Australian High Court sanctions wholesale assault on working conditions

by wsws (reposted)

Sun, Nov 26, 2006 7:56PM

Last week’s ruling by the Australian High Court to uphold the Howard government’s WorkChoices industrial relations laws has cleared the way for an escalating attack on workers’ jobs, wages, working conditions and basic rights. By a 5-2 majority, the country’s supreme court dismissed a challenge to the constitutional validity of the laws mounted by several state Labor governments and trade union bodies.

The decision demolished the fraud that the High Court case represented any serious threat to the IR laws, let alone a means of protecting workers and their families from the onslaught that has been under way since the legislation came into effect on March 27. All the empty claims by the Labor and union leaders of fighting the laws in the court served only to defuse the overwhelming opposition to the legislation throughout the working class.

After Howard first announced the laws in May 2005, Labor premiers and Australian Council of Trade Union (ACTU) officials told mass rallies and Sky Channel meetings involving hundreds of thousands of angry workers that they must not take industrial action or any independent political action to defeat the laws. Instead, they urged working people to place their faith in the legal challenge and to vote Labor at the next election.

More
http://wsws.org/articles/2006/nov2006/ir-n25.shtml

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