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Issue No. 134 | 03 May 2002 |
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The Hijacking of May Day
Interview: Youth Group History: Back To The Future Industrial: On the Street Unions: The New Deal Legal: The Police State Road Women: What Women Want Politics: Street Party International: The Costs of War Review: Songs of Solidarity Satire: Bono Satisfies World Hunger for Preachy Rockstars Poetry: Woomera
The Soapbox The Locker Room Bosswatch Week in Review Tool Shed
 Doctors in the BushM1 Open LetterJulian OnlineMay Day DebacleMothers Day MusingsGreetings From Canada
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History Back To The Future
*********** The building industry pact signed this week heralds a new era of co-operation in an industry that has for over a century been a major area of demarcation disputes. It is also another example of the key historical role of peak councils in ensuring the long term good for the union movement as a whole. In Australia and Great Britain the clash between unions and groups of workers in the late 19th century has been termed a clash between the Labour Aristocrats and the New Unionism. The aristocrats were the skilled tradesmen and craftspeople such as stonemasons, carpenters, engineers and printers. These have generally been seen as less militant than the unskilled who began organising at the time. These skilled workers had a long history of organising through craft guilds (these dating back to at least the 1600s in England). These imposed strict limits on entry to trades and long apprenticeships for those who did join. These craft traditions were breakdown by the Industrial revolution as new manufacturing techniques made them impossible to sustain in the face of factory production and mechanisation. Patmore notes that the New Unionism seems to have its origins in the London Dock Strike of 1889 when large groups of semi-skilled and unskilled workers such as dockworkers, gas workers and seamen formed unions. The unskilled may have been more militant but Hobsbawm attributes more radicalism to the apparently moderate skilled trades as they were the driving forces behind peak bodies such as the TUC and Labor Councils (in Australia) and the Labor parties. Phelps-Brown in his classic study of British industrial relations notes that the rapid spread of the new unionism across the British isles brought with it many short stoppages as the economy expanded and workers gained more bargaining power. The trade cycle downturn led to fewer but longer stoppages in many industries where unions grew. Union headquarter were not usually the initiators but workers on the ground struck to protect wages and the position of their union (demarcation). The settlement of demarcation disputes was a big factor in setting up federations of unions and the TUC, and in Australia the labour councils. One of the major roles of peak bodies quickly became the settling of demarcation disputes. The conflict between unions in occupations such as engineering and shipbuilding was fierce, as were the clashes between skilled and unskilled workers. The federation of the large numbers of unions that developed at this time was often in response to these disputes that could not be arbitrated and the co-operation between apparently conflicting small unions engendered by their discussion at higher levels. New unions developed at this too because the older unions refused to have anything to do with the newer unskilled workers. The control of entry into the trade was the reason the first unions were organised by occupation, not location. Class differences between the aristocrats and the other workers meant refusal to even associate with other workers in one workplace who were not of the same trade or who were unskilled. Trades Councils were formed to help maintain the situation of the skilled workers. The demarcations had been against the new workers, but the new forms of organising amongst the unskilled meant that the new general unions recruited across industries. The older unions also began to change at this time. The new unions also were the ones who adopted Marxist and socialist views of the structure of society. The older unions seem to have been the ones in the UK who developed the Labour Party. The way that that these decisions were taken has influenced the shape of British unions ever since, as the unions became independent minded and clannish not industrially based or influenced so much by central councils. The Australian experience was from the late 1880s of industrial and general unions developing and the craft rigidities and extra wages for crafts not so apparent. They did not have the aristocratic advantages of British unions, could not enforce the indentured apprenticeships of the British crafts unions. Technological change labour shortages and productive reorganisation up to 1890 also had a big impact on craft margins. The Labor Council has throughout its long history constantly been involved in demarcations, and in a sense it is the reason it and other peak bodies were established. The Council was a key player in getting the first Inter-Colonial Trade Union Congress going in 1879 and further congresses up to 1898. The major organising initiative of this congress was the Australasian Labor Federation (ALF) whose aim was the unification of working class organizations on the political and