CANBERRA — In the last 13 years, there have been few big industrial actions to defend wages and conditions. TIM GOODEN, NOEL BARTONE and STEVE CROFTS are Community and Public Sector Union workplace delegates in the ACT government. They explain why the recent fight back against the Carnell government was worthwhile.
During the last 12 months, there have been three major industrial fights in the ACT. First was the attempt to stop the corporatisation of ACT Electricity and Water (ACTEW) in mid-1995. Second was the fight to stop the budget cuts being implemented, and the third the battle to stop enterprise bargaining being used as a trade-off tool for job losses in the public sector.
Although these campaigns occurred in similar political environments, they were run very differently and ended with very different results.
Attempts by the Liberal government to corporatise ACTEW in 1990 were stopped by a union and community campaign which led to the ALP taking control of the Legislative Assembly in June 1991 and forming a minority government. In February 1995 the Liberals returned to power in a minority government, bringing with them their "privatisation is better" ideology.
ACTEW
The government immediately announced that it intended to corporatise ACTEW. Management bombarded workers and the community with propaganda on the benefits of corporatisation, using public money for a television advertising campaign.
The unions only demanded that the government answer a number of questions about what was going to happen. Union members were looking for leadership to fight the proposals, but at meetings no recommendations were put and they ended as information sessions, leaving the rank and file demoralised.
Following this, some unions, led by the Community and Public Sector Union, tried to oppose the corporatisation while others did nothing or actively supported the attempt to privatise Canberra's largest community asset.
The Trades and Labour Council could not or would not come out in united opposition, and the Greens and Independents took this as the go-ahead to support corporatisation in the Assembly. Corporatisation was implemented with practically no debate. One hundred jobs have been lost to date and electricity and water charges were increased immediately.
Budget cuts
The second major challenge by the government to the unions was over its budget for the next three years. It included cutting 3000 jobs, reducing public transport, selling the government nursing home to a private company and the privatisation of Kaleen Youth Shelter.
The CPSU was the only union that responded with an industrial campaign to stop the worst of the budget cuts. No mass action was called, and no attempt was made by the trade union movement to put up a united front against the attacks.
The strategy of the CPSU at the time was to hold different industrial actions on different days and place bans on the collection of revenue. There were several small actions, along with pickets of Belconnen Remand Centre and Kaleen Youth Shelter, but to little avail. The government never felt under pressure to negotiate and passed its budget unamended.
In the most recent dispute, over enterprise bargaining, the government offered only a 1.3% per year pay increase, with forced redundancies and different agency-based pay outcomes. This time the TLC convened a combined union delegates meeting to discuss the government's failure to negotiate.
Initially the strategy was to hold small separate actions, like the unsuccessful tactics used in the budget cuts campaign. But the delegates were angry at the lack of decisive action and frustrated by the wavering of officials. The mood of the meeting changed when CPSU delegate Tim Gooden called on the TLC to convene a mass rally outside the Legislative Assembly. The union leadership was left with little choice but to start a campaign that set a new course for industrial action.
Confrontation
From the beginning the government took a confrontationist approach to negotiations. It had no intention of paying wages in line with the CPI. It wanted agency agreements so that competition could begin amongst different sections, and it wanted to prepare the way for individual contracts. Trade-offs through agency agreements were designed to recover $120 million, which was allegedly the shortfall in the budget.
The government used every dirty trick in the book to try to break the unions. These ranged from police investigations of union members to threats of delegates being sued. When the unions began to take action under protected action clauses in the Industrial Relations Act, the government threatened to retaliate with lockouts.
Perhaps its most successful tactic, however, was to make separate offers to each of the unions. Eventually each union did make a separate deal; the divide and conquer strategy was to some extent successful.
However, the pay outcomes ended up being significantly higher than the government had expected to pay. This was because the delegates forced the campaign in a united and active direction. Although many of the bureaucrats dragged their feet, the continuous calls for rallies, pickets, blockades and democratic control of the campaign meant that they were forced many times to show leadership or be outflanked by their own members.
This was never clearer than when 500 rank-and-file members from all unions decided to join 2000 teachers at Bruce Stadium on February 6. The rank and file almost instinctively knew that unity and solidarity were necessary for the campaign to be successful, yet most of the bureaucrats tried to dissuade them from attending. This act of solidarity boosted the morale of the rank and file and exposed the bankruptcy of the bureaucracy.
Democratic Socialist Party members on the campaign committee called for a full blockade of the ACT like the one in Western Australia. This was watered down to a blockade of the Legislative Assembly, on February 14, where trade union leaders really started to campaign hard with their members.
Gaining ground
With over 100 bans in place across the government and a successful blockade under their belt, the unions felt more confident in taking the fight to Carnell. This is when the government started to negotiate and give some ground. It was also when it started to offer separate deals.
The new-found morale increased the size of the combined delegates meeting and forced other officials to attend the campaign committee. A further blockade was called for February 21, and a picket was started on the Legislative Assembly. However, the campaign committee was concerned that the dispute might "peak", and some officials started to look more to the Industrial Relations Commission for a legal solution. With an official of the ACTU lurking in the background, it was obvious that the pressure was on to do a deal or reduce the campaign to a stalemate.
Deals were then done with individual unions. Despite continued jousting between government and unions, the enterprise bargaining process is now nearly completed. The government started by offering 1.3% pay increases and forced redundancies over 12 months but by the end of the campaign most unions had achieved pay increases of 10.1% with no forced redundancies over 30 months and no corporatisation of ACTION buses.
For most rank-and-file trade union members, involvement in this campaign meant that they worked with other unionists for the first time in years. They mobilised the trade union bureaucracy into militant action, and they actually got some gains. If the campaign had remained united and more publicity work had been done with the unions and the community, a lot more could have been gained. But after 13 years of ALP/ACTU no-fight strategies, the campaign should provide a good starting point for future struggles.