The emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself ISSN 1446-0165 No.70. Spring 2018 http://australia.workersliberty.org The right to strike and Changing the Rules By Bob Carnegie and Martin Thomas The campaign is a positive move; but not by The ACTU's new campaign to "Change the itself not sufficient. The more active unions Rules" indicts the fact that the "rules" of need to supplement it by a public campaign working life have shifted more and more for the right to strike. against workers over recent decades, even if The Australian industrial relations system is you take it into account the limited moves the exceptional in giving great weight and spread Rudd and Gillard federal governments made to official arbitration procedures, and between 2007 and 2013 to undo some of what the Howard coalition government had Inside this issue done. • The right to strike and Changing the Rules • Morrison and Dutton: jackals of the ruling class • What will it take to "Change the Rules”? • Living Wage for working women • RAFFWU Woolworths activist interview • Student workers getting organised • Financial services Royal Commission and FSU • Why Study Das Kapital • Book Reviews: The Internationalists; Rosa Luxemburg collection • Victorian Socialists – launch and candidate interviews restricting workers' right to take industrial demonising of unions was typical of action more, probably, than any other country broadcast media operators... Overall, which allows parliamentary elections, free interviewees (including non-members) were activity for opposition parties, and significant not unsympathetic to unions". media critical of the government. Why weren't they union members? The This exceptional system has not served most cited reasons were that they "don’t see Australian workers well. Union density has them [unions] doing all that much", or they fallen faster than in other countries, from feel they "don't know enough" about unions, 51% in the mid-70s to 15% on the latest or that unions are "invisible in the workplace" figures, 9% in the private sector, 7% among (bit.ly/geny-u). workers aged 20-24 and 4% among workers Those perceptions cannot be overcome aged 15-19. In October 2017, Vitor Gaspar, without unions winning, and being seen to the IMF's director of fiscal affairs, reported win (by more than aficionados of the small that as regards growth of income inequality print of Fair Work Commission decisions), since the 1980s, Australia is up there with the disputes. And to win disputes, unions need to leading few countries, the US, South Africa, take action. India, China, Spain and the UK (bit.ly/imf- Unions should sponsor a campaign, ineq). complementary to "Change the Rules", for Australian capitalism has done relatively the right to strike to be recognised by law as well, compared to other countries, since an individual right as basic as the right to free 2007. That should have given more space for speech, the right to hold meetings, and the the union movement to push for right to protest on the streets. It is so improvements. But workers are still going recognised in the constitution of France. backwards. The items in "Change the Rules" The general demand in the "Change the are mostly wishes for changes in government Rules" material that "Workers' rights to policy, to be mediated through the withdraw their labour must be aligned to ILO arbitration-heavy system of industrial [International Labour Organisation] relations. They are good and desirable. All standards" is not sufficient. experience shows that unions' ability to win The ILO is an international body originally such changes on any large scale depends on set up by the League of Nations in 1919, and the strength of union organisation and then adopted by the United Nations in 1946, activity, and not just on the desirability of the run on a 2:1:1 basis by representatives of changes. Without a regrowth of union governments, employers, and unions. The organisation and activity, all campaigns like ILO's own pamphlet on the ILO and the right "Change the Rules" will be pushed into to strike records that "the right to strike is not becoming increasingly plaintive pleas to the set out explicitly in ILO Conventions and good nature of Labor politicians. Recommendations" (bit.ly/ilo-rts). The very low union density rate among Various ILO meetings have deplored young people is not a product of those people various Australian government actions as not being flooded with right-wing ideologies or up to ILO standards, but there are no "ILO even of them fearing that union membership standards" to rely on. will get them victimised. A survey among young people found that they "considered Support for the right to strike does not mean that unions were portrayed [in the media] as thinking that strikes are a cure-all. It suggests associated with strikes and causing trouble. intelligent and judicious use of that right. However, interviewees suggested that the Workers' victories come most often from short, sharp, well-timed actions: long set- 2 piece disputes are most often won by the employers, who have deep pockets. Nor does Morrison and Dutton: support for the right to strike mean thinking jackals of the ruling class that strikes are the only form of industrial action. One of the outrageous features of the "The silent minority" - minority, yes, that's current Australian regime is that action which what he said - "are fed up with bodies like the would not even be "industrial action" in most Civil Liberties Council and the Refugee countries, like work-to-rule, can be outlawed. Action Collective, and certainly the The more active and campaign-minded dictatorship of the trade union movement". unions should be approached to sponsor a That was Peter Dutton in his maiden specific right-to-strike campaign speech, who on 24 August forced Malcolm complementary to the "Change the Rules" Turnbull to resign as Liberal Party leader. campaign, and to assemble funds sufficient to Dutton wanted rid of Malcolm Turnbull get office space and a minimal staff for it in because Turnbull, though solidly right-wing each state. on all the core economic issues, is a social The first task of the right-to-strike campaign liberal of the sort commonplace in most should be basic public outreach - meetings, richer capitalist countries. debates, petitions, street stalls, leafleting, In the final party room, Dutton failed to social-media promotion. become the new Liberal leader and prime The campaign should also seek minister. But the winner Scott Morrison, is endorsements, one by one, from Labor only a slightly more smoothed and polished politicians for its demand for a right-to-strike representation of the Liberal right. law. The unions sponsoring the campaign Dutton opposed same-sex marriage. He should use their votes in Labor conferences to boycotted the parliamentary apology to the push that demand, and press other unions to Stolen Generation. He opposes a republic. As do the same. a minister dealing with health and with As well as doing its basic public outreach immigration, he has been stridently right- work, the campaign should be set up on a wing even in Liberal terms. His politics are sufficiently "arm's length" basis that it can what you would expect from an ex-cop. organise "community assemblies" and such in Morrison is the son of a cop, rather than an support of industrial disputes while not ex-cop, and more polished in manner. But he falling foul of the law, at least as at present too opposed same-sex marriage. He too has interpreted. It should organise support for been an especially mean-spirited immigration unions and workers penalised, or threatened minister. He too tends to climate-change with penalties, for industrial action to defend scepticism. Unlike Dutton (as far as we their rights. know) he is a full-on religious devotee, a The aim is to raise the confidence of the member of a Pentecostalist sect. union movement - and of workers who are Compared to British Tories, German not unsympathetic to unions, but don't join Christian Democrats, or pre-Trump US because they "don't know" or they perceive Republicans, Australian conservative politics unions as "not doing all that much" - so that it is shifting to the aggressive right wing of that can coordinate diverse forms of social ruling-class spectrum. pressure into a push sufficient to revitalise The move is similar to that with the US union organisation and force a new Labor Republicans with Trump, or the French government to concede the right to strike. mainstream right (Les Republicains) with Laurent Wauquiez. It is internally generated, 3 rather than coming from the pressure on the mainstream right of maverick forces (Trump, What will it take to Change or Marine Le Pen's FN/RN in France: One the Rules? Nation is not in the same league). It offers hard-faced, illiberal, free-market By Martin Thomas and Bob Carnegie policies, with little of the demagogic social- In March 2018 the Australian Council of populist tone of Trump or the FN/RN or Trade Unions (ACTU) launched its Change Salvini in Italy. The drift is reflected not only The Rules campaign. It was made a feature of in the federal Parliament, but in the Brisbane's Labour Day and of rallies across conservative press, like The Australian. Australia around that time. There is, as of now, no economic crisis Union and pro-union activists welcomed the pushing the Australian ruling class to more ACTU's turn to campaigning. The rally and aggressive policies. The driving force here the delegates' meeting in Melbourne was seems to be a long-term truth: if the labour especially big.