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

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.