We can stop them

indonesia / philippines / australia | workplace struggles | opinion/analysis Wednesday September 14, 2005 07:58 by dmitri - Anarkismo outetheos at yahoo dot com dot au

Anti-working class laws can be stopped

Faced with a political crisis and massive public opposition, a govern-ment can be forced to back off.

Faced with a political crisis and massive public opposition, a govern-ment can be forced to back off. The Liberal Party controlled the senate before, in 1976-1983 and couldn’t implement all its anti-union laws.

In 1998, the federal government thought it could destroy the Maritime Union of Australia. The MUA wasn’t saved by the courts or by the sen-ate. The battle was fought and won on the wharves, with mass pickets defying the laws and keeping the dock gates closed to containers handled by scabs.

There were mass demonstrations including one of 80,000 in Melbourne. Wherever Coalition MPs went, they were met with protests. Some workers took spontaneous strike action. The government backed off. Solidarity won. Now we need to do it again.

In 1968, the union movement responded with massive strikes and public protests when Tramways union leader Clarrie O’Shea was jailed. The extent of the protests meant that O’Shea was released from jail and the law which sent him to jail wasn’t used again.

Some say that the union movement is too weak to respond now. But opinion polls over the past eight years have consistently shown that the majority of workers would like to join a union.

A February Newspoll found that 53% of workers oppose any further restrictions on the right of unions to enter workplaces. Many of these workers were not union members but they recognised the value of unions.

If unions and community groups mobilise, it is possible to stop the government from using its anti-union laws. And it is possible to stop some of the other attacks the government has planned for working people. We have to organise now to stop this injustice.