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| Issue No 67 |  |
18 August 2000 |
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| Issue No 67 | |
18 August 2000 |
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The AMWU's Amanda Perkins |
The Defence Legislation Amendment (Aid to the Civilian Authorities) Bill, currently before the Senate, would allow troops to suppress political disturbances, including industrial disputes and political protest. The Bill is being presented under the pretext of Olympic Security.
Michael Costa says the NSW Labour Council will be expressing its concerns about the use of the military in domestic situations to the State and Federal Governments.
'The military shouldn't be used to interfere with industrial disputes or legitimate civil protests. If the laws are needed for short term Olympic requirements then there should be a sunset clause,' he says.
'We wouldn't support any government, Liberal or Labor, using the military as in the Pilots dispute, to undermine the legitimate rights of workers and their unions.'
The Government and the Opposition combined to rush through the legislation which will fundamentally change the military's role in Australia.
The Bill was passed through the House of Representatives in one day (June 28) virtually unnoticed while the country was distracted by GST mania. It is due to be voted on in the Senate by the end of August in time for the Olympic Games.
Organiser Amanda Perkins read a resolution from AMWU members at Visyboard to the Labour Council before the resolution was adopted.
'Many of these workers emigrated to Australia to escape such repressive conditions in third world countries such as Turkey, Indonesia Yugoslavia or China,' she said.
'The emotional impact of seeing the army on Australian streets would be catastrophic for these migrants.'
The Visyboard workers resolution says:
'At Visyboard many of us are born overseas where governments use the army against the people. We came to Australia to be free. We support our union in opposing this terrible law. We call on the Labor Party to oppose the law. They are meant to represent the workers.'
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'Shop assistants are now being charged $4 a day to park at work. A full-time adult employee will lose more than two weeks pay every year simply to come to work,' says Greg Donnelly, NSW Secretary of the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (Shop Assistants Union.)
'Westfield must be doing it tough if they have to come after shop assistants for extra money. That's why the SDA is launching an appeal for shop assistants to donate 5c and 10c pieces to help Westfield in such difficult times,' he says.
'This should perhaps become part of a statewide, even national appeal to help this struggling multi-national company that is doing it tough.'
The SDA distributed money boxes at a lunch time meeting of more than 500 members at Burwood Park, opposite Westfield Burwood today. On one side they say 'stop Westfield's greedy grab.'
'At least $960 per year out of the hip pocket of shop assistants represents over two weeks wages for full-time adult retail employees, and much, much more for many part-time, casual and junior employees,' Donnelly says.
The State Award for a shop assistant currently stands at $458.80 per week ($12 per hour). The seventeen year old full time rate is $275.30 per week ($7.24 per hour).
'The charge will have a devastating impact on the majority of working mothers and young women in the industry who rely upon their car to get to work,' Donnelly said.
We hoped that Westfield would understand how unfair it is to penalize shop assistants for coming to work. We want free parking not fee parking.'
The new law was passed after parliament sat for almost 70 hours and considered more than 690 amendments to its 260-plus clauses as conservative parties filibustered to the very end.
The Act went through 66-54, with the Government winning the support of the Green Party.
Labour Minister and author of the Bill, Margaret Wilson, told the House it was difficult to express her emotions after almost a decade of fighting to overturn the Employment Contracts Act, and thanked unionists for their efforts.
The new law ad is due to come into force October 2.
Ross Wilson, President of the NZ Council of Trade Unions said unions are ready to take up the challenge of ensuring workers get fairer workplaces under the Employment Relations Act.
He said workers would be breathing a collective sigh of relief at the demise of the ECA.
"The Employment Relations Act provides the framework to achieve fairness in our workplaces. Unions will work with their members to ensure that fairness is delivered."
Ross Wilson said that workers expected a new era of industrial relations where they could achieve a better deal.
"The Employment Contracts Act represented everything that was unbalanced and unfair for workers. Today unions will move into a new era where we can focus on restoring respect, fairness and decent pay and conditions for New Zealand workers."
by Rowan Cahill
During the last fortnight there was the hint of a breakthrough. Following Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) recommendations, the American owned Joy Mining Machinery company ended its latest lockout and foreshadowed a return to work.
However subsequent meetings and compulsory AIRC conferences between Joy and unions representing 70 workers, who have variously been on strike and locked-out since the breakdown of EBA processes in March, were fruitless.
Joy strategists seem intent on shepherding the dispute to arbitration, and the parties remain miles apart with about twenty issues in contention.
Concurrent with discussions Joy pressed ahead with union bashing tactics. It sought, and gained, a certificate for 166A proceedings against the three unions involved in the dispute (the AMWU, AWU, and CEPU), officials, and workers at the Moss Vale plant.
The way is now clear for the company to pursue common law claims against those unions and people that its various private investigators, video cameras, and informants have identified as allegedly damaging business.
Joy workers have rejected any return to work and refuse to be intimidated. Quite simply, they have been hardened by the dispute; they have been out in the cold for much of the year, and no longer respect or trust their "employer". Any fear has been replaced by wry contempt for what they regard as an American "baseball bat" approach to industrial relations.
I got an insight into the mood on the picket line one afternoon last week. One of the workers was looking across the road at a 20 metre high pine tree; casually, and with sense of bitter humour, he remarked, "We should start getting tinsel for that tree". A young father, thinking of Christmas on the picket line.
by Andrew Casey
Selleys is the producer of popular homemaker products such as Araldite, Polystrippa and PolyFilla.
This is now the longest strike at this plant in more than a decade. Members of the union will meet again on Monday to discuss the future of the dispute.
The strike began on August 9 and the 130 members of the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union (LHMU) have maintained a 24 hour peaceful protest outside the plant ever since.
The support from other unionists and community members has been astounding with people coming to the Padstow plant unannounced to join the protests.
A group of Maritime Union of Australia members rolled up earlier in the week to show their solidarity - while that very modern form of solidarity, e-mail messages, have come in from all over the country.
If readers of Workers On Line have the time they would be more than welcome to join LHMU members this weekend outside Selleys at 1 Gow St Padstow.
Selleys brought in new management to their Padstow plant 12 months ago and negotiations for a new Enterprise Agreement between the company and the LHMU have now gone on for six months.
Last weekend unionists handed out leaflets outside retail outlets to inform Selleys customers of the company's actions in this dispute and leading up to the dispute.
Enterprise bargaining negotiations between the LHMU and Selleys broke down when the company refused a claim for a 6 per cent wage increase.
by Andrew Casey
The South Pacific unions will probably discuss a proposal to send a combined union delegation to Fiji in September to have an on-the-ground inspection of conditions and discussions about future union sanctions in support of the Fiji TUC and its membership.
