Future Union Movement

BATTLE PLAN READY FOR SALLY’S ARMY

GRACE COLLIER

Businesses have two years to establish fortifications against a union power grab
Like a ray of sunshine beaming through storm clouds, some cheery news has arrived. The ACTU elected a new secretary this week. Despite our gloomy national predicament, no doubt you will take a moment to send Sally McManus congratulations.

Whoever leads the ACTU must act as the public interface between the union movement and the rest of society, so they must be a palatable cleanskin. Naturally, this somewhat narrows the pool of contenders.

As well as having a PR role, the ACTU houses the bureaucratic brains of the union movement and what is left of its heart: true believers who think they hold “light on the hill” values. These Labor values are a set of “working-class” beliefs mostly imbibed at middle-class institutions, for instance by university students who listen to Billy Bragg and rail against capitalism before becoming student union operatives, then expand their cred by working seven hours and 36 minutes a day, nine days a fortnight, in a public service job before heading into the union movement.

Consequently, the ACTU is the hallowed place where passionate union theorists with limited experience in the real world attempt to administer the labour movement. Don’t think McManus is condemned to a boring existence, though. Any ACTU secretary must tiptoe down a hazardous path.

For a start, there are meetings to chair with the people who run the unions. Important discussions about divvying up other people’s money can become heated and must be adjudicated. The union secretaries all passionately hate each other, almost as much as they hate the concept of private profit, the bosses and Tories.

Bitter arguments rage over union coverage of various worker categories. For Australian unions, there are slim pickings out there. The shrinking pool of union members and the revenue they generate is a regular topic. Like seagulls fighting over chips, union bosses wheel and swoop, screeching all the while. Anyone trying to referee will find themselves deafened, pecked and shat on.

ACTU people also think up grand industrial relations policies to inflict on the economy, and hope to get as many of them in place as possible. It is important to leave a legacy before jetting off to a better job in politics, industry superannuation or a posh union bureaucracy in Europe.

The policies are designed to be implemented by the political arm of the union movement, the Labor Party, through which the unions anticipate taking back control of the nation. So, like sleeper agents activated by a secret signal, brainiacs are springing out of the woodwork with grand policy suggestions for their future prime minister, Bill Shorten, to implement.

In The Australian this week, on ABC TV and in an address on Facebook, McManus gave us a few clues about union thinking: “radical change” is needed because working people are at “breaking point”. A people’s movement for fairness will form an army and fight for serious amendments to law. In the meantime, unions will simply break laws they find unjust.

McManus says her priority is to “lead a movement to take on corporate greed”. There will be demands for less red tape around going on strike, limits on the use of casuals and labour hire, and a reversal of penalty rate reductions. It is intended the Fair Work Commission will be given increased power to arbitrate on disputes between companies and unions. Conversely, the FWC is to lose its power to cancel enterprise agreements and move employees back on to the award.

Recently, at a conference in Canberra, two people from the National Tertiary Education Union presented a brief and clearly written paper called The Future of Trade Unions in Australia. This fascinating paper provides valuable insight into union thinking. If all goes according to plan, legislative change will ensure 50 per cent of Australian workers become union members within five years. This will eliminate “the free-rider problem”: when unions in bargaining represent workers who don’t ask them to, then become cross because they won’t join up.

The ACTU, unions and employer groups are to get together and determine “bargaining electorates” of at least 2000 employees. Once a bargaining electorate is declared, unions can apply for a ballot and within 60 days employees would vote to establish a “collective bargaining unit”. Employers could send written material urging staff to vote against the move but not “hold meetings with employees individually or in groups to discuss it”.

If most employees vote yes, all employees in the electorate would be forced to join the relevant union and pay dues. After that, only the union could negotiate enterprise agreements with employers, and workers would be denied the right to vote on these agreements.

Don’t dismiss these ideas as outlandish. What this paper describes is essentially the American model of industrial relations. Australian unions have always coveted the American system and it isn’t outside the realm of possibility that they might achieve their goal one day.

Australian businesses better get their industrial relations management strategies in order, pronto. They have two years to terminate their enterprise agreements, exit the bargaining system and escape the reach of the FWC, forge great relationships with their staff and build protections against unwanted union interference.