The frustration of rank-and-file building workers who marched to the ALP national conference on July 31 was obvious. They demanded Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's Labor government honour its promise to abolish the Howard government-created Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC).
First, union officials called off the march. Then it was put on again at the last minute. But when the workers got to Darling Harbour, they were shepherded away from the ALP conference site to a hall around the corner.
Then they were told by Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) president Sharan Burrow and Unions NSW secretary Mark Lennon to "celebrate" the trade union movement and the Your Rights At Work campaign, which defeated the former Howard government's anti-union laws.
Burrow also tried to frighten workers with the prospect of thousands of job losses from the global recession. The implication was: you better not make too much fuss about your rights now — just worry about keeping your job.
But the workers weren't buying it. They kept up the chants against the ABCC laws and booed at the image of former ACTU secretary Greg Combet (now a minister for defence personnel and the "Minister Assisting the Minister for Climate Change" in the Rudd cabinet).
One building worker brandished a photoshopped image of deputy PM and workplace relations minister Julia Gillard as Margaret "Thatchard".
Burrow and Lennon were decidedly uneasy.
And so they should be. The next day, the unions represented at the ALP conference supported a motion on the ABCC that allowed its Gestapo-like powers of coercion to be transferred to a special division of Fair Work Australia.
This is even though the motion also said: "Labor understands that coercive investigation powers impinge upon people's civil liberties and that their use should be limited to circumstances where these powers should have a continuing role in the enforcement of workplace laws."
A day before the ALP conference began, the federal court imposed penalties totaling $15,000 on the Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union (CFMEU) official Noel Washington. He was fined on July 29 for holding a stop-work meeting to discuss health and safety concerns on a Melbourne building site — illegal under Australia's industrial laws.
On August 11, South Australian building worker Ark Tribe was due in court to face a possible six month jail term for refusing to speak to the ABCC.
On July 28, Tribe tried to ask Rudd a question during a community cabinet meeting in Elizabeth in Adelaide's north. He was the only one standing up in the hall with his hand raised. But somehow, Arkstribe.blogspot.com reported, Rudd couldn't see him.
What was the question Tribe wanted to ask?
"Why is it that, as recently demonstrated by Mr Turnbull, he, like most other Australians, can exercise their right to remain silent, yet I as an Australian construction worker who only demands the same right, find myself in a situation where your government is trying to imprison me for six months?
"All I want, Mr Prime Minister, is a fair suck of the sauce bottle mate."
Before the march on the ALP conference, at a meeting of delegates of the NSW CFMEU construction division, one delegate got up and said the obvious: the ALP was in no way the workers' party and that workers needed to build a new party of their own. He was strongly cheered.
It was also clear that most of the rank-and-file prison workers, who rallied in Sydney on August 6 against the planned privatisation of Parklea prison by the NSW Labor government, had given up on the ALP.
They reserved their strongest cheers for left-wing Greens state parliamentarian Sylvia Hale, who has been a regular visitor at the 100 day-long picket outside Premier Nathan Rees' electorate office.
The union officials had to bring Hale forward on the speaking list when the workers kept chanting: "Bring on Sylvia! Bring on Sylvia!" It showed once again that rank-and-file trade unionists in struggle know they need a political alternative to Labor.
Meanwhile, most of the trade union leaders are still bogged down doing dirty deals in the ALP — even though Labor government after Labor government keeps proving that it is a party for big business.
At the same time, the ALP weakens the very unions that donate millions of dollars to it every year.
The challenge for all of us on the left is to demonstrate not only that it is necessary to build a political alternative to the ALP, but that it is possible too.