Critical Times

Getting rid of the Howard government’s WorkChoices laws is an immediate priority for Australia’s working people.

The full force of WorkChoices is yet to be felt, but current laws give a glimpse of what the Howard Government and its big business mates have in store for Australia’s working people after the election.

AWAs are already biting into penalty rates, overtime and shift loadings, annual leave and public holiday loadings, rest breaks and health and safety conditions. Job security has disappeared for low paid, casual, part-time and non-unionised workers, and young workers are particularly vulnerable to unfair dismissal.

Long held trade union rights to collective bargaining agreements are being trampled.

Big business is still not satisfied.

On their agenda is a vicious attack on workers’ compensation and plans to wipe out legal protection for contractors.

The government is preparing new laws, making community support for workers taking industrial action illegal.

All this is happening at a time when big business and the multinationals are reaping record profits and workers are struggling.

As Greg Combet, ACTU Secretary, recently said, “The Howard Government’s IR laws are a huge free kick for big business at the expense of Australia’s working families.”

If you fight, you can win
In spite of difficulties imposed by WorkChoices, workers with their unions have stood up to the bosses’ IR laws. Where unions have dedicated their efforts into organising and mobilising their members around imaginative and inspiring campaigns, they have succeeded in not only protecting workers’ existing rights and conditions, but have nurtured more union activists and strengthened their unions.

Lessons from 2 years of experience clearly show that where unions have drawn on their natural allies in the wider community, they have gained respect, expanded their support base and strengthened their fighting capacity.

Will Labor get rid of WorkChoices?
Workers want the union movement and Labor to take up the fight to smash the IR laws. They want leadership that builds the united fighting capacity of workers, unions and communities. They want leadership that continues the fight to protect the workers beyond the next election.

Working people are pinning high hopes on a Labor government to tear up WorkChoices altogether.

Recent promises made by Labor politicians to restore minimum conditions are met with the hope that these are not empty words that tinker at the edges. If Labor is seriously committed to getting rid of IR laws, it will give vigorous support to the mobilisation of workers, unions and communities.

The Business Council of Australia, the peak body of the largest multinational corporations and big business, has made it clear that it wants more draconian IR laws, not less. Multinationals and big business will exert enormous pressure on a Labor government not to roll back WorkChoices. How Labor deals with this pressure will be closely watched by the working people.

Not alone
Australia’s workers are not on their own fighting off attacks by monopoly capital. Global imperialism is driving the assault on working people around the world. The multinational corporations are in a frantic hunt for bigger profits and aggressively compete with each other for cheaper labour, markets and resources. Their desperate drive for bigger profits unleashes wars of aggression, grinding exploitation of working people and destruction of the environment. Inevitably, people will resist. Australian workers’ fight against WorkChoices is part of that struggle against the imperialism.