced on August 24 that its annual profit for the 2010-11 financial year had increased by 86%, giving it a profit of $23.6 billion. The so-called Big Australian made its profit from mining coal and iron ore in particular.
BHP made its name as a steel producer in Newcastle and Wollongong. In 2002, it “spun-off” its steelmaking division after having closed the Newcastle steel works in 1999.
Smelling the breeze, it decided it was more profitable just to mine resources and export them, rather than make steel in Australia.
The latest result of that decision is the retrenchment of 1000 workers at the Port Kembla steelworks in Wollongong — even as BlueScope’s former parent company makes the largest corporate profit in Australian history.
Qantas, the formerly publicly-owned airline, is also cutting 1000 jobs over the next five years.
The Sydney Morning Herald economic editor Ross Gittins said on August 29 that this should be a “reality check” for unions.
But it’s not as though Qantas is struggling. As Gittins freely admits, its profits doubled over the past year — so why the cuts?
Gittins said: “The point is that conscientious managers of a public company will always seek to maintain its profitability by cutting its cloth to fit the market’s changing circumstances. If that means letting unionised staff go and replacing them with cheaper workers here and overseas, so be it.”
Loyalty, productivity, skills and education — all are secondary to the one factor that the bosses care most about — cost. The message is simple: give back conditions, limit wage rises and most of all, don’t unionise, or your job will be next!
It’s in this context that state government workers in New South Wales face attacks on their wages, their conditions and their right to organise.
If workers are to receive pay rises above 2.5% (a real wage cut as inflation is more than 3%), they have to agree to give back conditions (such as class sizes for teachers, or patient ratios for nurses).
And the givebacks have to be finalised and signed off before the pay rise comes through.
And should Premier Barry O’Farrell succeed in his union-busting (and that will be one of the results of O’Farrell’s campaign), do you really think it will end there?
All state governments — not just the Liberal controlled ones — are watching to see if O’Farrell can get away with this fundamental attack on workers’ right to collectively bargain for a fair wage.
If he succeeds, who’s next? Victoria, Western Australia or perhaps federal public servants? And we’ve already seen the disdain with which private sector moguls treat their workers.
Solidarity is the key. An attack on one is an attack on all. Even though you may not be a steelworker, an airline steward, a teacher or a nurse, if we let the bosses get away with attacks on these workers, we are next.
It’s not good enough to wait until the next elections and vote the bastards out — because the other bastards are no better. It’s a simple equation, and one we all need to remind ourselves of: Touch one — touch all and if you don’t fight, you lose.