After Australian journalists’ strike
The political issues facing Fairfax workers
By
the Socialist Equality Party (Australia)
11 May 2017
The week-long strike by journalists and editorial staff at Fairfax Media, in opposition to the company’s announcement last week of 125 newsroom sackings, was a significant stand against the continuous restructuring of the media, and the decimation of jobs throughout the industry.
Journalists rejected the attempts of the union, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), to limit the strike to a token one-day stoppage. They took action in the face of the ever-present threat of legal penalties and massive fines by the federal government’s pro-business industrial tribunal, the Fair Work Commission, which hangs over the head of any section of workers who defy anti-strike laws and take up a struggle in defence of their jobs and conditions.
The Fairfax journalists’ strike won widespread support, reflecting a growing sentiment among working people more broadly for a genuine fight-back against the corporate offensive against living and working conditions.
But journalists must face the fact that, despite their courageous stand, the strike has resolved none of the problems they confront. From the outset, the union did everything it could to limit industrial action to employees at Fairfax’s major media outlets. At the same time, it sought to divert opposition into impotent pleas to the company’s ultra-wealthy investors to reverse the decades-long cutbacks to newsroom jobs.
The union was well-aware that these appeals would fall on deaf ears, and that Fairfax’s major shareholders are preoccupied only with maximising their profit margins. The real concern of the MEAA, as in every previous dispute, has been to ensure its own…