AUT: WR on the Australian dockers

[Antagonism <mrnobody@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bill Bartlett wrote:

> >There was also quite an interesting, and extremely
> >critical, article in the latest issue of World Revolution.

> Unfortunately I don't subscribe to "world revolution" (did I say that?), so
> can you forward it to the list?

Here it is. I'll send some comments on it seperately.

 Australian dockers
Union perversion of workers' solidarity

The official general strike in Denmark at the end of April seems a good
illustration of the state of the class struggle internationally. For half a
million workers (20% of the workforce) to be on strike for a number of days is
evidence of the level of discontent that exists within the working class. On
the other hand, although most of the Danish unions had recommended acceptance
of the pay deal that workers had rejected in a ballot, they have not been slow
to present themselves as fighting organisations and to take charge of the
strike, in contrast to the equally huge movement in 1985 where the unions were
running to catch up with a largely spontaneous upsurge. This is typical of the
current situation between the classes - a growing discontent in the working
class faced with the deepening economic crisis, manoeuvres and campaigns from
the unions to prevent that discontent coming to fruition.

Further evidence of this state of affairs is provided by events in Australia,
following the sacking on April 7 of 1400 dockers and 600 casuals by the Patrick
Stevedoring company. When security guards with rottweillers evicted workers
from 17 ports across Australia there appears to have been a spontaneous
response from thousands of workers. In Sydney a 5000 strong protest at the
harbour included nurses, teachers and striking building workers. Workers
gathered at a number of other ports, including striking building workers in
Melbourne. However, although there were many instant walkouts in solidarity
with the sacked dockers, the preparation of government, bosses and unions had
been long underway.
Ritual blockades: a trap for the workers

This dispute goes back some time. Last year it was revealed that the company
was assembling a non-union strike-breaking force in the Gulf port of Dubai.
"The company, with the federal government, appears to have been planning the
showdown for months" (Guardian 16 April) In addition, "the federal government,
which has set up soft loans to help Patrick's finance the redundancy bill, has
warned unionists there will be no early end to the dispute" (ibid). When the
workers were sacked, although the dockers lost their jobs, the company made a
show of targeting the MUA.

The angle of the bosses' attack has thus enabled the unions to focus the whole
dispute on the issue of 'union rights' and to imprison the workers in a crusade
to blockade the ports. The mass pickets at dock gates have involved regular
clashes with police and security guards. The MUA has "largely succeeded in
preventing lorries and trains from loading and unloading cargo containers
handled by Patrick's new, non-union replacement workers" (Guardian 28 April)
The blockade has succeeded, but there has been no extension of the struggle.
Workers have been drawn into ritual confrontations which have done nothing but
give the unions a more militant image. These confrontations have been
reminiscent of what happened at the News International plant at Wapping back in
1985-86 where twice a week for months the unions staged pitched battles with
the police.

A typical example of workers getting drawn into the dead-end of the blockade
happened at East Swanson dock in Melbourne on 17 April. A report in Socialist
Worker (April 25) describes how "3,000 pickets, singing the Internationale,
gathered to repel riot police, who had promised to break the picket that night,
even at the risk of a bloodbath... The pickets in Melbourne lugged iron railway
sleepers and tipped a container over to block the gates and railway tracks into
the yard. Then at sunrise the next morning, as the police prepared to attack, a
2000 strong contingent of striking building workers marched down to the docks
and onto the picket line. The police retreated in disarray, and the pickets
celebrated their victory".

Unfortunately the real disarray is in the working class, not with the forces of
state repression. Clearly workers want to express their solidarity with the
sacked dockers, but instead of posing the question of extending the struggle
and raising their demands, they have been pulled into the spectacular, but
dead-end blockades - and the trade unions have emerged looking like fighting
organisations of the working class rather than the saboteurs they really are.

The bourgeoisie anticipates growing combativity in the class

In many ways, the dock strike in Australia is a conscious copy (by the
bourgeoisie, who have clearly provoked it from the start) of the Liverpool dock
strike, and of similar union campaigns such as the UPS strike in the US. But in
contrast to the campaign round the Liverpool dockers, other sectors have been
drawn in much more directly and on a greater scale into the events. In
Australia this includes not only teachers, nurses and building workers but also
Toyota workers, workers from Safeway supermarket warehouses and Sigma food
processing plants. Furthermore, these mobilisations have not been left to the
rank and file union machinery alone - unions have organised at state level and,
for example, there is due to be a one day strike in Victoria, and possibly
other states, on 6 May. The sheer scale of this operation - as in Denmark -
shows that the unions are aware of a growing discontent and militancy
throughout the working class, and are undertaking these manoeuvres to nip it in
the bud. Real class solidarity is pushing to express itself, which is why it is
so important for the unions to present their own perverted version of it.

And the manoeuvre is not restricted to the Australian unions alone. The
International Transport Federation has told its 500 union affiliates in 120
countries to campaign against Patrick. As the Trotskyists of Workers Power (May
98) drool: "The struggle has rapidly gained an international dimension, with
dockers' unions in the USA, South Africa, Japan and the Philippines all
announcing their support for industrial solidarity. The wharfies' slogan, 'MUA
is here to stay' has become a rallying cry for working class militants from
Manila to Tokyo". Not only has the campaign got under way far more speedily
than the one round the sacked Liverpool dockers, the 'MUA is here to stay'
slogan puts the defence of the unions right to the fore.

Other forces of the bourgeois state have also been brought in to back the
unions. while the police have been cracking workers' heads, a federal court has
ruled that Patrick Stevedoring had acted illegally in sacking union workers.
Justice Anthony North declared that "there is an arguable case that the Patrick
owners and Patrick employers have engaged in an unlawful conspiracy" (Guardian
22 April).This shows a division of labour within the bourgeoisie, where the
company is portrayed as ruthless and the courts as capable of being fair. It is
another weapon in the armoury of capital.

The international media publicity that the MUA has received, in contrast to the
usual news black-out that greets workers' struggles, is part of a campaign by
the bourgeoisie to promote unions as the only organisations that defend the
interests of the working class - and so to prevent the workers from
understanding the need to create their own organisations outside of and against
these state institutions.

Tracey 2/5/98

from World Revolution (paper in the UK of the International Communist Current)
No.214 May 1998
BM Box 869
London WC1N 3XX


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