In addition, as much as strikes initiated by unions might have lowered productivity (and this is really talking about the side of business owners more than of the welfare of workers) – the last 15 years of economic expansion in Australia could not have been possible without the unions agreeing in the first place to keep wages down and setting the 3-percent ceiling on inflation via the Prices and Incomes Accord with the previous Labour government !
In fact, what the government seems to conveniently forget is that union strikes are for workers to get a fairer share of the wealth from this “economic boom”! (18)
Secondly, Australian unions have been in the past and are still at the forefront in the fight for maintaining and protecting workers’ conditions and pay, now more so with the crushing effect of the current government’s Workchoices legislation.
Facing million-dollar fines, court cases, interrogation, threats, harassment and intimidation from government and government personnel, unions have fought against the AWAs Australia-wide and for the re-establishment of collective bargaining agreements and called for more workplace health inspectors, campaigning against increasingly common workplace accidents which could have been avoided with better adherence to OH & S (occupational health and safety) standards by business. (19)
Unions are now fighting against the highly abusive effects of the government’s S457 visa (temporary worker visa) scheme under which overseas workers are employed- a scheme which the U.S. Department of State in its 2007 Trafficking in Persons Report has led to sex trafficking, debt bondage and slavery of migrants in Australia. (20)
The AMWU (WA Branch) for example has just established a 200+ strong Filipino Metalworkers (overseas Filipino workers or OFWs) group within the union, who will have input into the union’s major decision-making bodies – the State Council and State Conference – and will be able to run for positions in these bodies, a new radical practice as all other delegates will be of permanent residency or citizenship status. (21)
The AMWU (WA) has successfully stopped illegal deportations by business or employers of these skilled OFWs and is now working for obtaining their permanent residency similar to the Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union/Electrical Trades Union (CEPU/ETU) which has successfully got Western Power (WA) to agree to back and finance the permanent residency applications of its OFW linesmen, numbering 60 as of this stage. (22)
Thirdly, contrary to the Howard government’s claim that the progenitors of low inflation and the 2-3-percent inflation target has been the Liberals with their superior economic management skills, in fact as ex-Prime Minister Paul Keating has pointed out, being able to keep the inflation target to 3 percent and establishing that 3% target was made possible by Australian unions. (23)
Another ex-Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser admits: “Union and the government got on board and we were the only country in the world (in the 1990s), where the unions supported a central bank inflation target.” (24)
Under the Prices and Incomes Accord initiated by the Labour Bob Hawke government in 1993-1996, the Australian unions in arguing for an upper limit on inflation of 3 percent and in agreeing to keep wages down – underwrote the resultant 15-year productivity of the Australian economy.
A productivity which the Howard-Costello Liberal government crows about as its own achievement!
Liberal Treasurer Peter Costello inherited an economy becoming stronger after radical fundamental structural reforms instituted by Labour between 1983-1996 – in which Australian unions played the pivotal role of keeping wages down and agreeing to limit strikes !
Yet Costello now claims that a union-dominated Labour government will push up inflation and create a recession (while the Reserve Bank on Nov. 13, 2007 has warned that Costello and the Howard’s planned spending for its election pledges could most likely push up inflation, now over the historic 3-perent ceiling – and that there would be another interest rate rise in the next 6 months)! (25)
Ironically, Howard’s promise in his re-election in 2004 was that there would be hardly any interest rate rises.
In fact there has been six interest rate rises since, suffocating working families crushed by the new Workchoices legislation’s reduced pay and benefits on one side and the rising costs of interest payments on their mortgage, the increased costs of goods and services with the introduction of the GST.
The truth is that there is nothing special in the Howard government’s “management” of the economy.
In fact in 1982, when Howard was then Liberal Treasurer for the ruling government, there was the biggest wages explosion in postwar history when wage demands hit 18 percent. While under the Labour government’s Accord with the unions, wages were kept down with the help of the unions! (26)
4. We are supposedly free in Australia and abide by democratic principles vs. silencing of opposition and dissent
The fourth belief is that in Australia, we are free as we always have been, free to speak and express what we wish to say, free to do as we wish within the democratic principles enshrined in the Constitution and the judicial system.
In fact, the government through new laws has now removed many of our basic rights to express what we wish to say, particularly if this relates to social and work grievances. It has removed our basic rights to defend ourselves before being accused of a crime. It has removed our basic rights to due process of law. Some of these have been pointed out by ex-PM Malcolm Fraser himself in his lectures at Melbourne. (26a)
These removal of basic democratic, civil and human rights has not just been experienced by refugees or migrants – in fact, the average Australian worker, student, journalist, academic, scientist have experienced the repression and violence of the government. Even state government officials have had little say over its own mandated affairs under the Constitution where the ruling Federal Liberal-National coalition has wished to take over. (27)
It might be unbeknownst to most but the Liberals’ stranglehold of the Senate has meant that virtually any law and policy – on matters affecting all of us – as decided by the ruling government can be pushed through with hardly any opposition. (28)
Workers can now be fined and even jailed if they refuse to answer questions or provide information to Federal Government officials. Unions can be fined $33,000 by the government for asking an employer to include protection for workers against unfair dismissal in an agreement. (29)
In the building industry, workers and their union officials’ telephones can now be tapped and the workers and officials placed under secret surveillance by inspectors of the 2-year old Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC). (30)
