The United Workers Union bureaucracy paved the way for mass job cuts by facilitating the orderly closure of Coles distribution centres across NSW and Queensland.
Having forced through a sell-out enterprise agreement that gave Coles everything it wanted, the United Workers Union is presiding over an “orderly closure” of the facility.
The Coles warehouse dispute is a turning point in the class struggle and one whose political lessons must be studied and acted on to defeat the escalating joint union and company assaults.
Solidarity is calling for “rank-and-file organisations” that would “work with” union bureaucrats and seek to prevent workers from leaving their corrupt and thoroughly corporatised trade unions.
As workers are propelled into struggle against a corporate onslaught targeting their jobs, conditions and social rights, it is essential that they draw the lessons of past experiences, including what has taken place at Smeaton Grange.
The dispute, one of the longest of the past two decades, has again proven that the trade unions are police forces of company management.
The worker noted the parallels between his abandonment by the unions and their current attempts to force through a sell-out deal at Coles’ Smeaton Grange warehouse.
A continued rejection of the sell-out must be linked to the fight for a broader movement of the working class, outside the straitjacket of the unions.
Coles is only able to reap massive profits and to proceed with a sweeping restructure, as a result of the perfidy of the United Workers Union.
The working class everywhere must come to the defence of the locked-out Smeaton Grange workers and begin preparing concrete actions to strengthen their fight and break the isolation being imposed by the union.
The union insists that workers have no choice but to accept the sell-out, while Coles signals it will end the protracted lockout only if there is complete capitulation to its demands.
Teachers have spoken out in support of the locked out workers at the Smeaton Grange warehouse in Sydney, and have condemned the United Workers Union’s attempts to impose a sell-out deal.
With a market capitalisation of $24 billion, the Coles Group is the 18th largest company listed on the leading Australian share index, the ASX200, and is determined to satisfy the dictates of the global financial markets, for higher returns and share prices.
The company’s video last week “exposed that the union is working hand-in-glove with Coles management against the interests of the workers.”
The UWU is using a playbook employed by the unions to shut down workers’ opposition and enforce a defeat in one dispute after another over decades.
Coles revealed the real line-up in the Smeaton Grange warehouse dispute: the company and the union on one side, and the workers on the other.
Solidarity bemoans the union’s attacks on workers as a “tragedy,” as though a misunderstanding is involved, but insists that they remain trapped within the framework of the UWU as it seeks to enforce a sell-out.
Coles praised the union for seeking to impose the company’s demands, castigated workers for their repeated rejection of the sell-out and denounced “socialists,” i.e., the SEP and the WSWS, for disrupting the company-UWU operation.
The statements by educators are important indications of the support for the building of new genuine working class organisations of struggle, and for a broader political movement of the working class.
The United Workers Union is once again seeking to ride roughshod over workers' opposition and to impose a sell-out that would result in the closure of Smeaton Grange and the destruction of most, or all, of the 350 jobs there.
