Women workers bear the brunt of SA attack
[This is the text of a speech by JANET GILES, South Australian president of the Australian Education Union, to the International Women's Day rally in Adelaide on March 13.]
International Women's Day commemorates the women garment workers' strike in New York of 1857, in which women went on strike to protest against low wages and poor working conditions.
It is ironic, therefore, that in Adelaide more than 100 years later, the state government intends to introduce an industrial relations bill which, if passed, will see the destruction of most of the gains made by the collective action of workers through their trade unions in that time.
In true macho, competitive style, Premier John Olsen's conservative government has created an industrial relations bill nastier than Jeff Kennett's in Victoria, Richard Court's in WA and even Peter Reith's in Canberra.
It attacks the hard-won conditions of women workers. It increases the power of the powerful over the powerless, and undermines the ability for workers to act collectively to gain strength and bargaining power.
Today, it is women who hold most of the part-time and casual jobs. The bill seeks to scrap unfair dismissal laws for these most vulnerable workers. If you are new in the job, a casual or work for a small business and you are sacked, you will no longer be able to argue against unfair dismissal through the Industrial Relations Commission.
The bill seeks to introduce compulsory junior rates into all industrial awards, which will mean a reduction in pay for many young workers.
Young workers should be paid the same amount for their work as any other worker. Junior rates should be abolished, not expanded. Junior rates create another underclass of workers and do nothing to increase employment. They only increase the profits of employers.
The new bill also seeks to introduce secret individual contracts. This would mean women workers have to bargain individually with their boss rather than rely on the protection of award conditions and rates of pay.
This measure ignores the power relationship between employers and employees. "Sign up or else lose your job" will be the attitude of many employers.
The government intends to strip basic conditions such as overtime, penalty rates for shift work, annual leave loading, allowances and public holidays.
The bill seeks to undermine the power of collective workers' action by preventing union officials from entering workplaces to recruit, organise and support workers.
As a union official, I know the most effective way to support and organise women in a workplace is to build a relationship. This relationship would be destroyed with the new bill.
Unions and community groups are organising to campaign against this bill and ensure it does not get through parliament. We ask that you come to the May Day march on May 1 as a strong show of public opposition to the bill. We ask that you contact your local MP, the Democrats and [independent MP] Nick Xenophon and let them know that you want them to vote against the bill.
If the government gets away with this change to the industrial laws, there will be freedom and flexibility for the employers but absolutely no fairness to workers.
We could be taken back 100 years to the days of the New York garment workers, when they were beaten back by police in violent struggle.
Those women symbolise what IWD is all about: when women stick together and work collectively, we are a force to be reckoned with.
In recent years, the things that women have struggled for over the years have been torn down as state and federal governments destroy our social fabric in pursuit of an ideological shift that replaces the notion of a shared responsibility for each other with that of everyone for themselves — from the goal of a compassionate culture to a competitive culture.
It was women who saw the need of child-care centres and established community-based services long before there was adequate funding. Women saw the desperate need for safe abortion services and helped each other get them. Women identified the need for refuge from domestic violence and established shelters. It was women who campaigned for decent public education, public health services and housing. The collective action of women put these things on the policy agenda, into law and won funding for them.
Unemployment for young women between the ages of 15 and 19 is at the crisis level and has got progressively worse with every recession since the 1960s. Aboriginal people in SA are in danger of losing their claims to land through changes to land rights laws proposed by the state government.
Women's and community services are losing their autonomy and collective management, and funding is continually being cut. Health, education and welfare services are being stripped of funding.
Unity and collective action have never been more crucial. We have been through hard times before. Women need to work together to develop new ways to link with all the people who have been savaged. We need to demand jobs, justice and democracy for all kick out the social vandals who are currently in government.
If we're talking "zero tolerance", let's talk about zero tolerance for social vandalism and zero tolerance for intolerance.
The women's movement is everywhere, and that is our strength. We don't need one leader to follow — we have many leaders, many activists and many ideas. Feminist are everywhere.
In another New York strike in 1912, women carried a banner which inspired the writing of a poem which later became a song. The banner said, "We want bread and roses too", and the last verse goes like this:
"As we come marching, marching we bring the greater days. The rising of the women means the rising of the race. No more the drudge and idler — 10 that toil where one reposes. But a sharing of life's glories."