‘Better future’ in Victoria not for workers?
Last year, Daniel Andrews swept to victory in the Victorian election on the back of a union-led campaign, a fact he has never shied away from acknowledging.
At the ALP state conference in March, he paid tribute to unionists: “Our party says thank you and I say thank you … to every delegate – every member of our movement, every member of a union. I was proud to stand by your side”.
Public transport workers have now learned how shallow his words were. Far from standing proudly by our side, Daniel Andrews and the state Labor government have thrown their full weight behind our bosses.
The government says our actions are “unjustified”. Is it unjustified to expect job security and decent working conditions? Is that not what Andrews meant when he talked about “building a better future”?
“There is no need, absolutely no need for anybody to be taking industrial action; that ought to be the last resort, not the first”, Andrews publicly argued before rail workers’ 4 September strike. He has said nothing about the fact that our union has been locked, for six months now, in pointless discussions with a company that is determined to strip our working conditions. That our union had to force Metro to the bargaining table in the first place. That our agreement expired two months ago.
What would Andrews have us do when a company refuses to step back from its attacks? Give away our conditions? Back down? If the Labor government doesn’t support workers fighting for their rights, it doesn’t support workers having these rights.
The government even went as far as trying to have our right to strike terminated. Telling commuters they had “every reason to feel angry and fed up” with us, transport minister Jacinta Allen defended the government’s decision to join Metro’s court case against us by claiming they had to “protect” the public.
To have Liberal Party mayor Robert Doyle tell us we are “ … greedy, greedy, greedy” is no surprise. But to have members of the ALP line up with our enemies has come as a shock to many transport workers. This is a betrayal that will not be forgotten.
