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  Issue No 100 Official Organ of LaborNet 29 June 2001  

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Media

The Printed Word Revisited


Rowan Cahill looks at the resurgence of the workers press and the lessons for unions in better communicating with their members.

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Trade union journals, newspapers, and journalists are an important part of Australian political and cultural history. For example the longest-running labour movement publication, the Australian Worker, has a listing in the authoritative Oxford Companion to Australian Literature (1985), having employed or published major literary figures like William Lane, Henry Lawson, Mary Gilmore, John Shaw Neilson, and Frank Moorhouse.

Long serving Australian Worker editor Henry Boote (1914-1943) similarly rates an entry, while Clyde Cameron recently claimed in the journal Labour History that Boote was "the greatest Labor journalist of all time".

During the late nineteenth century, and through much of the twentieth century, trade unions embraced the maxim "the printed word is the best organiser".

Size Matters

While much has changed since the heyday of Boote, and overall union membership has plummeted, we are still dealing with at least 1.9 million fee paying trade union members in Australia, and a few million associated family members.

This is a huge committed, and potentially sympathetic, trade union base. Numerically it is vastly superior to the numbers organised in any of the political parties; it is superior to the collected person-power of the Armed services; and is rivalled numerically, perhaps, only by organised religion.

At a time when trade unions are looking to rebuilding from the bottom up with strategies like energetic recruitment programmes, and strengthening of both the delegate and organiser systems, the role of the printed word should not be overlooked.

Wasted Potential

For too long trade unions have neglected the power of the union journal or newspaper. In recent decades some labour movement journals have only appeared erratically, while others have been given over to internecine politics and leadership self-aggrandisement. Union journalists tend to be expected to be media factotums, instead of specialist journalists.

This is a terrible waste. With potential readerships that in cases match the circulation figures of mainstream magazines, the potential for union based publications to develop, elaborate, advance and sustain a union world-view is immense. Collectively labour movement publications could, and should, constitute an informed and credible counter to the anti-union thrust of the mainstream press.

Two union publications that are on the right track are the Maritime Workers' Journal (circulation 9000), journal of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA), and Education (circulation 65,000), journal of the NSW Teachers Federation.

Communal Clout

The Maritime Workers' Journal has a magazine format, averages 32 pages per issue, and is published six times a year. It is a glossy publication, uses colour freely, and combines material from union officers, the rank and file, and a professional journalist. In recent years the journal has published some of the most detailed journalism in Australia on the scandalous "flag of convenience" issue, the exploitation of Third World maritime labour, and marine pollution.

A number of aspects of the journal help make it a popular and powerful union tool. Members contribute articles; there is a lengthy Letters section which is at once political, nostalgic, and often humorous; rank and file obituaries, authored by fellow workers, regularly appear, sometimes in great numbers. Collectively all this helps foster a communal consciousness and sense of belonging, which in turn helps give the union its political clout.

During the Patrick Dispute (1998) many observers wondered at the solidarity and sense of community pervading the culture of the MUA. Such wonder comes as no surprise to readers of the Maritime Workers' Journal.

As part of its communication strategy, the MUA has developed an award winning website. During the Patrick Dispute this really came into its own. Faced with restricted media coverage of its position on the complex matters in dispute, the union posted its analyses of events and statistics on the web, countering the Employer/Government media blitz.

The MUA message got out locally and internationally, helping account for the significant international and local widespread support the MUA attracted.

Chalkface Journalism

The teacher journal Education is a 32-page newspaper, published 12 or 13 times each year during school terms, and personally mailed to each member of the powerful NSW Teachers Federation. It is produced by a team of four people, including an editor and a sub-editor. Advertising of educational and teacher oriented products helps defray production costs.

Like the MUA journal, Education blends material generated by union officers, the rank and file, and journal staff. The Federation's Research Department frequently uses the journal to keep members abreast of latest research relating to current campaigns and initiatives.

During the 1970s and 1980s the Letters section of the journal was extensive, lively, and reputedly the most read section of the paper. During the 1990s the volume of Letters to the Editor decreased; the current editor is trying to reinvigorate the tradition.

For the majority of State school teachers, industrial awareness has a great deal to do with the journal. This is complemented by Federation's website which has both public access and a password protected, "members only", area. Constantly updated and increasingly sophisticated, this website has been used to great effect in recent industrial campaigning. Most teachers have free workplace internet access.

Unionism for Students.

