Comment by Jorge Jorquera
On February 10, several thousand union delegates met in Melbourne to discuss how to support the Maritime Union of Australia at Webb Dock. The feeling at the meeting reflected the dilemma of Australian unionism today.
The bulk of delegates expressed their willingness to fight and, despite all the new tactics of the ACTU, everyone recognised the need for at least some of the old industrial and community protest action.
However, there is still a strong sense that the struggle around Webb Dock is short on clear objectives and a strategy to achieve them. There is a strategy behind the main line of the ACTU-MUA campaign: turn the tide of public opinion against Corrigan and the NFF, and provide a context in which industrial action is saleable to public opinion as a justified last resort for a "fair go". But there is no discussion of fundamental objectives.
The whole debate is on day-to-day tactics. No one is keen to suggest what might happen beyond the next day's media intervention or Industrial Relations Commission appearance, or about how these relate to the industrial action (and not just MUA action) that will have to follow if we are to win.
Of course, there is a serious issue of security involved: the goals and strategy to achieve them can't be blabbed all over the media. However, if the MUA is to win all those sympathetic unionists in other industries who are itching to do their bit to defeat Reith's agenda, these people have to have some, at least general idea of what is being aimed for, how it is to be organised and where they can most usefully fit in.
Is the aim of the fight merely to thwart the Liberal-NFF-Corrigan brand of industrial relations offensive, only to return to the restructuring of the Hawke-Keating-Kelty variety? Unfortunately, hidden away in the eight pages of ACTU speakers' notes for the February 10 meeting are the same aims and strategy that led the Australian union movement down this drain for more than a decade.
There have always been two options with regard to achieving productivity improvements on the Australian waterfront, the notes state: 1. Negotiated change and continuous productivity improvements. 2. Confrontation and conflict. The government and NFF have sought confrontation and conflict from the outset. So the ACTU strategy for the Webb Dock fight amounts to Accord-style negotiated restructuring (i.e. erosion of workers' wages and conditions).
With the ACTU locked out of the government's negotiating room, it has been forced to fall back onto a tactical campaign aimed at holding the line. So far, the MUA has handled this well. It has forced Patrick to attack, exposing the company's involvement in the Dubai scam and winning public sympathy in return.
But even the best prepared counteroffensive will be only partially successful unless there's strategic clarity about what we're fighting for. A combination of industrial and political pressure may force Patrick to retreat, but only until the Liberals win the next election.
For the MUA (and the whole union movement) to make serious headway, we have to start tackling the ideological agenda of the Corrigans, namely that productivity increases that boost private profits are good for "all of us". That is, we have to stop playing the game according to the bosses' rules.
The unions can't survive in the long run if they don't develop their own project for solving the problems of society, in opposition to the basic agenda of Liberal-Labor politics — rationalisation, competitiveness, restructuring, "world's best practice", etc.
For example, if the campaign at Webb Dock is limited to the right of unions to negotiate productivity increases, we open the door to the NFF and Co. claiming that this can be done best without unions; and it can. For so long as the MUA is on the waterfront defending its members' interests company profits will be limited by such "privileges" as holiday leave loading and penalty rates.
When they accept that productivity gains for private profit are good, unions expose themselves to unending pressure about "world's best practice", unending investigations of productivity by government and private think tanks, and relentless pressure to retreat on jobs and conditions. While Labor or Liberal form governments in this country this will, sooner or later, end in retreat.
Webb Dock poses a test: can we unlock unionism from the Laborist strategy of negotiating defeat? This is not to prescribe tactical recipes. Indeed, it can be counterproductive to jump back to certain forms of industrial action after years of inertia, especially if it takes the form of isolated actions. Each time the union movement does this and gets defeated, more workers lose their faith in unionism.
However, at least if we put up a proper fight — making the point that workers do not agree with the agenda of big business — even if we lose, workers will know who defeated us and against whom we must launch our next offensive. This guarantees we strengthen unionist understanding among workers, not erode it.
In a campaign that argues against further corporate profit and for a workers' offensive to gain back what workers have lost, the MUA can proudly defend the wages and conditions they have maintained for their members.
No waterside worker should have to play down what they fought to achieve. Now they have the opportunity to do the opposite, lead a fight on behalf of all workers.
If the MUA can develop a clear strategy, it will be easy enough to win workers to every change in tactic that may be required. But support will be a lot less if everyone is kept in the dark while union leaderships look for the clever tactic that will save the day.
Neither are the employers or government likely to fall for this. They will call the unions' bluff. They know that every tactic the union movement can employ still relies, in the end, on the ability of the unions to mobilise workers in mass numbers to withdraw their labour and take action that undermines the employers' profits.
The time has come for the Australian trade union movement to think back to when we used to win. The old tactics never left us (even the Accord allowed us some industrial action). What we lost and must regain is the old class viewpoint: that employers and employees don't have the same interest and that to defend our own interests we must fight against theirs.