Victorian Trades Hall Council. The voice of Victorian workers since 1856.Victorian Trades Hall Council. The voice of Victorian workers since 1856.

A LOT MORE TO DO

By Brian Boyd, VTHC Secretary, 20 March 2008

AWA’s have been formally scrapped by the federal government.   This is good news.   But many employers have been trying to register thousands of AWA’s over the last five months.   Recent figures show there are nearly 140,000 AWA’s backlogged in the system.   This shows a clear contempt by many employers for the election result last year.   They have felt comfortable enough to do this because of the so called ‘even handed’ rhetoric of Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd.

 

The VTHC is committed to an ongoing campaign that will see the complete scrapping of the I.R. laws of the Howard era.

 

This task will be no mean feat.   Last year’s federal election result was a great victory for the trade union movement’s successful ‘Your Rights@Work’ campaign.   In particular, the mass mobilisations of trade unionists and our community allies were historic and effective.

 

Now that Howard is out of power, there are great expectations about ending his draconian legacy of I.R. laws.   We are told the process is slow and complex.   There is also an emerging view in some quarters that workers should now become ‘spectators’, not ongoing ‘participants’ in the political process of creating new, fairer, decent I.R. laws.

 

This view should not gain currency.   It would be very dangerous for the organised labour movement to not maintain an activist, overt campaigning strategy.

 

Current national ALP policy on new I.R. laws is, in a number of aspects, not consistent with trade union policy.   Workers’ rights, collective bargaining rights, protection of job delegates and health and safety delegates, the right to take industrial action, the right of entry of union representatives into workplaces, are just some of the issues not guaranteed as the federal government moves to draft up the substantive I.R. bill later this year.

 

Be vigilant!


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