DP World dispute: Signs of a Fight Back as Wharfies Strike Nationally

Danny O.                            14 July 2019

Around 1,800 wharfies working at DP World terminals across Australia have gone on strike in defence of their jobs and conditions. The UAE-based multinational is one of the largest container terminal operators in the world, and the largest in Australia, operating four terminals around the country. 

The strike by members of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) is part of a struggle over a new Enterprise Bargaining Agreement (EBA). The legally protected national strike action started on Monday July 8 as 300 wharfies in Brisbane walked out for 48 hours. This was followed by a 4-day stoppage of 600 workers in Melbourne on Wednesday. A further 600 workers in Sydney struck on Thursday and Friday at the same time as hundreds of workers in Fremantle.

The well co-ordinated national strike by the workers and the MUA is the first major industrial action by unions since the ‘Change the Rules’ electoral campaign failed to elect an ALP government.

The pulse may be faint, but there are signs of life in Australia’s trade union movement yet.

Braving chilly high winds and rain on a wintery Friday morning in Melbourne, hundreds of unionists and community supporters gathered on the picket line in a fantastic show of solidarity with the striking workers. It’s a positive sign that the organised working class may be starting to gear up for a fight back against the coming attacks from the vehemently anti-union Coalition government and big business on workers’ rights and conditions.

As the ALP swings to the right and the anger of union members mounts over once again being used as foot soldiers for another dead-end electoral campaign, there are growing calls from workers for the trade union movement to get back to doing what unions are supposed to do best; fighting industrially to win higher wages and better conditions for members, and building unity and solidarity with workers in struggle.

And more struggle is on the cards in other major industries. In Melbourne, co-ordinated protected industrial action by employees of the city’s railway and tram operators is looking increasingly likely. Construction workers are also due to negotiate new EBAs in the coming months as well. All while staring down the introduction of the so-called Ensuring Integrity Bill, one of the most repressive anti-union laws ever proposed in Australia.

Whether the trade union movement has the leadership to do what needs to be done to win these coming battles for working people remains to be seen. But one thing is certain. They won’t be won by waiting around for another election in three years’ time! Workers will win nothing by relying on parliament and the ALP. Only by taking control of our own struggles, and relying on our collective strength – not just as workers in this or that industry or union – but as workers as a class, can we ever hope to achieve a turn around in the state of the union movement. That will require not voting to change the rules, but breaking them together.           

Workers Organising - A Strong Base for Winning an Independent, Socialist Australia

Ned K.   15 January 2019

In the struggle between capital and labour in Australia since 1788, the working class has overcome all sorts of obstacles put in its path by the ruling colonial and imperialist powers and their various layers of governments. Laws at state and federal levels have always been introduced by the ruling class to either weaken and divide workers' collective strength or confine resolution of workers' collective issues to the courts. When all else failed for the ruling class, they had no hesitation in using brute force to break workers’ solidarity and equally importantly, their organisations. De-registration of the Builders Labourers Federation is one example.

In the Howard Government years, and to this day, the ruling class continues to try and find ways to weaken and/or contain workers' collective strength and collective organisation.

However workers continue to find ways to struggle appropriate to their circumstances at a local level while also seeing the need to unite with all workers across Australia to struggle for issues with a common cause, including the cause for an Australia which is free from the stranglehold of transnational corporations which dominate every industry in every state and territory of the country.

It is this appreciation by workers that there is an identity of interests between their local issues and issues facing all workers in Australia that generates such widespread support for the ACTU's Change The Rules Campaign.

It is this appreciation by workers that they need to not only organise locally over local issues but also organise on a national and international scale that has led to thousands of workers over many decades supporting amalgamations of their unions and their unions’ participation in national campaigns on a wide variety of issues.

The ruling class do not like it when workers express class consciousness. This is why the ruling class tried to block the amalgamation of the CFMEU, Textile Workers Union and the MUA.

More amalgamations are in the wind, including unions that predominantly cover workers without recognised trades and with high turnover of labour. The new organisations formed as a result of such amalgamations have the potential for involving in an organised way hundreds of thousands of workers of different backgrounds in diverse industries.