industrial level. The Council actually became the Sydney District Council of the ALF in 1894. This move came just as union organising peaked and went into rapid decline during the Depression so ALF existed in name only. The ALF history is a complex one of different factions within the union movement, just the sort of thing the current building industry pact is aimed at overcoming. Its also the first form of the idea of the One Big Union (OBU) that was later pursued from different angles by the IWW, the AWU and led to the formation of the ACTU in 1927. In the 1900s and 1910s the Labor Council urged amalgamations between rival unions, who were often all affiliates to avoid demarcations. This was the case with various unions of tobacco workers (successfully) and in the metal trades (unsuccessfully). That the Labor Council was seen a key player is clearly shown by the fact hat unions persisted in seeking affiliation despite knock backs and political rivalries. This key role has remained to today, as the signing of the building industry pact illustrates. The Labor Council also attempted to keep demarcations in check by refusing affiliation from groups who they saw as having adequate coverage from existing members. The TUC, like the Labor Council in NSW, attempted to overcome many of these problems. The TUC and the Labor Council equally saw the importance of stressing an overall purpose of workers organizations, rather than just emphasising narrow sectional interests which was a cause of demarcation. Walter Citrine played a major part in the TUC General Council's inquiry into the structure of the trade union Movement, requested by the 1924 Congress at Hull, and the results of which were presented by the General Council in a report to the 1927 Congress. In the interim, Citrine had written a crucial memorandum on the question of structure. Citrine saw the defects in trade union structure as: (1) sectionalism, (2) competition for members, (3) unions offering different rates of contributions and benefits for apparently the same services, (4) demarcation of work, and (5) lack of a co-ordinated policy." By 1924 a number of "main principles" of good trade union practice had been established and formed the terms of reference of the TUC Disputes Committee when considering union disputes over membership. BUILDING INDUSTRY CONFLICT In general labouring unions the demarcations also came up, an interesting development given that Councils were set up to help these general trades get unions for these sectors. One of the unions that formed out of the battles in the building labourers was the forerunner of the BLF, who broke away from the United Labourers. The best-known story of the massive conflict in the building industry is of course the battle between the BLF and the BWIU in the 1960s and 1970s. These conflicts were shaped around ideological differences between left wing parties (the split in the Communist Party into the SPA, CPA-ML and the CPA). The building industry was a critical sphere, and the Building Trades Group within Labor Council had long operated independently and with much stability. A big change in the leadership of the BLF changed things dramatically, and actions on Green Bans brought the differences into public view. Other major differences between the BWIU and the BLF was question of accident pay that led to the BLF invading Labor Council, who were seen as favouring the BWIU on this issue. The activities of the federal office of the BLF eventually led to the demise of the NSW leadership, and then to the demise of the BLF itself, and the BWIU effectively took over, becoming the CFMEU a little later. These moves to amalgamation were in line with the ACTU amalgamation push, begun in the late 1980s. It was also in line with the century old Labor Council approach to these kinds of disputes, and the reason for peak council establishing in the UK and Australia. The prestige of peak councils enabled them to be an influence with unions, and effectively operate as "the Parliament of Unions". The "parliamentary role" thus arose from demarcation disputes, and ensured an ongoing role for peak councils with unions, and strong influence with industrial tribunals and governments as the effective voice of the labour movement, as Citrine set out clearly in his prescient comments of the TUC in the 1920s. `Function must determine structure', I wrote, `and that type of organization which will suit the minimum needs of a union's own members will not necessarily be best for the attainment of all the broader objects.' The rise of peak councils in adjudicating between unions has seen this focus on broader objects as the major reason for their existence. The building industry pact of this week is the latest example of the Labor Council acting to ensure that the good of the union movement overall must take precedence over the factional warfare between rival unions. See: Ray Markey. In Case of Oppression: the life and times of the Labor Council of NSW (Annandale, NSW: Pluto Press, 1994) E H Phelps Brown. The Growth of British Industrial Relations (London: Macmillan, 1965) Greg Patmore. Australian Labour History. (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1991) Derek H. Aldcroft and Michael J. Oliver, Trade Unions and the Economy: 1870-2000. (Aldershot, Hampshire and Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2000)
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