This meeting of SPOCTU, attended by about 40 participants, was originally scheduled to be held in Fiji, but this was cancelled to protest the coup against the democratically elected Labour-led government of Fiji.
New Zealand, with its newly elected Labor government and a raft of new pro-worker employment laws just passed this week, is a much more positive environment for unions from this region to meet together.
NZ Prime Minister, Helen Clark, is scheduled to speak at SPOCTU on the same day that the Fiji crisis is to be discussed by delegates.
Democratic developments throughout the South Pacific will be a key item for discussion at the conference.
There will also be a debate on the effects of Globalisation and the WTO on the economies and democracies of the island nations.
Many of these island nations play 'host' to a growing textile and garment industry funded by Chinese, Korean and Australian interests.
There are some reports that these new factories are also being used as fronts for an international trade in sex slaves - with the island factories being used as staging points for the movement of young Asian women into North America.
The history and struggles of workers in the South Pacific sometimes seems as being the stuff of a good Pacific Island pulp adventure story - heroic struggles, romantic stories, as well as outrageous and funny episodes.
The pioneers of the union movement in the South Pacific can provide hair raising stories about how the Cold War impacted on these small islands with mention of the CIA, the KGB and even Mossad.
The CIA at one time was said to have a full time operative in Fiji funding the development of unions. The WFTU - the old pro-Soviet union international - was also very active providing funding and support to a wide variety of nascent island unions.
At the end of the Cold War it was the Japanese, the Koreans and the Malaysians who were trying to influence the local union movements - largely with an eye on how best to make a profit for their business interests from their home countries.
In reaction the union movements from about 15 island nations came together in 1990 to swap experiences about the spies and the influence peddlers, and to provide solidarity and support under the umbrella of SPOCTU.
Apart from Australia and NZ, Pacific Island countries with active union movements who will be represented at the SPOCTU conference include: the Cook Islands, Fiji, Tahiti, Kiribati, New Caledonia, PNG, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, the Wallis and Futuna Islands.
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Candidate: John Robertson |
If you're an ARM member and haven't indicated that you will be voting online you should be receiving your ballot paper soon in the mail.
"It is important that the ARM includes Union activists to broaden its base of support if the republican cause is to engage with ordinary working people", says John Robertson, the NSW Labor Council Assistant Secretary and candidate for the NSW State Committee.
"This failure to engage with workers was one of the reasons for the failure of the referendum last year".
Andrew Williamson , NSW District Secretary of AIMPE, is also putting his hand up for one of the eight National Committee positions.
'There's a view around town that some of the ARM personalities are an albatross around the neck of the Republican cause. We need to move forward,' he says.
'Via Workers Online, I expressed my dismay at the way ARM was then handling the campaign and the vilification of some Republicans that had the temerity not to toe the ARM line.
Aaron Magner is another union activist looking for a position on the NSW State Committee. Aaron is an industrial officer for the LHMU.
"We need active state councillors with freshness and energy to take on challenges and generate debate on a new model for constitutional change", says Aaron.
"It is crucial that the ARM involves all the people that want a republic but voted "NO" in the 1999 referendum".
Anastasia Polites is an Organising Works trainee for the Independent Education Union and is also on the ACTU Youth Committee. She is running for the National Convenor of the Young Republic.
"We need to broaden the campaign to encourage young workers from throughout the community to participate, not just students from university campuses", says Anastasia.
"The lesson that we leant from last year indicates this is the group that we have to convince. It is time for a new campaign and a new strategy to lead us to victory."
There are other excellent candidates running - including MEAA member Jo Scard, Jason Yat-Sen Li and Richard Fidler who also support the Union movement. Voting opens on the 28 August.
by Andrew Casey
" Child care workers need to work together to build and maintain the profile, standards and values of an industry which is now nearly a century old," Sonia Minutillo, the Executive Vice-President of the Child Care Union said.
" This industry has a proud tradition of service to the community - a tradition which has been nurtured by the thousands of people who work in the industry.
" Unfortunately too few people recognise and value these traditions and standards," Sonia Minutillo said.
A Conference for NSW Child Care Workers, on Saturday August 26, is expected to attract more than 100 participants concerned about the working life of child care workers and the issues that affect them daily.
" This conference - organised by the Child Care Union - will take important steps towards establishing a positive profile for child care workers and their proud traditions," Sonia Minutillo said.
" There are between 15-20,000 child care workers in NSW. In the 1990s there was an almost four-fold increase in this industry, an explosive growth."
The conference theme - 'For the Love of It' - will look at the profile of child care workers, the regulations that impact on child care workers, the stress of child care and the rights and responsibilities of child care workers.
" Guest speakers will be from the Office of Child Care and a variety of industry specialists, as well as child care workers from across the industry," Ms Minutillo said.
The one day conference will be on Saturday August 26 in the LHMU Auditorium, Terrace Level, 187 Thomas St, Haymarket, Sydney.
The conference is open to union members and non members.
Conference Registration costs are $ 10 for union members and students; $ 15 for all other interested participants.
The conference is sponsored by HESTA - the Child Care Superannuation Fund.
For more information about the conference, and registration forms, please ring Rondell Millane or Jim Llloyd on 9281 9577
This is the response of MUA national secretary John Coombs to ongoing reports that Patrick Stevedores boss Chris Corrigan is on the brink of replacing wharfies with robots at his Port Botany terminal.
"We have not been involved in the development of this new technology," said Mr Coombs. "But we have good reason to suspect the validity of Mr Corrigan's latest claims. The question is why hasn't anyone been invited out there to see a demonstration of the new technology? And why do our people on the job there every day say the automated straddle is just left rusting most of the time?"
Reports on the ground from the Patrick workforce (especially from technicians employed there) are that the robotic straddle is far from working. When they do give it an occasional test run it can only go in a straight line back and forward. No-one has ever seen it turn a corner. Also members report that while the windows have been blacked in, when the sun is behind it you can see a silhouette that looks suspiciously like a person at the wheel.
"I think Mr Corrigan may well be a bit nervous about a third stevedoring company about to set up operations in Melbourne," said Mr Coombs. "This could be more about boosting the Patrick share price and profile in the face of some stiff competition. It is also about justifying government funding in the company. But it does say a lot about Mr Corrigan and his absolute inability to deal with workers as human beings."
Mr Coombs said that the union also viewed the publicity as a bit of a scare tactic, a bargaining chip for the coming enterprise negotiations.
"Management are going to say, you have to accept more labour cutbacks or we'll replace you with robots," he said. "And the government is funding this gambit to the tune of millions."
