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  Issue No 18 Official Organ of LaborNet 18 June 1999  

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Interview

Ballot Boxing

Interview with Peter Lewis

In the midst of a key anti-union ballot, the Finance Sector Union's Geoff Derrick is learning vital lessons about life in a deregulated labour market.

 
 

FSU state secretary Geoff Derrick

How did the FSU get involved with AGC?

The history is that the company was respondent to the old Clerk's Finance Companies Award before it became a wholly owned subsidiary of Westpac. We had a demarcation agreement with the Australian Services Union that once it became a wholly-owned subsidiary coverage would be transferred to the FSU, that's gone along smoothly between the two unions. We've been talking to AGC for some time to get them to the negotiation table to discuss an appropriate award or enterprise agreement - they've been stringing us along a little bit and obviously been working behind the scenes to develop a non-union agreement under the Reith laws .

Do you know what their motivation for doing that was?

I believe the motivation is imply to control or cut costs and to avoid FSU coverage and avoid Westpac terms and conditions for AGC staff.

Describe the AGC workforce, what sort of people are they?

They're low to middle income earners without a history of union membership. There's about 2,500 people, most in Sydney but some in Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide and a few in Perth. They do a range of activities associated with the finance company. AGC processes all the Westpac personal loans - you go into a Westpac branch and apply for an unsecured personal loan and it will actually be processed through AGC. They have a high level of secondment between Westpac and AGC; AGC's credit card operation is run out of the Westpac centre at Epping; they have parallel management structures all the way down the line. When I sat down and negotiated the last Westpac enterprise agreement the leader of the Westpac negotiation team was handing out an AGC business card.

Once you heard that they were trying to get a non-union agreement up, what did you guys do?

The first thing we did was get a copy of the document and do an analysis of the terms and conditions to work out whether or not it was a fair deal; and it clearly wasn't. We compared it to the Westpac agreement because we saw that as a fair comparison given that the other banks who own finance companies all pass on their bank terms and condition to the finance company employees.

Once you decided that the deal had deficiencies, what was the next step given you didn't have many members within the organisation?

We contacted the employer to try and get them to agree to negotiations; they indicated there would be no negotiations but that "they would be interested in our feedback". We then contacted the few members we did have in AGC - we'd been out there trying to generate a bit of interest and few people had come on board. We got a lot of encouragement to tell people what was in the deal : what their Westpac colleagues were getting and what other people in finance companies were getting.

And how did you go about getting that information into the broader workforce?

We arranged a series of information meetings after hours in clubs and pubs and the like; we faxed in meeting notices to the company but our members in there told us management took them straight off the fax machine. So we took to standing outside the entrances to the office and handing out leaflets promoting the analysis we had done and the meetings to everybody who walked in.

What was the response?

Surprisingly good, given that it was after hours and the onset of winter and that most of these people were not union members and had probably never met anybody who's a paid union official. The attitude was a combination of people who were really keen to play a high profile role in the campaign and a few people who were just testing us out to find out what we had to say and draw their own conclusions on what we were saying and what the company was saying.

As its proceeded you've managed to turn the tide, do you put this down to any one technique?

It's a combination of factors but they are linked. The main reason I think is that we've listened to the people who are at AGC: they wanted someone to do a professional and independent analysis of what the company was offering and we've done that for them. They wanted someone to tell them the facts and then only offer an opinion after they had the opportunity to absorb the facts. We haven't tried to snow them, we've just tried to focus on the quality, or lack of quality in the company's proposal. What's turned it around is that we've been able to say: vote "No" because you are entitled to a better deal than this and a better deal would have better pay outcomes, fairer superannuation outcomes, fairer hours of work and would improve your redundancy entitlements.

You work in an industry where traditionally the union has gone in and negotiated wage increases within an institutionalised structure. This is a much more free-for-all environment based around an actual ballot. Has this forced you to do things differently?

The process under the current federal laws is dead set stacked against unions. We don't get equal time with employees to tell them what our message is. We don't get equal time to ask questions of the employer about what they are proposing and why they are proposing it. We don't get a real opportunity to debate the employer about their proposal and our preferences in a way that is fair. The employer can call compulsory staff meetings and drum the "Yes" campaign through their existing management structure. We have to rely on almost guerilla tactics. We have to be out there waiting for people to come off the job, talk to them in remote locations and spend a lot of time listening.

Has that been a good process for the union?

It's been an excellent process because we have been trying to talk to AGC people for months and while we had been making some progress it was very slow progress. A lot of people just didn't see the need join a union after all these years, they didn't see the need to change the relationship between management and employees. What management has now done is sharpen people's focus and they now understand that the employer is heading in a totally different direction and that they do need to get together and organise in support of themselves.

So do you think at the end of this process AGC will be an organised, unionised company?

We're confident we'll get a "No" vote and that will strengthen the real power of employees at AGC. Hopefully it will be a wake-up call for Westpac management who are obviously behind the AGC strategy; and it will bring them to the negotiating table to work out for a fair deal for AGC employees. That will prove the value of unionisation to AGC staff.

And are there broader lessons for your union and the movement in general?

It reinforces for us that we are actually quite good campaigners because we listen to people. We're prepared to put in the effort to meet them outside their traditional working hours. We're prepared to produce material which is easily understood based on their feedback; and we're prepared to tell them what's happening all along the way. While we have all the disadvantages in relation to time and access compared to the employer the big advantage we have is the truth. We go out and tell the truth and AGC employees and workers generally are intelligent enough to sort out the truths from the untruths and they act accordingly.

And is this a bottoming out for an industry that's copped a bit of a hammering in recent years?

It's a realisation that we can effectively respond to employer tactics that are designed to minimise the capacity of workers to organise together for a better deal and a fair deal. We realise that, OK, the Reith legislation is stacked against us, but we do get some opportunities because employers are abusing the power that they've been given.


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*   View entire issue - print all of the articles!

*   Issue 18 contents

In this issue
Features
*  Interview: Ballot Boxing
In the midst of a key anti-union ballot, the Finance Sector Union's Geoff Derrick is learning vital lessons about life in a deregulated labour market.
*
*  Unions: Psyched Out
Intense competition in the labour market has fuelled a new renaissance in psychometric testing.
*
*  History: Rhetoric and Reality
This month will be a big one for Labor Party rhetoric about the "light on the hill".
*
*  International: ILO Adopts Child Labor Convention
Child slavery, prostitution and hazardous work have been outlawed in Geneva
*
*  Legal: Competing Agendas in Enterprise Bargaining
Recent developments show unions how they can turn the Reith laws on their head.
*
*  Review: Sister Power
A new book offers practical help for women who want to be heard.
*

News
»  Carers Crisis: Victims Turned Away
*
»  Farmers Back Social Audit
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»  Holiday Bugs: Government Asked to Act on Y2K
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»  Oakdale Miners Take Message to Canberra
*
»  United Front for Public Sector Pay
*
»  Talking Books Silenced
*
»  Upper House Reform: Lest We Forget Greiner
*
»  Pregnancy Bunfight Looms
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»  Horta Launches East Timor Mercy Ship
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»  Sparkies Back Fantastic Plastic
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»  APHEDA Helps Beat The Blockade
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»  Torture Support Day, June 26
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Columns
»  Guest Report
*
»  Sport
*
»  Trades Hall
*
»  Piers Watch
*

Letters to the editor
»  Chardonnay Debate Lacks Class
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»  GST Rally, Town Hall, Monday June 21
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