By Dave Mizon
To come to an understanding of the present malaise that the union movement is in, we must follow the course that the union leadership has taken for the last 12 years — a course that has run the labour movement up against the rocks of capitalist restructuring, productivity increases and so called efficiencies.
This course is marked along its way by tragic defeats, breathtaking retreats and amazing give-backs. It has not only affected the union movement but has also had broader ramifications for the social movements. These movements, in happier times, relied on the muscle and organised know-how of the union movement. Now, the leadership of the unions confine themselves to hand-wringing and muted moans of anguish.
How did we get here? The answer lies in the policies embraced by the trade union leadership, sometimes grudgingly, other times with glee. From the Accord, which has had more sequels than a Rocky film, to enterprise bargaining flexibility agreements, the underlying themes are the same: to ensure that the rank and file show no initiative in starting real campaigns and lack the confidence in their own strength to carry forward a struggle or even to defend themselves against attack. This is evident in the rounds of redundancies in the public sector and in the oil industry. The sackings have occurred without action being taken against the employer.
The union leaderships believe that through various sleight-of-hand mechanisms, or by obtaining major union status in the industry, they can buy a place — with our jobs — in capitalist society. The result is that an increasingly confused and demoralised union membership is relying more heavily on what officials direct or advise them to do.
But while the industrial relations courts and enterprise agreements, which read like cryptic crosswords, give these officials a modicum of relevance in deciphering them, their short-sightedness is beginning to trip them up. Workers in the large, well-organised shops are deciding that if they are going to be confused and demoralised, they can do it by themselves. This produces the new generation of enterprise flexibility agreements, in which the company expels unionism from the site by granting a pay rise (individuals can still be union members, but there is no collective).
The Prices and Incomes Accord began the process of undermining the confidence and solidarity of the working class, cutting links between workers at different factories and industries. But the project of restructuring (based on the structural efficiency principle) introduced a new attack on unionism. It swept aside the notion of automatic pay rises for the working class as a right to be demanded and fought for, reintroducing the idea that pay rises could be obtained only through productivity increases (multi-skilling, speed-ups and attendant job losses).
It was with restructuring that the real damage to the system of industrial awards was begun. Linked to this was the contrived debate that the strategy of struggle and confrontation was incorrect for the union movement and that a negotiated path would produce more humane and equitable results.
The history and traditions of the labour movement — of class struggle, independent initiative and militant action — said the union leaders, the bosses and the ALP, had resulted in bad outcomes for both the bosses and the working class. This is because, said the union leaderships, ever victims of their own myopia, there can be common cause for both capital and labour; companies and their employees are really a family. Talk about dysfunctional families!
With enterprise bargaining, the full array of anti-union measures is being deployed by the bosses — annualised salaries, flexible work hours, consultative committees, incentive and bonus schemes, personal assessments — all of them designed to chip away at union and class consciousness, to coopt workers and to break solidarity. Enterprise agreements, by their very nature, highlight the differences of a workplace rather than underline the commonality of an industry.
We have not heard a peep against these attacks from the union hierarchy because they don't want an active, confident and militant membership that knows its rights. They want a docile and subservient mass that can be conned into letting off the occasional puff of steam to show the capitalists that the leadership is still relevant, that it can still turn up the heat.
This is why union membership is on the decline. Companies are moving to buy out union membership with a grab bag of once-off pay rises and other inducements (superannuation schemes, lease cars). It's a case of just add money and watch a retreat precipitate. In this way the bosses are buying our future and also attempting to dissolve our past.
So how do we combat this decline and reinvigorate the union movement?
It's certainly not by turning unions into service organisations offering cut price holiday flats, dental care and cheap airfares, or worse still by turning them into labour hire organisations, negotiating closed shop agreements that act as straitjackets for the membership.
What has to be done is to restore the true meaning of what unions are about: that is, that they are combat organisations of and for workers. To achieve that we have to rebuild the solidarity that has been lost, rebuild the networks between factories and industries and rebuild the idea of a common cause that is entirely separate and different from that of the capitalists.
By building that unity of purpose and action, we can begin to counteract the unity of the capitalists.
We also have to counterpose policies and solutions to the dominant theories that are being peddled by the union bureaucracy, not just on the economic questions of pay rises and allowances, but also around political questions such as sexism, racism, the environment and solidarity with workers in other countries. We have to encourage alliances between workers and residents or other interest groups.
This is how we will create a vibrant, democratic combat organisation of the working class, an organisation that will revitalise shop floor structures, that will replenish the cadre of militants who have confidence in their own power.
To my mind, this necessitates creating a broad left that will act as a pole of attraction to build a new class-struggle left in much the same way as the Militant Minority Movement began. We need a left that will actively fight, that will promote alternative and openly socialist policies and that won't be frightened to cut the bindings the ALP has wrapped around it.
The strategy of pressuring the bureaucrats to do the right thing is flawed. If the leaders lack the consciousness, then they should be replaced, not with a kindlier face (which is the too frequent end of rank and file politics) but with a political alternative.
Our politics are the tools with which we can rebuild the union movement. The concrete tasks ahead are to rebuild links and solidarity, to break with the ALP, which has brought us to this state, to regain confidence in our own strength and faith in the working class as a force to change society.
[Dave Mizon is a shop steward in the National Union of Workers.]