The Right to Strike in Australia

In Australia, a proposed new law going through the Parliamentary process will raise the penalty on trade unions for secondary boycotts and sympathy strikes to $10m, a move that would further crack down on unions and water down the right to strike. Under a competition law bill introduced in March and expected to return to parliament this week, the Turnbull government would increase the minimum penalty for secondary boycotts from $750,000 to $10m.

Sympathy strikes, one of the most common forms of workers' collective self-defence, involves a union taking industrial action to force an employer to cease trading with another entity until that targeted company agrees to industrial demands.

The bill's advocates argues that “secondary boycotts are harmful to trading freedom and therefore harmful to competition”.

The International Labor Organisation believes Australia’s ban on secondary boycotts goes beyond a “permissible prohibition” and interferes with the right to strike. Under International Labour Organisation Convention no.87, sympathy strikes are permitted, provided the original strike is lawful.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions calls for secondary boycott provisions to be removed from Australian competition law entirely. Former ACTU secretary Dave Oliver said multimillion-dollar penalties were an attack “on people’s democratic right to participate in protests, negotiate for better wages and conditions or exercise their right to free speech”.