Automated ports do exist, the most renowned being in Rotterdam, Holland. But this hub port, which services the whole of Europe, was a greenfields site designed from scratch so that the straddles follow an infra red track system embedded in the ground on set paths. They do not weave around each other like the cramped, small scale, straddle operation at Port Botany.
"Working for the Commonwealth Bank has become so bad and the turnover rate so high that it's now being forced to offer up to $500 for any staff who can coax a friend or relative into it," says Peter Presdee of the Finance Sector Union.
"Bad management and greed are to blame. For several years the Bank's treatment of its staff has been getting worse so it's no surprise that experienced employees are leaving in droves and very few people want to start working for it. .
"This is now a Bank without a plan for providing quality customer service in the long term nor even in the short term for a major event like the Olympics, and it will be staff and ordinary customers who pay the price."
The FSU says the Bank will not be providing relief staff over the Olympics in busy Sydney locations like Parramatta, Hurstville or Hornsby. And in a further drain on staff resources in outer lying suburbs the Bank has sent an urgent memo asking staff to volunteer to work in the CBD over the Olympics."
FSU members are pressing for a 6.5% per year pay rise and adequate staffing levels in a new Enterprise Agreement.
'That's why thousands of our members went on strike in June and why further action may be necessary," Mr Presdee said.
NSW Labor Council's Mark Lennon says this will make it easier for members to pay their dues.
'It will make sure a system that has been in practice for years but depended on an employer whim will be enforceable by an employee.'
A test case is likely to be heard by a Full Bench of the IRC.
The Labor Council and unions are retaining senior counsel for the matter. The awards which are to be part of the application are yet to be finalised, however the will be representative of employees across the State.
In addition, the Labor Council will be seeking that the Government intervene in the matter in support of their position.
The matter is unlikely to come on for hearing until early next year.
by Mary Yaager
Chalker said that electrical cables had been installed inside Telstras exclusive communication pipes.
If one of our the telstra or other construction workers was to cut this cable thinking it was communication wires, they would be electrocuted Calker said.
Jeff Forbes CEPU Sub Branch Secretary on the North Coast has fighting to have this and other safety issues addressed raised with Telstra to no avail.
The CEPU has also raised the seriousness of issue with Telstra and have been ignored.
The CEPU has called on Labor Councils Safety Watchdog Mar Yaager to intervene.
Yaags has called on WorkCover who given assurances the issue will be rectified.
Yaags says she cannot believe the attitude of Telstra on a matter as serious as the lives of the workers.
Good one Telstra.
The seminar is sponsored by Leichhardt Municipal Council.
The seminar - Australia's role in the Reconstruction of East Timor is to be held on Wednesday 30th August : 9:30am - 5:30pm at Leichhardt Town Hall. It is to be followed by a benefit night for the people of Maliana in East Timor.
The program for the day is:
9:30am: Aboriginal "Tent Embassy" and Lord Mayor's Welcomes.
9:45am:Kim Gago, National Emergency Commission of the CNRT.
10am:Robyn Scott-Charlton (Director, AUSAID East Timor desk), An Introduction to AUSAID'S Work in East Timor.
10:30 -11:20am: Reconstructing East Timor's Health System. Panel session with Dr Peter McDonald (Timor Aid), Liz Glynn (AETA), Lance Taudevin (former aid worker in East Timor), Jorge Aroche (director, STARTTS), Alison Tate APHEDA.
11.20 - 11.30 am:Morning Tea
11.30 - 12.30 pm:Reconstructing East Timor's Education System. A Panel Session with Annette Griggs (Local Government initiatives),Gordon Biok (FUTO Training College), Prof. Stephanie Fahey (RIAP/Sydney Uni), Prof Bill Buckley (UNSW/Education), Patrick Lee (Independent Education Union), Dr Geoffrey Hull (UWS/Academy of East Timor Studies).
12.30 - 1.15 pm: Lunch Break.
1.15 - 2.00 pm: Reconstructing Cultural Institutions in East Timor. A Panel Session with Bob Howarth (Queensland Newspapers on rebuilding media infrastructure), Sister Susan Connelly) MMIETS/Tetum language choir tour), Martin Wesley-Smith AO (music traditions), Alix Mandelson (weaving handicrafts)
2.00 - 2.45 pm: Security, Forensic & Legal Issues in East Timor's Nation Building - The Australian Contribution Panel Session with Jim Dunn (author/commentator tbc), Australian Army, Navy and Federal Police Spokespeople(tbc), Keith Suter (International Lawyers Association), Mary Larkin (Amnesty International), James Arunitakis (AIDWATCH), Anne Marie Devereux (Law, ANU, tbc)
2.45 - 3.00 pm: Afternoon Tea
Part 2 :Reflections on East Timor's referendum and the fallout in Australia.
3.00 - 4.30 pm: The Media Coverage on East Timor - Past and Present : Crusading but Fair?A Panel Discussion with Wilson da Silva (producer "The Diplomat"), Beatriz Miranda (SBS radio), Mark Chipperfield (Aust correspondent for UK Sunday Telegraph), Christopher Zinn (Foreign Correspondents Assoc of Aust/London Guardian), John Mantinkus (freelance journalist), Liam Phelan (freelance) H.T. Lee (freelance).
4.30 - 5.20 pm: Unresolved Issues in the Australian Search for Justice in East Timor.A Panel Session with Justice John Dowd (ICJ), Shirley Shackleton , Bruce Haigh (commentator and former diplomat),Dr George Aditjondro (Newcastle Uni). Discussion will focus on the questions of the Balibo deaths, War Crimes Tribunals, Refugees and the Indonesia factor.
5.20 - 5.30 pm: Concluding remarks
Bookings for the seminar should be made by phone to Jeff Lee (AETA) on (02) 9519-4788/(02) 9500-1638. Registration will be from 9am at the Town Hall 30 August 2000. Cost is $20/$10 although people who are without means will be admitted free or by donation. Mail address is c/- TSP/AETA PO Box 703 Leichhardt 2040.
The Seminar will be immediately followed by A Benefit Night of Verse, Humour, Song and Music for the people of Maliana between 6-10pm at the same venue. Artists include Solidarity Choir, Leichhardt Espresso Chorus, Jeannie Lewis, John Warner & Margaret Walters, Tug Dubley, Matawa Band, Edwina Blush & Trevor Brown, Jan Preston & Jim Conway. Denis Kevans,Stiff Gins and others($10/$5). Money raised will go to the Leichardt Council library project in Maliana and other initiatives under the 'sister-to-sister" arrangement between Maliana and Leichhardt.
