[MELBOURNE — On May 11, the Socialist Alliance sponsored a trade union seminar, discussing, among other things, unions and political representation. This question of relating to political parties, and specifically the ALP, has been an increasing focus of discussion among Victorian unionists, particularly since Electrical Trades Union Victorian secretary Dean Mighell announced his resignation from the ALP, and the Victorian branch of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union stopped its affiliation to the ALP for six months.
[After a plenary of speakers from the political parties, union representatives addressed the forum. Victorian Trades Hall Council secretary Leigh Hubbard spoke first, followed by Australian Manufacturing Workers Union national council member Chris Spindler and the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union's Gareth Stephenson, who is a member of the construction division's committee of management. In the interests of furthering the discussion, 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly re-prints below abridged versions of the three unionists' speeches to the forum.]
There is a real dissatisfaction among unions and individuals with the ALP. That's been made clear by Dean Mighell's resignation from the ALP in Victoria and, more recently, by the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union making noises about its affiliation.
I'm not sure that that kind of questioning and dissatisfaction will lead anywhere, unless there is a political process happening in the unions themselves or there is some alternative outside the ALP. Just because there is dissatisfaction doesn't necessarily mean things are going to change.
I've been cynical about whether the ALP will reform itself. It has a number of reviews on at the moment. There's the review of the party structure about how to improve the party's vote, how to make it more attractive to members and non-members and how to better link to unions — both affiliated and non-affiliated.
But it is not a matter of how the ALP improves its organisation. It's about how the party changes its values — or reasserts more traditional values — to a progressive social agenda. When you hear party leaders say that the way to look after low-income earners is give them access to share schemes or tax credits, you have to wonder if there's been any reflection on that at all.
What's happening in the ALP partly reflects the demise of politics within the union movement. During the last 25 years, the left has generally declined, and so have left parties. So there's also been a decline in political education and political consciousness within the trade union movement. Not all of it — it's patchy — but by and large there has been that decline.
For example, the 38-hour work week didn't come through the beneficence of the Labor Party, or the Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) or even the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU). It came because in Victoria you had 40 or 50 union officials who were members of the Communist Party of Australia.
The CPA caucus decided to pursue a 35-hour week. Those officials went back to their unions — metal trades unions — and called on the left unions generally. Between 1977 and 1980 they actually ran a campaign. They got their members to take off one day a month unpaid. And they did that for 12 to 16 months.
Eventually the ACTU was forced to take up a case which became the 38-hour test case, which by 1982 was in the IRC, set the standard and became the award. Militant left unions had a party which gave them the infrastructure to form policy.
Since the 1980s there's been none of that — there is no alternate left voice within the union movement around which people coalesce or caucus. We've suffered from the demise of both the Communist Party and the National Civic Council.
One of the questions — and I've got no immediate answer — is: how do you resurrect that debate around ideology? You can talk about rules and how you relate to members all you like, if you're not also talking about ideology and content then its just like selling Avon door to door.
I would also say that about the ACTU approach on recruitment. It's all very well to say we'll recruit 200,000 new members but unless your politicising and engaging with the activists in that group you're really going nowhere.
The other issue which is very large is the changing composition of the workforce. The growth areas of trade unionism are semi-professional and professional areas. I won't deny the importance and the strength of the traditional blue collar manufacturing, construction and mining industries. But as a proportion of the trade union movement they are declining very rapidly, while the growth unions are in the finance sector and among teachers and health workers.
Most of these unions are not affiliated to a political party. If you look at all the major campaigns in this state over the last couple of years — run by teachers, police officers, nurses or whoever — they've been very successful campaigns run by unions that are absolutely dedicated to the issues and their members and that don't give a stuff, in terms of running them, which political party is in office.
One of the lessons from this is, I suppose, that if you're not bound within a political party structure you're more likely to say, “Well I don't care who is in government, I'm going to pursue the campaign”. There is a real issue for unions inside the ALP structure about criticising the party, or running campaigns in an independent way.
The ALP no longer represents politically a huge and growing proportion of the Victorian Trades Hall Council. Around a third to 40% of the 360,000 workers covered by the VTHC are in the non-affiliated union milieu, which is the growth area.
By and large unions in the ALP are trying to direct or hold influence on the direction of the ALP. That's very difficult.
But I don't think there is any contradiction for a militant industrial union being affiliated to the ALP and simply seeing it as a site of struggle. If a union simply says: “We'll turn up to policy meetings, we'll turn up to state conference, we'll battle away — we're still going to speak out on issues and we're still going to run on campaigns, we're still going to criticise governments — ALP or otherwise” — I don't see a contradiction in that.
Unions have a responsibility to their members to use every forum they can, every opportunity they can to advance the interests of their members.
I can understand unions which say they'd be better joining any other party than the Labor Party because it has to look over its shoulder. At the moment the ALP is not looking over its shoulder worried about some left or centre-left force. It's looking to see where the Liberals are.
So there is an argument that unions leaving the ALP and joining something else — whether it's the Greens or the Socialist Alliance or whatever — could be a useful thing.
I think the debate at the moment is a useful thing. Hopefully it will force the ALP to reassess where it's going.
I don't think that there will be a big walkout of unions from the ALP. Because most people — even in the left unions — have their power and opportunities to advance themselves very much tied up with being a part of the factional system. It's a big ask of those officials to challenge that status quo by walking away from it.
Many unionists will take a critical view privately, but when it comes to the crunch of speaking out about the ALP or leaving the party, I think you'd be silly to expect them to turn around and actually do it.
But I think individuals will, many of those I know have. As Lindsay Tanner told the ALP's internal review, the ALP doesn't just need a coat of paint, it needs complete re-stuffing. I think that's absolutely true. But what Lindsay's re-stuffing might mean and what others of us might mean might be completely different things.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, June 5, 2002.
Visit the Ìý