COMMENT
BY TIM GOODEN
GEELONG — As a Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union steward and activist, I am concerned with the decision by the CFMEU and the Victorian Trades Hall Council (VTHC) to become so identified with a “Vote 1 Labor” campaign for the November 30 Victorian election.
Certainly, a Liberal government would be a disaster for working people.
Such a government would link up with the federal Coalition government and
the bosses to make life more difficult for trade union militants.
The VTHC's solution was to fall in behind the Labor Party and organise workers to letterbox and staff polling booths for the ALP in marginal seats. The VTHC produced thousands of glossy leaflets calling for a vote for the ALP. It even erected a huge banner from the Trades Hall that only called for a vote for the ALP.
But the lessons of history should not be ignored. Labor governments — at both state and federal levels — carried out the attacks on the Builders Labourers Federation in the late 1980s. At the time, the ALP used cops against building workers. We shouldn't think it would not use them against building workers again.
The union movement is right to prefer a Labor government to a Liberal government. Labor is a lesser evil. But the reelection of Labor is no guarantee that life will be any easier on the picket line.
When Premier Steve Bracks' ALP government ousted Jeff Kennett's Coalition government, workers throughout Victoria had high hopes that it would reverse Kennett's cuts to public services and attacks on the rights of workers. While Bracks has restored some money to public services, he has gone nowhere near restoring all of the funds slashed from the ambulance service, schools, hospitals and other essential services.
Even in relation to workers' compensation, Bracks may have restored the right of workers to sue their employers under common law, but he has not reversed all Kennett's attacks on WorkCover.
Bracks' government has sided with the employers against those unions that uncompromisingly defend their members. One of many examples is Bracks' intervention in the internal workings of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union by writing to AMWU national secretary Doug Cameron to demand action be taken against the elected leadership of the Victorian branch.
Workers need a genuine pro-worker alternative to the ALP. In the November 30 Victorian election, there were two organisations that provided a clear set of progressive, pro-worker policies: the Socialist Alliance and the Greens.
The VTHC should have called on workers to give their first preferences to these organisations. Not only that, but the trade unions should have encouraged rank and file workers to actively campaign for these groups as a step towards constructing the much-needed alternative.
The VTHC has made a mistake in calling for a number 1 vote for Labor. It reinforced the bankrupt two-capitalist-party system at a time when so many workers are looking for a working-class alternative. How are workers going to get a voice if their leaders are still wedded to the myth that the ALP will look after them?
Working people need a party that genuinely represents their interests. If the trade union movement is to remain relevant it will have to abandon its reliance on the pro-capitalist ALP and look to develop militancy in politics, just as it does on the shop floor.
[Tim Gooden is a CFMEU shop steward and secretary of the Geelong branch of the Democratic Socialist Party.]
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, December 4, 2002.
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