:: rawblogXport ::

:: Monday, May 03, 2004 ::

Defend militant unionism, defend Craig Johnston! By Sue Bolton, Green Left, Australia
“Solidarity is an extension of unionism on the job. If you can't do something as an individual, you join a union and the collective does something. It's the same across the board. On different jobs and in different industries, some unions have more muscle than others. If the strong help the weak, it will come back 10-fold and others will help you, and if people keep doing that it will multiply.

“No-one can convince me that you can win anything without fighting for it. If you're not militant you get done over. That's been proved over hundreds of years. I've seen militant industrial action in the old metal workers union, in the Builders Labourers Federation and from different unions in different areas where they've made big gains through militancy.”

Johnston argued that the federal Coalition government is trying to criminalise industrial action. “They're trying to move everything out of the industrial section of the law into the criminal section. When an organiser goes onto a site, the government is trying to say that it is trespass, a criminal offence. If a union organiser says to a boss, `You owe a worker money. You've ripped them off. Pay up or I'll have a stoppage', that is considered coercion and threats so it's a criminal charge. The government is doing this because they want to say that unions are third parties. They want employers and employees to negotiate without unions.”

posted 6:30 AM :: reference link :: 0 comments ::

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