The rights we need to win

The ACTU congress in Melbourne on 25-26 October 2006 adopted a strong policy for workers' rights as its alternative to John Howard's "Work Choices" and Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act.
The ACTU policy includes:
➀ Union recognition as a right for every individual worker, regardless of whether his or her fellow-workers are too scared to claim that right.
➁ Rapid procedures to allow workers unfairly sacked, especially for union activities, to win reinstatement.
➂ Legal rights of access to workplaces, to workers, and to documents for union delegates and union officials.
➃ A legal right to strike, and repeal of sections 45 D and E (from 1977) of the Trades Practices Act, which ban "secondary" or solidarity action.
➄ The straightforward "repeal of the... Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act 2005 [which] renders almost all forms of industrial action in the building industry unlawful".
➅ Employers should be legally obliged to take part in collective bargaining, and can escape collective bargaining only when the union can find no index - no petition, no mass meeting, no petition, nothing - that the majority of workers want collective bargaining.
➆ A strong "safety net" through minimum wages and conditions, and through awards. No limit on the matters to be contained in awards.
➇ Pattern bargaining - banned by Work Choices - should be legal, and indeed in some cases may be mandated by the Industrial Relations Commission.
Check out the details at http://www.actu.asn.au/downloads/files/policy.pdf.

This policy should be discussed fully, and in detail, throughout the labour movement and among those committed to civil rights. Otherwise we will not know what we are aiming for when we protest at Howard's laws. We could end up winning and yet losing. We could eventually get Howard's laws repealed, but replaced by laws which still cripple effective trade-union action.
Provision to make employers take part in collective bargaining if 50%-plus-one of workers want it is not enough. Nor is a simple reversion to the old system, before Howard, where compulsory conciliation and arbitration was the legal norm and bedrock.
The first three provisos above - union representation as a right for every worker; prompt redress for unfair dismissal; a right of access for union organisers, and protection against victimisation for union delegates - are all vital for unions to be able to organise under hostile managements. Without them, it can be almost impossible to get past first base.
In formal terms, George W Bush's USA has laws which mandate collective bargaining and require union recognition when a proven majority of the workforce want it.
But a union has to get enough proven support to gain a ballot, keep its support together during a probably long wait for the ballot, and win the ballot in order to get recognition. Even if it jumps all those hurdles, the laws requiring employers to do collective bargaining in good faith are so toothless that bosses can and do regularly flout them with impunity.

In practice, so an ACTU investigation reports: "In the US... unions achieve certification in as few as 45 to 50 per cent of cases where a ballot is held. Further, in a third of cases where the union is recognised, a collective agreement is never made... This is despite the fact that unions do not initiate a vote until 60-70 per cent of employees have signed an authorisation card indicating their support for the union to represent them in collective bargaining..."
Unions often lose the ballots when they already have 60% or 70% support signed up. Why? Because the employer is free to victimise unionists, bludgeon workers with threats and disinformation campaigns, and recruit new workers less likely to vote for the union.
The British law of 1999, also based on "collective bargaining if 50%-plus-one want it", is a bit different. Union-busting is lower-key there. But the results are not good.
The average density of union representation, and the percentage of workplaces having union representation, have declined, despite a relatively large increase in recent years in public service jobs which already have higher rates of union representation than the private sector.

In France, the right to strike is a constitutional right of each individual worker. We need something approximating that in Australia. No-one takes strike action lightly. But union organisation can never be effective without the fallback right to mobilise the collective strength of the workforce against the power of the employer, which will always be greater than the power of any individual, unorganised worker.
The right to take solidarity action is vital if the stronger sections of the labour movement are to be able to help protect the weaker and more vulnerable.