The right approach to this is to say “Sure, we won’t interfere with the wider populations need to get to work on public transport etc. We will simply refuse to charge them any money to do so. All services will be provided at zero cost until further notice.”
It rips the rug right out from under the declaration for why it’s an illegal strike.
… that’d require the station staff to hold all the station fare gates open, the ticket inspectors and the rail cops to respect the strike.
They need to be in the union too.
Oh, and they have done this before. It’s not new.
Have they done this in NSW before? I know they’ve done this on buses but I haven’t seen it done with trains.
I’ve seen it done on trains in Sydney.
Is the blocking of the strike just? I don’t think so.
The point of striking is for workers to wield their economic power. The ability to bring the city to a halt is that economic power realised for train workers. It is being denied them and they are being legally forced to work. The legal removal of the right to strike is a big part of why corporate profits continue to grow but wages are stagnant IMO.
This article goes into the problems faced by workers in the Australian industrial landscape.:
I support a significant relaxing of Australia’s industrial relations laws which as the article highlights is sorely needed.
Debates about tactics is a separate issue to the right to strike. I think the tactic of running services whilst refusing to collect fares is a good one. The problem that a refusal to collect fares fails to address is the massive amounts of overtime that train drivers are being expected to work. Overtime bans were blocked in the “Fair Work” decision. Train workers I know have been complaining about being dangerously tired under the new timetable which has significantly expanded services without having the required number of new drivers and guards.
I don’t see how you can conclude that.
Workers can take many different actions, and they can tie whatever demands they think reasonable.
Workers strike actions need to have economic impact to be effective. Refusal to accept payment achieves that requirement. Going further, to harm the wider public through your actions seems less reasonable. I think we’d prefer more public transport, not less due to public distrust.
What about emergency services? Should they be able to go on strike and just let people die? It’s the same argument, and the solutions are similar.
What, indeed. Perhaps it’s all connected.
It seems other arms of NSW public service have been bullied into accepting deals that don’t even keep up with cost of living increases. The likes of medical staff and emergency services are reluctant to strike. The state government has exploited that to the disadvantage of public servants. Those with the necessary muscle could lead the rest into improved wages and conditions.
A win by train drivers could be leveraged by other public servants. Wins in the public sector could be leveraged by the private sector. That’s probably what the exploitative Right fear.
On another front, what’s different about the employer/employee relationship? It’s just another market interaction. If employees are to be forced to sell their labour for whatever the employer offers, then it’s only fair and consistent that suppliers of goods & services be forced to accept whatever the customer offers. Why should they have a right (refusal to sell) that’s denied others?
It was explained in the next couple of sentences. The new time table significantly expanded services, but without having the workers to carry out the extra work. I’m for expanded train services, but they need staff for it to be workable. They needed the staff before they started the timetable. They didn’t and now train drivers are having to work without adequate rest between shifts. It is dangerous to expect people to work like that. If striking reduces public confidence, what about train crashes caused by over tired drivers? (I’m not saying the crash was caused by the new timetable, but it may have been a factor.)
Yeah, not buying it. I’m in favour of more unions and it’s not that the situation isn’t bad or the people undeserving; it’s just that a general strike is a dumb strategy. It’s over too quickly becoming old news in about a day, sets the public against you, harms the reputation of the service you want to work in and probably causes actual harm to some commuters.
If too many hours is the issue, then just don’t do them.
Then it becomes an incremental growth issue for the trains, so they have to respond by employing more people.
Refusing to take money hits them where it matters without incurring any of the bad side effects. In fact, it probably gets the public on your side.
You’re arguing tactics, which implies support for our labour laws. As the article to which Frew linked above points out, those laws are “in breach of international labour standards”. This thread is about the right to strike, not tactics.
I think the laws on this are irrelevant. They can’t make you work… horses and water. But they’re probably doing train workers a favor by directing them towards tactics that would actually be more effective.
And yet I’m a Pirate, so I’ll talk about whatever the fuck I want to. I don’t comply with conversation “framing”, and I recommend against it for everyone else.
That’s nothing new for the LNP. Work for the dole is essentially unfree labour.
