Workers' Rights
The Socialist Alliance orients towards struggles in the union movement. In line with its criticism that the ALP is holding back and bureaucratising the union movement, the Socialist Alliance encourages workers and unions to break with Labor and to set up a "new workers' party".
In 2005 and 2006, the Socialist Alliance initiated and helped organise trade union "fight-back" conferences, in response to the Federal Government's "WorkChoices" legislation, attracting hundreds of union militants and members of other socialist groups. The Socialist Alliance was involved in the campaign against WorkChoices, including as part of the Your Rights At Work movement, and against the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC).
The Socialist Alliance is highly critical of the Australian Labour Party's industrial policy for not returning enough rights to workers and for retaining the ABCC, referring to the new system (Fair Work Australia) as "WorkChoices-lite".
Notable Socialist Alliance trade union leaders have included Chris Cain, Western Australian State Secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia; Tim Gooden, secretary of the Geelong Trades and Labour Council; and Craig Johnston, former Victorian State Secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, who was jailed for 9 months in 2004 after an industrial dispute at Johnson Tiles in 2001.
Read more about this topic: Socialist Alliance (Australia), Political Campaigns
Famous quotes containing the word rights:
“The common goal of 22 million Afro-Americans is respect as human beings, the God-given right to be a human being. Our common goal is to obtain the human rights that America has been denying us. We can never get civil rights in America until our human rights are first restored. We will never be recognized as citizens there until we are first recognized as humans.”
—Malcolm X (1925–1965)