Provided these new organisations are structured in an inclusive way that balances local, regional and national identity of workers, they will make a valuable contribution to a strong working class base to win an independent and socialist Australia.
 

Injustice within the Law means Resistance is always our Duty

Danny O.    10 January 2019

We are told that the law is impartial. That all stand equally before it, and that it arbitrates fairly and with justice. But it doesn’t. Our lived experiences show us that’s a lie.

It was the French poet and writer Anatole France who wrote the well-known words, “In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.” There is a fundamental truth in this quote that demonstrates the real nature of the law as we know it. In a class society like capitalism, the law exists for the benefit of the rich and ruling class while it punishes the poor and working classes all the while holding high the banner of “equality”.

Arising from this contradiction between the self-avowed ‘equality’ and ‘impartiality’ of the law and the reality of the inherent inequality of a class society in which that law is applied, there exists a concept of ‘injustice within the law’.

The Tolpuddle Martyrs

In 1937, ‘Doc’ H.V Evatt, then High Court judge who later went on to become leader of the ALP, penned the book Injustice within the Law detailing the case of the Dorsetshire labourers, also known as the Tolpuddle Martyrs.

In 1833, six agricultural labourers in the village of Tolpuddle in the county of Dorset in south-east England founded what was essentially a trade union to fight against the lowering of their wages. In doing so, the labourers swore an oath of allegiance to each other and their union. The following year they were sentenced to seven years penal transport as convicts to Australia.

The legal pretext for their sentencing was swearing a secret oath which was a violation of the obscure Unlawful Oaths Act 1791. Of course, their real “crime” was organising a union to fight for their interests, despite trade unions having technically been made legal ten years earlier.

A great popular movement arose in England in defense of the Tolpuddle Martyrs and against the injustice that had been done to them. A petition was circulated which received over 800,000 signatures and a mass demonstration was organised. The popular pressure forced the English government to pardon the labourers in 1836, just two years into their sentence. The case of the Tolpuddle Martyrs became a textbook example of ‘injustice within the law’, of how the law is twisted and manipulated to serve the interests of the ruling class and undermine the democratic rights of the people.

Modern times, but same old story

Examples of these ‘injustices within the law’ are plentiful. But they become increasingly obvious in times of economic and political crisis for the ruling class. In the Great Depression of the 1930s in Australia and elsewhere cases proliferated. The real “crime” of the workers and poor was organising and protesting against their starvation, unemployment, and hardship. The crimes they were technically charged with were offensive behaviour, hindering police, obstruction, causing a public nuisance etc. Repressive legislation was passed to hinder the activities of trade unions, and unsuccessful moves were made to outlaw the Communist Party, a staunch fighter for the interests of the workers and unemployed.

Today, at an increasing rate legislation is being passed in Australia that curtails our democratic rights. Some of these include laws that punish journalists and whistle-blowers who try to inform the people of what our government is really up to, laws that remove our rights to privacy in the name of “keeping us safe from terrorism”, and laws that prevent us from holding effective protests and making our voices heard as equal citizens of the country. As the economic crisis of capitalism drags on, and in time worsens, as social inequality deepens and the life of ordinary workers and people gets harder, all of these laws are waiting and available to be used against us to supress our ability to resist and fight back.

Australia already has some of the most draconian and repressive anti-union laws of any advanced economy in the world. But the most militant union and section of workers, the CFMEU and its members, are increasingly the subject of ‘injustice within the law’. The union’s officials are charged with trespassing, blackmail, and now even criminal cartel behaviour. Of course, their real “crime” in the eyes of the ruling class is effective union organising which infringes on the bosses’ profits.

To try and curb the example set by the construction union to the rest of the working class, the ruling class established a political attack dog in the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC), a government body designed specifically to target the CFMEU and its members that dare take a stand for the rights of workers.

Most recently, the ABCC has used its compulsive powers to force employers to hand over the personal details of construction workers around the country who attended ‘Change The Rules’ rallies late last year. Workers can now be pursued for taking “illegal industrial action”, which for construction workers can mean an individual fine of up to $42,000, more than three times than any other worker under the Fair Work Act. Equality before the law? Not if you’re a construction worker!

