General strike in New
South Wales ONE million workers took part in a 24-hour general strike in New South Wales on October 23, called by the state's Labor
Council to protest the introduction of anti-union laws.
### KEN DAVIS
(ODA), "this law is a means not for attacking rival parties but for purging our new-born democracy". However, in fact, the lustrace is not only an attack on human rights but a sign of the authoritarian character of the current leaders.
It is enough simply to appear on an StB list - with only that agency knowing why and how — for a person to be considered guilty unless they can prove otherwise. Two protective clauses — one calling for the punishment of anyone publishing the StB list, and another calling for proof that a human rights violation had indeed been committed by an accused person — were chopped out of the law during the parlia mentary debate.
The affected person has two weeks to leave their job, and does not even have the right to defend themselves in front of a commission. The appeal will only establish whether or not the name really appears on the StB and Communist Party lists.
Furthermore, private sector employers will have the right to ask their employees to produce an Interior Ministry certificate proving that they are "clean"
A law In the Interests of the right
This law serves the particular interests of the right, at a time when the Prague Spring is increasingly presented as of no historical importance and its character as a genuine revolt against the Stalinist regime is denied. However, ex-Communists and collaborators continue to sit in the parliament and the right will protect all those who have rapidly changed their spots and who now vote for the right.
According to the law's supporters, the idea is to create a "climate of moral pressure". In reality however, while the green light has been given for a witch-hunt, the former political police has been reconverted into the Commission for the Defence of the Constitution and the economic mafia continues to work.
The constant demands for controls on the "dirty money" flowing around the privatization process have always run up against the opposition of Klaus and his 22 allies.*
ERRIES, buses and trains were stopped. Industry, mines and ports were silent. Schools, both state and religious, were closed. Post offices and large shops went unstaffed. Banks, colleges, libraries, museums and theatres were shut.
Despite court rulings against the public sector unions, government offices, both state and federal, were on strike. Community sector welfare and education agencies were closed. Radio broadcasts and daily newspapers were produced by managers while jouralists struck.
Not since 1917 has New South Wales seen a general strike.
The mass media, now controlled in Australia by only two right wing press barons, Murdoch and Packer, went to great lengths to deny the effectiveness of the stoppage.
Employer spokesmen initially estimated 800,000 on strike, with a loss of $500 million in profits, only to revise the figure of strikers down to 400,000 in later media releases.
Newspapers and television featured managers and strike-breakers who had walked or cycled great distances to get to workplaces, or promoted the delights of car sharing to beat traffic jams.
Television and radio ran endless interviews with disgruntled individuals claiming the strike would achieve nothing and denouncing union tactics.
Vast majority support the strike
But the truth was that the vast majority of unionists supported the strike, leaving Sydney and the other New South Wales cities quieter than any Sunday or public holiday in memory.
In Sydney, to the surprise of union members, no mass rallies or marches were called.
The New South Wales Labor Party opposition failed even to endorse the strike call. Instead of rallying hundreds of thousands of workers to demand the ouster of the minority conservative government, the streets were deserted. No picket lines were set up to prevent scabbing, and union leaders went to great pains to exempt as many federal sector or "emergency" workers as possible.
The union leaders were pushed into the general strike "as a formality" , due to the evident anger shown in major sectoral stoppages in recent weeks.
On September 17, 15,000 workers rallied outside parliament in Sydney, during a strike by manufacturing, waterside and mining unions against the new law.
On October 15, 10,000 nurses demonstrated at parliament, during a stoppage of 80,000 health sector workers against hospital closures and under-funding of the health system.
The general strike served to bring to a head growing militancy and frustration in the union rank-and-file and the community in general, without allowing any ongoing strategy for defeating the New South Wales government or the capitalist offensive.
Right wing push through new laws
Although re-elected without a majority in May, the right wing Liberal-National coalition government led by Nick Greiner has been able to push through the new legislation, relying on the votes of conservative "independents" in both houses of parliament.
The laws are designed to dismantle the current industrial court system which sets awards on pay and conditions after disputes between representative unions and employer federations.
They seek to break union power by outlawing "closed shop" workplaces and industries where all workers have to belong to the union.
Industrial awards will be replaced by a patchwork of fixed term "voluntary employment contracts" and enterprise bargaining, disadvantaging part-time and poorly organized sectors. "Women and migrant workers will suffer most according to the official strike call.
By excluding unions from the negotiating process and encouraging company unions, the laws will leave individual employees negotiating with the bosses on wages and conditions.
International Viewpoint #216 • November 11, 1991
Union officers will have to give seven days notice before entering any workplace and strikes during the time of an enterprise agreement can be punished with fines of $10,000 per day for each worker.
Union decisions must be taken by costly and slow postal ballots, not by elected delegates or mass meetings.
The new laws are a charter for employers to sack unionised workers and abolish penalty rates for nightwork, overtime pay, the 17% pay loading on the four weeks annual leave traditional in Australia, redundancy payouts, sick leave and job security provisions.
The New South Wales laws are designed as a model for national legislation, if the conservatives defeat the Hawke labor government at the next federal elections.
Already, under a federal Labor government and with Labor governments in all states other than New South Wales, wages have been lowered much faster than in other OECD countries. Unemployment is over 10%.
Unions leaderships have collaborated on seven official (and almost annual) austerity "Accords" with the federal Labor government and employers.
The week of the strike, the federal industrial relations minister repeated that the Accord strategy remained in force — unions should hoid down wages and accept mass unemployment in order to boost profits and allow re-investment in manufacturing.
Sell off of public assets begins
The state and federal governments, both Labor and Liberal, have begun to sell off public assets. Airlines, banks and telecommunications are being privatized. Gone are the promises to maintain the "social wage".
Fees have been re-introduced for tertiary education, unemployment benefits are disappearing in favour of compulsory and temporary) "retraining" programs, welfare services and pensions are being cut, and new patient charges and hospital closures are whittling away the national health system.
Despite the sacrifices by working people during a decade of Labor governments, profits have risen enormously in many sectors, without any re-investment in manufacturing industry and job creation.
The wealth boost Labor gave the capitalists has allowed fruitless speculative investments and imperialist investment in super-exploitative industries in SouthEast Asia, Chile and the Pacific.
The only strategic difference between Labor and Liberal-National opposition is on how best to squeeze the workers — through agreements with the union leaders or through smashing the unions outright. *