Posted by John, October 22nd, 2009 - under Unions.

Tags: Australian Council of Trade Unions, Australian Labor Party, Fighting back

As the Rudd government’s new anti-union laws came into operation on 1 July this year, the Australian Industry Group’s Peter Nolan claimed that the bosses weren’t too worried – “We don’t expect to see any massive outbreak of industrial activity”.

Unfortunately, so far he’s right.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ most recent figures, union membership in the year to August 2008 increased by 56,000. But this hardly marks a turnaround in the unions’ fortunes.

Levels of industrial action have remained at historically low levels over both 2008 and 2009.

Two questions arise. Why is this the case? And what can be done about it?

To answer the first we have to look beyond the ALP’s role in managing Australian capitalism in the interests of profit. What about the union leaders’ role?

The ACTU leaders in particular have distinguished themselves by praising the new laws, covering up their true nature and promoting the illusion that Labor has dismantled WorkChoices.

Here’s Sharan Burrow on the day the Fair Work Act came into effect:

Well it’s a great day for Australian workers, we’ll be celebrating, workers across the country will be celebrating the death of WorkChoices.

Louise Tarrant, National Secretary of the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union, was another proclaiming the vast difference between WorkChoices and the new laws.

On 1 July 2009 as the “Fair Work” Act came into operation, Tarrant proclaimed that luxury hotel workers wanted to go down in history as the first workers to use the new laws.

By exercising their right to strike? No, that’s just as illegal under Fair Work as under WorkChoices.

Instead, they would be outside the offices of Fair Work Australia, waiting for it to open so they could “lodge applications for majority support determinations under Section 236” – an application to have the LHMWU as their bargaining agent so they could seek a collective agreement.

This promotion of the new laws is not just because many union officials are part of the Labor Party machine.

It flows from the nature of the trade union bureaucracy, whose central role is to negotiate between the demands of their members and what the bosses will find acceptable.

So even where they have mobilised some action, more often than not the conclusion is to demand that the ACTU and other union officials be given a seat at the negotiating table.

For example, there was a sizeable rally in Melbourne on 1 September against the government’s latest attack on workers’ rights – the attempt to introduce uniform national laws that will reduce already inadequate health and safety protection at work.

ACTU secretary Jeff Lawrence’s demand at the rally was for the government to sit down with the ACTU and unions.

The apparently contradictory flip side to union officials’ promotion of the Fair Work Act has been constant reminders to members that pretty much any industrial action they might take under it is likely to be illegal.

The one thing that could turn the situation in workers’ favour – serious industrial action – is constantly undermined by union leaders.

What should be done? Are new collective bargaining rules, which the ACTU pushed as the big change, worth anything when restrictions on strikes and industry-wide campaigns remain in place?

Is the right to collectively bargain meaningful if the union is weak on the ground?

That points to the need to rebuild rank and file organisation, the networks of delegates that have been allowed to wither over decades now, as official strategies have focused on anything but the strikes and on-the-job organisation that are the life-blood of unions if we are to really take on the bosses and win.

That’s the bottom line for making some real gains, not what passes for gains today, when a newspaper article entitled “Unions hail win for the lowly paid” is not actually about low-paid workers winning anything, but merely about the LHMWU applying to represent 3000 hotel workers in negotiations.

A number of unions have reported increases in membership over the past year. But the key issue is not just numbers but involvement in action.

The bosses and government understand this. That’s why Labor’s re-labelling of the anti-union commission in the building industry, the ABCC, is designed to make things worse for militant building workers by dividing the union movement, to the detriment of those who want to fight.

Penalties under the new body may be relaxed for particular workplaces if, in Gillard’s words, it can be demonstrated that “the requisite lawful culture is in place [with] the opportunity for the law-abiding majority to not be tarred with the same brush as the unlawful rogue elements”.

But we need more “rogue elements” in every workplace.

A quick glance at the ABCC website will show the untold story of hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines paid this year by unions for exercising the right to strike. But also on those reports are the signs of life that can rebuild the union.

Report after report outlines “unlawful industrial action”.

In every case, collective action is taken in defiance of the law. Action by 300 workers, initiated by AWU delegate Joe O’Connor at Lake Cowal gold mine in 2005 over food and hygiene standards at the kitchen and mess at the camp, involved a three-day walkout.

There’s action outside the building industry.

In western Sydney this August, 130 bus drivers walked off the job for six hours in protest against onerous timetables.

The Daily Telegraph labelled them “rogue drivers” because they did it “without consulting any official of the Transport Workers Union” – whose role was then to pressure them to go back to work.

To withstand that pressure we need more delegates in more workplaces, in touch with each other, discussing union activism as the way to recruit non-members, supporting each other.

We need to be clear about the anti-union nature of the new laws, just as we were about WorkChoices.

That means understanding the ALP’s role in keeping Australian capitalism profitable. It means ditching the union leaders’ mantra of flexibility, productivity, wage restraint and what’s “good for the industry”.

But that is only the beginning of wisdom. That understanding needs to be harnessed to on-the-job organising to rebuild the unions from the ground up.

This article, by Diane Fieldes, appeared in the October edition of Socialist Alternative.