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

'IR is the make or Break Issue'

Brian Boyd, VTHC Secretary, February 2008
Over the summer break some media commentators tried to sneak in a little rewriting of recent history with respect to the 2007 Federal election.  “Labor – and the union movement – certainly campaigned hard against WorkChoices and vowed to get rid of it”.  (AFR 11/1/08).

While it is true that the 2005-06 WorkChoices legislation was the latest manifestation of John Howard’s IR reactionary decade long industrial ‘revolution’, it wasn’t the sole aspect of the union movement’s determined  political campaign.

The union movement has campaigned ceaselessly since 1996 against both the detail and the ideological thrust of all of John Howard’s IR Laws.

It didn’t take long for the major employer associations via certain Liberal Party, now Opposition spokespersons, to try to limit the damage of the pre-November 24th 2007 anti-IR campaign by claiming that “the Coalition’s IR reforms between 1996 and 2005” should be defended as the election was only about WorkChoices.  This cynical push should and must be nipped in the bud very quickly.

The union movement must represent its members and working people in general vigorously and never concede negative policies and bad laws just because of the electoral cycle.

Upcoming preliminary legislation relating to the abolition of AWA’s and award modernisation is actually dealing with matters pre-WorkChoices.  Some modifications occurred under WorkChoices but the evils of AWA’s for example was started long ago by Howard.

But just as important is the acummulative raft of IR laws, regulations, codes and related policies that have compounded over the years to severely restrict ‘rights at work’ across the board.

AWA’s represent one aspect of a range of draconian measures that restrict basic collective bargaining rights, as defined by the ILO conventions.

It is one thing for the incoming federal government to say it will consult widely with all relevant stakeholders, especially business.

However, it should be well remembered that when Howard won the October 2004 federal election, he conducted over the December/January 04-05 summer period a summit of major employer bodies and their legal represntatives only in order to fast track the drafting of the WorkChoices legislation.  They and the bureaucrats came up with more than 1000 pages of anti-union regulations.

No niceties of across-the-board consultation then.

Interestingly the right-wing think-tanks condemned the process as it all added to red-tape confronting business.  These purists couldn’t see that the key historic task of WorkChoices (added to other IR laws) was to eliminate the ability once and for all of workers to freely organise collectively via unions.  If a raft of bureaucratic, heavy handed, even cumbersome laws, were needed first, then so be it, according to the class warrior John Howard and the employer architects.

The IR Laws, created between 1996-2004 were not working fast enough.  The 1998 waterfront dispute for example didn’t deliver a body blow, in fact it had galvanised union solidarity.

The details of the Rudd / Gillard upcoming IR legislation packages in 2008 need to be scrutinised carefully.  Already employers are acting as if they know the results!  Worse, it is what they are doing in the meantime.  Many employers are feeling comfortably enough to continue to exploit Howard’s IR legacy still in place.

Telstra’s push to spread AWA’s in the current hiatus phase is cause for deep concern.  19,000 Telstra workers are to be contacted in order to check if there was any “pressure” to sign AWA’s now and in the past.  Similarly, the recent dispute in Darwin involving a British ship ‘Triton’ and the sailing of a union crew, illustrates the mood for change is being bypassed.
 
It is a time to monitor things closely and act to defend our rights more than ever.

 


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