ACTU vow ‘to turn up heat’ on bosses

Sally McManus flags more industrial action, picket lines and product boycotts to pressure companies to offer more secure employment conditions.

ACTU secretary Sally McManus. Picture: Getty Images

ACTU secretary Sally McManus has declared unions will be “turning up the heat” on employers as the economy emerges from the pandemic, flagging more industrial action, picket lines and product boycotts to pressure com­pan­ies to offer more secure employ­ment conditions to workers.

Revealing “a change in our industrial campaigning”, Ms McManus told The Australian the “whole union movement” would be uniting behind workers and individual unions pursuing job security claims.

“All unions will be getting behind workers who are fighting for job security so employers know they are not just dealing with their own workforce but all of us and the capacity of the whole union movement,” she said.

Ms McManus cited previous campaigns against Carlton & United Breweries, Streets ice cream and Harvey Norman where unions urged the public to boycott their products.

“That is just one thing. We will support the workers in whatever way gives them support,” she said.

“It might mean protests, picket lines, fundraising, boycotts, social media campaigns.

“This is really sending a message to employers and to governments that we’ve had enough and we’re going to be turning up the heat on employers and also on governments.”

Ms McManus said new polling in western Sydney and Queensland highlighted how the mass loss of casual jobs during the pandemic had driven a shift in attitude among voters, including Liberal supporters, from acceptance of insecure work to wanting government action to fix it.

ACTU commissioned polling of 1242 voters across the federal seats of Lindsay and Herbert found 72 per cent, including 50 per cent of Liberal voters surveyed, believed insecure work was being made worse by government and business.

More than 62 per cent believed their jobs had become less secure during the pandemic while 70 per cent of voters, including 38 per cent of Liberal voters surveyed, said jobs were not secure enough to allow workers to plan for the future.

Almost two-thirds of voters surveyed, including 58 per cent of Liberal supporters, said they had either lost work or hours in the past 12 months, or knew someone in their family who had.

The Transport Workers Union is preparing to embark on more strikes against employers in support of job security claims, and Ms McManus expected to see an increase in industrial ­action taken by workers. She said unions would also be targeting employers across manufacturing, warehousing and distribution who kept operating during the pandemic but had converted workers to labour hire and other forms of insecure employment.

The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union said Cadbury workers would take fresh strike action for 24 hours from 7am on Friday after 81 per cent of workers who participated in a ballot voted against the company’s proposed enterprise agreement.

AMWU national secretary Steve Murphy said “weak bargaining laws mean workers are continually forced to take industrial action without pay to fight for basic rights”.

“We need secure jobs as part of a manufacturing-led recovery as we head into the next phase of Covid, and into a federal election,” he said.

Ms McManus said “employers need to know that if a group of workers is having a dispute or a claim for secure jobs and they are fighting for that, they’re not just taking on that group of workers, or just that one union, it will be the whole union movement”.

“I can understand that a whole lot of employers will be thinking, ‘Well, actually we would prefer … to have people in more permanent jobs but I’ve got a problem because my competitors aren’t doing that and it’s cheaper to adopt business models which are based on insecurity’.

“Those employers have to understand we want change and if they want change so that they are not having to compete against people with those other business models, you have got to make it universal for everyone so that’s legislative change.”