March 12 - This one is not going to get by! That was the mood of trade unionists when they rallied against the NSW Labor government's plans to privatise the electricity industry. Thousands of electricity workers participated in the February 26 protest outside the NSW parliament building. They were joined by workers from other industries. Union members know that the main reason that governments privatise is to squeeze more out of workers. Privatisation makes job slashing and union busting easier because it protects governments from direct responsibility for such deeds. Workers' livelihoods are instead thrown over to the hands of corporate vultures - rich profiteers eager to make yet another quick killing.

It is clear that the NSW Premier Morris Iemma and Treasurer Michael Costa's privatisation plans have the backing of the capitalist class. That is why they are so hell bent on pushing ahead despite the scheme's unpopularity even within Labor's own ranks. The day after the February 26 rally, the Fairfax owned Sydney Morning Herald published a lengthy editorial strongly supporting the NSW Labor government's privatisation agenda. Rudd and Gillard are energetically behind the scheme too. From planning public service job cuts to extending racist welfare restrictions against Aboriginal people from the NT to WA's Kimberly (even after making a token "apology"), Rudd is proving himself to be a little Johnny Howard. Just like all the state ALP governments, federal Labor administers society not for the workers who elect Labor but for the ALP tops' big end of town mates who own all this country's wealth and control its state apparatus.

But this privatisation can be defeated! Our side has the numbers and the will. And the power! That power which workers have always had to rely on to protect their interests - the power of industrial action! Last November, Victorian nurses defiantly shut down public hospital beds to win more nursing positions and a much needed pay rise. The nurses union triumphed even though the nature of nurses' work restricts their industrial clout. But electricity workers - how much profit would Murdoch, Fairfax and Packer's media empires, for instance, be making without electricity? Or dishonest Dick Pratt's Visy operations? When the corporate billionaires start having their profits shut down some of them will "realise" that they had better tell Iemma and Costa to call the thing off.

Electricity workers know the power that they have. There have been discussions about when to flick off the electricity. Proud unionists would have been pressing their union leaders about taking such action. Currently, workers are accepting the line from the pro-ALP union leadership: that they should rely on getting the privatisation defeated within the ALP or through parliament - and industrial action should not be considered at best until much later on after the campaign has won more support from the public. But militant unionists can respond to this line with a number of points.

Firstly, while it is possible that opposition within the ALP can stymie Iemma's plans, there is no guarantee that this will occur. Furthermore, even if the measures are rebuffed within parliament they are likely to soon reappear again. A few years back the Carr government's electricity privatisation push was retarded by opposition within the ALP but now the scheme is back. It is back because what are generating the plans are not just bad ideas but the relentless drive of the capitalist elite to gain new sources of profits. But if the ruling class is struck with a high-energy dose of union industrial power they would be much more likely to realize that electricity privatisation is a no-go area for them in the medium term.

Secondly, if the power privatisation plans are defeated through industrial action that will have a much more electrifying effect on the struggles of all workers - from ferry workers facing the privatisation of Sydney Ferries to fire brigade employees insulted with a pay "offer" that is below inflation to building workers still being hounded by the union-busting ABCC construction industry "watchdog." And it will empower other sectors of society who are being downtrodden by this pro-tycoon government in NSW from the Redfern Aboriginal community being hit with constant cop harassment to "ethnic" youth in Sydney's southwest who face racist official stigmatization as "violent gangs" and "terrorists."

Thirdly, if the power privatisation is not defeated by class-struggle methods, it is likely that even if the plans suffer a setback, privatization will still make some headway through some sort of compromise deal. The big chop will then come through a number of smaller cuts. Like with Telstra. Already, there have been reports circulating of certain union officials doing behind-the-scenes negotiations with their Labor colleagues around deals that that would allow some level of private capital entry. The February 27 issue of The Australian reports that Unions NSW secretary John Robertson, who has in public been a vocal critic of privatisation, has been talking with senior minister John Della Bosca about an arrangement that would allow private investment in two new generators at Lithgow's Mount Piper station. Especially when there is such energy in the union movement against privatisation we should not accept any such deal. Let's strike down the privatisation fully!

Fourthly, the anti-privatisation campaign already has much public support. Unions publicity work has achieved this. Wide layers of working class people already know that privatisation will mean higher energy prices. But if this support for the campaign is not turned into powerful action soon then sympathy will turn into apathy. Workers seeing backdoor dealing will drift from defiance to cynicism.

It is worth here looking back at the anti-Workchoices campaign. In 2005 and early 2006, hundreds of thousands of workers eagerly participated in industrial action against Howard's union busting. But the pro-ALP ACTU leaders defused the industrial struggle and told union members to instead focus on campaigning for an ALP government. Now, the new Labor government will kind of scrap AWAs (which to the extent that it is eventually due to happen is positive) but has promised to replicate big chunks of Workchoices provisions in its own IR legislation. These include laws against workers industry-wide bargaining and provisions outlawing strikes in strategic industries - all measures that could be used against an electricity workers fightback. So a whole lot of anti-union measures that could have been defeated on the terrain of industrial struggle are now still being imposed. And what is more, being imposed by a government confidently claiming that it has a "mandate" to maintain such measures. Let us learn lessons from this experience!

No one thinks that waging industrial action in the power sector will be easy. Major action in something like the power industry would bring unions up against anti-strike laws and the courts. And eventually, as was the case during the 1998 waterfront battle, against the cops. To be able to stand strong against all this, union members will have to be well educated that the courts and police are part of a state that has been deliberately built up to serve the rich exploiting class. This education is not helped by the fact that some on the left (while doing much work to publicise the anti-privatisation issue) have been portraying the existing state power sector as simply being in the "hands of the people." That makes out that the state owning the power sector is also "in the hands of the people." But that is definitely not the case. Australia's state industries are themselves shaped by the fact that the state here is a rich peoples' state. That is why, for example, they never even cared to connect up electricity to some Aboriginal townships ... in the 21st century! We must resolutely oppose privatisation because that would mean further attacks on workers rights but in order to mobilize the kind of action that we need to defeat it we will have to be clear that the present state is not in any way our friend.

