Graham Matthews
"We can win this", Tim Gooden, secretary of the Geelong and Region Trades Hall Council, told 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, referring to the campaign against Work Choices. "We've always had bad laws and history shows we can win if we take high-profile action as part of our campaign."
Gooden and the GTHC have been at the forefront of the campaign against Work Choices. On June 30, 2005, 10,000 workers mobilised in Geelong against Work Choices, closing down the city. On November 15, that number grew to around 30,000, and a meeting of Geelong union delegates on March 1 unanimously called on the ACTU to organise national strike action the day Work Choices was enacted.
While supporting the ACTU's campaign against Work Choices, Gooden felt that it has been too focused on getting Labor re-elected in 2007. "The bosses are more than happy for us to stand outside the footy and distribute leaflets", Gooden said. "What also needs to happen is a nationally coordinated industrial campaign against bosses who attempt to implement Work Choices. That requires bigger and more frequent mobilisations."
He added: "But the campaign needs to be the whole bag — individual wildcat actions, building to larger protests, building up to massive ones. We also need rolling strike days in different industries, which build up to a national strike day."
Gooden dismissed concerns by some ACTU officials that an industrial campaign might alienate the public. "Not if the groundwork is done in the community and union sectors", he argued. "Some ACTU officials are only concerned with the next federal election and they're coming to the conclusion that industrial action will undermine getting Labor into government. That's their contradiction, because it's only going to be a well-organised political and industrial campaign that will get federal Labor into government, and force the bosses back."
"France was a good example of mass industrial action that forced the government to concede", Gooden continued. "The lesson [from France] is that laws can be changed. We've done the same here ... for instance, there were laws against four weeks' annual leave and we changed that.
"Whether we have the political leadership to win this campaign is another question, and is shaping up as a debate in the workers' movement now." Workers won't continue to mobilise in great numbers if they sense that there is no thought-out strategy to defeat Howard other than at the ballot box, Gooden said.
"That would kill the campaign, just as it did in the New Zealand campaign against the Employment Contracts Act in 1991. There, anti-worker laws similar to Work Choices were used by the bosses to decimate the union movement, despite demonstrations being called by the Council of Trade Unions."
"The same thing happened under Kennett in Victoria", Gooden said. "There were a couple of big mobilisations, but not enough, and the main message to workers at each was 'change your vote at the next election'. That's why the national mobilisations need to be part of a national campaign of strike actions, protests and blockades.
"All this is illegal, but it has been for some time now and the union movement is going to have to deal with that in order to stop any government or employer who tries to jail or fine people.
"This is the only way to make the bosses change. If they think they're going to suffer, they'll back off.
"Given that the state will respond and unionists will go to jail, the action needs to be deliberate and planned. And that's what the trade union movement isn't discussing, because everything has been too focused around Labor saving the day at the next election."
Gooden, a member of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, joined a protest on June 5 against the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC): that managed to close down an information session it was holding in Geelong. "We've got to let more people know about the powers of the ABCC, its powers to compel witnesses to appear before it or face six months' jail and its ability to deny the right to silence", he said.
Gooden, who is also a member of the Socialist Alliance, encouraged joint community-union demonstrations against the ABCC's attack on civil rights. "Everyone, not just construction workers, needs to be concerned about this. There's nothing preventing the ABCC from using its powers against all workers — something that has already begun to happen through Work Choices.
"Pretty much every struggle on a building site is now deemed to be illegal", Gooden explained. "If you stop work to expose a dangerous practice, workers face up to $20,000 in fines and the union faces a $120,000 fine.
"The ABCC is ringing workers up at night, at home. It is dragging our delegates through four-hour secret interrogations. As a result, workers are becoming reluctant to raise safety concerns, and if that continues, someone could be killed. If we can't maintain common agreement, the employers will hire people on different pay rates, and over time the pay rate across the industry will fall."
Gooden has this message to workers rallying on June 28: "Workers should be demanding from their union leaders definite plans of action that will up the ante against employers and the federal government. We defeated [former] Liberal PM Malcolm Fraser and we stopped [former] Liberal leader John Hewson's so-called fight-back attack on unions. We won a lot of concessions from [former] PM Robert Menzies, one of the biggest haters of unions in history.
"Workers still have the ability to carry out such campaigns, providing there's the leadership and political will. We shouldn't be scared, and the current union leadership shouldn't underestimate our ability to win our demands."
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, June 28, 2006.
Visit the