Economic crisis belts the working class: Will the ACTU fight or fizzle?

Written by: Bill F. on 8 June 2020

In the wake of the coronavirus crisis, the Morrison government is taking desperate measures to restore the security and profits of the capitalist class and their foreign monopoly mates.

After years of regular abuse and anti-union laws, the federal government has reluctantly accepted that they need the union movement involved in any far-reaching plans to resurrect the capitalist economy. They have asked the ACTU (Australian Council of Trade Unions) to participate in a ‘roundtable’ review of industrial relations, along with employer organisations and social and community representatives.

This in itself is an admission that the capitalist class needs the working class to survive, to continue making profits and to accept capitalist domination of society. While the ACTU covers a much smaller union membership than in days past, it still covers key trades and industries including the public service, and has some capacity to reach into the wider community as well.

Five working groups

The government has proposed working groups to develop policy recommendations in five areas. These are … 

Award simplification, Enterprise Agreements, Casual and Fixed-Term workers, Compliance/Enforcement, Greenfields Agreements.

Recommendations coming from this process, if accepted by government, would be dealt with through legislation, government regulation or through the federal budget now postponed until October.

It is obvious, in the short time provided, the government doesn’t really expect agreement on substantial issues, and in any case, is not bound to accept the recommendations. What they are seeking is to compromise and disarm the union movement by collaboration, perhaps making some small concessions. If this is the cost of industrial peace while capitalism recovers, well and good – if not, a further reason to bring in more union-bashing ‘reforms’!

What the ACTU wants

After years of wage freezes, price hikes, casualisation and social service cut-backs, the working class was well and truly hammered before the coronavirus hit, so the ACTU had no difficulty in producing a half-decent list of working class demands to bring to the roundtable discussions. While there is no mention of even social democratic demands such as nationalising key industries, most of the items they listed focus on the immediate needs of working people and would benefit workers in the short term.

They have listed eight key areas for ‘economic recovery’ with some detailed explanations on each. (See http://www.cpaml.org/web/uploads2/actu-media-release-200512-rebuild.pdf)  

1. Two million new permanent jobs, halving the number of insecure jobs

2. Lift wages, living standards

3. Investing in public and community services

4. Nation-building projects

5. Education and Training

6. Dealing with Climate Change

7. Dealing with Social Disadvantage

8. Supporting Australian industry

What the bosses want

The AIG (Australian Industry Group) is making the front-running here, representing the remnant Australian capitalists while the foreign monopoly-dominated BCA (Business Council of Australia) lurks in the background, confident in more direct links to its government stooges.

The AIG wish-list is a stinker, hardly the “fresh approach” promised, but rather a re-hash of anti-worker obsessions.

In the first place they want to scrap the “better off overall test” in Enterprise Agreements – and what’s the point of an agreement for workers if they are not better off?

For the AIG and the capitalist class, simplification of awards means stripping out issues such as annual leave, personal and carer’s leave, redundancy pay and termination notices from awards and agreements and leaving them to the tender mercies of existing and yet to be defined legislation.

Furthermore, they reject any attempt to introduce criminal penalties for wage underpayment by bosses, which has been rampant for young students and casualised workers and those thrown into the so-called ‘gig economy’.

You can bet they will oppose almost every point of the ACTU position, but you can also bet they will also make a few concessions to appear “reasonable” and “realistic” in this crisis.

A big test coming

By the stated conclusion of this process at the end of September, the ACTU will be under pressure and not only from union members. In September the coronavirus crisis stimulation in the form of Jobkeeper and Jobseeker packages will be downgraded, perhaps in full. Many hundreds of thousands of working people will already be in debt and desperate need, many others will be barely able to survive on charity hand-outs and meagre social services. They will be looking to the union movement as their only hope.

If the ACTU is unable to get its eight point position accepted by government, what happens then? Will they draw a line or just slag off at the government and then sit back and foster illusions for the Labor Party to win office, as happened last election. (Labor, for its part, is currently doing its own sitting back and waiting – no leadership coming there, so don’t waste your breath.)

Will the ACTU be prepared to fight for its position? Will it be prepared to educate and mobilise the working class to press its demands through strike action? Or will it spend endless time and resources trawling through the courts and losing again and again? That will be the test – words are not good enough, action speaks louder!

History shows, “If you don’t fight, you lose”.

“Jobs You Can Count On” Campaign Narrative Can Unite Workers

Ned K.

 

The ACTU and two of its affiliates, United Voice and National Union of Workers all use 'Jobs You Can Count On" as a campaign narrative to unite workers in action.
 

As with the Your Rights At Work campaign there are those within the union movement who see the end goal being an ALP win in the next federal parliamentary election.

