Workplace Democracy and Democratic Unions
Workplace Democracy and Democratic Unions: The only bill that fits a Fair Workplace, Guest post by Peter Curtis.
Workers are losing their jobs and paying in a multitude of ways for what is an inevitable and systemic crisis of the capitalist economic system. Greed or a lack of control or regulation of the finance system is not fundamentally causal although they are obvious factors.
The capitalist economic system even at the best of times is ipso fact inequitable and exploitative and will and must remain so if it is to continue to function.
This is always the case and will remain so regardless of any attempts to improve it by increased government intervention and controls.
The ability of the union movement to reduce and controlled inequity and exploitation will be conditioned by the capacity of the broader labour movement – workers, families and communities – to put their stamp on actual, existing political and economic events.
Geoff Lawrence of the ACTU misunderstands the problem when he suggests that a part of the solution is, “the reshaping of our economic architecture so a collapse of this magnitude cannot occur again.” (Is it only a question of reducing the size of economic collapses?) … “This means abandoning the selfish pursuit of greed we have seen in recent years. It means dumping the misguided ideology of neo-liberalism and let-the-market-rip of the kind we saw under the former Howard-Costello Government, and in the US, and other countries in recent years.”
He even goes on to suggest that the leopard should change into something else altogether. “Big business, meanwhile, needs to put on hold its obsession with profits if it wants to have a market to sell to in the future. Business needs to make jobs sacrosanct, because there won’t be a market without decent jobs and decent wages, and the time for workers to spend the money they make.”
Not understanding businesses’ obsession with profits may partly explain why we have not had the same call from the ACTU for workers’ solidarity action against job loses and threats to cut workers living standards that the French and Irish unions have organised this year.
The imperative for Australians workers is to win back their rights at work and develop the means to maintain and defend those rights through their unions. This will require transforming their unions into organisations that are able to carry out both offensive and defensive struggles in both the workplace and within their communities.
Rather than assist in organising the rank and file by attempting clear arguments and develop activity to encourage a purposeful and independent union response we get contradictory statements in one breath.
Once again the ACTU position is contradictory and leads to confusion, “While unions are prepared to be flexible and restrained in tough times, we won’t accept cuts to workers’ real incomes. We won’t accept a wages-tax trade-off. The Accord was right for its time, but today’s decentralised wage system is far different from that of the 1980s.” Flexible and restrained and as well refusing to accept cuts to incomes – will it be possible to do both?
This statement is very revealing as it essentially argues that we cannot act as an independent labour movement because without the permission of the parliament we cannot act! The ACTU states that “the state of the economy only makes it more urgent that the Fair Work Bill – with the improvements we have called for – is passed by the Senate so unions can protect the wages and conditions that are under attack from employers.”
Workers rights have only ever been won when there has been a willingness to oppose and break the law and the rule of parliaments. Hedging their bets and sowing more contradictions and confusion the ACTU does acknowledge this, “None of what we have achieved has been given to us. When the rights of working Australians were attacked – unions stood up. Australian workers will not forget that we stood up for their rights.”
“For too long, workers have been forced to the wayside as unions were marginalised and denied a voice in public policy.”
Why has this become the case? What can we do to address the problem? There is overwhelming public support for the immediate introduction of new industrial relations laws that boost rights and legal protections for working Australians during the economic downturn and beyond.
What Workers Think: Might is on Our Side.
A survey, conducted by Essential Research for the ACTU, found that eight in ten Australians (77%) want Parliament to pass new, fairer IR laws as soon as possible.
“People are worried about their own jobs and those of their family in the current downturn. They want the security of stronger IR laws that protect their rights. The worsening economic situation means it is vital that we get rid of what remains of WorkChoices.” ACTU President Sharan Burrow.
However union activists must be alert to the fact that the Fair Work Bill is maintaining elements of WorkChoices that will continue to undermine solidarity with fellow workers and our ability to win and defend our wages and conditions and create democratic workplaces – ones that we want to work in.
Key findings of the national poll of 1020 people include:
∑ 67% say that with the economic downturn, increasing the rights and protection of working people through new IR laws is more important than ever.
