ACTU President lauds education staff at IEU Conference
ACTU President Michele O’Neil has praised IEU members for keeping schools going during the pandemic.
Addressing the IEU’s Annual Conference, O’Neil said, “all credit to you. Given the challenges you faced, what you did to keep educating was extraordinary”.
The ACTU is trying to get the Labor Government's Secure Jobs, Better Pay Bill passed by Federal Parliament before Christmas. Having passed through the House of Representatives, the legislation needs the support of at least one Senate crossbencher to become law.
O'Neil said the IEU's multi-employer bargaining impasse with Victorian Catholic employers shows how the current industrial relations system fails workers.
IEU General Secretary Deb James and Rep Heather Macardy addressed the Senate Committee Hearing into the proposed Bill in early November, explaining the toll of drawn-out negotiations on education staff.
O’Neil said they both did their union proud and gave “really powerful evidence”, despite having less than a day’s notice to attend the hearing.
She said reforming the bargaining system was an “enormous task”, and the Bill presented a “once in a lifetime opportunity to change working people’s lives for the better”.
O’Neil urged her audience to use “friendly” encouragement when seeking to convince Senators to back the legislation via social media.
“Tell your story, don’t attack, engage.”
Michele O’Neil launches the IEU Annual Conference, 12 November.
And she practices what she preaches.
Deb told the Conference how a “zen-like” O’Neil handled hostile questioning at the Senate Hearings, remaining calm, positive, and constructive throughout her grilling, and resisting the “bait” set by an aggressive Senator.
“We couldn’t have better leaders,” Deb said of O’Neil and ACTU Secretary Sally McManus.
O’Neil’s manner may be pleasant, but her message is blunt: “These laws are about fundamental rights of workers to bargain and have a level playing field”.
“We’re about balancing power to win extra leverage to get workers a fair deal.
“Australia has become more unequal and divided and a lot of the damage was done in the last decade under governments hostile to unions.
“Changing the government in itself doesn’t deliver change – now we must make sure the promises made by the Labor Party are delivered.
“We never take the foot off the pedal. We don’t win until we see a difference in the daily lives of working people.”
O’Neil said the union movement had done the hard work on its policies in hope of a Labor victory before the 2019 federal election. The recent cost-of-living crisis made the need for change even more urgent.
“Wages have been stagnant for 10 years, but they’ve gone backward in the past 16 months. Workers are literally making decisions between spending money on food or petrol.”
This, when big business profits are up 28 per cent, CEO pay is up 41 per cent, and, despite productivity rising, the labour force has its lowest ever share of GDP. The people saying workers shouldn’t have more will spend big to oppose industrial relations reform.
“Big business knows most people don’t like them so they’re framing their opposition campaign around public sympathy for small business, claiming there will be Australia-wide strikes.
“That’s why there’s a scare campaign saying the Bill is too rushed – they need more time to spend a lot of money opposing it. They’ve had plenty of time, we’ve been talking to them for years… We need to keep the Labor Party strong, keep the Greens on side and get the one other vote we need to get this Bill passed.”
O’Neil invoked the actions of the ACT’s ‘Vintage Reds’ - unionists who have retired from full-time employment – campaigning for the Bill by knitting outside Senator David Pocock’s office and reminding him, “we voted for you, now it’s your time to vote for us!”
Asking members to follow their example and do everything they could to support the Bill in the next few weeks, O’Neil said, “we never win alone”.
“We only win when we’re together. Solidarity is our power.”