Open letter to delegates to the 2009 ACTU Congress

Dear fellow unionists,

As delegates to this ACTU Congress you have piles of policy before you, but one basic decision to make.

Should you back the ACTU leadership’s support for Rudd’s Fair Work Act or oppose it?

The Congress papers say that “the Fair Work Act sees the end of the direct legislative assault on organised labour” and “represents a substantial, albeit imperfect, transition of the 2006 ACTU Congress policy into legislation.”

That’s just spin! Read the Congress’s own Industrial Relations Legislation Factsheet and the truth comes out (see the basic facts about the Fair Work Act over the page, mainly taken from this Factsheet). Workers are still losing.

The draft Congress Industrial Relation Policy says that the new legislation gives the union movement a chance to “grow unions, protect jobs and advance workers’ interests”.

If the economy were booming we could almost believe this, even though it would still be a recipe for a stagnant union movement. But we’re entering the biggest recession in 70 years, with thousands of jobs already lost and one-and-a-half hands tied behind our backs by Rudd’s law.

If more workers have joined unions since 2006, it’s because the Your Rights at Work campaign was seen as defending their interests. To keep growing we must keep campaigning for our rights, which remain crippled by the Fair Work Act.

It’s high time to drop business-as-usual-don’t-embarrass–Kevin-and-Julia-too-much unionism. This compromised approach gave the vast majority of workers lower wage increases during the resources boom than would otherwise have been the case, and meant that profits and CEO packages skyrocketed (check the Congress Wages and Collective Bargaining Factsheet for detail).

Instead of a vague, feel-good resolution about “campaigning” and waiting for Kevin 2010 to remove the bad bits of the Fair Work Bill, this Congress must adopt two basic positions:

1. For a full-scale, cross-union industrial and community campaign against the Australian Building and Construction Commission, one that will continue until it or any replacement scheme is abolished, and building workers have the same rights as all other workers.

2. For a campaign of industrial disobedience to the most crippling provisions of the Fair Work Act, including its ban on pattern-bargaining, restrictions on the right to take industrial action, restrictions on the rights of unions to organise and enter work sites and restrictions on the contents of industrial agreements.

The November 2008 suspension of charges against CFMEU official Noel Washington shows that workers and their unions can win if they organise to act against injustice. It’s the sort of unionism we´ll need just as much under the Rudd government as under Howard.

Let’s build a campaign now against all that is still anti-worker in the Fair Work Act—beginning with the anti-democratic Australian Building and Construction Commission.

Socialist Alliance National Trade Union Committee

Distributed by Tim Gooden, Secretary, Geelong Trades Hall Council (pictured), as a contribution to debate at the 2009 ACTU Congress

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Yes, the Fair Work Act is WorkChoices Lite!

Check out the following powers of the Fair Work Act, detailed in the Congress’s own Industrial Relations Legislation Factsheet.

If Malcolm Turnbull introduced such anti-worker industrial laws - which violate International Labour Organisation standards - wouldn’t the union movement be fighting them?

1. The Fair Work Act cuts back unions’ right to organise

• 24 hours notice of right of workplace entry, restricted access to employee records
• Bans pattern bargaining, allowing very restricted “multi-employer bargaining” only for low paid
• No restriction on employers using pattern bargaining
• Employer right to seek injunctions against unions using pattern bargaining
• Employer right to challenge the conduct of ballots to frustrate protected industrial action
• No positive rights for union delegates
• No positive rights for workers to join unions and participate in their work
• Almost no recognition of the role of delegates in representing workers in bargaining process
• No requirement for employers to facilitate union access to workplaces
  

2. The Fair Work Act prevents workers from improving their living standards

• Limits award content to 10 listed matters
• Fails to enshrine in minimum standards: 11 public holidays per annum, a right for parents of pre-school children to part-time work, rights to information and consultation in the workplace, retrenchment pay for employees of smaller businesses, and any guarantee that workers entitlements will be paid first in the case of company failure
• Restricts matters that can be covered in an agreement, banning enterprise-specific unfair dismissal and right of entry agreements.
• Allows award modernisation that could result in reduced standards in some industries and occupations
• Maintains existing AWAs, including ones that would not meet the government’s own standard for fair agreements
• Allows an employer taking over a company to refuse to employ workers transferring from business being taken over
  

3. The Fair Work Act keeps penal powers, including those established by Work Choices

• Requires secret ballots for protected industrial action
• Preserves the Work Choices requirement that employers deduct strike pay even in circumstances where employees are at work
• Allows the use of scab labour
• Doesn´t give workers the right to conduct meetings to prepare for bargaining
• Increases the penalties Fair Work Australia can apply to “ensure compliance” with its rulings
• Bans industrial action in support of economic and social campaigns (like that against Work Choices)
• Bans industrial action even where an employer proposes radical workplace restructuring
• Keeps the anti-union provisions of the Trades Practices Act
• Leaves a dispute with the boss to be settled in the normal court system unless the boss agrees to have it judged by Fair Work Australia
  