While an industrial campaign against electricity privatisation will be hit with opposition from the powers that be, it will also energise massive back up. From ordinary people, many of whom would jump at the chance to resist the decay and increasing cost of public services. And especially from unionists who are anxious to finally rollback a series of anti-worker attacks. All these people will have to be well schooled on the understanding that the fight against exploitation often requires facing down attacks by the institutions of the bosses state. In regards to such training it is great that the Sydney MUA branch has joined with vigour a united front campaign to have charges dropped against Palm Island Aboriginal hero Lex Wotton. Lex Wotton is facing over ten years in jail in connection with a mass anti-racist resistance struggle that inspiringly defied the cops and courts in Palm Island in 2004 after police beat to death a black man in custody. The MUA is putting on buses to take people from Sydney to the Brisbane rallies in Wotton's defence that will begin on the Saturday before his trial. Whatever their politics on other issues, the support of the Sydney MUA Branch for the Let Lex Go campaign and its officials' statements that the Palm Island struggle was 100% justifiable will have the effect of inspiring union members to themselves organise uncompromising struggles against oppression. Join the Brisbane actions to defend Lex!

Those who argue against electricity sector industrial action point to the fact that the influential big company owners who would be hit by a power shutdown here have international sources of profit that they would fall back on to mitigate the effects of workers action here. But that only makes solidarity action from workers abroad more crucial. However, it does not help to win such solidarity when some in the workers movement here build the campaign against privatisation partly on the basis of keeping out foreign influence, as a matter of keeping the industry in "Australian hands." Yet if the electricity sector ends up in private "Australian hands," those Aussie profiteers will be just as (if not more) ruthless than bosses from other countries. The anti-privatisation campaign is about defending workers rights against exploiters, where ever they are from! To make the issue one of "Australian" versus "foreign" ownership turns off workers abroad who are looking to organize solidarity with their comrades in NSW.

On this point, we must note with sadness that a small group of members of the racist One Nation party were at the February 26 anti-privatisation rally promoting their shit. What would an overseas union delegation at the rally think if they saw them there? Next time the One Nation idiots show up at a union rally, they should be told to piss off in an organised way! If we do that then we will win respect from global unions and they will be more energised to support workers struggles here.

A version of the anti-foreign diversion that we should be especially on guard against is the attempt to make the anti-privatisation issue a China-bashing exercise. The Daily Telegraph newspaper and right-wing talkback radio hosts have been pushing an anti-communist scare campaign about the threat of Chinese state-owned power companies. We should be clear that the struggle at hand is not against the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) but against the anti-worker schemes of the greedy Aussie ruling elite.

In fact, while we are talking about forms of industry ownership, it is important to note that in the PRC's system, the key infrastructure and industries are actually publicly owned. Furthermore, in the PRC state firms aren't simply there to provide infrastructure for private bosses in the more profitable industries to make a killing (like the way BHP and NAB do here) but are actually the core of its economy and dominate the most lucrative sectors like oil, shipping, automotive and banking industries. Such a public ownership-based system, while far from "perfectly" socialist in China, was nevertheless born from a heroic capitalist revolution (in 1949.) When capitalist rulers in the West run anti-PRC campaigns they are trying to break up the socialist-leaning state there so that they can take into "private hands" China's industry (already sweatshop Western and Taiwanese private bosses were able to gain a hold in China's export processing sector during the late 1980s and 1990s.) Politically aware workers in the West must oppose this agenda. And to help explain to other workers why we should oppose anti-communist China-bashing we can make the point that when Murdoch's anti-union Daily Telegraph and rightwing talkback hosts pretend to be pro-worker, that smells like a rat!

Opposition to the power privatisation within ALP ranks is so strong that 15 Labor MPs felt compelled to make a point of joining the February 26 union rally. Many Labor supporters feel that the Iemma/Costa scheme is yet another example of how Labor has moved away from its previous "pro-worker stance." But 25 years ago, workers were also saying that Labor had moved from what it used to be. And 25 years before then workers were even then saying that Labor was betraying its previous policies. The point is that the ALP has always been a party of dashed hopes. It has never been able to satisfy the needs of its worker base because the party's program is one of cooperating with the capitalist owners - and the interests of the capitalists are completely counterposed to those of workers. Sure some in Labor are more politically sincere than others but they cannot have decisive influence because they are together in a party with those most eager to be feted by the bourgeois elite (whether it be through accepting developers' "gifts" or fine-dining at corporate executive events or simply lapping up endorsement by the tycoon-owned media.) In the long term there is only one fate that awaits Labor: a split. The question then is what alternative to Labor do we need? Well, what is needed is not simply an uncorrupted version of the ALP. Because what breeds the ALP's corruption is its corrupt political strategy, the idea of running the capitalist system and then kidding yourself that you are doing it in a way favourable to workers. What we need is a party of unwavering opposition to the exploiters and their system. A party composed of people who are prepared to remain in opposition until they have built up workers struggles through a number of campaigns to such an extent that the toilers are able to take over society and bring industry into truly public ownership.

Whenever workers embark on a major struggle, like the one that we need to have against privatisation, it poses the need for us to generate the best possible organization and political leadership. But such political clarity and organization will mainly be built in the course of real struggles over real issues. Today, we need to wage strong resistance against privatisation. The time for action has come! Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win! ♦

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