Obviously, all this is another good example of ‘injustice within the law’. Workers are threatened and fined for the crime of illegally striking, but their real “crime” is fighting for their democratic rights, for pay rises to keep their heads above the rising tide of the cost of living, and for daring to challenge the government’s repressive industrial laws that serve the profit margins of the big business ruling class so well.

The hypocrisy is rank! Politicians vote to give themselves massive pay rises year after year, bankers receive huge salaries and bonuses for exorbitantly charging customers (and dead people!), while the workers face almost insurmountable legal obstacles to even have their pay keep up with the cost of living, and in many cases to even be paid the measly legal minimum!

Changing the rules won’t change the Law

The ACTU’s campaign to ‘Change The Rules’ is a noble attempt to try alleviate the worst aspects of all this, and deserves our support. It’s immensely important to defend the democratic rights that workers have been able to win over hundreds of years of struggle and to fight to extend those rights to give the working class the best chance to organise and improve its conditions in the here and now.

But we should not fall into the trap of thinking that if the ‘Change The Rules’ campaign is able to win all of its demands that would somehow make the law and its courts and commissions ‘fair’ or ‘just’ or ‘independent’ or bring ‘equality’ between workers and employers. The nature of the law under capitalism would not change one iota. Because, under capitalism there can never be equality between unequals, between rich and poor, between oppressed and oppressor, between slave master and slave, between capital and labour.

There’s a well known saying that goes “When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.” When we are clear on the nature of the law and come to understand that it really serves the interests of the ruling class against the workers and common people, then from the stand point of the working class, it becomes clear that the law is always unjust and that resistance is always our duty.

And we can rest assured that as sure as night follows day, as the ruling class attacks on the living standards of the workers deepens and the repression of the people’s democratic rights increases, so will the people’s desire for struggle and resistance, like it has so many times before. So, the only question left to ask the workers of Australia and those who claim to represent them is, are you prepared to do your duty?

“Jobs You Can Count On” Campaign Narrative Can Unite Workers

Ned K.

 

The ACTU and two of its affiliates, United Voice and National Union of Workers all use 'Jobs You Can Count On" as a campaign narrative to unite workers in action.
 

As with the Your Rights At Work campaign there are those within the union movement who see the end goal being an ALP win in the next federal parliamentary election.

 

The "Jobs You Can Count On" narrative has been picked up by the ACTU to run alongside its "Change The Rules" campaign which aims to put enough pressure on a new ALP federal government (if elected) to restore "balance" between labor and capital in the industrial laws. While some changes to industrial laws will be of benefit to workers, such as industry wide collective agreement campaigns, abolishing the ABCC, better union organizer access to workers on the job through changes to Right of Entry laws, such changes will mean little unless working class organisation and collective action "on the ground" develops a life of its own independent of the parliamentary election cycles.

 

From this perspective, the "Jobs You Can Count On" has real potential to contribute to building and uniting workers across many different industries and sectors. Why is this so?

 

Asking workers the question "what does a job you can count on look like for you?" gets a wide range of responses. Many workers would when asked this question by union organizers give similar answers about a living wage, job security while others working in poorly organised (in a trade union sense) workplaces identify respect and fair treatment as key issues. Many workers in industry sectors that rely on government funding for their wages and conditions such as public hospitals, essential service workers and child care or aged care, identify staffing levels as well as income levels that recognise the link between quality of jobs with quality of services and/or care to the community.

 

"Jobs You Can Count On" campaign narrative also is applicable to temporary workers such as local students, overseas students and other visa workers working in jobs that they have no intention of staying in for long term employment. However for them "a job you can count on" is where the boss does not dare swindle them out of shift or weekend higher pay rates or who is forced to recognize that they have to balance work and study time.

 

So no matter what the worker's situation is, asking questions about "Jobs You Can Count On" can be the start of a conversation that can connect all workers' particular situations and issues to the need for workers to join together to win. Defining the "win" will vary depending on the issues raised but asking the right questions opens up the possibility to link a group of workers’ issues to a "bigger picture" than returning an ALP government to office.

 

The "Jobs You Can Count On" campaign narrative has the capacity to enable workers to take action together at many different levels and thereby experience their own collective power.