4. The Fair Work Act discriminates against different groups of workers

• Removes “high income” earners from award coverage
• Leaves contract workers with fewer rights than employees, including no rights to union representation or collective bargaining
• Allows a longer qualifying period for employees in small business
• Makes it easier for small business to sack workers
  

5. The Fair Work Act maintains unions in a weakened legal position

• Does not actually define the rights of unions
• Abolishes unions as parties to agreements, which are made between employers and their employees
• Does not require unions to consent to changes to an agreement, even when the union is covered by the agreement.
• Fails to enshrine a right for all employees and unions to be informed about the strategic designs of the employers
• Provides no clarity about where federal or state laws apply, much less enable workers to opt into the federal or state system

June 20: Protest 2 years of the Intervention

Protest, march and concert – marking two years since the announcement of the NT Intervention

Saturday June 20, 10:30am Belmore Park, Eddy avenue, Haymarket (opposite Central station)

March to the Block in Redfern for family and culture day concert

Stop the NT Intervention
> Reinstate the Racial Discrimination Act
> No Blackmail – Land Rights not Leases
> Aboriginal Control of Aboriginal Affairs
> Housing and Services for all Communities
> Jobs – not cuts to CDEP

Speakers include:
> Maurie Japarta Ryan (Central Land Council, NT)
> Larissa Behrendt
> Adam Kerslake (Unions NSW)
> Geoff Scott (NSW Aboriginal Land Council)
> Jim Allen (Board Member NSW Aboriginal Housing Office)
> Jeff McMullen
> Dootch Kennedy (Illawarra Aboriginal Land Council)

Performers include:
> The Last Kinection
> Nadeena Dixon
> Cuzco
> Maupower (Torres Strait)
> Dizzy Doolan
> DJ Exile (Aotearoa)

Stand Against Rudd’s Racism

June 20, 2009 will mark two years since the Howard government announced its Intervention into NT Indigenous communities.

The Intervention promised health, housing and education – but it has delivered only racism, the destruction of Aboriginal control and worsening social problems. After the allocation of more than $1 billion the only houses that have been built with intervention funds have been for government managers imposed on communities. The compulsory quarantine of welfare payments is causing greater poverty, real hunger and segregation in Centrelink and in shops.

The Rudd government has made symbolic gestures to try and signal a break from the racism of Howard – apologising to the Stolen Generations and recently signing on to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. But this is hypocrisy. They have pursued Howard’s agenda of “mainstreaming” and assimilation with force, expanding the Intervention, despite the recommendations of their own ‘review’.

In the NT, they have also overseen the withdrawal of funding from remote ‘outstations’, forcing migration into towns, and severe restrictions on teaching in Aboriginal languages. The government has pledged to re-instate the Racial Discrimination Act this spring, but has insisted this will mean no ‘softening’ of punitive Intervention policies.

Land Rights not Leases – Stop the national expansion of Intervention policies

A key aspect of the Northern Territory Intervention has been the compulsory acquisition of Aboriginal township land for five years. Housing assets have been forcibly transferred from community councils to the NT public housing agency. Over the past nine months, the government has announced that only 16 of the 73 ‘prescribed communities’ will receive any funding for new housing. And these communities have been given an ultimatum. They must sign township land over to the government for between 40-90 years before any construction can commence. While a handful of communities-desperate for housing and under extreme pressure-have signed these leases, the majority say they will never sign away Land Rights fought for over decades.

In March, the government announced it would extend the policy nationally – no new housing will be built in any remote community across Australia unless long-term leases are signed. And of the scores of Aboriginal communities in NSW who desperately need housing, only two – Walgett and Wilcannia – will receive funding.

The abolition of Aboriginal controlled Community Development Employment Projects (CDEPs) was a cornerstone of Howard’s Intervention, forcing thousands of Indigenous people in the NT out of work. Now this policy is also being rolled out nationally, with up to 30,000 CDEP jobs facing the axe this July. In the face of looming global recession this is madness. We need to fight these policies aimed at breaking up Aboriginal control and forcing Aboriginal people to leave their communities.

June 20 will be a national day of action, including a march in Darwin led by Aboriginal people living under Intervention policies. Join in the rally, march and concert in Sydney. Demand an end to Rudd’s racism and funding now for Aboriginal controlled housing and services in all communities.

For more info contact the Stop the Intervention Collective Sydney (STICS) through
Monique on 0415 410 558 or
Paddy on 0415 800 586

To see the flyer for the protest: click here

May 30 ‘Stop the Sell-Offs’ day of protest to relaunch campaign against privatisation

May 28, 2009

“Unless he abandons his plans to privatise NSW public services and assets Nathan Rees is headed for electoral oblivion”, Colin Drane, convener of the Sydney Power to the People coalition1 said today.

Drane was announcing the first in a series of “Stop the Sell-Offs Saturdays” on the privatisation issue. They will feature campaigning stalls in shopping centres and protests outside MPs’ offices.

The protests are part of the campaign to force the Rees government to drop its plans to sell off management of prisons, wholesale and retail electricity distribution, NSW lotteries , NSW Waste Services, Sydney Ferries and Pillar, the NSW superannuation fund administrator.

