Whitlam sacking - a tipping point in the relentless attack on workers' rights and living standards

Much has been written about the legacy of the Whitlam Government since his passing away in October this year.

One feature of the Whitlam Government period that has not received much press is what was happening with workers' share (including self- employed workers) of the national income in the mid- 1970s and what has happened to it since.

A graph sourced by the ACTU in a 2013 document "A Shrinking Slice Of The Pie" shows that in the Whitlam Government period, workers' share of the national income rose from 63% in 1961 to 75% in 1975, the year of Whitlam's sacking.

 

 
By 2012 it had declined to below 60%. The steepest periods of decline in workers’ share of the national income since the sacking of the Whitlam Government occurred in the Fraser Government's second term of office from 1977 to 1980, in the mid -1980s under the Accord policy of the Hawke Government and the period of Work Choices under the Howard Government.

During the early to mid- 1970's, there were consistently over 2,000,000 working days lost due to collective action in the form of strikes by workers. Many of these strikes were over claims for a bigger share of the pie created by workers but expropriated by the capitalist class.

Union membership which gave some indication of the numerical collective strength of the working class was just under 60% of the workforce.

The Whitlam sacking was a tipping point for workers in Australia. It symbolised a decision by US imperialism in particular that its global plans did not include toleration of an active, united working class in countries within its sphere of influence.

US imperialism intensified its efforts to court Labor 'leaders' like Hawke to control the working class (see "Further reading" below) and to participate in the systematic dismantling of the core strength of the working class in Australia. Its purpose was to maximise profits of the big corporations, especially in the mining, agriculture and resources sectors where imperialism significantly increased its presence from the 1980s onwards.
 

It had other plans for manufacturing workers in Australia. In a sense, imperialism gave up any hope of taming manufacturing workers in Australia. It resorted to closure of whole manufacturing industries in Australia, with compliant governments, both Liberal and Labor, appealing to imperialism that they could carry out its wishes better than their parliamentary opponents.

The Accord policy of the 1980s, the introduction of non- union Enterprise Bargaining under  Keating, the confinement of collective bargaining to the enterprise level, the narrow definition of workers' right to 'protected industrial action' not only paved the way for the individual contracts of Howard's Work Choices, but they turned workers away from being union members in their droves.

From a high of just below 60% in the 1970s, union membership has fallen to about 18% overall and 13% in the private sector. Strikes are a rare event in Australia now.

Renewed Assault On Workers' Living Standards To Increase Profits.

However, imperialism is not satisfied. Through its latest parliamentary agent, the Abbott Government, it is trying to wipe out workers' mass organisations (unions) altogether through legal means combined with a sustained media campaign portraying unions as corrupt organisations that workers should avoid at all costs.

The Government is also planning to pass laws which further restrict the rights of workers to discuss issues with union officials inside their workplace. The Government wants to restore the right of the boss to prevent a union official from meeting workers in the place where they have their meal break. This builds on the lack of rights of workers' elected workplace delegates in the Fair Work Act where the word 'shop steward' or 'union delegate' does not even rate a mention!

The Government , on behalf of the big corporations, is also hoping to legislate to further restrict when workers can take the already limited 'protected industrial action'.

The purpose of this latest attack is to prepare the way for a further reduction in the workers' share of the wealth of the country and to further increase the profit share of the corporations, including those that dodge their tax obligations and those that do not.

Workers Fighting Back

Despite the incredible assault on workers since the sacking of the Whitlam Government by imperialism and the in the main servile parliamentary friends, workers continue to find ways to act collectively to defend and extend their interests. Although the number of workers in unions has declined as a percentage of the workforce, there are still thousands of workers who join unions. However there is also much higher turnover of workers in particular workplaces and industries now than in the 1970s when there were more full time jobs and more job security. Despite restrictive collective bargaining rights under the Fair Work Act, thousands of workers still stick together to win above award minimum pay rises and better working conditions.

One of the problems is that union membership does not 'follow' workers who are moving from one employer to another or one industry to another, so a worker who is a member of a collective today is 'lost' when they move to another workplace tomorrow. 

How workers communicate with each other to plan collective action has changed, but not been extinguished by the big corporations and their governments. While the corporations benefit by having to rely on as many large concentrations of workers as was the case with big manufacturing plants of the past, they struggle to control how young workers in particular use social media to communicate with each other and to plan actions.

The recent Bust The Budget rallies, while not sustained, were organised almost entirely by social media and resulted in good numbers.  They showed that the corporations may have short term success in restricting action inside workplaces due to repressive laws and the changed nature of many workplaces, workers still and always will find ways to organise collectively to pursue their own interests.

Unions as organisations can still greatly assist in this process by themselves putting their common interests ahead of their own sectional interests.

Workers have no time for demarcation disputes which cause confusion among workers about which union to join. Most workers who have joined a union at one point or another in their working life would appreciate a membership system where their union membership can easily be maintained as they move in and out of different jobs, or temporarily cease working.

Workers want organisations to belong to that are in step with how they earn a living in the 21st Century.

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Further reading: Hawke and Carr were US sources on Whitlam turmoil