∑ 77% believe the Rudd Government should keep its election promise to get rid of Work Choices and the Parliament should pass new, fairer IR laws as soon as possible.
∑ 86% believe that maintaining jobs and incomes helps demand and stimulates the economy.
∑ 64% say collective bargaining is necessary to give workers job and income security.
∑ 87% of Australians believe the global financial crisis was caused by businesses more concerned with short-term profits than planning for the future.
∑ 77% of Australians support restoring unfair dismissal protections for all workers.
∑ 74% support collective bargaining rights for all workers
∑ More than three quarters of Australians (76%) want to get rid of laws that restrict workers from accessing advice from unions in their workplace.
It is evermore critical that the labour movement develop specific and concrete demands for the new situation that we find ourselves in.
Some suggestions for union demands;
A national system for bargaining and negotiations.
A Fair Work Bill should defend a unions right to organise and train workers so that they can protect jobs, incomes, and the right to collectively pattern bargain with bosses.
Unions must provide the means and support for workers and their communities to take action over inequality and social turbulence caused by unemployment, lack or loss of housing, and loss of income.
Collective and Pattern Bargaining improves solidarity, productivity, morale, reduces turnover and values the knowledge of workers within an enterprise and across an industry.
Collective and Pattern Bargaining provides unions the best opportunity to organise workers in solidarity action by providing;
∑ The best defence for workers’ to exercise their right to be represented by a union.
∑ The best protection for all workers – job security with a safety net of a minimum wage, national basic standards and awards, and unfair dismissal protections.
∑ Protection for workers right to access union’s help and advice for the democratic organisation of their workplace.
∑ Unions the best means to win entry rights to inspect employees’ records when there is a case of underpayment, breaches of wages and conditions, reduncies or workplace laws.
∑ Unions’ the right to access non-members’ records to prevent discrimination and further exploitation of fellow workers.
Defend and extend pattern bargaining.
∑ Defend and protect the right to take industrial action to win improved wages and conditions
∑ Pattern bargain protects workers wages and conditions being undercut by competition from other even more exploitative bosses.
How do we respond? What the ACTU has to say …
Paraphrased from a speech by Geoff Lawrence given to the AWU Conference in 2008
The ACTU says there are three priorities:
1. Dealing with the economic crisis: While the downturn is beginning to bite domestically, the Federal Government is making sure the Australian economy is not as badly affected as others overseas. Unemployment in Australia is expected to rise to 7 per cent by early 2010 – suggesting around 250,000 workers could lose their jobs. Economic stimulus package
The ACTU has been at the forefront of the push to protect jobs since the earliest signs that Australia would not be immune from the global financial crisis. Unions have already been successful in influencing the shape of the government’s response to the GFC but workers want to see these initiatives focus on job retention and creation.
The ACTU has argued for;
∑ stimulus measures, include a submission to the Australian Fair Pay Commission to maintain minimum wages.
∑ infrastructure may be needed or should be brought forward. Infrastructure needed for future prosperity – rail, roads, ports, schools and health.
∑ The new National Broadband Network is a priority. That builds new industries and growth opportunities for the future as well as supporting decent living standards for workers and our families.
∑ Local content in these new infrastructure projects must be maximised — openings for apprentices and an ongoing role for skills development that sustains long term careers.
∑ NO point if taxpayers footing the bill if the employers are able to outsource the work offshore or to allow contractors to undercut decent wages and conditions for the workers?
∑ proposed innovative ways of preserving jobs while retraining and reskilling the workforce,
∑ called for a jobs summit, to be attended by unions, governments and business so we can all be on the same page finding solutions to the crisis. Up to 5 per cent of GDP should to be spent on job creating initiatives.
∑ strongly advocating for the Government to adopt a further plan to ensure employers retrain, retool, and rethink redundancy.
2. Getting the best IR legislation we can: Employers are using this crisis to slash wages and conditions.
The Government stimulus plan should leave workers’ entitlements guaranteed 100%. A universal scheme managed nationally or by industry; or a pay-as-you-go contribution plan.
∑ legislation to rank employees’ entitlements above secure creditors, with guaranteed training and assistance to get back into the workforce.