AETA takes full responsibility for both events but would like to thank the following for either assistance endorsement or sponsorship: NSW Writers Centre, Politics in the Pub, Research Institute for Asia Pacific (Sydney Uni), UNSW School of Education, Australian War Memorial Journal 'Wartime 'for permission to reprint Wendy Sharp images from their current issue, Wendy Sharpe, the king street gallery on burton, Nette Griggs and Karen Smith from the Leichhardt Council Community Services Office, Jas Hall, Mark Chipperfield. Tanya Plibersek, M.P. for Sydney, CFMEU Union, International Commission of Jurists, Gleebooks, Norton Street Bookshop, ASIET, Aidwatch, (note this is only the short-list).
The Senate acknowledged the role Australian merchant shipping plays in peacetime and called on the Government to promote Australian flag shipping.
The resolution (reproduced in full below) contrasts starkly with the Howard Government policy of favouring cheap, substandard foreign shipping at the peril of the national flag fleet.
The Federal Government has refused recommendations by the industry, the unions and its own appointed shipping reform group to provide fiscal support to Australian shipping industry. Instead it has opened up the domestic transport industry to guest workers, exposing the Australian coast to pollution.
World shipping is dominated by flag of convenience vessels registered in tax havens like Panama and Liberia, where they are not required to meet international safety or labour standards. Many of these ships are, according to submissions to an international inquiry, crewed by poorly trained or fraudulently certified crew from Third World countries (International Commission on Shipping, ICONS).
Exploitation of labour and tax avoidance enables these ships to offer cut rate freight rates, which are driving Australian ships out of business. Seven Australian flag ships have been lost in the last 18 months.
In recognition of the importance of maintaining an Australian fleet, ALP National Conference, this month, adopted a policy iof supporting national flag shipping.
The Senate resolution is as follows:
That the Senate -
This Conference notes the economic and strategic importance of maintaining a vibrant, efficient and safe domestic shipping industry for island nations such as Australia.
The valuable defence and national interest contribution of the Australian shipping industry was recognised by Major General Cosgrove in formal thanks for the support given to Interfet Forces during the East Timor crisis.
This Conference reaffirms our support for the cabotage provisions of the Navigation Act and condemns the Howard Government for abuse of the Single and Continuing Voyage Permit provisions of the Navigation Act to disadvantage and undermine the Australian shipping industry.
This attack on the shipping industry has disastrous effects on defence, environment, immigration and the national security of Australia. The replacement shipping companies and workforces have no allegiance to Australia, pay no tax and are effectively guest labour in the Australian domestic transport sector.
This Conference calls on a Federal Labor Government to involve all affected industry participants in the development of measures for best commercial practice in the international industry designed to promote a modern, efficient and safe Australian and international fleet. In developing these measures, regard shall be given to the need for support comparable with that available to international shipping.
Conference also acknowledges the contribution of the Australian merchant marine to the security and defence of Australia and notes that this contribution will now officially be celebrated on International Maritime Day, September 24.
"Strain of Justice", Sunday Telegraph, August 6, 2000.
On reading this article, one must call into question the thought processes` of those whom, we have elated to the judiciary on the basis of their ability to mete out justice on our behalf, on an equitable basis.
For several generations Medical science has unanimously agreed that a sedentary life style is the prime cause of coronary sickness. Yet here we have those, in whose hands we have placed our punitive and retributive justice system, echoing the catch cry of charlatans and carpetbaggers, that overwork is the cause of their self inflicted illness.
What can one expect from a body that was made for activity, imagine the low self esteem of a soccer player, a footy player or even a cricket player, if they had been benched for the length of time some of our sitting magistrates have.
The past nursing and Union experience of the Chief Magistrate Pat Staunton, would surely enable her in making a more balanced and objective "Judgement", on stress and the cause of it .
In these times of economic rationalization for the "common man", and the "roll back" and reform of his working conditions, it may also be appropriate for an economic and critical assessment of the sick leave entitlements of this segment of the judiciary. An inquisition into the leave used and the pattern in which it is used, could possibly reveal flaws within the system as well as the individuals. Ms Staunton , indicates that sick leave is increasing ,if so, this pattern must precipitate an inquiry into the suitability of those magistrates taking excessive sick leave. Some local government bodies institute an internal inquiry as to the suitability of employment after 7days of illness in a 12month period.
The claims by Chris Hartcher, and the apparent convoluted meandering and non-specific claims by the Chief Magistrate, in the article "Strain of Justice",(Sunday Telegraph) should ring alarm bells for the long suffering taxpayers who are required to foot the bills for these "Over Worked" magistrates.
In fact, the claims of stress and illness, calls into question the ability of those that are allegedly suffering, to administer justice in the state of New South Wales in a fair and equitable manner.
Tom Collins
First let me congratulate you on your first Editorial, a very insightful piece of writing.
Unfortunately you appear like many others who are to deep in the forest to be unable to see the trees , and believe in your own rhetoric or should I say " Mantra".
You can have all the training for delegates, officials or paid representatives you want, but unless there is a fervent belief in the cause, you have nothing.
I say, "Today the Trade Union movement in Australia, has all but nothing".
You talk of empowering members, how can you do this when the only power Unions have is in the internal squabbles about who gets to be the "Leader of the Band", or who gets first suck on the Saveloy.
Of course peoples interest in politics has not diminished, it has increased as they realize the power that they actually have in communion with others of like mind. And most Unions are no longer , of like mind!
We as a species are at the crossroads, do we wish to continue to empower weak and mediocre Union Leaders, who feed us bullshit, or because they have chosen the easy path , through the mushroom sheds , or do we want real leaders.
Leaders who will grasp the nettle and carry the banner at the vanguard rather than the rear.
Perhaps there are none of these zealots left?
Democracy is the Trade Unions only way to the future!
Team Work Tom
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What have been the fundamental problems with privatisations in Australia?
Firstly, the lack of transparency. The process should involve steps whereby a government assesses the value of an asset in public hands, versus the benefits of selling that asset. What we have seen in the past is that Governments come into office and they are approached by various interested parties. These are mainly the people who are likely to benefit in terms of the sale process, like merchant banks. They target certain assets which should be sold. The government then makes a decision on which assets they would like to sell. They announce them in the budget papers for instance, or in some media release and then they bring these people in - the outside advisers to give them advice on how to go about selling. There is no process whereby they actually assess the value of that asset in government hands.
Secondly, on the few occasions where there has been disclosure of the calculations used to assess retention, the methods used have been very flawed. Some academics describe them as virtual fraud. They have involved extreme assumptions about the cost of capital and the use of quite inappropriate calculation procedures.
Thirdly, we haven't seen governments broadly articulating what they would like to switch the investment into, after privatisation. They have just pulled the money out, and claimed they are going to reduce debt, or something spurious like that.
