Luckily as an avowed sports hater, I’m immune to the current wave of cricket-inspired Aussiephobia, and can show a bit of solidarity with their unions and working people.

It’s a year to the day on Thursday since John Howard’s government introduced sweeping new labour laws, which were a body-blow to people trying to organise and defend their working rights. The law lets employers move people one at a time onto ‘individual contracts’, outside of the protections previously negotiated with their unions. It removes unions’ rights in many workplaces at a stroke, divides the workforce if troublemakers can be singled out for much worse conditions under their own contract, and obviously it’s now much more difficult for unions to fight hundreds of little battles, rather than one large one.

It doesn’t stop there though – employees in firms with less than 100 staff have lost unfair dismissal protection, and for larger firms a new clause of ‘operational reasons’ does much the same. Minimum wages have been restructured to be updated according to economic competitiveness rather than tackling unfair pay. Differing state-level labour rights have been rounded down to a minimum set. Access to unions in the workplace has been more tightly controlled. And the independent body which oversees industrial relations has had powers removed and been prevented from getting involved in new areas.

Ouch! Makes some of our Trade Union Freedom Bill problems look pretty small beer, and I’m very glad we don’t have to deal with this bundle of bother over here. Unions have been knocked sideways by this blow, and are devoting a lot of effort to public campaigning now that the changes are enshrined in law. They are marking the date with protests around the country, and you can view their rather effective TV ad campaign online at their campaign site yourrightsatwork.com.au

In the UK, Amicus has called a demo outside Australia House in the Strand in London at 9.30am on Thursday. I’ll stop off on my way into work – hope to see more people there to support our colleages down under!