 

In so doing they reinforce Marx's summation of workers' daily struggles when he said words to the effect that now and again workers are successful but it is the growth of the labour movement that is the real success.
 

Eureka is a weapon for the people

Louisa L

When the Australian Building and Construction Commission banned the Eureka flag on building sites it launched a pallet of bricks onto its own feet.

Instead of repressing the flag, it had the opposite reaction. Suddenly the Eureka flag was flying on cranes across the country.

The ABCC realised they’d underestimated the power of the workers. Its inspectors would march onto sites to throw their weight around, and there it was, a silent ‘Up yours!’ to all their threats. 

They pretended the flags weren’t there. 

ABCC squeezes employers

The CFMEU refused to deal with them, so since its rebirth, the ABCC has put the squeeze on employers. 

Some corporations have a lot to lose. The biggest, like Business Council of Australia member Frasers, have few worries. Frasers is a developer that contracts out its construction work to companies including Probuild. Frasers’ watertight contracts ensure any delays by industrial action mean compensation from the construction company.

This is why Probuild copped abuse from ex-Industrial Relations Minister Michaelia Cash, for daring to tell her it didn’t want to pick a fight with its workers over the new construction Code.

Meriton, however, was barely affected by the ban because it doesn’t need government contracts. It almost exclusively develops and constructs houses and apartments, overwhelmingly for rental, and owns staggeringly large swathes of cities like Sydney. 

Targeting individual workers

The ban only applies to companies reliant on government contracts. Mid-level Watpac is one of these. A Eureka flag flying on any of Watpac’s sites, whether it was a government job or not, meant they were in breach, and risked losing contracts. So said the ABCC.

Previously Watpac could hardly keep up with demand, but construction of apartments is slowing.  The company is increasingly reliant on those government contracts. 

Watpac managers had maintained good relations with their workers. In a massive building boom, this is important. Stoppages and delays are poor advertisements for future contracts. On time means bigger profits. Besides, screwing workers is easier during busts when work is scarce.

The ABCC was targeting a Watpac worker, Denis McNamara, who was on the CFMEU’s NSW Committee of Management, so inspectors put pressure on Watpac management. Soon management told eight workers including Denis McNamara to take down Eureka flags. Every one refused. They knew they had the backing of their workmates right round the country.

Watpac lodged a dispute in Unfair Work Australia naming individual workers, rather than the CFMEU. The workers didn’t attend the hearings but worked as normal. It was lawyers at 30 paces. 

Targeting the imperialist ruling class

The Eureka flag is a dangerous weapon in the hands of the people. It embodies 160 years of struggle. It targets the imperialist ruling class. It has the potential to unify and clarify a multitude of smaller battles under one banner, Australian independence. 

As the struggle developed more and more people were learning this. Eureka flags, hard hats and t-shirts multiplied on building sites. The Queensland branch of the Australian Education Union issued Eureka stickers to its members and refused orders from the government to withdraw them. 

In mid May 120,000 workers on Melbourne streets put the nail in the dispute’s coffin. They had many grievances, including the flag ban. 

The ruling class wanted Eureka’s message taken out of this fiery mix.

Uniting the vast majority

In early June, Fair Work found in favour of the workers. The legal arguments summed up in the mainstream media are secondary to  the united refusal of workers to back down. The construction boom, although slowing, strengthened their hand. 

This doesn’t mean moves to crush unions will end. The state apparatus of police, courts, gaols and even the army have long been used against the people, when struggle gets too hot. 

On May Day in Sydney, CFMMEU delegate Luke Allen reflected this, “We’ve been fined millions and millions of dollars, even threatened with deregistration, and some of our leaders locked up, arrested, charged, facing gaol time just for doing their jobs.

“Branches have had their offices raided, staff terrorised, cars and home phones bugged, all in attempt to bring down the CFMMEU.”

He made it clear the fight would continue. 

A working class looking beyond its day to day skirmishes with the boss, to the multinational corporations that the state apparatus and parliaments serve, is a class that understands its true enemy. 

A working class that also arms the Australian people with Eureka’s message of anti-imperialist independence can unite the vast majority behind its lead. 

That’s the task.