∑ For workers without access to redundancy pay the ACTU wants to see the government invest productivity places in training, backed up with case management. These places would include income guarantee for 6 months at no less than 80 per cent of their previous income.
∑ Penalising low paid workers would be both morally and fiscally wrong. The ILO warned last week that lowering wages would cause deflation, which must be avoided, if we are to avoid a prolong downturn.
3. Growing unions: We need a more democratic approach. Where the big investment decisions are not left to the boardrooms, but where there is a proper, strong, role for the government (and unions?) that is transparent and accountable. And one that leads to a more equitable society, with a fair share of the proceeds of economic growth for all and, above all, respect for workers’ rights.
The ACTU will continue to stand up for working people and fight for improvements in the legislation.
Improvements such as:
∑ True freedom of bargaining
∑ The abolition of the Australian Building and Construction Commission – These laws have to go, getting rid of the construction industry laws that should not exist in a civil society. It is wrong that construction workers have fewer rights than all other workers. That a worker, or even an apprentice, can be called into a secret interviews for hours – one in three without legal representation – is wrong. That a unionist could be hauled before a court & face jail sentence for not appearing in these interviews – is a disgrace.
∑ Better industrial action provisions
∑ Right to bargain across industries
∑ Better right of entry
∑ The unequivocal fact about the important role of unions in a democracy.
∑ reverse the negative and anti-union policies – the labour movement is not part of the problem but a critical part of the solution.
∑ We need workers and unions that represent their interests. Workers, and their unions are an essential part of the solution to our current economic mess.
∑ The labour movement must be both strident and progressive in advocating our case that the system needs to be fixed.
∑ We cannot concede space to the business lobby. The push back on the Fair Work Bill with the spurious argument that economic circumstances mitigate against industrial relations changes.
∑ A united union movement that stands up and delivers for all working Australians.
The need to develop understandings and arguments necessary for socialists active in their unions and the labour movement generally.
Key points are that;
This is a period of political and economic transformation, wether we like it or not, therefore requiring a transformation of our arguments, methods and organisation.
Wether this is a temporary down turn or rather a profound collapse of the system on a global scale is a mute point. We can say with assuredness that the mineral boom was able to disguise to an extent the now revealed and increasingly apparent social and economic inequity within the system and these inequities are now developing and extending further a field.
Unions must maintain its campaign for their rights at work and continue the work of making and building connections within their communities. Where the leaderships of our unions obstruct either through passivity or deliberately using political and organisational means the rank and file must find other ways of working around these obstructions.
This will require a combination of developing the means for activists to share experiences and most importantly educate each other and develop strategies to further develop our theoretical understandings and thereby developing better methods in action. This way we can develop concrete objectives politically and economically so that we can identify and strengthen any nascent social solutions that may evolve.
To develop a labour movement response as such will require giving work within the trade unions and associated communities absolute priority – it is the only item on the agenda.
The current situation offers possibilities and cause for optimism if we are able recognise and take hold of any opportunities to build a cohesive actual movement. Unions are yet to put any clear argument and stamp on developments. It will be only by doing so that we can build and strengthen the arguments for a socialist alternative.
Peter Curtis
8/3/09
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One dimension of the crisis which will prove critical to union rebuilding is the way unemployed workers are regarded and assisted by the union movement. Thus far the Rudd Government has maintained the punitive measure of the Coalition and the union agenda has neglected to take it up. The ACTU did not cover this in its Executive decision on Job and Income Security in December but did include a “new form of social insurance” and dole-pension parity in March.
Moves for employment security measures beginning with firms receiving government assistance, short-time working with training add-ons for down days, removal of punitive delays and requirements to chase jobs around the country which don’t exist and simply not excluding the unemployed from “stimulus” payments would be a start.
The labour movement needs to get over competitive unionism and union corporate interests and to think as a class. That was decisive in rebuilding in the 1930s when the Unemployed Workers Movement laid the basis for new left leaderships in a range of unions. Failure to do so now would invite the Right into the vacuum where “working families” who are not working through no fault of their own become desperate though homelessness and poverty.
I think it’s more important than ever that unions embrace a vigourous organising model, if they’re to survive the GFC and help their members.