Who have been the winners and who have been the losers from privatisation?
The winners have been mainly the people who have been able to afford to buy the shares. They have been the companies who have been involved in the process of privatisation - the merchant banks; the accountants, the lawyers, the advisers to government. It certainly has not been the community.
The losers have been the general community. We did an analysis of seven of the major floats - or privatisations - and we found that they were sold for something like $42 billion and by December of '99 when we stopped writing the book they were worth more than double that. In effect we saw a transfer of wealth from the public to the private sector of $48 billion, just for those seven surveyed privatisations.
In what other ways has the community lost out?
The workforce has lost out. In the Commonwealth there has been a loss of around a third of the workforce since the Coalition came into office.
And the other thing of course is the impact on service provision. We heard a lot of complaints from the bush for instance, following the half privatisation of Telstra.
Then we have the potential loss of services in States like Victoria, where most of the power industry has gone into overseas hands. The new owners are interested in the bottom line, and there is going to be very little interest in improving services there. If anything, we haven't seen the worst of that situation yet.
We are beginning to see the substitution of State owned, regional monopolies with international cartels which are operating across State boundaries. The ideals of national competition policy and competitiveness are likely to be eroded by the existence of cartels which are seek initially to drive out competition, and which soon be able to turn a big profit.
So one of your major criticisms is how governments actually value assets or efficiency in operations?
Yes. That is one thing. Consultants have been promoting the sale of government businesses rather than systematically appraising the value of those assets. Valuation procedures have been biased towards encouraging asset sales.
For example the State Bank of NSW was sold for about a seventeenth of its value. The net proceeds were just over $160 million. A few years later it is making that per annum. It was recently valued at between $2.6 and $2.9 billion by Arthur Andersen. The Fahey Government sold it too cheaply.
The main problem has been that the analysis has not been done properly; and governments have focussed solely on financial factors and not looked at the impact of asset sales on services to the community. And they haven't talked about alternative avenues for investment which might provide better outcomes for the community.
Sometimes politicians do say "we are going to sell in order to invest in other infrastructure." But they never seem to specify what that new infrastructure will be. That is one of our problems with the sale of Telstra. We are told that they are going to sell in order to reinvest the money in other infrastructure. Now, what more crucial industry is there in a large country like Australia, than communications infrastructure? We have a problem with that.
Much of political rhetoric around privatisation centres on the maxim that "all debt is dangerous". Is this true? Does the private sector operate in this way, and are our debt levels high by international standards to justify this?
That was one of the reasons we wrote this book - that kind of sloganeering, that debt is bad and we must reduce it. The fact is that when we look at Australia in terms of the world situation, we are one of the lowest indebted countries in the world when you look at it as a percentage of our GDP. If you look at a country like the US, which is regarded as the most successful economy in the world its ratio of debt to gross domestic product is around 41%. Japan is 46%. The average for the whole of the OECD is 45%, and even higher for the European community. The Australian total is something like 7%.
You say that our Government Trading Enterprises have been undervalued and the analysis of their profitability or efficiency is either false or questionable?
Their reported profits have been calculated on a different basis to the private sector and people have made invalid comparisons between their profitability and the profitability of private sector firms. The accounting methods are so different it is just not valid to compare the reported figures.
Consequently governments may have undervalued assets in their own mind, believing the reported figures and thinking that government owned water and electricity businesses were not very profitable. If the figures are reworked using private sector accounting methods, a different picture emerges.
Some of the overseas bidders, particularly for electricity assets, paid prices which were surprisingly high, even allowing for past understatement of GTE's profits. But others see that as an effort by foreign companies to get a foothold in a market which has got a stable political environment, and where the new owners could expand their operations through the gift provided by national competition policy. It's been easier for new owners of electricity businesses which have long term contracts to deliver energy.
At the heart of your critique is the claim that there is a lack of a vision of what government should do?
Absolutely. To our knowledge, there has been very little talk by politicians or others about what government should be doing, as opposed to what they shouldn't be doing. There is always the talk about government should be made smaller, without any rationale as to why that should be the case. And smaller to do what? We are never told any of that. And there has been no real debate or the debate has been at the margin. Every time a government's identified a particular business to sell off, they say, well governments shouldn't be in this industry or that industry. And it is always a debate at the margin about shedding something, without really articulating the vision of what are the new things governments should be doing.
Henry Mintzberger, a Canadian management writer, argues that in a democracy we can't afford not to have wide-ranging communication and political debate, so maybe the government should own some newspapers, rather than have the media concentrated in private hands. Now, he's a fairly right wing management writer. Maybe the current, local equivalent to that idea is to ensure that there is widespread access to the internet and other modes of communication - and that we retain certain types of electronic media in public hands. Yet the way things are going in Australia we should fear for the future of the ABC, unless there is some greater challenge to the orthodox thinking about privatisation.
What effects has privatisation had on processes of accountability and transparency in government?
Well, they have been largely eroded. The fact is that any Stock Exchange listed company is required by Stock Exchange listing rules to provide more information to shareholders about the proposed sale of major business undertaking than we have seen governments provide parliaments about the proposed sale of government assets.
Some years ago when Bruce Baird was the Minister for Transport he refused to give the NSW Parliament any documentation about the contracts for the M2 motorway.
Proposals for major infrastructure projects are not being put on the table. The rationale for outsourcing is confined to analysis within government agencies, often without public scrutiny.
We have had the spectacle of the Victorian government under Kennett amending the FOI Act to make sure that major contracts involving billions of dollars cannot be examined by the community. Certainly the story has been one of increasing government secrecy about major deals.
And when you have obtained the information on those deals you can see why the government has been so secretive - because of the great benefits to the private sector in those ventures.
These things have occasionally been debated. Public Accounts Committees in NSW and Victoria, for example, have agreed that summaries of contracts for major infrastructure financing deals should be made public and published.
In fact, contract summaries are being prepared in NSW, but they are not even available in the parliamentary library. They have been prepared by individual agencies, and kept there.
You seem to give the impression that governments are also out of their depth in being able to make these decisions?
To a large extent. When the former Auditor General, Tony Harris, retired, we went to his farewell lunch and he was saying that when he started as Auditor General he found that there weren't staff capable of doing the present value calculations needed to analyse infrastructure financing deals. And it is even worse in the rest of the public sector.
Nick Greiner, when he published the first guidelines on private sector involvement in infrastructure financing, said it would be appropriate for the government to outsource the analysis of these because he didn't think that the public sector had the capacity to do it.
And that hasn't changed to any great extent. The skills of the public sector are still at the same level, or similar levels. Politicians basically are relying on outside advisers to tell them what the situation is in regard to decisions they want to make.
