Socialist Party Australia - Latest industrial news from SP

National Teachers Strike...Adelaide bus workers...TWU/Qantas dispute...Sutton charged by rank and filer...CFMEU preparing for a big fight...

Teachers stand up to Labor bosses
By a Perth State school teacher
100,000 teachers walked out of schools in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia on 17th of September.
This is the first time there has been joint action by the Australian Education Union (AEU) in its history and one of the very first time a union has taken strike action Australia-wide. Huge rallies thundered home the message to State Labor Governments: Save State Education standards! Over the last 20 years teachers’ salaries have fallen by up to 30% behind other professions, while the work load has vastly increased.
The average age of teachers is in the mid 40s because young people are no longer attracted to teaching with such high work loads and starting on as little as $37,000 a year after five years at university.

Teacher shortage
30% of teachers in their first five years are leaving the profession. This means that by 2005 there will be a critical shortage of teachers with schools having to close on selective days.
15,000 rallied in Sydney outside State Parliament. 8,000 rallied at Perth’s Subiaco Oval. Victorian teachers marched from Melbourne Park to Treasury Place to protest.

Strikes about more than money
These strikes are not just about pay and conditions as important as these issues are. The strike action is about saving the education system.
For example, in the UK education unions caved to government cuts year after year and schools are now in crisis. Teachers are leaving in droves, workloads are at critical levels and many schools have to close on Fridays due to the shortage of teachers.
In contrast, Canadian teachers unions fought long and hard for better pay and conditions even striking for five weeks. Now Canadians have to fight long and hard to get into teaching, pay is the envy of the world and workloads so good they allow teachers do what they are paid to do which is to teach.
The AEU is now at that crisis point. If they crumble our schools will be as they are in the UK, run down understaffed and in an absolute mess. Alternatively we can fight with a militant program to win huge gains.
Every State government is now in control of the ALP but the irony is that they are offering less than did the WA Liberal Government four years ago!
The AEU has to wake up to the fact that the ALP is now not a party supporting unions, education, teachers or students. They are more concerned with balancing the books.

Labor offers less than Liberals
In fact the reason teachers in all three States are being offered 3% or less per year is that all three State Treasurers got together in August and agreed to offer only 3%. The AEU is asking for up to 10% a year to start to catch up on the losses they have experienced over the years.
In some of the most militant teacher union branches in WA, calls are being mooted that if the union officials and Executive crumble on this issue they will be asked to resign and new elections take place to reflect the mood of teachers. At the last time a bargaining Log of Claims was presented, the WA union had the State government over a barrel with the pending State election.
The excuse was that if the unions are taken to arbitration then no industrial action could take place. However the AEU in WA now have a more campaigning mode.
The union will launch a political campaign right up to the State election.

AEU needs to go further
This is an improvement, but it needs to go further. Teaching unions should challenge the ALP by standing teachers against the ALP in critical seats including the Minister for Education and the Premier.
These teachers MPs should stand on an average wage and be accountable to the union movement and the community not the powerful and wealthy. This indeed could mark the beginning of a new workers’ party.
The ALP is now a bosses’ party—far more interested in looking after private education and the top end of town than teachers, students or the community.
There is a new militancy in the teachers union. At the WA rally, teachers voted for more industrial action, 8,000 to zero! Let’s ensure our union stands strong in the face of cost-cutting governments.
The teachers’ fight is also the fight for everyone interested in a decent public education system.

Adelaide bus workers strike back
By Rob Frost, Busdriver
How would it be possible to earn $13.36 per hour, yet take home $700 each week? Easy - be a busdriver and work 6 twelve-hour days.
In an industry notorious for its long hours, 72 hours a week is the legal limit, and many workers would put in this many hours to make the $700 they need to maintain house and family.
Busworkers with SERCO and SOUTHLINK in Adelaide who earn as little as $13.36ph basic, showed their disgust with this situation in July with a five-day strike - timed to coincide with the Adelaide Show and an AFL homegame. The drivers are calling for a modest 8% increase over two years.
Declaring the strike illegal, the Industrial Relations Commission gave them two weeks to sort something out.

Chained to the wheel
Many private companies in other States pay little better. The incentive to work long hours is sweetened by the penalty rate system - hours in excess of 40 attract time-and-a-half or double-time. To maximise profits, the bosses in the bus industry want a smaller workforce, with long working hours. Offers on the table to Melbourne busworkers have included a DROP in the hourly rate with increased penalty rates, encouraging drivers to ‘voluntarily’ chain themselves to the wheel.

Minimum wage needed
Busworkers need a $20 an hour minimum wage which would give then a basic take-home they can live on, with penalty rates as compensation for anti-social hours. The Socialist Party calls for a living minimum wage and a 35-hour week, so all workers can have a decent life for themselves and their families.

TWU militancy pays off at Qantas
The Transport Workers Union (TWU) supported two strikes at Melbourne’s Tullamarine Airport in August, forcing Qantas to shelve its plans to introduce labour hire in the baggage-handling area.
The TWU represents hundreds of airport workers. A TWU official told The Socialist: “We’ll defend the status-quo. The TWU will oppose any compulsory casualisation.
The two stoppages have forced Qantas to ‘review’ their attempts to introduce labour hire into this industry”.

