Sue Bolton
There are a wide range of responses among unionists to the question of how much the ALP's industrial relations policy changed at the party's 2004 national conference, held at the end of January.
On one hand, the Australian Council of Trade Unions issued a media release which claimed that the ALP's industrial relations policy "is a framework for decent workplace relations under a future Latham Labor government".
Other unionists, however, are more critical. They applaud the changes in Labor's new IR policy, but also recognise the policy's limitations. Michele O'Neil, Victorian secretary of the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union (TCFUA), and Martin Kingham, Victorian secretary of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) — both of whom were delegates to the conference — cautioned that policies endorsed by ALP conferences aren't always implemented by Labor governments
Kingham told Green Left Weekly that "in terms of social policy issues, we probably have the most right-wing ALP leader that we've had in quite a while", but that the industrial policy adopted at the conference is "one of the better industrial policies we've had for a decade. Of course, that's the policy they've adopted in opposition. In government it could be another story."
O'Neil concurred with this sentiment when she told GLW: "My members are pretty hard-nosed about the difference between what a party promises in opposition and what it delivers in government. The important thing that I'll be reporting back to our membership is that it's significant to get these achievements into the platform, but the real task is to ensure that a Labor Party in government actually acts on those commitments and makes them effective. And that's going to require constant vigilance."
Both Kingham and O'Neil commented on the difference between the ALP conference and the ACTU congress. "We had less of a battle getting a good industrial relations policy at the ALP conference than we did at the recent ACTU congress", said Kingham, referring to their attempt at the ACTU congress to call for the abolition of individual contracts. The motion was defeated because it didn't have the support of the ACTU leadership or the majority of unions.
The new ALP policy promises to "abolish Australian Workplace Agreements" and states that there will be "no legislative provision for federal statutory individual agreements". This is an important advance, although is unlikely to turn the big corporations off supporting the Labor Party, because only a small percentage of employers use AWAs.
Despite the low take-up rate for AWAs, Kingham pointed out the significance of abolishing AWAs and individual contracts. He said that the current Workplace Relations Act prevents unions from intervening in the certification of AWAs and individual contracts.
"If you restore unions' ability to intervene and block agreements that don't match their pattern [bargaining] agreement, then it's basically down to us as unions to use that opening to operate on pattern bargaining principles."
The new policy allows for the reversal of the federal Coalition government's stripping back of awards, by awards covering a comprehensive range of conditions again. However, the new policy hangs on to the Keating Labor government's enterprise bargaining system when it says that "a system of workplace-based collective bargaining will be continued".
While the policy hints that it might support "alternative ways for workers to achieve decent increases in wages and conditions" including "industry-based arrangements", there is no explicit commitment in the policy that a future Labor government would resist pressure from the employers to ban pattern bargaining or that unions could engage in industry-wide bargaining.
This is a problem, said O'Neil, because "the capacity to have industry-wide negotiations, to have increases flow into awards and have the awards reflect those standards properly are critical issues for our members. This is because the great bulk of textile, clothing and footwear workers are not in workplaces where they see the benefits of enterprise bargaining, and those workers are being left behind in the current system. So having effective industry negotiations and effective flow-ons into the award system is one of the only things that will make a difference to lift up some of the lowest paid workers in the country."
"It would be fair to say that the new policy is neutral on the issue of pattern bargaining and we would like it to be explicit and compulsory", said Kingham. "In practical terms, there are significant obstacles to unions achieving pattern bargaining. We do pattern bargaining [in the Victorian CFMEU] but we still have to sit down and make more than 3000 individual employers sign on to an identical agreement."
One reason why the corporate press hasn't been screaming about the ALP's new IR policy is because Labor has retained enterprise bargaining.
The system of enterprise bargaining ties up a huge amount of union resources because unions have to negotiate separately with thousands of employers. This means that workers in tiny or un-unionised workplaces usually miss out on enterprise bargaining agreements. The system of enterprise bargaining has resulted in increasing gaps in pay and conditions between the well-organised and ununionised sections of the workforce.
