By Peter Anderson
SYDNEY — The introduction of contract labour laws will dramatically alter the face of the trade union movement if and when John Hewson's Liberals succeed at federal elections. Victorian workers have already felt the heavy hand of the Kennett state government, but the sort of popular mass demonstration that confronted the Liberal law makers in Melbourne and regional centres when 250,000 demonstrated on November 10 will not be possible under the contract labour system.
Recognising this, some unions have begun the process of organising rank and file members to face the possible Coalition onslaught. On the weekend of November 14-15, lodge officers from mines across the country gathered at the Sydney headquarters of the United Mineworkers Federation to hear in detail how the new laws would effect the mining industry, and what could be done about it.
The Mineworkers aim both to educate members in an attempt to maintain the loyalty of the rank and file in the event that contract labour becomes law, and to prepare to fight the legislation along with the rest of the trade union movement. The union is distributing information about New Zealand, where contract labour is already a reality, about Britain, which has not recovered from the ravages of Thatcherism, and about the United States, where Right to Work laws have devastated union conditions.
"These are class laws", says Mineworkers' organiser Bob Graham. "If they are not class laws, why did they pass them — just to be unpopular? The Liberals are making a pretty play that they will revive business and provide cheaper, more disciplined labour. So, unions will be fighting like hell just to survive. There will be no political strikes; once you sign that contract they will make sure you do not demonstrate about a hospital closure, about unemployment or about an unjust war."
As a result, working class solidarity will be severely tested. Bob Graham believes working people will be divided into three broad groups: At the top, those permanently in employment, comprising an "aristocracy of labour"; a middle layer who are only intermittently in work; and at the bottom a layer of very low wage and mostly unemployed workers. That bottom layer will put permanent pressure on the wages and condition of the middle group.
"I blame the Accord for all this", says Graham, who thinks workers' disillusion with unions because of the Accord helped Kennett in Victoria. The warning signs were there very early: such dangers had already been evident in Britain where the unions came out of a social contract in the 1970s and there was a reactionary government waiting at the other end.
"There used to be many (what affectionately could be called) old plough horses in the unions, people who did not seek high office but who collected dues and represented the union on the job. But they thought the Accord method was not the way they understood union activity and stopped doing it."
Consequently, consciousness among union members today is very mixed. And the situation is made worse when almost every day in the press union officials are referred to exclusively as "union bosses" in order to associate them with the real bosses and to divide them from union members.
Whether it goes under the name of enterprise agreements or contract labour, much of the new industrial relations practice echoes Right to Work legislation prevalent in many US states, where conditions are worse than elsewhere, accidents more common, wages are lower, union rights have all but disappeared and union membership is down.
Under the Liberals' laws, even within the mining industry, workers who sign contracts with one employer will no longer be able to take industrial action in support of workmates who may be suffering worse conditions under a different employer. The US experience is that strikes under such conditions are inevitably long and bitter.
Loss of union membership in New Zealand and Britain has been less than might have been expected in the circumstances, said Graham, and could be attributed in large part to the demise of basic industries that had been well organised, like steel, coal and manufacturing. In Australia, it is claimed that 25% of union members would chose not to continue membership under right-to-work laws. But 75% will remain with their unions. n