ACTU welcomes Qantas deal
However, while the workers were on the picket-line in the baggage area, ACTU Congress in Melbourne was being addressed by Qantas Boss Margaret Jackson – despite a call from some delegates to boycott the address and go to the airport to support the union members.
Jackson said later on ABC radio that Qantas plans to increase its percentage of casual workers to 25% of its 34,000 national workforce.
She blamed increased competition and the 9/11 attacks on the US for this “flexibility drive”.
Outrageously, ACTU Secretary Greg Combet said “It would be acceptable in the interests of productivity to increase part-time workers”.

Push casuais
Combet neglected to clarify whether “Part-Time” workers would be acceptable on a permanent or casual basis, but Qantas attempts to introduce labour hire would suggest that they had intended to enforce casualisation.

CFMEU militancy rubs off
The events at the airport highlight two important lessons: Firstly that in a country with 27% casualisation – the second highest in the world – every workforce needs to be on guard against bosses attempts to re-structure their working situation.
Secondly – even a hint of militancy can get results. For instance the recent agreement struck by Piave cement-truck drivers.
Through the TWU their gains include a 6% per annum pay rise, $30 per day meal allowances, uniforms, sunscreen and hats. It is no coincidence that these drivers work with building workers whose record of militancy with the CFMEU is legendary.

Sutton charged by rank and filer
Internal union charges have been laid against John Sutton, the National Secretary of the construction division of the CFMEU.
The charges were served by Victorian CFMEU rank and file member Dave O’Brien, and have won widespread support from fellow rank and filers and even organisers and officials in States around the country.
Dave alleges Sutton breached sections of the rules of the National, Construction, and Furnishing Trades divisions of the CFMEU through gross misbehaviour, neglect of duty, misleading bodies of the union, incompetence, and collusion with corrupt ex-officials of the Furniture Trades division. Nearly two years ago Sutton gave an eight hour interview to the ABC-TV’s Four Corners programme attacking his political opponents in the union and accusing them of corruption. Sutton agreed to the interview to get himself a national platform to attack his many opponents inside the union.
There had been a wave of criticism of his non-leadership in the campaign for a 36 hour week and his inaction over allegations of corruption and inept leadership in the NSW branch, controlled by his factional mate, Andrew Ferguson. Outrageously, Sutton used the Four Corners interview to call for a National Crime Authority inquiry into his union, an invitation the Howard government was pleased to accept and soon after set up its bodgy Royal Commission.
Sutton will never be forgiven for his on-air interview which directly led to the Royal Commission, costing taxpayers $66 million and leading to charges against union members and officials as well as a soon-to-be-announced Taskforce of ex-police officers to try to terrorise building workers.

A ‘give up’
What is common knowledge around the union however, is that Sutton, in the 7 hours of interview not shown, made unsubstantiated allegations against a wide range of union officials and organisers.
The leader of Australia’s most powerful union was ‘giving up’ fellow members of his union to the mainstream media! Dave O’Brien is currently fighting the ABC in the NSW Administrative Appeals Tribunal in an attempt to get the full transcript of the interview.
In any event there is no way we can go into the next few months of a momentous battle with the Federal Government with such a treacherous man at the head of our union. The slogan for the union for the next period must be: National Unity, National Reform!
For a militant union leaders in the national office and in the NSW branch that will unite in action with Victoria, WA and elsewhere and start putting workers’ interests first.

CFMEU get ready for war
Australia’s strongest union - the construction division of the CFMEU - is preparing for a massive battle in 2004.
The Federal government has accepted all the recommendations from the Cole Royal Commission into the building industry - which is not surprising as they told Cole what to say. Under pressure from the union, the ALP and minor parties will delay the passing of legislation to implement the main recommendations by way of a Senate inquiry.
However the Democrats will almost certainly then vote with the Government on most points, giving them the numbers. This small capitalist party is fearful that a double dissolution election will wipe them out and is as a result in the Government’s pocket.

April 2004
Therefore, around April 2004, there will be major changes in Australia’s construction industry: An industry Taskforce with police powers to raid union offices onsite and offsite, keep elected officials offsite, take over control of health and safety from elected OHS reps, ban strikes after 2 weeks, and much more—all with the aim of driving down the wages and conditions of Australia’s best organised union workforce. Ex-Federal Industrial Relations Minister Tony Abbott ‘outed himself’ and said if the government wins this battle, other workers will be next.
As the Australian economy enters a period of world trade conflict, falling busines investment, and a bursting of the housing and debt bubble, the bosses and their Government want to unload the crisis onto the backs of workers. Many workers have taken advantage of the low interest rates and bought houses and cars and are vulnerable to rate increases and the loss of pay resulting from strike action.

Prepare now for next year
The union must prepare now to win the hearts and minds of members and their partners for the important battle ahead. Short-term hardship will be necessary to save the standards won in the past for the next generation.
We must do all we need to do inside the union to make sure it is ready with policies, actions and the personnel necessary for this battle.
The task for workers in other industries and for the broader community is to actively get behind construction workers in this battle, as we did for the wharfies in 1998. An injury to one, is an injury to all! If you don’t fight, you lose!