The new ALP policy promises to remove "all industrial matters from the Trade Practices Act and be regulated by industrial law". If enacted by a future Labor government, this would be a significant advance because section 45D of the Trade Practices Act is one of the most common tools used by employers against industrial action.
During the 1980s, it was ALP policy to remove sections 45D and 45E from the Trade Practices Act, but both the Hawke and Keating Labor governments ignored this aspect of ALP policy.
The new ALP IR policy is silent on the question of whether Labor would support or oppose employers using the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to fine unions large sums of money for engaging in "anti-competitive" behaviour by seeking pattern agreements.
It is also silent on the question of legislative change to prevent common law being used by bosses against unions for engaging in industrial action.
The new policy doesn't say anywhere that the Coalition's Workplace Relations Act will be repealed. Some unionists are assuming that the new policy will mean the repealing of all of the provisions of the WRA.
However, if the WRA isn't repealed, there are still some nasties which will be left in place by the new policy. For example, the WRA allows for employers to bypass unions and initiate non-union agreements. So too would sections 127 and 166 of the current WRA. These empower the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to order unions to stop unprotected industrial action.
O'Neil is also critical of the section of the new policy which states that "lockouts by employers who are not bargaining in good faith" will be illegal. After TCFUA members at Geelong Wool Combing experienced months of being locked out, O'Neil feels that there should be a blanket abolition of the ability of employers to lock workers out.
O'Neil reported that her union had won motions calling for protection of the jobs of textile, clothing and footwear workers before any tariffs could be reduced any further, and for an ALP government to commit to preferencing Australian-made suppliers, and especially regional suppliers, for government purchasing. In addition, the motion committed an ALP government to only purchasing from companies that meet core labour standards and which deal with unions.
She also pointed to important improvements in the areas of workers' entitlements, the rights of casual workers, and federal legislation to enshrine rights for outworkers. However, she said "it by no means meets all of what would be the basic demands of our union about what should be in a Labor Party platform. Such a platform would remove non-union agreements and ban lockouts."
She also welcomed the part of the policy with called for industrial manslaughter legislation, but added that "the people who could implement that today are the Labor state governments. And what an indictment on them that the only government to have introduced industrial manslaughter legislation is the ACT. We are going to have to push to make sure we see that the resolution on industrial manslaughter is enacted."
Kingham said that despite the improvements in the IR policy area, "I'm disappointed about the conservatism of the social policy in the current platform of the ALP. I'm only in the ALP because I have to be."
Louise Walker, Socialist Alliance member and vice-president for general staff in the National Tertiary Education Union's Melbourne University branch, told GLW that the policy talks a lot about the contradiction of continued high levels of long-term unemployment and other workers working longer hours, but offers no solutions.
Socialist Alliance member and former Australian Manufacturing Workers Union organiser Brett Cardinal feels that the conservatism of the ALP conference on social issues contradicts any advances in the IR agenda. In response to Latham's proposal of a photo ID card for foreign-born workers, Cardinal said: "The reason why most employers would use so-called illegal labour is so they can exploit those workers. I think unions should place more of their energies on ensuring that those workers are getting the right rates of pay.
"I think it's sad that we're pitting worker against worker when the real culprit is the boss. It's the boss that seeks workers out who are vulnerable and desperate, and then when they're found out, these workers are punished.
"My pity also goes to the people in Labor for Refugees who must have walked away from the ALP conference absolutely gutted that their party decided a policy on the basis of what would get the party elected. It's really appalling. My message to people in the Labor Party fighting for refugees is that they should seriously think about whether the Labor Party is really a party for the working class."
Walker added that "the emphasis in the ALP platform is on opportunity for the individual rather than pulling up the living standards of the whole of society. The new ALP platform has much less emphasis on the collective and solidarity and much more on individualism. People who are on unemployment benefits or other forms of welfare and people who are currently working are not considered in the policy to all be part of the working class. It allows the different sections of the working class to be pitted against each other."
From Green Left Weekly, February 11, 2004.
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