This is the edited text of a speech given by PEGGY TROMPF to a meeting in Sydney on September 1 organised by the Rank and File Alliance.
On Monday, I listened to the speeches of the president and secretary of the ACTU as they opened the congress.
As I sat there, I began to feel more and more unreal — as if, like Alice, I had fallen down a long dark hole into Wonderland. It is true that one of the speakers bore a passing resemblance to a white rabbit, but I soon realised that my feelings were probably more inspired by another old story, though I wasn't too sure which one.
The president was full of congratulations for a thing called the moomen for working so hard and in such a unified way for the Labor Party.
He said the government would give the moomen opportunities to change, but then he said that the moomen must retain its independence.
He said there had to be a new style of moomen, one that was committed to people and progress. He didn't say what people or whose progress.
He asked us to imagine an old-style militant trade union leader coming back to life now. The old leader, the president said, would not believe his eyes, as he saw before him a utopia where there was nothing left for the moomen to do.
The president said many other wise though sometimes mysterious things.
He said that trade union membership had declined, that there were new industries which had no unions covering them; but then he said that unions were making a comeback.
His voice hushed as he sagely remarked, "The more things change the more they stay the same".
He joyfully told us about the progressive companies that were welcoming unions with open arms, about the reconstructed, sophisticated new-style unionists, who are better educated, more imaginative and better thinkers than their antediluvian forebears.
His voice became strong and militant as he proclaimed, "If companies try to become savage, if they try to use the ideology of economic rationalism, the union moomen will strike back". Strange, I thought: wasn't it the case that companies and governments were both savage and economic rationalists?
The secretary's speech took a little longer than the president's because he said a lot of things twice — probably for the benefit of those older-style unionists, who were slower of thought and imagination than the newer ones with uni degrees who had unbiased and flexible views because they had not been prejudiced by any direct contact with workplaces.
He also said profound things like, "We're not here to walk away from anything or anybody".
He also seemed to be telling the delegates what it was that they should all agree on; and that was before they'd begun to discuss it.
The secretary said that it was old-fashioned socialism to talk about the power that people have when they work together.
My feeling of unreality was still there the next day when the prime minister came to speak to what all three of them called true believers.
I was not too sure what the belief was, but after listening to the PM I thought it might be in some kind of men's sport or war games: he mentioned giving flak and something about front rowing.
The PM seemed very concerned about decency. He said we had to have a decent society and decent values.
He also talked about the poor old-fashioned unionist of a decade ago, who presumably held highly unfashionable attitudes to do with class struggle and ideas that capitalists were out to maximise their profit.
Embrace the new-style unionism, was the PM's message. Continue to support us, who have given you such advances.
Just like the president, the PM gave us a wise though mysterious message: "Organically expand the tentacles of trade unionism."
"This can be done", he proclaimed, "through sensible, organic enterprise bargaining ... which will attract youth".
Ah, I thought, this makes sense: a mutant ninja octopus which can be given to McDonald's workers instead of wages.
The reason for my sense of being in another place was that the organic tentacles of the trade union movement were not doing a hell of a lot for a group of Tooheys workers whose new-style bosses were definitely not playing the new game. It hadn't done a lot for the Tasmanian paper workers despite the president himself appearing.
Hadn't these capitalists heard of the new cooperation? Hadn't they heard of best practice? Didn't they know that traditional industrial conflict had been turned into a constructive and pro-active mutual benevolence club?
After all,the ACTU was producing brilliant men who wrote books on best practice unionism, which told workers that they could concentrate on wealth creation, that they could assist their benevolent bosses with schemes for job redesign, training, as well as ways to allow their employers, in the most compassionate manner, to make them redundant, outsourced, right sized.
As I thought about this, I realised that what I was being reminded of was the story of the emperor's new clothes.
You know the one: the emperor wanted the best suit of clothes ever seen. Two cunning tailors heard of his wishes and approached him, saying that they had won the best practice award for excellence in their trade only that year.
The emperor employed them and they set to work. When he visited the workshop, he was surprised to find them cutting and sewing ... nothing, as he thought.
The tailors held imaginary cloth in their arms. "Look at the beauty of the materials", they said. "Feel the quality of the cloth. With these garments you will be renowned throughout the land. And best of all, the lavishness of these clothes can be appreciated only by the sophisticated, new-style people in your kingdom, so you will be able to tell who is worthy to be let into your restructured court."
"Of course", said the emperor, whose name was William the Curly. "Go ahead and make an entire wardrobe."
The cunning tailors, whose names were Robert the Reformist and Paul the Pallid, got to work and produced a whole new-style, sophisticated wardrobe.
William the Curly was delighted and arranged a celebration to show off his wardrobe. All the wise and new-style members of his executive (some of whom had made themselves over from their former old-fashioned selves) loudly praised William's sense of style.
They said they were in accord with him and hoped they could also get their tailoring done at Robert and Paul's.
But suddenly a young unsophisticated shop steward who happened to be in the crowd called out, "The Emperor has no clothes".
Many of William's court protested and called the shop steward a reactionary, a scumbag, an antiquated 19th century perpetrator of old-fashioned class war, and said that she had no business in the Labor Party or the trade union moomen if that was her attitude.
But some of the others present began to see that indeed William stood there absolutely naked.
The emperors of the ACTU/ALP tell us to embrace new approaches to the capitalist system which will result in a decent society with decent values inhabited by decent people.
But their policies and strategies are as transparent as the emperor's clothes. Far from being decent, their nakedness verges on the obscene.