The campaign has the support of Unions NSW, the South Coast Labour Council, Newcastle Trades Hall Council and individual unions.

Drane said: “80% of people in NSW oppose privatisation. They know it means worse services, higher prices and job losses. But, with a few honourable exceptions, the pollies still don’t get the message.

“The ‘Stop the Sell-Offs’ Saturdays will give the people a chance to remind our forgetful MPs that ‘No means No’ when it comes to selling off NSW public services.

“Power to the People has already sent a letter to all NSW MPs demanding that they clarify their stance on Rees’ sell-offs. We shall be publishing the results on our web site (at http://powertothepeoplesydney.blogspot.com/) and letting all communities know the position of their MP. Any MP who doesn’t respond will be regarded as a supporter of privatisation.”

Drane said that the campaign would build on the protests of NSW prison officers, which have already blocked the privatisation of Cessnock Gaol . The prisoner officers, members of the Prison Officers Vocational Branch of the Public Sector Association, are presently maintaining 24-hour protest pickets outside the electoral offices of the premier in Toongabbie and of minister Jody McKay in Newcastle.

“This campaign won’t stop until the Rees government gets over its privatisation addiction”, Drane concluded. “One day the premier may thank us for it, because the government won’t survive the next election unless it drops a policy the vast majority of New South Wales rejects.”

Media contact: Colin Drane 0419 698 396

1. The Power to the People coalition consists of organisations and individuals committed to maintaining public services and assets in government hands.

South Sydney meeting against privatisation

A public meeting is being held on Wednesday 27th May at 7.30pm at South Sydney Uniting Church (56a Raglan St, Waterloo).

The meeting will be discussing many of the questions surrounding the state government’s plans to privatise prisons.

It should be an interesting look into prison privatisation and will have a number of guest speakers including: Greg Smith (Shadow Attorney General & Shadow Minister for Justice), Lee Rhiannon (Greens member Legislative Council), Penny Sharpe (labor MP), Prof Eileen Baldry (associate Dean School of Social Science UNSW) and a prison activist.

This event is being presented by The South Sydney Herald, South Sydney Uniting Church and the Social Justice Committee of the Sydney Presbytery of the Uniting Church in Australia.

Contact: Trevor Davies 0400 008338
trevrssh@bigpond.net.au

Radical history conference: A century of struggle

Laborism and the radical alternative - Lessons for today

Saturday 30 May 9.30am (registration) - 5.00pm AMWU offices, 251 Queensberry St, Carlton

Speakers include:
Verity Burgmann, author of many books on labour movement history
Jamie Doughney, economist, National Tertiary Education Union state president
Dave Kerin, CFMEU mining and energy organiser, Latrobe Valley
Chris Spindler, Australian Manufacturing Workers Union organiser

Socialist Alliance is organising a one-day conference on the struggle to build a radical alternative to the deadening hand of the ALP and the lessons we can draw for today. The seminar will draw on the experiences of the communist and trade union movements in Australia over the last century. This will be an important seminar given the global economic meltdown, the crisis of climate change and the dampening impact that the federal ALP government has had on the trade union movement.

Agenda:
10am:
The formation of the ALP. Was it ever a workers' party?
The record of the ALP. High hopes and big disappointments

11.30am:
The Wobblies. Achievements and limitations
The vehicle of socialism? The NSW Socialisation Units in the 1930s

2pm:
Communism in Australia. Some of the issues
Left alternatives in the trade unions

3.45pm
Fighting under Labor governments today
Looking to the future

Registration from 9.30am: $15/$5 concession.
Organised by Socialist Alliance - Sponsored by Green Left Weekly.
For more information phone 9639-8622.

"Make Greed History"

Scottish Socialist Party EU Election Broadcast

Rudd puts warfare before welfare: A sad day for the people of the Illawarra

MEDIA RELEASE

May 12, 2009 - Illawarra Socialist Alliance has condemned the Rudd government’s plans to spend over $300 billion on defence projects over the next 20 years, as outlined in the May 2 defence white paper.

Illawarra Socialist Alliance convener, Chris Williams, said: 'Instead of committing to a multi-billion investment plan to reduce global warming – a very real threat – the Rudd government will spend hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on countering non-existent military threats and encouraging an arms build up in the region.

'The $20 million BlueScope contract is a complete sell out for the people of Wollongong , and not because it represents only one day’s work. The Port Kembla steelworks should be utilised for a massive program of green job creation, e.g. wind turbine production, not for making ‘warfare destroyers’. This is a huge slap in the face for voters who considered Rudd the anti-war candidate and one committed to act on climate change.

‘The difference between the expectations Rudd has raised and the actual proposals he’s made is huge. We must demand more of our government. What’s necessary in this time of crisis is real job creation – not one day’s work – that addresses environmental problems as well as the recession. Massive government investment in the production of renewable energies would be a great start.

‘The ALP government is putting warfare ahead of the welfare of our community and environment. The Socialist Alliance stands for the complete opposite and demands a change now', Williams concluded.