PM John Howard is running low on stocks for a fear campaign to propel him back into office for a fifth time. In 1998, Howard gave just enough support to Pauline Hanson's racist fear campaign against Asian migrants and Aboriginal people to to get him over the line in spite of promising to bring in the unpopular GST. In 2001, the fear campaign was generated by the Tampa refugees, with Howard defiantly claiming, "We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come". In 2004, it was the threat of rising interest rates under Labor — oops, can't use that one again Johnnie!
So now, facing defeat on November 24 if opinion polls are correct, Howard has delved deep into his bag of tricks and found his last, best hope for a fear-generated re-election: the union "thug".
We've heard the ads: if Labor is elected, 70% of the Labor front bench will be former "union bosses". A large billboard at the end of the M4 motorway as you drive into Sydney proclaims the threat. It's impossible to miss the meaning.
Joe Hockey, minister for workplace slavery, admitted on October 27 that the campaign against unions was indeed one of fear. He said, "Our fear campaign is based on fact". The fact is that a larger proportion of ALP frontbenchers were union members or officials, before entering parliament, than the 20% of the population who are union members.
This fear campaign has a strong "back to the future" feel. In November 1963, Robert Menzies, the PM's hero-of-heroes, used the threat of the "36 faceless men" who controlled the Labor Party (the ALP federal executive) as a successful frightener. And in this year's "Great" Debate on October 21, the worm registered its approval when Howard warned of the threat of Labor being run by former "union bosses".
Labor's response to this fear campaign has been to try to itself from the union movement. At first, Labor spokespeople quibbled with the figures — arguing that only 60% were former union officials. Wayne Swann was only a union member and anyway, "70% of Mr Howard's Cabinet didn't want him to be prime minister", ALP leader Kevin Rudd bleated on October 14.
The Labor Party left it to Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) president Sharan Burrow to come to its defence when she pointed out that, of 30 Howard ministers, 16 were lawyers. Among them, the current treasurer Peter Costello was the lawyer for the notorious union-busting company Dollar Sweets in a celebrated case in the 1980s. "This is just a diversionary tactic", Burrow told the October 15 Sydney Morning Herald. "Mr Howard, whose legacy is job insecurity and income insecurity for working families, is trying to demean the good name of people who have spent part of their lives as union representatives. Unionists are also teachers and nurses and tradesmen."
It's also a fact that far greater numbers of Australian workers would become union members if there was a union in their workplace. According to the 2007 State of the Union survey, 52% of workers would like to join a union, and 83% of those surveyed said unions benefit the country.
The feeling of the need for solidarity remains strong in the workplace. But restrictive laws, a lack of resources and the ineffectiveness of the union bureaucracy in unionising workers, particularly in the burgeoning (and largely unorganised) retail and service sectors, contributes to this lower than should be unionisation.
But the facts speak louder than the protestations of the major parties' leaders. For a party apparently dominated by the union movement and run at the behest of union officials, Labor's IR policy, laughably named Forward with Fairness, is remarkably similar to the Coalition's Work Choices.
"If I'm elected, we will abolish Work Choices", Rudd told ABC radio on October 15. However, about all Labor will actually abolish is the title of the legislation.
Labor's IR policy preserves most of the more negative aspects of Work Choices: Labor will keep the bureaucratic restrictions on union officials' right of entry to workplaces; it will retain secret ballots (discriminating against those from a non-English speaking backgrounds, and breaking down solidarity) before strike action; and it will maintain the Coalition's ban on industrial action outside of a bargaining period, making the Your Rights At Work (YRAW) rallies illegal under a Labor government, according to deputy enforcer Julia Gillard.
Labor will also keep the Coalition's ban on industry-wide (pattern) bargaining, and insist that separate agreements be made for every separate workplace in an industry.
Labor will preserve individual contracts (AWAs) until 2013. It has refused to reinstate unfair dismissal laws in full, and promises to keep the draconian Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC), with its power to coerce answers to any questions in closed hearings, until at least 2010.
Labor's policy on economic matters is also practically indistinguishable from the Coalition's. Both pursue a neoliberal model where the role of government is to provide money to individuals to buy services from private-profit providers rather than fund publicly owned infrastructure.
Labor has consistently rebuffed the Australian Education Union's call for more funding for public education, adopting the Coalition's schools funding formula. So much for the extra $2.9 billion annually that the union says is needed to raise standards in public schools.
If Labor's policy isn't serving the interests of the union movement, is the reverse true? Is the Labor Party over-represented in the union movement leadership?
There were 1.8 million trade unionists according to August 2006 Australian Bureau of Statistics figures. While ALP membership figures are not publicly disclosed, the Fabian Society (a group within the left of the ALP) says "the ALP has a mere estimated 50,000 members, many of whom are assumed to be 'stacks' renewed at concessional rates".
Even if all ALP members were unionists (and the Fabians obviously don't believe this to be the case), this means that they compose less than 3% of the unionised workforce. Yet they dominate far more than 70% of official positions.
For some — Bill Shorten and Doug Cameron — although not all (such as Dean Mighell and Joe McDonald) becoming a union official is a necessary stepping stone to a safe seat in parliament. Shorten and Cameron are to be given a cakewalk to the soft-leather benches at this election.
So exactly which tail is wagging which dog?
The ALP leadership has done its best to silence the union movement in the campaign against the Howard government. The YRAW campaign only got off the ground after unionists pressured the ACTU leadership not to roll over to a "re-elect Labor" campaign as the first and final word on Work Choices. However, as we've seen, the pressure was not strong enough to maintain momentum in an election year.
The union movement faces a huge task — to free itself of ALP domination, not the other way around.
While unions remain an effective defence of working peoples' rights on the job (union members earn more and have better leave entitlements than non-members in comparable industries, according to the 2005 ABS document Employee earnings, benefits and trade union membership), the enormous restrictions on unions' ability to defend workers' rights remains.
While the union movement remains politically tied to the ALP, it is forced to accept what that party offers, or, rather, doesn't. Being independent of both major parties would help give it the necessary political weight to defeat Work Choices and any of its pale imitations. We want Howard out, but we need and deserve a union movement leadership whose fortunes are not tied to a parliamentary career with the ALP. An independent union leadership that fights for the rights and interests of workers — first, last and always — is the only way we will defend our rights at work.