CAMPAIGN TO RESTORE THE UNIONS

We, the undersigned, condemn the neo-liberal union busting attempts we have witnessed in this city over the past year, coming from an organisation which purports to be left wing, and calls itself the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism. CARF has ironically proven itself to be a bastion of racism and fascist policy in this city and by its agitation has driven deep division into the Union movement, in such a way that far right union busters of by gone eras could only have dreamed of.

 

After a general workers uprising occurred outside of CFMEU headquarters, in September of 2021, we saw the astonishing scenes of CARF refusing to stand in solidarity with these protesting workers and instead they released an open letter condemning the protesters and smearing them all as Far Right and Fascists. These attacks against fellow workers have left a deep wound in the Union movement which has yet to be healed and will possibly take years to address. Despite purporting to have much support from the Socialist wing of the left, in Victoria, CARF has proven time and again that it is little more than a neo-liberal organization.

 

As we approach another election cycle in this state we therefore feel it is time to release our own open letter condemning the division that CARF has spread in our community. We wish to rebut their claims and smears against fellow working class people in Victoria who we, the undersigned, stand in solidarity with as they seek redress to the wholesale stripping of their human rights, which occurred during the pandemic response.

 

Far from being fascist the requests of the protestors that day were inherently left wing. They were petitioning for their inalienable right to work(1), without having to forgo their own bodily autonomy, as a precondition to accessing said work, and submit to draconian vaccine mandates. Even worse it has since come out that they were not just being asked to relinquish their bodily autonomy for some fictional collective health, that we now know could never exist given the flaws in these vaccines ability to stop disease transmission, but they were being asked to partake in medical experimentation against their will. This has long been considered an anathema to a society built on human rights(2).

 

We now know, thanks to comments made by Janine Small a Director from Pfizer, at a European Parliament inquiry into the global pandemic response, that Pfizer had not in fact tested their product for transmission reduction capability, prior to rolling out their vaccines(3). Shockingly it has also come out that both Pfizer and Moderna are only now conducting research into long-term side effects of their products(4). Regardless of how well the vaccine works and how safe it turns out to be, the fact that this data was not known BEFORE the drugs were approved and mandated means the product was indeed experimental in nature at the time it was rolled out. This was an extreme precedent to set; to suggest that a private drug company had the right to dictate to the rest of society who could or could not be active in the community without first partaking in medical research for the benefit of the company and its profits.    

 

The fact that CARF stood with Pfizer, and other pharmaceutical companies, on this precept, against fellow unionists, shows that they are a completely neo-liberal organization far more concerned with the profits of their own stock holdings in pharmaceutical companies, than they are the health and well being of fellow workers. The fact that CARF was standing alongside the rights of private health corporations and drug companies to dictate policies is also highly surprising, coming from an organization that purports to hold so much support from “socialists”. At no point in the pandemic response was some collectivist, Marxist, community response proposal being offered.

 

In fact it was quite the opposite. All of the response was being privatized to poorly regulated, and in some cases completely unregulated, private health enterprises whose profit considerations were the major driving force behind their actions, not the health and well being of workers(5). Indeed during this response to the pandemic we have seen one of the largest transfers of wealth upwards, from the working class to the capitalist class in history(6). It eclipses even that which we saw in the 2008-banking crisis. No actual left wing party can seriously be in support of this if they are true Marxists.

 

These were the sort of acts that Unions protested and went on strike against numerous times in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. But for some reason suddenly, when Covid-19 hit, we saw entire swathes of the Union movements management class suddenly turn on these ideas of socialism and reject working class concepts that had been held for the previous 100 years by the left.

 

We know from further questions out of the European Parliament inquiry that in actual fact the Public Private contracts, which Pfizer forced governments around the world to enter into for their product, are hugely expropriating and give a private company unprecedented powers(7). In no way were these vaccine doses being offered up ‘free’, as a duty of care to society in the face of an emergency, despite what the relentless propaganda program suggested.

 

Indeed this response was in itself literally fascism. Benito Mussolini has been attributed, as once having said one of the cornerstones of Fascism was the merger of Corporate and State interests(8). We have never seen such a blatant merger than the way pharmaceutical companies were completely embedded with the organs of the state during the pandemic. In fact the Victorian Governments pandemic response as a whole deeply resembled ideas first floated by Mussolini in his now infamous 1932 speech to “Medical Doctors at the inauguration of the National Congress of the trade unions of Fascist physicians”(9). CARF’s position was therefore wholly in line with literal old guard fascism, which is highly shocking coming from an organisation that claims to oppose fascism.

 

Lastly we must address the issue of race as it is of such importance to CARF. It was clear during the September 2021 uprising that many of the workers who were opposed to vaccine mandates were in fact from ethnic minority communities in our state. Primarily the crowds were made up of people from the Balkans, Polynesian and Arab communities. This made the sting of them all being smeared as “far right extremists” even more hurtful, as so many of these communities have had to struggle with historic bigotry from actual “far right extremists” when they first arrive in this country. For CARF to have sunk so low as to bully them in that fashion was truly disappointing to witness.

 

Not only were they against the mandates for the above reasons but many also had cultural understandings that lead them to a different view of how the pandemic response should be managed. Rather than listening to the concerns of their members the Unions instead adopted a paternalistic, almost neo colonialist, approach that only ‘’western medicine and doctors” can truly know the answers to deal with the pandemic. These ‘rabble ethnic minorities’ needed stewarding and to be put in their place, as they were too stupid to know what was good for their own needs. Shockingly members of CARF seemed to openly celebrate when a brutal police action was then unleashed against these minorities, which roiled the city for a full week, in a display of state oppression against protesting workers the likes of which we have not seen in this country since the 1930’s.

 

This has sadly become expected from institutionalised Unions over the past 20 years of neo-liberalism but for CARF to also stand on that side was again dismaying. They clearly state that opposing racism is a cornerstone of their existence and yet they partook in one of the more racist incidents in our city in a long time.

 

Much of what we have said in this letter regarding the dispossession of the poor and ethnic minorities in our society, under the pretense of the ‘pandemic response’, were also borne out by the scenes we saw at the housing estates of African migrants in Flemington and by the Covid-19 Review lead by Peter Shergold that was recently published. (10) (11)

 

It is therefore for all the above reasons that we sign this letter in rejection of CARF and the divide in our Union movement that they are creating. We say that we are a group of left wing, working class, individuals and we reiterate our belief that the workers have the right to organize and form unions. These Unions must take the concerns of ALL of their members seriously and cannot classify those they disagree with as “Far Right” extremists simply to remove them from Union debates.

 

Secondly we reiterate our belief that we are completely pro medical choice. At no point did the protesters ever say those who wished access to a vaccine should be denied it. They simply said you cannot force it on the entire population carte blanche, under threat you would be unpersoned from society and refused all the basic human rights that belong to all citizens, if you chose not to have it.

 

Finally we reiterate that we are indeed anti fascist. We stand against the growing corporate fascism that we see rising in this country, which accelerated during the pandemic. We stand against medical fascism in all of its forms. And we acknowledge that if we want to stop the working class from being seduced by genuine far right groups, then we need to return to our own core policies of left wing ideology and stand for the workers and with the workers and never again take the side of the capitalist class, in the rampant dispossession of the workers and the profit mongering of corporate pharmaceutical behemoths, like we saw in this country over the period of 2020-2021.

 

We call on everyone who is Pro-Union, Pro-Medical Choice and genuinely Anti Fascist to sign on to this open letter and demonstrate your support.