Comment by Dick Nichols
The recent resolution of the CFMEU National Executive attributing the decline in the trade union movement to the "Accord process entered into between the federal ALP and the ACTU" will be welcomed by everyone who has the interests of the trade union movement at heart.
In a sense there is nothing much more to it than a belated recognition of reality: with Labor in opposition a section of Australia's trade union officialdom no longer feels compelled to say black is white.
Many on the left will feel that the CFMEU's acknowledgment of the facts of life would have had more value if it had occurred while Bill Kelty was assuring fellow Reserve Bank board members Bernie Fraser and Sir Peter Abeles that enterprise bargaining wouldn't endanger the Keating government's inflation rate targets.
That's true enough. But after 13 years of "consensus" and as Howard's axe starts to fall the CFMEU statement is doubly positive.
First, it tells all those rank-and-file unionists who felt sure all along that the Accord stank, that they, and not their leaders, were right. Emperor Kelty really didn't have any clothes, and now, after years of official ACTU gobbledegook and double-speak, militant unionism isn't "old-fashioned" and "unsophisticated" — it's vitally necessary to turn back Howard and Reith.
It will be interesting to see whether other traditional "left" unions, like the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and the Public Transport Union, also feel the need to enter the confessional. Or will they, like ACTU president Jennie George, seek refuge in evasions about everyone having a right to their opinion and the balance sheet of the Accord years being "complex"?
Second, in calling for avoidance of a repeat of the Accord, the CFMEU NE resolution opens up the vital question: what should be the relation between the unions and the ALP? Or, more generally, what should the politics of the union movement be in the present period? Here the real choice is whether we are going to repeat the old historical flip-flop of Australian trade unionism — militant under the Liberals, comatose under Labor.
This is not a small, nor a purely theoretical, issue. Today each union militant has to answer this question: are we going to conduct the coming struggle against Howard and Co. in the perspective of installing a right-wing Beazley government resting on an Accord by another name? Or are we to conduct it along the path of building an alternative, a new party for working people?
As things stand this second course sounds purely fanciful. Not even the embryo of such a party exists and many bridges will have to be crossed for it to become a reality. The point, however, is not whether or not a genuine workers' party can be conjured up by trade union leaders issuing declarations now, but whether it should be militant unionism's strategic goal. As it struggles to counter Howard, in which direction should the movement be heading?
Today, militant industrial action in defence of the Maritime Union of Australia, against CRA and for a functional public sector is a vital necessity. It's also critical to rejuvenating the unions themselves.
But, crucial though militant industrial action by unionised workers is, it is still far from enough. With Howard on the attack against sectors of the community with few direct links to organised labour (students, refugees, indigenous people, the anti-uranium movement), it's more necessary than ever for militant unionism to step beyond its traditional arena and become a champion of all targets of the Coalition. That wouldn't be an entirely new experience: in the 1940s Australian unions helped the Indonesian independence struggle, in the 1970s they stopped the mining and export of uranium.
However, even this sort of broad-based action (which should draw in ALP organisations and those who look to the ALP) isn't enough. Unless we draw the political lessons of 13 years of the Accord (its role in driving thousands of workers into the arms of the Liberals, the havoc it has wreaked on working-class consciousness), then the implicit political dynamic of united struggles against Howard is re-election of Labor. This will become explicit the closer elections loom.
In short, it's time to put politics back into a labour and working-class movement chloroformed by 13 years of corporatism. Howard is certainly making his contribution to this cause, but unions like the CFMEU need to promote rank-and-file debate about how working people are to develop their own alternative to the "single thought" of Labor and Liberal, how they are to put working-class solutions (like the shorter working week) back on the union agenda. If it contributes to this urgently needed next step, the CFMEU NE resolution will have made a useful contribution.
[Dick Nichols is the trade union coordinator of the Democratic Socialist Party.]