I’m in agreement with more or less everything said in this thread so far. Strikes need to be able to be held, some industries need to be creative in how they strike so the right parties are inconvenienced, employees should be able to refuse overtime, etc etc. Not directly related, but something should be done about “unions” that act consistently to the detriment of their members, too.
From the article linked in the opening post:
[Fair Work Commission]… ordered the suspension of both the 24-hour action slated for Monday and the continuing overtime ban, …
Anyone who strikes or refuses overtime will be penalised.
Yet that’s the subject of this thread; legislation impinging on industrial action.
They can make refusing to work untenable. IIRC fines for disobeying FWC rulings run to well over $10,000/day for each worker.
You evidently have some interest in distracting from the subject.
It’s time for a fight then.
I don’t like the train workers chances under the rules of current economic system though. They will need to bypass that. The government and courts are too tightly in bed with the banks. You can’t even refuse to pay these fines. They will just take it from you without permission (if you have a bank account, which I presume the union does). They can also just de-register the union and stop union dues from being paid to them.
To avoid this, the union should move its funds somewhere the government can’t touch, establish new dues payments methods as appropriate, and then take appropriate measures like refusing overtime and not charging fares as I described earlier.
No. Just don’t like being constrained by pedantic rules.
IIRC, workers can be penalised individually.
Your credibility might suffer less if you deign to learn which rules can be safely ignored. Wandering off, following your own train of thought, looks like trolling to distract. Your failure to pay attention to the information provided doesn’t help.
I have no idea why you think you have any authority here, but it’s boring. These are discussion forums. If we can’t use them to discuss various aspects of an issue, then it’s just an echo chamber. Is that what you want?
Debating a Union’s industrial tactics is a third order issue compared to trying to develop a policy on the right to strike and industrial relations. I will explain.
The way I look at it, the right to strike is a basic right, like the right to free speech or the right to a fair trial. I support the union movement, I think workers are best off in general when bargaining collectively, when they can take industrial action.
Unions themselves are a bit of a mixed bag. Where they are democratic and give union members ways to have a say and get involved, I support them with very few conditions. I don’t work in their jobs, therefore I don’t know what they go through and I don’t feel I can judge them by the tactics they choose to use when trying to win better wages and conditions. I trust them to know what is best for them.
Some unions on the other hand are pretty shit, like the SDA, where they have been under the control of the right wing of the ALP right faction. They negotiate away conditions for nothing and run the union as a stepping stone into parliament. I think this was the sort of thing @jedb was referring to.
I have done a lot with the union movement over the years. I worked for the NSW Teachers Federation for a year when I was about 20, have been a member of a number of unions and was arrested at the MUA picket in 1998 and arrested repeatedly at the Joy Mining dispute in 2000. I wasn’t a member of these unions, I just supported them as a citizen and unionist. Because I have a long history of participating, I have the ear of some fairly influential unionists, this doesn’t really help the Pirate Party though.
To have influence over the tactics used by unionists, you need to participate in the union movement. Having a basic right to strike policy and some sort of statement saying we generally support unions (something @miles_w has been planning on proposing), we open up opportunities for pirates to participate in the union movement as pirates. From this position our thoughts on tactics would be heard and have the possibility of being implemented. From the outside and with no platform to participate, we have no influence at all. Why would they listen to us?
What I propose is that we work on a policy to expand the right to take industrial action, including the right to strike. Where our members are interested or already active in their unions, we support them however we can, when applicable. If we do this, then debating tactics will mean something.
In the Brisbane bus drivers ‘strike’ a few months ago, they were letting people travel for free. There are other ways to carry out industrial action than strikes which can be just as effective.
I try to see issues from both sides so I like to appreciate wage pressure on companies to remain cost effective, but at the same time if a company can’t afford to pay their works fair and competitive rates then they need to be cutting costs elsewhere or reconsider their business model.
The FWC ruling against Sydney Trains is a bit of a shock to all of us, but after the outrage of the AWU raid by the ROC last year I don’t think I’m surprised by anything any more. The incoming electoral funding disclosure amendment from the LNP is another strike against grassroots advocacy and community organising.