During the past 20 years, our life at work has become more stressful, unsafe and unrewarding. Some of us are taking home more money, but often the price is double shifts, enforced overtime and less time for family and leisure. Others are working two or three jobs or worrying where the next work contract will come from.
Sixty per cent of Australians feel that workers are a lot less secure than 10 years ago. That's not surprising when we look at the facts. In 1971, 89% of us were in full-time jobs, now it's 69%. Thirty per cent of male workers are working more than 50 hours a week and more than half of these wish they could work less. And 1.2 million Australian workers feel they must do unpaid overtime.
In a lot of workplaces industry-wide safety standards have disappeared and industrial accidents are on the rise.
Women workers are losing out most in this retreat. The federal Coalition government has been pushing women out of the work force and increasing their dependence on welfare. It has deliberately raised the cost of child care (17.6% between September 2001 and September 2002 alone).
It has increased the tax burden on women with young children who return to work and tried to bribe women to stay at home. Those women who return to work mainly have part time jobs — 70% of part time jobs are done by women and 45% of women's jobs are part time, up from 36.5% in 1986.
The gap between men's and women's wages is widening: in the two years to May 2002 women's wages increased by $33 as against $58 for men. In the early 1980s, full-time pay for women was 86% of the average male wage: now it is 81%.
All this has gone along with the weakening of our unions. The rot started back in the 1980s when the Hawke ALP government's Accord gave the Australian Council of Trade Unions the job of destroying any unions that resisted the pay cuts of the day, unions like the Builders Labourers Federation and the air pilots' association.
Now the ACTU and the majority of union leaderships have given up any idea of tackling the Howard government's anti-union laws. And the boss's "right" to sack and "need" to be competitive is hardly ever questioned.
At the same time those unions that are still putting up a fight—like the National Tertiary Education Union and some branches of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, the Maritime Union of Australia, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and the Australian Education Union — are being specially targeted by a government that is determined to neutralise unionism once and for all.
There is an alternative. The Socialist Alliance says working people urgently need to rebuild militant, democratic unionism in this country. We are working with unionists and workers to resist the assault on pay, to stop speed-ups, reduce work stress and prevent victimisation and exploitation.
The Socialist Alliance will fight for a legal framework that strengthens the position of workers and unionists, repealing all anti-union laws and enacting a workplace bill of rights that supports workers organising to defend their jobs, pay and conditions.
If this is your struggle, then you should be a member of the Socialist Alliance. We are for the right of all unionists, and indeed, those who are in industries that have little union coverage, to organise to defend their conditions. The SA is working to unite with union activists in a range of unions across the country to better defend and extend hard-won rights. We stand 100% with militant trade unionists. We respect trade union militants like Craig Johnston and Chris Cain, the WA secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia.
As they say, "If you don't fight you lose".
[Ian Jamieson is a waterside worker and a Socialist Alliance candidate for the Senate election in Western Australia.]
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, June 9, 2004.
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