Another problem is that the bureaucracy tends to be reluctant to appoint people who have got more talents than themselves. And the fact is, the chief financial officers of some of largest government departments in NSW are unqualified - they lack tertiary qualifications in accounting, and are not members of the two major recognised professional bodies. Yet these agencies are dealing with billions of dollars per annum.
What sort of effect will the loss of revenue have on finances of Australian governments in the future?
It will take a decade or more to see the full effect, because we are still seeing government finances being propped up by asset sales, though we are now scraping the bottom of the barrel to some extent. The fact is that electricity and water have both been very good earners for governments. Their profitability has been distorted by the use of unusual accounting techniques. Certainly accounting techniques which are not used in the private sector. They have been far more profitable when they have been reported on a private sector accounting basis. They have strong cash flows. They are providing services for which demand is largely inelastic - people still need to use water and electricity regardless of their income. The history of price regulation of basic utilities in Australia and the United States demonstrates how over time regulated industries find ways to earn high returns, notwithstanding the best efforts of the regulators.
So governments that sell off good businesses are going to lose those cash flows in future and over time this is going to have an increasingly hard effect on their own budgets. Victoria in particular has sold off virtually everything.
The Commonwealth too in selling off shares in say, Telstra, is losing the revenue stream that came from Telstra's dividends. And it is a significant income stream for the federal government. Billions of dollars a year.
Meantime the proceeds of sale are going into recurrent spending on things which aren't going to generate revenue in the future. Much of that spending is on election pork barrelling.
What would savvy business leaders think about this?
I have sat at lunch with some businessmen and they say "it's just bloody ridiculous. Howard is selling off Telstra and pissing the money up against the wall." And they say even if you put the money into hospitals and schools, they don't really produce revenues, so you are going to have some cash flow problems down the line.
And there are people who are gaining from privatisations. They are in that small group who are actually gaining from this process.
What can we do now that the horse has bolted?
We don't think it has. We think that we have still got lessons to learn from the last decade, because that is all it has been in Australia. Very few sales happened before 1990.
But it seems to us that there are still some crucial assets left in most States except Victoria and South Australia, which have sold their power industry. We feel that there is time to learn those lessons before any state government considers the sale of further essential services. And also in the federal sphere we feel that the government should pull back from selling Telstra, because in our view, heading into the 21st Century, it is crucial that governments maintain an operating interest in telecommunications.
by Noel Pearson
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Noel delivered this Ben Chifley Memorial Lecture at the Bathurst Panthers Leagues Club on Saturday 12 August 2000.
In recent times I have been thinking about the social problems of my people in Cape York Peninsula. The nature and extent of our problems are horrendous. I will not reiterate the statistics here tonight, suffice to say that our society is in a terrible state of dysfunction.
In my consideration of the breakdown of values and relationships in our society – I have come to the view that there has been a significant change in the scale and nature of our problems over the past thirty years. Our social life has declined even as our material circumstances have improved greatly since we gained citizenship. I have also come to the view that we suffered a particular social deterioration once we became dependent on passive welfare.
So my thinking has led me to the view that our descent into passive welfare dependency has taken a decisive toll on our people, and the social problems which it has precipitated in our families and communities have had a cancerous effect on our relationships and values. Combined with our outrageous grog addiction and the large and growing drug problem amongst our youth, the effects of passive welfare have not yet steadied. Our social problems have grown worse over the course of the past thirty years. The violence in our society is of phenomenal proportion and of course there is inter-generational transmission of the debilitating effects of the social passivity which our passive economy has induced.
In considering the sad predicament of our people and the role which passive welfare has played in the erosion of our indigenous values and relationships, I have had cause to think about passive welfare provisioning and welfare policy generally in Australia. Thus I have also been considering the history of the Australian welfare state, its origins and its future.
The historical experience of my people in Cape York is different from that of mainstream Australians. I will therefore talk about two histories: the history of your mob and my own.
Before I do so, let me first say that my historical and social discussion has been assisted by some of the analyses of the early international labour movement. I am therefore thinking about class. I refer to “class” in Australia because its existence cannot be denied – it is a historical and contemporary fact, even if the term has lost currency, indeed respectability, in public discussion today. Indeed the Australian Labor Party talks no more about class, let alone class struggle. The C word has departed from the rhetoric of the official left. This is understandable, but regrettable.
It is understandable because the political philosophy of the Left in Australia has changed and the notion of the struggle between classes is seen as antiquated, divisive and ultimately fruitless given the apparent inevitability of stratification in a free market society. This notion is after all associated with a political and economic system that is now discredited with the collapse of communism.
However it is harder to understand the abandonment of class in our intellectual analysis of our society and history. How can we pretend that class does not exist?
If the policy prescription – large scale expropriation of private enterprises – that followed the class analysis of the early international labour movement was wrong, it does not mean that all aspects of the analysis are therefore invalid. Indeed, whenever there is public discussion of the widening social and economic divide in our country – as The Australian did in its recent series – we are faced with the fact that there are class cleavages in our society. And yet our policy debate is largely conducted as if class does not exist.
Classes are treated as political constituencies and labelled with evocative and provocative terms such as “the battlers” and “the mainstream” and “the forgotten people” and “the elites”. The theory of the dynamics and operation of class society, as explained in the analysis of the early international labour movement, has been largely discarded. It does not inform policy.
But I find that I cannot so easily avoid such analysis in seeking to understand the predicament of that lowest underclass of Australians: my mob. For it explains our predicament in a way that the prevailing confusions do not.
Recently, I read the comments of a prominent young indigenous sportsman who has been speaking out, in his own way, about his views on the oppression of indigenous people in this country. In a blunt statement this young man said:
“Today’s government and society are trying to keep us down, keep us in our little place, and take away our self-esteem, take away our pride ... They want to kill us all and they’re still trying to kill us all.”
Most indigenous Australians would understand this feeling, even if they would not articulate their sense of oppression in the same way. Most indigenous Australians know the sense that every time we try to climb we face daggers of impediment, prejudice, difficulty and strife.
My own thinking is that this viewpoint is to be explained by understanding the structures of class which operate to keep our people down. There are structural reasons why we occupy the lowest and most dismal place in the underclass of Australian society. There are structural reasons why all of our efforts to rise up and to improve our situation – are constantly impeded. The concept of race has been coopted by the mechanisms of class to devastating effect against the interests of black Australians. It means that even among the lower classes the blacks have few friends because the whites focus their Hansonesque blame and resentment upon the blacks, who are either to be condemned for their hopelessness or envied for what little hope they might have.
From my acknowledgment of the reality of class society you should not infer that I am a proponent of socialist or indeed any economic policies. I do not propose, indeed I do not have, any economic policy for the country. My preoccupation is to understand the situation of my people, which necessitates an understanding of class.