 

The "Jobs You Can Count On" narrative has been picked up by the ACTU to run alongside its "Change The Rules" campaign which aims to put enough pressure on a new ALP federal government (if elected) to restore "balance" between labor and capital in the industrial laws. While some changes to industrial laws will be of benefit to workers, such as industry wide collective agreement campaigns, abolishing the ABCC, better union organizer access to workers on the job through changes to Right of Entry laws, such changes will mean little unless working class organisation and collective action "on the ground" develops a life of its own independent of the parliamentary election cycles.

 

From this perspective, the "Jobs You Can Count On" has real potential to contribute to building and uniting workers across many different industries and sectors. Why is this so?

 

Asking workers the question "what does a job you can count on look like for you?" gets a wide range of responses. Many workers would when asked this question by union organizers give similar answers about a living wage, job security while others working in poorly organised (in a trade union sense) workplaces identify respect and fair treatment as key issues. Many workers in industry sectors that rely on government funding for their wages and conditions such as public hospitals, essential service workers and child care or aged care, identify staffing levels as well as income levels that recognise the link between quality of jobs with quality of services and/or care to the community.

 

"Jobs You Can Count On" campaign narrative also is applicable to temporary workers such as local students, overseas students and other visa workers working in jobs that they have no intention of staying in for long term employment. However for them "a job you can count on" is where the boss does not dare swindle them out of shift or weekend higher pay rates or who is forced to recognize that they have to balance work and study time.

 

So no matter what the worker's situation is, asking questions about "Jobs You Can Count On" can be the start of a conversation that can connect all workers' particular situations and issues to the need for workers to join together to win. Defining the "win" will vary depending on the issues raised but asking the right questions opens up the possibility to link a group of workers’ issues to a "bigger picture" than returning an ALP government to office.

 

The "Jobs You Can Count On" campaign narrative has the capacity to enable workers to take action together at many different levels and thereby experience their own collective power.

 

In so doing they reinforce Marx's summation of workers' daily struggles when he said words to the effect that now and again workers are successful but it is the growth of the labour movement that is the real success.
 

Change the Rules! Change the System!

Mike Williss

The Australian Unions’ (ACTU) campaign to Change the Rules is deserving of the full support of all working Australians.

It is a comprehensive response to injustice and unfairness across a range of issues: social inequality, taxation, rights to industrial action and representation, wage theft, penalty rates, enterprise bargaining, insecure work, minimum wage, working women and working families, temporary visa workers and the construction “watchdog”, the ABCC.

The campaign statement reads: We all want a country that is fair, but right now the rules favour big business and the very rich…. Working people need more power to swing the pendulum back.

It would indeed be a very great thing if the ACTU campaign succeeds in restoring the right to strike, abolishes the ABCC, wins substantial increases to the minimum wage and Newstart Allowance, restores full rights of entry provisions for unions, and restores penalty rates. The rights of temporary visa workers, insecure and part-time workers, working women and working families also need new rules.

As well, one third of the largest multinationals pay no tax in Australia. Exxon-Mobil hasn’t paid for three years in a row. Others pay ridiculously small amounts. Changing rules to force them to pay would be great!

It’s a massive agenda. It requires strength and defiance.

Major victories have always come on waves of struggle on the job, in the streets and communities. Victories don’t come from the so-called “independent umpires”, the courts, politicians or parliaments.

Has Australia ever been “fair”?

Even if all the ACTU demands were won, that can’t be the end of it.

“The rules that made Australia fair are broken,” says the ACTU. This is a dangerous illusion for the people.

Rules and laws have always been written by and for the ruling class of big business and corporations. They’ve always tried to make Australia “fair” for the super-rich and “not fair” for the majority, the working people.

A quick glance at Australian history will show that unions have always been subject to heavy fines, their leaders and members have been jailed for defending workers’ rights, and that any improvements to wages and conditions have come by and large from action on the job rather than the benevolence of the so-called “independent umpire”. It has never been a fair country for working Australians.

The very worthy demands now being put forward by the ACTU would provide a breathing space for workers for a while, but pressure from big business to cut costs and remove conditions will always remain and  intensify.

Time to get off the treadmill

That is why the ACTU campaign Change the Rules is worthy of support, but the missing piece is that only when workers unite to Change the Capitalist System will fundamental sustainable improvements in workers’ lives take place.

Given that the decisive sections of the economy are in foreign, and predominately, US hands, the first stage in Changing the System must be the demand for a genuinely independent Australia – economically and politically.

Such an independent Australia must necessarily be a socialist Australia with all working people becoming owners of, and benefitting from, our natural resources and the enormous wealth created by the labour of workers. Only the working class has the capacity to unite and lead the Australian people to Change the Rules and Change the System.

It’s time to unite, not just to Change the Rules, but also to Change the System!