The ALP’s 46th National Conference met in Sydney last weekend, with 21 representatives from the AMWU among the 400 conference delegates.

The AMWU delegates successfully moved motions to improve the ALP’s federal platform in the areas of trade, procurement, industrial relations, apprenticeships, skills and training, and workers entitlements.

Those changes were:

Trade
•    A commitment from the ALP to enforceable core labour and environmental standards to be part of any international trade agreements signed by an ALP government;
•    A transparent process of any trade agreement, including a review and vote in the parliament;
•    An independent and open economic and social impact study prior to any agreement being signed; and
•    A bi-annual report to monitor the tariff and non-tariff barriers in place in other countries.
Industrial Relations
•    A commitment to make arbitration part of the 2012 review of the Fair Work system, in response to the actions of Qantas to force workers to arbitration, and the lack of rights to access arbitration for workers at companies like Cochlear.
Skills, Training and Apprenticeships
•    The ALP committed to improve labour-market testing and to set up a jobs register to ensure companies were giving local workers a fair go before being allowed to hire workers on temporary visas.
Entitlements
•    The ALP also updated its policy to reflect the commitment made at the last election to protect workers’ entitlements in full, and also committed to a review of corporate law.

AMWU National Secretary, Dave Oliver, said that the conference had confirmed the union’s successful Manufacturing: Australia’s Future  campaign over the past year.

“Two years ago, we were able to achieve some major changes to the ALP’s policy which we’ve built on since that period.

“As all AMWU activists would know, our union’s focus is much broader than the ALP and is about campaigning in the community, but it’s still important to spend the weekend arguing for our issues and holding the ALP and the government to account for manufacturing workers.”