Tim Lyons’ research paper lays out plan for more militant unionism and calls for organising blitz

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Unions should be prepared to take unlawful industrial action to win bigger pay rises because Australia’s laws make protected action too hard for workers, an influential unionist has argued.

In a Per Capita research paper, the former Australian Council of Trade Unions assistant secretary Tim Lyons has laid out a blueprint for a more militant form of unionism and called for an organising blitz to sign up members.

Lyons’ paper, Organising Ourselves: Rebuilding Australia’s Unions, takes up the rhetoric of the ACTU secretary, Sally McManus, that Australia’s industrial laws are “unjust” but suggests rather than simply changing the laws unions should be prepared to break them.

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The Per Capita fellow launches the paper at an organising event in Sydney on Thursday, ahead of McManus’s appearance at the National Press Club on 21 March where she will outline the ACTU’s demands for industrial law changes.

McManus is expected to call for a shift away from enterprise bargaining – which forces unions to negotiate with each employer in an industry for separate pay deals – in favour of bargaining at the industry level and up the supply chain.

In Australia wages have stagnated for four years despite continued economic growth and improved labour productivity in part because wage growth from enterprise agreements has been in decline since 1998.

Lyons seized on the “wage crisis” to argue that employers give low pay rises “because they can” and that unions need to see the stagnation as an opportunity to organise and “aggressively position collective action and unions as the way to win pay rises and end wage theft”.

Lyons labelled enterprise level bargaining “a failure” compounded by “very tight restrictions on industrial action [and the] absolute legal prohibition of secondary boycotts or solidarity actions”.

If the formal system for getting a pay rise doesn’t work, we’re entitled to ignore it. Tim Lyons

Workers were “atomised”, leading to greater use of contracting out and labour hire to drive down wages. Lyons called for “genuine collective bargaining” including acting “outside the formal system” of protected industrial action.

Lyons told Guardian Australia that unions “absolutely” should be prepared to take unlawful industrial action such as walkouts.

“If the formal system for getting a pay rise doesn’t work, we’re entitled to ignore it,” he said. “The alternative is to concede we’re not going to get a pay rise and that’s not acceptable.”

Lyons said the largest private sector pay increases in US history had been achieved “outside a formal system” of bargaining including actions by the OUR Walmart group and the Fight for $15, which won massive pay increases in the fast food sector through tactics including demonstrations and walkouts.

In the paper Lyons said a “critical mass” of union leaders were “prepared to approach these issues in a way that goes well beyond the incrementalism of our experiments”.

Lyons lost a tilt at the ACTU secretary’s job in 2015 but has remained influential, including formulating United Voice’s demand for a “living wage” of 60% of median earnings that was later adopted by the ACTU.

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Unions are increasingly using the organising model including Victoria Trades Hall organising young workers and the Retail and Fast Food Workers Union challenging the deals signed by the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association.

On International Women’s Day on Thursday, McManus defended her “unjust laws” comments, telling Sky News that women chaining themselves to men-only bars demonstrated that conscientious objection and peaceful resistance were acceptable when there was “no other way” to take a society forward.

Lyons supported calls for Labor to change industrial laws, with a focus on bargaining rights so workers can organise themselves.

But the Per Capita fellow was wary of the ACTU’s “narrow” Change the Rules campaign because it prioritised political mobilisation over industrial organising. Historically, legal changes followed successful organising rather than the other way around, he argued.