Over the past two years Union Solidarity has been involved in numerous disputes where workers’ basic rights were denied and where traditional union activity was limited by the current repressive IR laws.

Most of these were won. Union Solidarity makes use of very simple tactics of direct action and solidarity. And it has been effective. Workers have been re-instated, redundancies paid out, other employers warned that anti-worker and anti-union behaviours will have consequences. And those of us participating have been empowered – fighting shoulder to shoulder for the kind of world we want, using a successful act of civil disobedience. Realising that the bosses and politicians don’t have all the power!

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that we have the right to join and form trade unions in the protection of our interests. This Human Right is now being legally violated. It is therefore our duty to disobey these bad laws, and to stand together in defence of our fellow workers’ rights.

If you join the Union Solidarity SMS database, you will receive a message when solidarity is needed at a dispute. You will normally have a few hours or days notice of where and when a community assembly is forming, and you will be able to come and put your body on the line, in defence of the kind of community you want to live in.

In order to form effective community assemblies we need more people responding to these calls, and more people on the database.

To join the database visit www.unionsolidarity.org and click on ‘contact list’ or ‘add your name’ alternative go straight to SMS list form, http://contact.unionsolidarity.org, enter your details and you will start receiving these alerts. There is no spam or other announcements on this alert system. You will only receive notification when solidarity is needed at a dispute.

Please join this important and effective campaign.

See you on the assembly
Union Solidarity

Labels: What we say

Over the past two years Union Solidarity has been proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with many workers and community members fighting for justice. Below are some of the struggles we have been involved with. Download A4 leaflet

2005
Australian Envelope
A bitter and sometimes violent dispute over the sacking of a union delegate results in a settlement. Workers endure harassment by hired thugs and damage to personal property.

Colrain
A two-week strike wins an EBA, income protection and reinstatement of a stood down worker.

Robert Austin
Respected RMIT lecturer Robert Austin is sacked after supporting a student demonstration. A vocal campaign results in a negotiated settlement
Peter Vining
A CEPU delegate unfairly sacked by Australia Post. A series of actions continuing into 2006 finally results in out of court settlement.

Labels: For the Record, What we say

By his own admission ex Freehills lawyer Stuart Wood isn’t having much luck lately. Wood who offers legal advice to employers and claims to be “one of Australia’s leading workplace relations barristers” has been on the losing side of a number recent industrial disputes. Contrary to the intent of Workchoices a string of strikes and community assemblies have resulted in real wins for unions and the workers they represent.

Wood asserts that unions are “outsourcing” picketing to groups such as Union Solidarity. He candidly admits to advising employers in six disputes where Union Solidarity have become involved. By his assessment workers have won every blue bar one.

“In only one case that I know of…has the unionsolidarity [sic] tactic not been successful”.

A familiar pattern seems to be emerging in Victoria where some employers are keen to exploit the climate created by Workchoices. Unions are taken on or legitimate claims are frustrated. Stuart Wood and law companies such as Freehills are only too keen to “advise” employers how legal avenues can be pursued to avoid negotiating with the union/s involved. Legal sanctions are often threatened or realised that stop the union playing an effective role. However the dispute continues, the rank and file remains strong and the community rallies support. Finally the employer comes to their senses and negotiates with the union. The dispute ends when union members are satisfied with the result, democracy and decency prevail.

The only tangible effect of conservative industrial law firms in a number of disputes has been to actually prolong the conflict and cost the employer more money. Not to mention the stress and angst caused to individuals and families by threats of legal fines to decent working people.

Wood’s and his cohort seem frustrated by this turn of events. The expectation was that employers under Workchoices would be have a free hand in implementing whatever changes they want.

“[S]uch as opening new operations, closing old ones, hiring, terminating or trying to develop new and more productive ways of working”

All of these changes of course can have a detrimental effect on the employees concerned. Unions have a legitimate role in representing the interests of workers affected by change and ensuring their interests are protected.

Wood’s reveals the real intent of Workchoices is to bypass this democratic process and allow the employers to implement any change regardless of the social consequences.

“Any operator who is thinking about making the changes that I have described …must have regard to the likely outworking of any change which is not accepted by the relevant union.”

However action by the community has frustrated efforts to bypass the relevant union and protected the interests of the employees concerned.

“I doubt that any of the project operators who have been hit with a union solidarity type response to their activities thought, when they began the planning for the changes, that they would be targeted in the manner that they have been.”

If for nothing else Stuart Wood should be commended for his candor and honesty. His arguments are directed to employer associations and not for general consumption. He seeks to position himself as something of an IR guru advising employers how to implement change in the face of union opposition and community solidarity.

“To some extent, planning must become more sophisticated and take account of these possibilities, perhaps probabilities, at an earlier stage.”

Wood finishes his paper with a warning to employers that we hope will become a taste of things to come.

“Because the community picket strategy works so well, from all perspectives and has been so effective in Victoria (and to an extent in Western Australia), it will not be long before the strategy is adopted in other states”

Lets hope so
Union Solidarity.

Reference:
Stuart Wood, Outsourcing Industrial Action, www.stuartwood.com.au, p. 10-13.

Labels: What we say

“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