But first I want to analyse the present situation of the lower classes of Australia generally, and the historical origins of the present situation.
The two major influences on the lives of your mob have been industrialisation and the emergence of the Welfare State. During the stage of the industrialised market economy when the Welfare State was developing, the lower classes consisted mainly of a huge, homogeneous industrial army and their dependents. Since they lived and worked under similar conditions and were in close contact with each other, they had both the incentive and the opportunity to organise themselves into trade unions and struggle for common goals. They possessed a bargaining position through collective industrial action.
Many of your great grandparents and their parents were members of this industrial army, and they got organised to insist on a fair deal for working people and their families.
At the same time it was in the objective interest of the industrialists to ensure that the working class didn't turn to radical ideologies, and that the workers weren't worn down by the increasing speed and efficiency of industrial production. Health care, primary education, pensions, minimum wages, collective bargaining, and unemployment benefits created a socially stable and secure working class, competent to perform increasingly complex industrial work, and able to raise a new generation of workers.
These two factors, the organisation of the workers and the objective interest of the industrialists, produced an era of class cooperation: the Welfare State. The support and security systems of the Welfare State included the overwhelming majority of the citizens. The welfare ideology predominated in Australia during the long period of bipartisan consensus founded on what Paul Kelly called in his book The End of Certainty "the Australian Settlement", established by Prime Minister Alfred Deakin just after Federation and lasting up to the time of the Hawke and Keating governments in the 1980s.
At this point let me stress two points about the Welfare State that developed in Australia from 1900.
Firstly, the key institutional foundations of this Welfare State were laid down by the Liberal leader, Alfred Deakin. As well as the commitment to a strong role for government (what Kelly calls State Paternalism) it included the fundamental commitment to wage conciliation and arbitration which became law in 1904. Throughout most of the twentieth century the commitment to a regulated labour market enjoyed bipartisan support in this country. Whatever complaints the non-Labor parties harboured about organised labour, there prevailed a consensus about the necessity and desirability of a system of labour regulation in this country, right up to the government of Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser. It is important to remember the bipartisan consensus around the general shape of the Welfare State established in the early 1900s.
Secondly, it is also important to remember that the Welfare State was the product of class compromise. In other words it arose out of the struggle by organised labour – it was built on the backs of working people who united through sustained industrial organisation and action in the 1890s. It was not the product of the efforts of people in the universities, or in the bureaucracies or even parliament. Whilst academics, bureaucrats and parliamentarians soon came to greatly benefit from the development of the Welfare State – and they became its official theorists and trustees – it is important to keep in mind that the civilising achievement of the Welfare State was the product of the compromise between organised labour and industrial capital.
When the Arbitration bill was introduced into Parliament, Deakin spoke of this compromise as “the People’s Peace”. He said:
“This bill marks, in my opinion, the beginning of a new phase of civilisation. It begins the establishment of the People’s Peace…which will comprehend necessarily as great a transformation in the features of industrial society as the creation of the King’s Peace brought about in civil society…imperfect as our legal system may be, it is a distinct gain to transfer to the realm of reason and argument those industrial convulsions which have hitherto involved, not only loss of life, liberty, comfort and opportunities of well-being.”
The Social Democrats have given three reasons for defending the Welfare State:
Firstly to counteract social stratification, and especially to set a lower limit to how deep people are allowed to sink. People with average resources and knowledge will not spend enough on education and their long term security (health care and retirement), and they and their children will be caught in a downward spiral, unless they are taxed and the services provided. This is the main mechanism of enforced egalitarianism, not confiscating the resources of the rich and distributing them among the poor, because the rich are simply not rich enough to finance the Welfare State, even if all their wealth were expropriated.
Secondly to redistribute income over each individual’s lifetime. This is often performed not on an individual basis (those who work now pay some of older peoples' entitlements and will be assisted by the next generation), and there is some redistribution from rich to poor, but the principle is that you receive approximately what you contribute (in the case of education you get an advance).
Thirdly because health care and education (the two main areas of the public sector of the economy) can’t be reduced to commodities on the market, because health care and education are about making everybody an able player on the market. In other areas of the economy you can then allow competition.
Classical welfare is therefore reciprocal, with a larger or smaller element of redistribution.
But now, alas, the circumstances that gave rise to the Welfare State have changed.
The modern economy of the developed countries, including our own is no longer based to the same extent on industrial production by a homogeneous army of workers. The bulk of the gross domestic product is now generated by a symbol and information-handling middle class and some highly qualified workers. These qualified people have a bargaining position in the labour market because of their individual competence, whereas traditional workers are interchangeable and depend on organisation and solidarity in their negotiations with the employers. A large part of the former industrial army is descending into service jobs, menial work, unemployment. Many of their children become irrelevant for economic growth instead of becoming productive workers like their parents and grandparents.
New growth sectors of the economy of course absorb many people who can't make a living in the older sectors. Also, income stratification is now in many countries being permitted to increase. Employment is created at the cost of an increase in the number of people on very low wages. But even if mass unemployment is avoided, the current economic revolution will have a profound effect on our society: it will bring about the end of collectivism.
The lower classes in developed countries have lost much of their political influence because of the shrinking and disorganisation of the only powerful group among them, the working class proper. The shift in the economy away from manufacturing, and economic globalisation which makes it possible to allocate production to the enormous unregulated labour markets outside the classical welfare states, have deprived the industrial workers in the developed countries of their powerful position as sole suppliers of labour force to the most important part of the world economy. The lower classes are therefore now unable to defend the Welfare State. Nor is there any longer any political or economic reason for the influential strata of society to support the preservation of the Welfare State.
Those who have important functions in the new economy will be employed on individual contracts, and will be able to find individual solutions for their education, health care, retirement and so on, while the majority of the lower classes will face uncertainty. And the Welfare State will increasingly be presented as an impediment to economic growth.
In Australia the effects of this revolution and the dismantling of the 80 year old Australian Settlement, have been alleviated by the compromises between the traditional Australian social system and the economic internationalisation that was carried out during the Hawke-Keating years. These successive Labor prime ministers presided over this transition in the Australian economy, and they sought to introduce reform without destroying the commitment to the welfare state. Labor eventually lost the 1996 election but the earlier endorsement of the electorate of this compromise to a large extent forced the coalition parties to be more cautious about dismantling the welfare state, notwithstanding their preferences.
But the story does not end here. The welfare state will continue to face pressure to retreat. As I have said, it will increasingly be presented as an impediment to economic growth. You do not need me to tell you this.