The future of trade unionism depends to a great extent on the understanding of trade unionism amongst future workers. Future unionists are currently in schools and universities; as part of life in a market-force driven capitalist society, they are exposed daily to individualistic and anti-collective media and cultural messages.

If trade unionism is to have a healthy future, it seems commonsense to seriously try to spread the union message amongst future workers. The internet provides ideal propagandist and educational opportunities.

The internet is part of the lives of the majority of young Australians; schools and tertiary institutions abound with computer and internet facilities. At some stage the majority of Australian secondary school students encounter the subject of trade unionism as part of historical and social studies up to Year 10. Thousands of tertiary students encounter trade union topics and themes as they variously progress through Arts, Economics, Commerce, and Business degrees.

All trade unions should provide attractive historical and explanatory background materials on their websites, aimed at students. The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), the Australian Workers' Union, and the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union are examples of industrial organisations that have tackled this challenge. The ACTU effort is particularly attractive to both students and teachers, the latter being able to download complete lessons.

Considerable school and tertiary student interest in the 1998 Patrick Dispute has led the MUA to facilitate access on its website to relevant background material. Specific tertiary and journalistic queries beyond the general are, where possible, handled personally.

While the provision of website material aimed variously at school and tertiary students, requires money, some creative thinking, and perhaps the engagement of professional education expertise, it is arguably an important and prudent investment in the future. For those who question the efficacy or relevance of this sort of use of the internet, check out the American Central Intelligence Agency's website to see how capitalism's arch spooks attempt to reach school age children; it is an instructive exercise.

Old Wisdom

As the twenty-first century begins, the printed word has not disappeared and seems in no danger of extinction. World-wide a handful of media barons have realised this; scrambling for power and influence they seek to monopolise as much of the print media as possible, and similarly television, radio, film, and the new Information Technologies. At the heart of this greedy scramble for the old and the new is the Word, either printed or electronically rendered on computer screens.

Trade union builders of the twenty-first century should realise this. The old wisdom about the power of the "printed" word should be embraced, and all available technologies imaginatively and boldly exploited accordingly.

Rowan Cahill is a labour historian who covered the Joy manufacturing Lock-Out for Workers Online


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*   View entire issue - print all of the articles!

*   Issue 100 contents

In this issue
Features
*  Interview: Baptism of Fire
It�s been a rugged few weeks for Labor Council�s new honcho. But John Robertson accepts it comes with the territory.
*
*  Politics: Seven Days that Shook Our World
Chris Christolodulou surveys the wreckage from a week when the political and industrial wings of the labour movement collided.
*
*  History: History Sometimes Repeat
This is not the first Labor government to attack workers compensation entitlements. Some believe the Unsworth Government�s 1987 reforms were the beginning of the end for that administration.
*
*  Technology: Unions Online: Where To Now?
Social Change Online's Mark McGrath goes looking for what's on the virtual horizon for the union movement.
*
*  Media: The Printed Word Revisited
Rowan Cahill looks at the resurgence of the workers press and the lessons for unions in better communicating with their members.
*
*  Unions: Time For Second Gear
The trends are in the right direction but unions are still drinking small beer in the IT world and need to allocate more resources to communications generally, argues Noel Hester.
*
*  Satire: Texan Governor Faces Execution
The governor of Texas has been sentenced to death row after a jury found him guilty of killing hundreds of people.
*
*  Review: The Insider
Neale Towart looks at a literary anti-hero who brings the factional machinations and double-deals of the ALP machine out of the back rooms and into the light.
*

News
»  Picket MPs Face More WorkCover Heat
*
»  Della Tries a Henry VIII
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»  Privatisation Opens New WorkCover Front
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»  The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Virtual Democracy
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»  Bank Staff Forced to Flog Insurance
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»  Email Surveillance Report Gathers Dust
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»  Fifty Years On, Women Still Short-Changed
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»  Firefighters Withdraw Strike Threat
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»  Telstra�s Sells Off Skills Base
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»  BHP - Billiton Faces $1.8 Billion OHS Claim
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»  Activist Notebook
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»  STOP PRESS: Quite Frankly, Reith Goes!
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Columns
»  The Soapbox
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»  The Locker Room
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»  Trades Hall
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»  Tool Shed
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Letters to the editor
»  Picket at Parliament: Police Respond
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»  Time to Break
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»  Well Done for the Ton
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»  The Life and Soul of the Party
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»  A Tuckpointer Is ...
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