$8 per week: don't hold your breath
In April, the ACTU Executive decided that now was not the right time to lodge a claim for the $8 per week so-called safety net wage rise "promised" under Accord Mark VII. According to the ACTU, the high level of unemployment pointed to a situation where a wage rise of $8 per week (three or four cups of coffee, or enough food for a medium-sized dog) was not advisable. But after more than 10 years of persistent cuts to real wages, that excuse for doing nothing has worn thin. The wage cuts have been part of a package of economic policies that has increased unemployment, not decreased it.
The delay in the $8 wage rise, just like all the past delays, cuts, deals and misdirection, is what the bureaucrats at the ACTU have to pay to retain some role for themselves in the new industrial order that Keating and the Business Council are working to establish. By proving they can play the role of disciplinarian amongst the unions, they seek to convince the powers that be that they can do something useful — useful for the rich, that is. And useful for Keating and the ALP, whose whole claim to government is that it is in an alliance with an ACTU that can keep the unions in line.
But, it seems, the massive effort being put into redesigning a brave new world for the ACTU bureaucrats has brought them into conflict with a number of their affiliates. In NSW last week a group of 10 unions, mainly under traditional right-wing leadership, broke about 10 years of silence by speaking out against the ACTU wages policy. It has "failed to deliver favourable wages outcomes", stated the unions in a language obviously not aimed at their members but at fellow bureaucrats. They said that they plan to lodge a claim for the $8 safety net rise as soon as possible instead of waiting to see if the ACTU will do it in July.
Of course, any genuine move by unions to fight to improve their members' conditions is to be welcomed, although a real campaign would entail more than "lodging a claim". And any claim aimed at achieving real improvements needs to go beyond a demand for an $8 wage rise.
Unfortunately, there is reason to suspect that the NSW unions are not serious even about the $8. This is because the protest about the claim comes hand in hand with opposition to the ACTU's other scheme to centralise power in its hands, namely, the elimination of the automatic right of the NSW Labour Council, dominated by the right-wing union officials, to a seat on the ACTU executive. By responding — in words anyway — to increasing restlessness amongst the membership, the NSW right-wing unions also apply pressure on the ACTU to withdraw the plan to abolish the NSW Labour Council seat on the ACTU Executive.
In the meantime, the Queensland Trades and Labour Council has responded differently to the ACTU plans. It has changed its name to ACTU Queensland branch — just like the RSPCA.