BY PAUL OBOOHOV
Public servants are prime targets for the federal government. In the last decade 110,000 public sector jobs have been lost through cuts to funding, restructuring and the outsourcing and privatisation of government services (particularly of Telstra, the Commonwealth Employment Service and in information technology).
Salary (in real terms) and working conditions have deteriorated across the Australian Public Service because of agency bargaining, the introduction of individual contracts and the imposition of the GST (which impacts most on the lower-paid).
We are now facing an even-wider jobs disaster: the market testing of APS functions, with the eventual aim of outsourcing all of them. Centrelink appears to be facing privatisation and other departments (such as agriculture, fisheries and forestry) have already started outsourcing jobs.
Is the federal government the sole source of this agenda?
While the government is the one carrying all this out, the winners in this process are private corporations.
In the first instance, cuts made to public services give governments the fiscal room to lower taxation for corporations, such as in 1999 when it cut the corporate tax rate from 36% to 30%.
Privatisation and outsourcing are also of direct assistance to improving corporations' profits — they are a form of business welfare for the rich, minus any "mutual obligation".
The services outsourced are still essential to the functioning of government departments (such as personnel 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ and IT), which means that as long as the corporation holds the contract they will be paid for "providing" the outsourced service. If they cut corners (often by providing a worse service than existed before) they boost their profits, and those of their major shareholders.
As federal governments implement market testing and outsourcing of APS functions, the corporate world is beating a path to Canberra so they can benefit out of this "process".
All this is not so different from more famous examples of corporate exploitation. Government eagerness to help companies raise their profits has also been crucial to BHP's ability to get away with destroying the Fly River in western Papua New Guinea by dumping tailings from its Ok Tedi mine, for example, and to Nike's ability to get away with violations of international labour standards in its Indonesian factories. Public sector outsourcing follows this trend.
The privatisation of the Australian public sector is not a foregone conclusion, however. It can be fought against successfully; public sector jobs can be saved.
Workers, farmers and students have fought long and hard against the pro-business policies enforced on poor countries by the International Monetary Fund and Western investors, with no little success.
Now, in the rich, industrialised world too, there's a new movement on the rise which is struggling against corporate domination: it fought in Seattle in November 1999 against the World Trade Organisation, in Prague in September against the IMF and World Bank, and in Melbourne on September 11 against the World Economic Forum of big business chiefs.
We public servants should take a leaf out of this book.
On May 1 ("M1"), there will be a protest across the country, and around the world, outside the stock exchanges of major cities, the symbols of the big companies which benefit from the destruction of the public sector and from the policies of corporate globalisation which are impoverishing the majority of the world's population and destroying its environment.
If you are concerned about attacks on the Australian Public Service and your salary, conditions and superannuation, I urge you to join the strike against corporate tyranny on May 1 and attend the M1 protest.
[Paul Oboohov is a workplace delegate for the Community and Public Sector Union in the Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs and is a member of the Democratic Socialist Party.]