En Passant

It is all about priorities, and making sure that bosses don’t rip off their workers isn’t a priority for the Abbott government in Australia. Destroying the CMFEU, one of the few unions that fights to defend its members, is. If the government can do that it makes the climate even better to drive down wages and cut conditions in other industries across Australia. 7-Eleven is a microcosm of Australia’s industrial relations. What Abbott and his hired anti-CFMEU puppets in the Fair Work industry want is a cowered and compliant building workforce a la 7-Eleven. They want workers to work longer for less, just like the 7-Eleven bosses have been doing, with the same result – more profit for the bosses.

The only protection we have from the Daniel Grollos of the world, and their contempt for our safety and our rights, is a strong union that is independent from multi-millionaires and their goons – the issue at the heart of the Grocon dispute. And we’ve shown in spades that, if we’re given a fighting lead, we’re prepared to do what it takes to defend it.

And of course, there’s the most basic fact. The fact that infuriates the rich and the powerful, and that drives their bought and sold apologists in the media into a frenzy. That is, as we demonstrated in the streets of Melbourne on Tuesday, we have the power to fight and win.

These are Julia Gillard’s laws which allow, encourage and enforce this state brutality – court orders, police, capsicum spray, horses, and now possibly fines and jail.

These are Julia Gillard’s laws which allow, encourage and enforce this state brutality – court orders, police, pepper spray, horses, and now possibly fines and jail.
The task at the moment is to support the Grocon Workers. If you are in Melbourne and you can, get down to the picket. Victory to the Grocon workers.

Given the overwhelming rejection of WorkChoices in 2007 and the fear it still engenders, Tony Abbott cannot come out publicly in support of a return to this industrial relations ‘Golden Age’. So he hides behind weasel words about limiting union control and militancy – militancy when strike days are at historic lows! – and restoring industrial relations ‘balance’.

This is code for giving even more power to the bosses.

This is not a reason for defending Labor’s WorkChoices Lite. The alternative is to take industrial action to defend and extend jobs, wages and conditions. No to a return to WorkChoices. No to Fair Work which is WorkChoices Lite. Yes to the right to strike. Victory to the building union in its fight against Grocon.

With enough determination and support the Toll Holdings workers can win and show the rest of the workforce that strong industrial action supported by other workers and the community can win even in the face of the power of big companies and Labor’s rotten industrial laws.

The threat of contempt action against the nurses’ union is an assault not only on nurses but on every single worker in Australia, and our already very restricted right to strike. It is happening under Gillard Labor’s anti-worker ‘Fair Work’ Act. The trade union movement has the historic responsibility and opportunity to defend nurses and turn the tide in the one sided 30 year class war of the bosses against us by fighting back and defending the right to strike. When they jail a nurse for striking it’s a rich pig’s country still. Hands off our nurses, Baillieu and Gillard.

The nurses’ fight is our fight. Victory to Victorian nurses.

Industrial action, especially strike action, has the potential to win real gains for workers, to defend jobs and to help rebuild unions. The way to reform industrial relations in Australia is to make the draconian anti-strike and other rotten provisions of Labor’s Fair Work Act a dead letter by concerted strike action challenging the rule of the bosses.

QANTAS workers could walk off the job tonight, and picket to stop any supplies or personnel getting in or out. That way, like the magnificent Fair Work Australia and government defying Victorian nurses, they might have a chance of winning.

Labor’s Fair Work Act is much like Howard’s hated WorkChoices. That’s why Tony Abbott says he can live with it.