This is the short version of the pamphlet, it only contains "Outside and Against the Unions".
“Outside and Against the Unions” was written by the UK communist group Wildcat in 1992. Much of the article is about the sabotage of the Miners strike in the UK in 1984-5 by the National Union of Mineworkers and thus might seem irrelevant in Australia nearly twenty years later. However as well as much that is specific to the Miners strike there is an excellent exposition of the standard communist critique of the unions first developed by the council communists some eighty years ago. The council communists criticised the unions due to their experiences in the failed German revolution of 1918-23 where the unions and the Social Democratic Party used the Freikorps (proto-Nazi formations of ex-soldiers) to slaughter the insurgent proletariat. Wildcat have a website at www.webcom.com/~wildcat.
A similar critique of the unions could be written with reference to recent Australian history. The best example would be the Maritime Union of Australia accepting job losses and lower pay in the settlement of Patrick’s lockout of the wharfies in 1998. They did this despite the struggle being easily winnable with the mass pickets holding firm and the NSW and Victorian police forces very reluctant to smash them. There are of course many other examples such as the blockade of the NSW state parliament in 2001 that was called by the unions to give the pretence of doing something against the proposed changes to workers compensation laws that they had no intention of seriously opposing. And in September 2002 we saw the disgusting spectacle of CFMEU bureaucrats grassing up six undocumented Korean workers to the Department of Immigration with the excuse that it was to protect the wages of Australian workers. The Koreans were deported. As always unions help to divide the working class; citizens from ‘illegals’; employed from unemployed; skilled from unskilled…
Canberra, Australia December 2003
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