GREG ADAMSON is an ACT assistant branch secretary of the Community and Public Sector Union and a member of the Democratic Socialist Party. 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly's JENNIFER THOMPSON spoke to him about how the union movement can resist the Howard government's attacks.
Question: Howard has at least 20,000 public servants in his sights. What is to be done?
Howard is pretending that these cuts are necessary because of the government's financial state. In reality, in many cases the cuts will cost the government, and hand over profitable 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ of government operations to private industry.
The CPSU has the industrial strength to stop Howard. But everything depends on whether the present federal leadership [headed by Wendy Caird, CPSU joint national secretary] wants, or knows how, to use that strength. After years of simply conceding to the ALP's agenda for the public sector, it's a moot point whether the federal leadership knows how to fight.
Many of the skills and experience needed to conduct and win a fight have also been lost at the workplace level. There's a whole history and tradition of struggle that has to be covered here.
Question: But surely it's not that simple. Isn't Howard seen as having a mandate to fix up the budget deficit? Do the majority of Australians care about public servants? And, more directly, do the majority of unions really care about the public sector? Their miserable performance to date on the privatisation issue surely proves otherwise.
It's a simple matter to explain to people that 20,000 jobs out of the public service are not "fat", but a brutal attack on services and everyone's living standards — the social wage. The cuts that took place under Labor were serious enough, for example endangering public health standards through the 1993 funding attacks on the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service, but that'll be nothing compared to what Howard's razor gang has in mind.
Cuts of the size he plans can't be achieved without wholesale destruction of effective services, raising the spectre of horrors like "mad cow" disease. The CPSU should be already devoting a lot of its resources to winning the propaganda war against Howard: it's easily winnable, as the 60-70% support for Telstra public ownership shows.
Cuts to jobs, wages and conditions in recent years have been primarily through agency bargaining and the "efficiency dividend", tolerated by the CPSU leadership. Under these, the hard decisions on cuts were handed to staff themselves.
There is a strong feeling within the CPSU now that this has been divisive and disastrous, shown by the decision in the last pay agreement to dump the agency bargaining approach on wages. Members want to stop cooperating in the destruction of the public service, and the union should support them in this. If we conduct a serious, all-round battle against Howard's plans, support from members of other unions won't be lacking.
Question: But why didn't the CPSU prevent job losses and damage to wages and conditions that occurred under Labor?
CPSU members have been presented with very difficult choices, particularly the requirement that they lose jobs and conditions as they try to maintain living standards. There was no way to protect jobs and conditions once this framework of trade-offs had been created.
Question: So should the return of a Howard government mean an end to enterprise bargaining and a fight to reverse labour market deregulation?
Reregulation of industrial relations won't solve the problem of declining real wages. For nearly 90 years, we have worked with a system of "arbitration", in which a supposedly independent government-appointed arbitrator balances the interests of workers, bosses and the country.
In reality, wages may be allowed to go up when bosses' profits are high and guaranteed, or when the government is worried about social unrest. When profits are down or when the government of either stripe thinks it can get away with it, wages go down.
I think we have to move away from the trade-off mentality that has dominated enterprise bargaining, back to maintaining real wages and jobs: that would help rebuild solidarity and overcome sectionalism.
Question: Should unions accept that Howard has a mandate to implement his industrial relations policies? If not, how can the Liberals be stopped, for example, from reintroducing 45D and E provisions [prohibiting solidarity boycotts]?
I think the unions have to be careful about how they choose their fight with Howard: it has to be on issues that are broadly felt to be important and are critical to the operation of the unions as unions. If we win such a battle, for example against these 20,000 job cuts, then matters like 45D and E won't be such powerful weapons in the hands of the employers — the change in the balance of forces will have reduced their effectiveness.
In this regard, I don't think that the unions should be putting too much faith in the Democrats doing the right thing in the Senate — how they vote will depend most of all on the "street heat" we manage to organise around the key issues. Convincing members and the general community, however, will require unions to stop looking like cheer squads for the ALP and start looking like independent defenders of jobs, conditions and community services.
Question: How can the wages and conditions of weaker 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ be protected in Kelty's "marketplace"? What if Howard blocks safety net rises?
I don't think the Coalition government will oppose safety net rises — they have bigger fish to fry, such as their industrial relations legislation and Telstra privatisation. As part of winning the moral high ground, the government will do everything not to appear bloody-minded on the issues that don't count for it.
Each union has to look beyond its narrow individual interests to develop a social view. In the past 13 years, despite some good individual efforts, the union movement as a whole has refused to take responsibility for protecting the jobs and conditions of all workers, let alone the unemployed. Weaker 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ of workers have gained nothing in terms of organisation, confidence or capacity to struggle and win under Labor.
Question: How can unions prevent further erosion of union coverage and membership (especially among young people) when Howard plans to make non-union agreements even easier to introduce?
By winning a few important fights and delivering through struggle some important gains: that's how industrial unionism grew in this country in the 1930s to 1960s.
But the history of Australian unionism has also created a mind set that a union is simply a legally recognised organisation for representing members through an industrial arbitration system. Yet if every single Australian worker was on one of John Howard's individual contracts, and the Industrial Relations Commission was disbanded, there would still be just as many workers who would still need unions to fight for their rights.
ACTU strategies that involve mega-unions far removed from members, wars on new unions that try to represent workers, deals with bosses for compulsory membership or exclusive coverage, and a hope that a future Labor government will fix it all up, more than ever are a short road to disaster.
Question: This election was the first time that more blue collar workers voted Liberal. What mandate is there for union wage campaigns?
During the election campaign, the Coalition gave a commitment that under its industrial relations proposals workers would not be worse off — a lie, as Reith's wheedling over paid rates awards shows. So unions can make sure that such Coalition promises are not forgotten. However, the real mandate that unions have is that workers join unions because they expect them to protect their jobs.
Question: In hitching the movement's wagon to the ALP, unions have suffered a lot of defeats. In fighting the Liberals should unionists build a genuine left party to fight for workers?
Workers can't defend their rights and living standards through industrial and union action alone — that's an ancient lesson, bitterly learned, one that led to the formation of the ALP. Today we have to ask whether the overall purpose of the industrial struggle against Howard, beyond winning on particular issues, is to help Labor recuperate as the alternative "party of government". Or should it be viewed as leading to a new political voice for workers — their own party?
There are a lot of steps to be taken along this last road — disaffiliation of unions from the ALP, victories by fresh, militant forces in a lot of unions, a broad democratic debate on the unions' best political strategy, to mention but a few — but without that goal in mind, working-class and industrial politics in this country can't move forward.