By Peter Boyle
On the eve of the ACTU Congress, Democratic Socialist Party national secretary John Percy urged the unions to break its Accord with the Keating Labor government because it had proved to be a millstone around the neck of the union movement. "Laurie Brereton is demanding that the union movement commit suicide by allowing enterprise bargaining without the involvement of unions and the ACTU needs to respond with more than rhetoric", he told 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly.
"By introducing a creeping GST [Good and Services Tax] the Labor government has dashed the hopes of the 'true believers' who re-elected it to government in March because Keating claimed that Labor opposed the Liberal's GST".
"Ten years ago some people in the trade union movement believed that they were embarking on an ambitious new project with the launch of the Prices and Incomes Accord. This pact with the then new Labor federal government was to tie wage levels to the inflation rate, participate in the formulation of national industry policies, increase the 'social wage' and turn jobs into from a workplace to a national issue. This is what Laurie Carmichael, the architect of the Accord, assured the movement — although some unionist militants and the Democratic Socialist Party have warned since 1982 that the Accord would be a disaster for workers.
"History has since exposed the Accord as a cynical fraud. By all indicators — jobs, wages, wealth distribution, union strength and influence — the Accord has failed the labour movement. On the other hand Labor ministers, conservative economists and employers now openly boast that the Accord was primarily a vehicle for cutting real wages. And what a success it was for big business. In the 1980s employers made their biggest ever profits — much of it through unproductive speculation — while workers were forced to work harder for less", Percy said. This was because the real policy of the Accord, he said, was to impose a "industrial peace" through severely limiting the ability of unions to fight for improvements to workers' wages and conditions.
However, in Percy's view, the "more insidious was the accelerated erosion of the union movement's strength fostered by the Accord." This involved the spread, with the help of much of the union officialdom, of the rhetoric of consensus.
"Workers' interests were tied to that of their employers, and the allegedly shared goals of greater productivity and the quest for 'world's best practice'. It also involved an undemocratic and forced restructuring of the union movement from above. This has pit union against union as never before, sometimes in ruthless struggles to undercut each other in terms of members wages and conditions just to win the position of principle union in each industry.
"As a result the union movement is now weaker and less popular among workers than ever before", Percy stated. "After the first few versions of the Accord were implemented, it soon became clear that far from advancing workers' living standards the Accord was extracting an number of sacrifices — even at the height of the last boom. The explanation from Labor government and politicians was that this sacrifice would create more jobs, ensure that the economic boom of the late 1980s was 'sustainable' or at least give the economy a 'soft landing' when the boom came to an end. But this proved to be another fraud. By the admission of the then 'world's greatest treasurer', handing billions of dollars to big business did not produce an explosion of productive investment and soon we had the 'recession we had to have'.
"This recession has created the worst unemployment since the Great Depression yet the Labor government is doing nothing to create jobs while taxing workers more and giving more generous tax cuts to big business and the rich. The union movement is urged to deliver more sacrifice through 'labor market deregulation' in the form of enterprise bargaining.
"Enterprise bargaining is envisaged in the latest Budget as the government's central long-term strategy to address unemployment. The theory is that if workers reduce their employers costs by working harder and — on the average — for lower wages, big business will become more competitive and therefore more profitable. These profits will then be used to create more jobs and eventually trickle down in the form of higher living standards for workers. This is an old theory — one as old as the capitalist system — and long proven to be false.
"The union movement in Australia has to face up to the fact that policies which make the capitalist economy like Australia's more competitive — like deregulation, privatisation, low wages, low tax rates for companies and the rich — are poison to the working-class movement. On the other hand the policies that are urgently needed by working people, who comprise the great majority in this country, conflict with the profitability of big business.
"So, in the interests of big business profits, we are told we cannot afford a shorter working week to share the work around. We cannot have a program of public works to create jobs by building houses, schools, hospitals, better public transport and by fighting environmental degradation because, we are told, government spending must be cut to free savings for the private sector. We even have to co-operate in the doing away of existing jobs in the name of greater productivity.
"It is well past the time for a total policy reversal — for the union movement to start fighting for the interests of workers and rebuild the broadest labor solidarity and unity around these interests.
"It is not in the interest of workers for the ACTU to forge a new Accord with Labor by cutting a deal with Brereton on enterprise bargaining without unions. Instead it should reject the Accord and lead a campaign of union disaffiliations from the Labor Party which has proved itself to be a willing servant to big business".
The Democratic Socialists believe that the union movement should totally reject bargaining enterprise-by-enterprise and instead use the broadest possible industrial actions to defend and advance its
"We shouldn't return to the centralised wage-fixing system which straight-jacketted the movement in the earlier stage of the Accord either. Instead we should campaign for full freedom to organise, strike and extend solidarity to other workers — basic democratic rights denied to Australian workers against ILO conventions", Percy said.