“Where it is essential, if a person is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law”

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”

“Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of their interests”
Universal Declaration of Human Rights

On Tuesday 14th of November 2006 the High Court of Australia ruled that the Workplace Relations Act, as amended by Workchoices, is constitutional.

Unionists in Australia can now be jailed for six months for refusing to attend a hearing; six months jail for refusing to answer questions at that hearing (for instance, to determine other participants at a union meeting); six months jail for discussing with anyone, even a spouse, the contents of the hearing. It should be noted that there is no discretion for the judge, no other sentence available.

Given that such abuses of our human rights are now legal, Union Solidarity stands in open rebellion.

1948 saw the world agree to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Australia played a major role in the drafting and successful lobbying of the post-second world war communities, in support of this document.

This document grew out of the experience gained in the struggle against fascism and resulting second world war. The document speaks to us today only because our forbears struggled, only because they got their own time right.

The declaration places no conditions upon our rights; it simply stipulates that our rights do not make the rights of others impossible. The workplace Relations Act of course now guarantees rights to employers and their organisations, which are now expressly forbidden to workers.

Employer organisations for example will obviously never be frozen out of the workplace and criminalised, in a similar way to workers’ organisations under the Workplace Relations Act.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights clause dealing specifically with unions deliberately connects forming and joining unions with “the protection of …interests.” Under fascism during the 1930’s and 1940’s workers were in unions, however if they sought to protect their interests, that was regarded as criminal by the State.

The Federal Liberal Government has once again separated the right to form and to join a union for the reason for which people join, that is, the protection of their interests.

Simply, the right to form and join unions is forbidden where unionist are criminalized when they seek the protection of their interests.

Truly the Union Solidarity Community assemblies at the workplace gate are crating a new space in which the Australian People are finding the answer to Federal Government attacks on our rights.

Through the Community Assembly attacks on workers’ rights are dealt with in a whole-of-class way, based upon the old principle that “an injury to one is an injury to all”. From now on it is irrelevant which industry we work in, or for which employer we work. It simply does not matter whether we are acting against an employer directly involved in a dispute, or against secondary employers who service the attacking boss.

Now that employers have an absolute right to lock-out, sack workers (weasel words aside) and undermine collective, union agreements with workers, then the new rule is that there are no rules.

Union Solidarity is preparing for a worse-case scenario; we are duty bound to prepare for a Howard victory at he next Federal Election.

Every union Solidarity activist will do all we can to see Howard off. However, our main concern is organising resistance where we live, in order to give one extra voice to those disenfranchised through welfare-to-work legislation and importantly, to assist workers at the point of production whose rights are threatened.

The Federal Government has legislated that an employer acting as a corporate entity can trade freely, whereas workers acting as a corporate entity (a union), are permitted only to be traded. We are not “free and equal in dignity and rights”; now privilege rules and reactionary laws support the work of privilege in its destruction of democratic culture.

While engaging with some of Australia’s largest and most recalcitrant employers, Union Solidarity has won every dispute, or, is still pursuing the issues of the workers involved. We are a voluntary army of Australian citizens bent on taking back our democracy, openly resisting laws that threaten this nation.

We are committed to victory. We will persist across generations, if necessary, until that victory is achieved. We are aware that we live in the slipstream of ordinary people like us, shaping their own victories against repression and tyranny. We take heart in the respect we hold for each other in the dignity of the Australian working people.

Yours in Solidarity,

Dave Kerin.

Labels: Open Rebellion, What we say