Their struggle is our struggle
Every night for the last week, the TV news has featured footage of hundreds of burly men in overalls and work boots standing toe to toe with (mostly male) police and shouting abuse at bus loads of non-union labour as they cross the wharf-side picket lines.
For some feminists, such images epitomise the word "machismo" and tell a story that seems to have little to do with their own or other women's experiences, values and needs.
Beneath the macho images and the noticeable dearth of women on the picket lines, however, is the fact that the Maritime Union of Australia's battle against Patrick Stevedores, the National Farmers Federation and the Howard government to stop the de-unionisation of waterside work in Australia is a battle very much in the interests of women.
It's not just that most of the 1400 maritime workers who were sacked without notice by Patrick on April 8 have partners who will suffer greatly as a result of the wharfies' relegation to the unemployment scrap heap — although that is in itself a huge injustice.
It's that these men's struggle is, more than any for a decade, a struggle to defend the right of all working people to organise themselves to defend their own interests. Whether the wharfies win or lose will have a profound impact on the lives of the majority of women in this country, both in the short and longer term.
Each new revelation about how well planned and well funded the attack on the Maritime Union is, and how extensively top politicians and government bureaucrats are involved, underlines just how high the stakes are in this dispute.
The MUA is one of only a few unions in this country with the economic power and political will to seriously hurt any government or employer that attempts to seriously hurt working people.
The bosses are clear — and we must be equally clear — that if they are able to weaken or destroy the MUA, they will have struck a huge blow against the ability of all workers to defend and extend their right to secure, healthy, well-paid employment and decent living conditions.
With the strongest of trade unions crippled, employers and their agents in parliament will be free to ratchet up corporate profits by lowering wages, extending working hours or employing people "on call", withdrawing maternity leave, sick leave, health and safety provisions and holiday pay, and sacking people at will for any reason. The disaster this would mean for women should not be underestimated.
Australia has the most sex-segregated work force of all OECD countries. Women are concentrated in menial, insecure, part-time and casualised jobs and, on average, still earn only 67% of the average male wage; in 1995 that gap began to grow for the first time since the equal pay campaigns of the early 1970s.
In 1996, only 28% of women workers were unionised, compared to 34% of men. Without the minimal protection provided by unionisation, awards and the ability to withdraw their labour without fear of losing their jobs, women workers will continue to be the first to be sacrificed on the altar of business "competitiveness" and profitability.
Even to begin to turn this situation around, women workers need stronger, more militant trade unions where they work. They also need strong, class-conscious unions in all other sectors that will give solidarity to their sisters' struggles for equal employment opportunities, working conditions and rates of pay.
The current efforts to destroy the MUA are aimed at destroying the potential for such a movement.
The Maritime Union's struggle is our struggle; with the support of women around the country, it can be won. Let's change the gender balance on the picket lines and show this anti-worker, anti-woman government that women will not be refused the right to unionise, will not be pushed back into the kitchens or the sweatshops, but will fight as equals alongside all those who fight for justice.
By Lisa Macdonald