The Right to Strike in Australia

If you can’t withdraw your labour to improve your pay and conditions, there’s a good chance you’re not living in a democracy.

While governments like ours prepare for war with China (look at AUKUS) which will no doubt be sold as a war for democracy against dictatorship, our civil liberties are being thrown to the scrap heap.

The right to free speech is being desecrated on university campuses when speaking out against apartheid in Palestine, anti-war protestors are brutalised by police, and the right to strike is being seriously threatened. It’s that right to strike that we’re writing about today.

It seems as if the NSW government and private companies, in concert with the Fair Work Commission, are working as hard as they can to prove Karl Marx right when he labels the society we live under “a dictatorship of capital” and working class people “wage slaves.”

Just this Friday gone, the 21.02.2025, one of the largest private health companies, Healthscope, successfully applied to the Fair Work commission to call off a 26 hour strike at eight private hospitals in NSW.

This comes only a day or so after the NSW Labor government had the Fair Work commission call off industrial action on the rails. Industrial action has been banned until July.

This proves two things we’ve already said before. One, the state is not neutral, it’s a weapon of class struggle for the bosses and two, the struggle of all working class people is linked. The fact that the bosses can get away with calling off industrial action on the rails, undoubtedly makes them more confident to get it called off in the hospitals.

Section 424 of the Fair Work act, is perhaps one of the most anti-democratic, and anti-working class sections of the legislation.

It empowers the Fair Work commission to call off a strike if it would threaten “to cause significant damage to the Australian economy or an important part of it” or if it would threaten “the personal safety or health, or the welfare, of the population or a part of it.”

Note, $368B AUD on nuclear submarines is not considered to threaten “the personal safety or health” of the population. Curious!

Section 424 is designed to prevent effective strikes from happening full stop. That is to say that if your strike does what a strike is meant to do the strike can be made illegal. If you work in an essential industry, your strike can be made illegal. If your strike threatens a part of the welfare of the population, lets say, the billionaires, your strike can be made illegal. This is utterly undemocratic.

This legislation, introduced by the Labor government in 2009 - defangs the union movement in contravention of international human rights law, and undermines the living standards of working class people so that business can go on as usual. So more of the wealth that we create goes into the bosses’ pocket instead of ours.

There is a direct correlation between strike numbers declining and real wages declining too. We can see this clearly when we look at the impacts of the Accords. The Accords were the midwife of neoliberalism in Australia — a package of reforms implemented by the ALP in the 1980s and sold by class collaborationist union officials. Since then strike numbers and real wages have declined in tandem. Demonstrating that attacks on the right to strike are direct attacks on the working classes’ living standards.

Contrary to what the Fair Work act suggests, calling off strikes isn’t about the health and wellbeing of the population. It’s about stopping the working class from exercising the power we have to affect change and improve our lot in society.

Right now we’re seeing a pretty palpable example of that. Currently, Healthscope, the company that applied successfully to get the nurses strike called off, has just announced that it’s cutting maternity services in both Hobart and Darwin.

This is absolutely a threat to the “health and welfare of the population or part of it.” Is it being stopped? Absolutely not. Under capitalism, profits are sacred.

It’s simple. Profit over patients? No worries. Workers striking for equal pay with their counterparts? Illegal.

This state of affairs is unacceptable and it’s something we need to fight.

The Healthscope affair is a clear demonstration that the Fair Work act is enforced in a partial manner, to the benefit of the bosses, and to the detriment of the working class - so that profit reigns supreme. What conclusion could we draw other than that we live under the dictatorship of capital?

There’s a myth that permeates that we’re in this situation because of former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard. Undoubtedly John Howard was a class warrior for the billionaires, however the laws we’ve discussed today have been designed and implemented by ALP hacks. The ALP is traditionally conceived of as the party of the working class (the Liberals correctly seen as the party of big business) yet time and again the ALP has shown which side of the barricade they line up on. We need to abandon them.

It’s curious that when it comes to the dispute with the police in Victoria or NSW, the Fair Work commission stands aside. It is far more inclined to intervene on behalf of the boss when it comes to warehouse workers, railway workers and nurses. Perhaps the Fair Work commission is acutely aware that police play the role of strike breakers when push comes to shove?

Remunerating the armed bodies of men and women who exist to ensure the exploitation and oppression of the working class continues (the police) is of no issue. Yet, if you do the work that actually makes society run i.e, work the railways, work in hospitals, work in warehouses, teach in school, build the buildings we all live and work in, etc. don’t you dare think you have the right to fight for better pay and a safer workplace. This is the message the Fair Work Commission is sending.

Remarkably, even trade unionists under the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines would be legally permitted to strike if all their delegates were sacked for example. In Australia, that’d be against the law.

What we need is fighting unions that push through and break these laws and make them a dead letter. Just like what happened during the Clarrie O’shea strikes of 1969. The working class has the power to push past these laws and impose our will on society to make it a better place. Our rulers will never allow us to overthrow them legally. There’d still be apartheid in South Africa, if the working class and unions waited for P.W Botha to make mass resistance and strikes legal.

We need to fight in spite of the law. Not in a way that’s limited by the parameters of it. That would be like tying your hands behind your back and getting in a boxing ring with Mohammed Ali in his prime.

To do all that, we need to learn the lessons of history. We need fighters in our unions to take on the law. We need a party of union militants experienced in taking on the bosses. We need to build a political alternative to the ALP that genuinely fights the capitalists, and fights to win a society where the working class is in control. We need a socialist workers’ party.

So join your union, join Victorian Socialists and get involved in building the fighting force we actually need to win.

If you liked this and want to put your feelings of indignation and radical ideas into practice get involved with the Socialist Workers’ Caucus which meets every third Wednesday of the month at 6:30pm at the VS Volunteer Centre, 83 Sydney Rd, Brunswick, 3056