Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly's Bronwyn Jennings spoke to Geelong Trades Hall secretary Tim Gooden about the campaign to defeat the federal Coalition government's proposed changes to industrial relations laws.
Can the new IR laws be defeated?
Yes. They may pass through the Senate and some employers will try to implement them, but where workers and their unions are organised well, they will be able to oppose any changes that could adversely affect them. The recent rallies showed that workers are concerned and prepared to fight — so much so that even [PM John] Howard had to get off his banana chair and respond in the media.
What is Geelong Trades Hall doing?
We are disseminating information and doing as much education and media work as we can. Trades Hall hosted a dinner/conference last week for women trade unionists and the Ford workers women's committee is organising leaflet drops at all the weekend markets. We have an all-unions delegate/activist meeting on August 17. It is critical that all the delegates and activists are involved in the campaign if we are to sustain the momentum. Currently we are waiting for the ACTU to set a date for a national day of action.
We are going to rally outside the local Liberal office and we are identifying bosses who are forcing workers onto AWAs [individual contracts], so we can expose their businesses to some public scrutiny. We're also doing the normal fundraisers and other activities. Just recently a whole heap of musos came up to me with an idea to hold a rock concert and to write a song for the campaign.
We have purchased some new picket-line kits, as we call them, with money that was raised from the last rally, and they will be launched in September at an all-delegates' meeting. We'll also be beginning extra training for delegates and activists on how to run pickets.
This may sound a bit basic, but at the end of the day the government may have unjust laws in place, but whether bosses are prepared to implement them and sustain them in the face of ongoing industrial action is another matter. I don't think that bosses want a long industrial campaign that they can't win, but if they try to implement the proposed changes then that is what they will get and that is what we are preparing for. Workers didn't start this fight and definitely did not vote for it, but we sure as hell can finish it.
How important is it to include the community in the campaign?
This is very important, not just for public opinion and the polls, but because the union's support base is in the community. Especially when the going gets tough, it is the community and other unionists that provide the moral, financial, logistical and human resources to win the campaign. One of the best recent examples of this was the 1998 maritime dispute.
I think the ACTU media ads are working well and there are plans for letterboxing, doorknocking and national petitions. These are important, but we must not use this work solely to mobilise workers around getting another government elected and leave it at that. Just as some say that rallies alone won't win a campaign, neither will a community campaign win on its own.
If employers think that the campaign is focused just around that, then they will be free to implement the laws and workers will get demoralised and feel that we have lost. Bosses are happy for us to lobby and letterbox all we like; it's the industrial stuff they're scared of. What bosses fear most is a union movement with a clear set of demands that they put on any government — Labor or Liberal — and on any boss. Demands they are prepared to fight for and withdraw labour for. This is what we must prepare for. It is what the union movement does best; it is how our mothers and fathers won our workers' rights and it is how we will keep them.
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, August 3, 2005.
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