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By Peter Boyle With the Liberal-Nationals now in government federally and in all states but NSW, we can expect an acceleration in the attack on the rights and living standards of the great majority. Now that the election has been won, the Coalition no longer has to pretend to have become "moderate". The Howard government comes to office vowing to replace the unfair dismissal laws, cut unions out of wage bargaining, slash welfare and further axe public sector jobs. Under the guise of "family assistance", it intends to drive large numbers of women back into the home, to serve as replacements for an abandoned social welfare infrastructure. John Howard has promised $6.3 billion of spending cuts over three years, but may argue for bigger cuts if a large running deficit is "discovered" in the budget. The Keating government refused to disclose the Treasury's projections during the election campaign, but it's an open secret that a surplus which was forecast at the time of the last budget is now a deficit. A large budget deficit will also be used to justify the Coalition's privatisation plans, including the threat to hold even its minimal policy on the environment hostage to the sale of one-third of Telstra. There will be increasingly open slather for uranium mining and destruction of old-growth forests. The Coalition has signalled that it will start its attacks by picking on the most defenceless sectors, the unemployed and other welfare recipients. Unemployed migrants will be particularly targeted.

Awards

The attacks on the unemployed will also help prepare its broader assault on the workers' movement. The more desperate the unemployed are, the more they can be forced into accepting non-unionised and low-paid jobs. Once Howard brings in his new individual contracts system, workers will find themselves with even less bargaining power. If all new workers and workers changing jobs drop out of the award system, as is planned, awards will soon cover only a minority of workers. That could then become the pretext for abandoning them altogether. Howard has promised that workers accepting new individual or workplace employment agreements won't be paid less than award wages. The promise is worthless because there is — deliberately — no practicable way to enforce it. An Australian National University study of employment contracts negotiated under Kennett's deregulated system in Victoria has found that workers made more concessions than gains. Two-thirds of the contracts studied made workers accept shifts of more than 12 hours a day on ordinary rates. Penalty rates were reduced in 37% of contracts and totally eliminated in 35%. Sick leave was cut in most cases, and only 19% provided for pay increases. First-time employees were particularly disadvantaged. Howard's plans to further water down the unfair dismissal laws (already amended by Labor in January) will tip the balance further in the bosses' favour. Employers' claims that the law was unfair to them were dismissed by Justice Murray Wilcox, the chief justice of the Industrial Relations Court of Australia.

Union movement

If there is to be a successful fight back against Howard's attacks, the union movement will have to break from its conservative traditions and mount a broad and democratic movement against all the cuts. For a start, it will have to act to defend the rights of unemployed workers, pensioners and other welfare recipients — something it hasn't done for a long time. An attack on this sector is clearly an attack on all workers' rights and conditions. If the union movement does not combine defence of the immediate rights and interests of union members with building a broader defence of community rights, it will play into the hands of the Howard government. Already we have seen Howard preparing to use an attack on unions on the waterfront to spearhead his assault on workers' rights. Under Labor, waterfront unions traded off thousands of jobs for relatively large pay increases for the remaining work force. This now allows the Coalition to paint a picture of waterfront workers as privileged and overpaid. The union movement has been seriously weakened during the 13 years of Labor government. The unionisation rate has dropped from 49.2% in 1982 to 35% in 1994. The great majority of union officials now accept the profits-first logic of enterprise bargaining. Workers are poorly organised, and most have no experience of militant struggle. This is why employers and Liberals alike could dismiss ACTU head Bill Kelty's pre-election threats as mere bluster. Therefore, a campaign to democratically reform and rebuild the union movement will be an essential part of resistance to the Coalition's attacks. The bosses are baying for blood, but militant, democratic and independent trade union and community movements can stop them getting their way.
[Editorial: No mandates.]