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Comrades, now or never! The case for a general strike to bust the budget

By Marko Beljac - posted Tuesday, 27 May 2014


The attack on the people of Australia that the Abbott Government, at the behest of corporate Australia,  just intensified by means of its first budget has galvanised community and labour movement activists the length and breadth of our land of beauty rich and rare.

We all find ourselves asking; what is to be done to advance Australia fair?

Clearly the first objective is to prevent the pernicious measures of the budget from seeing the light of day. The obvious place to do this is in the Senate where a coalition of Labor, Greens and Palmer’s United Australia can combine forces to block provisions of the budget that are to be legislated in bills other than the appropriation bills.

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The Australian Labor Party for sound historical reasons will not seek to block supply that is vote against the appropriation bills.

In addition to the action in parliament it is of the first importance to mobilise a social movement to block the budget. This is necessary because the parliamentary coalition opposing the budget is fragile, after all these three parties otherwise are in electoral opposition and, moreover, they do not share a one-to-one correspondence in their responses to the budget.

For instance there are subtle differences over the deficit levy and there are more overt differences on education.

A well mobilised and continual campaign from an aroused citizenry needs to be in place in order to provide sufficient pressure on the parties in the Senate so that they maintain unity of purpose, rather than engage in political grandstanding, and oppose all, not just some, of the budget’s nasties.

Furthermore budget shockers could well be contained in the appropriation bills that shall pass, which means extra parliamentary action would be needed to block them. Resistance and direct action cannot be excluded toward this end. 

Thus far the rallies that have been organised have been wonderful and inspiring. Wonderful because they have brought Australians from all walks of life together in the one space under the banner of social justice, and inspiring because common action fills us with hope about the future and makes us more optimistic about the goodness that lurks in our hearts.

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The rallies, that said, are nowhere near enough. The trade union movement must be mobilised from head to toe in support of these rallies. The support of the working class is always of the first importance in any movement that concerns itself with social questions in a capitalist society. Thus far the organised labour movement has demonstrated a low profile; at the rally in Melbourne on May 18 I could discern only a few individual NTEU and NUW flags.

By joining the protest movement against the budget the trade union movement would be able to provide sufficient organisation and gravity to make a lasting effect upon Labor, the Greens and Palmer’s PUP.  The same also would apply to the ruling class which doubtless calculates that a weakened labour movement gives it the ability to continue with the neoliberal assault on the public.

Large scale mobilisation acts as a deterrent against ruling class action; for example the demonstrations against the Iraq war did not stop it, but they did prevent Iraq from becoming a free fire zone and it likely prevented more wars. Indeed it is probably one reason why “the war on terror” has gone underground.

Currently corporate Australia does not feel a sufficient sense of deterrence.

It is pleasing to see therefore that trade union mobilisation is now occurring, much of it coming from the grass roots up to boot. In Victoria on June 12 the Victorian Trades Hall Council is organising a day of action against the budget.

At an all union general meeting at Trades Hall the overwhelming sentiment from the shop floor supported the idea of a general strike, most especially through an Australia wide national day of action to be organised by the ACTU in opposition to the budget.

Union officials were noncommittal but there can be no doubting the sentiment of grass roots activists and organisers on this matter.

A general strike is a necessary step in the fight against the budget. It is a necessary step because this budget represents the first wave in a wide ranging attack on the working class and the welfare state, as the President of the ACTU, Ged Kearney, herself stated at the meeting.

It is a continuation of the corporate directed class war that pervaded the vision of both Fightback! and Workchoices.

The strategy of the labour movement against Workchoices was to mobilise in support of a Labor government that would then repeal it.

This budget demonstrates to us that this strategy was wrong from a long term perspective. It was wrong because although Workchoices was abolished the industrial relations regime put in its place still had organised labour in a historically weak position. It was doubly wrong because we are now back at it again, defending tooth and nail merely to hold the line in the face of a sustained assault against workers and the poor that will, moreover, widen in future.

Union mobilisation in support of parliamentary action is to be supported wholeheartedly but nonetheless recent history shows us that although necessary it is by no means sufficient.

A general strike would invigorate grass roots unionism, help build the infrastructure of class struggle, lost through decades of Accords and deal making with a neoliberal oriented Parliamentary Labor Party, and develop a working class culture robustly infused by class consciousness.

All of these are necessary to steadfastly hold the line against corporate directed attacks on the public. A general strike and movement building would also act as a deterrent against class war as trade union power had done during much of the post war era.

Many in the labour movement worry about the capacity of the unions to mobilise. Such concerns need to be brushed aside. Comrades, it’s now or never. The mere fact that such concerns exist tells us that the union movement needs to rethink its modus operandi.

The budget represents an opportunity, which we should not allow to be missed, to build a grass roots militant unionism dedicated to large scale social and political action.

This is needed because stopping the budget is not enough. The objective must be, through international solidarity, to provide a new ideological vision, a new member owned labour movement, a new form of political action, all dedicated to a struggle to dismantle the neoliberal order and to put in its stead a new society built upon the principles of cooperation, justice and, yes, liberty.

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About the Author

Mark Beljac teaches at Swinburne University of Technology, is a board member of the New International Bookshop, and is involved with the Industrial Workers of the World, National Tertiary Education Union, National Union of Workers (community) and Friends of the Earth.

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