When I consider the history of your people, I am struck by the ironies. Few Australians today appreciate their history. They do not realise that the certainties they yearn for were guaranteed throughout the twentieth century by the Welfare State to which the great majority of Australians were reconciled and committed. They do not realise that this civilising achievement was founded on the efforts of organised labour. Instead of appreciating the critical role that the organised labour movement played in spreading opportunity and underwriting the relatively egalitarian society which so many Australians yearn for today – organised labour has been diminished in popular esteem. It has come to be demonised, and whilst working people have a proud story to tell – of nation building no less – this is not understood by Australians today.
The second irony concerns the sacrifices that working people and the organised labour movement made during the painful transition period in our country that occurred from 1983 – and the complete lack of acknowledgment in the historical understanding of the Australian community of this. Wage restraint underpinned the reform processes pursued under Prime Ministers Hawke and Keating. If these reforms were essential and have underpinned the current economic performance of our country – what credit did the working people get from the responsibilities that they shouldered for the sake of the national economic interest? The irony is that rather than taking the credit for the outcomes of the economic reform process during this period (when incomes declined and profit shares surged) the organised labour movement ended up being perceived as retarding economic performance, and the call for labour market ‘flexibility’ never abated. Indeed the pressure mounted and continues today. At the end of the day, organised labour was left between a rock and hard place: responsible for economic reform, but unable to claim credit because many workers wondered whether the sacrifices had been worth making.
That is the origin and the present predicament of the Australian Welfare State, upon which your people have relied for generations and whose future is of critical significance to the prospects of your children.
The predicament of my mob is that not only do we face the same uncertainty as all lower class Australians, but we haven't even benefited from the existence of the Welfare State. The Welfare State has meant security and an opportunity for development for many of your mob. It has been enabling. The problem of my people in Cape York Peninsula is that we have only experienced the income support that is payable to the permanently unemployed and marginalised. I call this "passive welfare" to distinguish it from the welfare proper, that is, when the working taxpayers collectively finance systems aimed at the their own and their families' security and development. The immersion of a whole region like Aboriginal Cape York Peninsula into dependence on passive welfare is different from the mainstream experience of welfare. What is the exception among white fellas – almost complete dependence on cash handouts from the government – is the rule for us. Rather than the income support safety net being a temporary solution for our people (as it was for the whitefellas who were moving between jobs when unemployment support was first devised) this safety net became a permanent destination for our people once we joined the passive welfare rolls.
The irony of our newly won citizenship in 1967 was that after we became citizens with equal rights and the theoretical right to equal pay, we lost the meagre foothold that we had in the real economy and we became almost comprehensively dependent upon passive welfare for our livelihood. So in one sense we gained citizenship and in another sense we lost it at the same time. Because we find thirty years later that life in the safety net for three decades and two generations has produced a social disaster.
And we should not be surprised that this catastrophe was the consequence of our enrolment at the dependent bottom end of the Australian welfare state. You put any group of people in a condition of overwhelming reliance upon passive welfare support – that is support without reciprocation – and within three decades you will get the same social results that my people in Cape York Peninsula currently endure. Our social problems do not emanate from an innate incapacity on the part of our people. Our social problems are not endemic, they have not always been with us. We are not a hopeless or imbecile people.
Resilience and the strength of our values and relationships were not just features of our pre-colonial classical society (which we understandably hearken back to) – our ancestors actually managed to retain these values and relationships despite all of the hardships and assaults of our colonial history. Indeed it is a testament to the achievements of our grandparents that these values and relationships secured our survival as a people and indeed our grandparents had struggled heroically to keep us alive as a people, and to rebuild and defend our families in the teeth of a sustained and vicious maltreatment by white Australian society.
So when I say that the indigenous experience of the Australian welfare state has been disastrous I do not thereby mean that the Australian welfare state is a bad thing. It is just that my people have experienced a marginal aspect of that welfare state: income provisioning for people dispossessed from the real economy.
Of course the welfare state means much more than the passive welfare which my people have predominantly experienced. As I have said the welfare state was in fact a great and civilising achievement for Australian society, which produced many great benefits for the great majority of Australians. It is just that our people have largely not experienced the positive features of mainstream life in the Australian welfare state – public health, education, infrastructure and other aspects which have underpinned the quality of life and the opportunities of generations of Australians. Of course some government money has been spent on Aboriginal health and education. But the people of my dysfunctional society have struggled to use these resources for our development. Our life expectancy is decreasing and the young generation is illiterate. Our relegation to the dependence on perpetual passive income transfers meant that our people’s experience of the welfare state has been negative. Indeed, in the final analysis, completely destructive and tragic.
The two questions I ask myself about the Australian Welfare State in general and the future of Aboriginal Australia in particular are:
First, why were the lower classes not prepared for the changes in the economy and the accompanying political changes in spite of the fact that the labour movement has been a powerful influence for most of the century? The stratification of society is increasing, but the lower classes are becoming less organised and less able to use their numbers to influence the development of society via our representative democracy.
Second, why are we unable to do anything at all about the disintegration of our Aboriginal communities?
Let us admit the fact that we have no analysis, no understanding at all. All we have is confusion dressed up as progressive thinking.
When I have been struggling with these questions, I have gone back the early thinking about history and society of the nineteenth century international labour movement. A main idea was that social being determines consciousness, that is, economic relations in society determine our thinking and our culture, and that our thinking is much less conscious and free than we think it is.
If we allow ourselves to analyse our society in the way I think early social democrats would, I think we would come to the following conclusions:
Society is stratified. There is a small group at the top that is influential. There is a middle stratum that possesses intellectual tools and performs qualified work. The third and lowest stratum lacks intellectual tools, and does manual, often repetitive work.
The middle stratum consist of two groups with no sharp boundary between them. One performs the qualified work in the production of goods and services (the 'professionals'), the other (the 'intellectuals') has as their function to uphold the cultural, political and legal superstructure that is erected over and mirrors the base of our society, the market economy
I believe that a main function of our culture, from fine arts to footy today is to make people unable to use their intellectual faculties to formulate effective criticism and analysis while still allowing them to do their work in the economy. In this talk I use the word "culture" in a wide sense, including not only art and literature but also our social and political thinking. To intellectually format people, but still let them acquire the knowledge and develop the faculties needed for them to be productive is a complicated process. Therefore our culture is complex and difficult to analyse.
Our society and our culture is not a conspiracy. There are no cynics at the top of the pyramid who use their power to maintain an unnecessarily unequal society. Stratified society is perpetuated because of the self-interest that everybody has in not sinking down. People believe what it is in their interest to believe. Influential people believe that a stratified society will always be necessary for economic growth and development. Their subordinates, the intellectuals of the middle stratum who maintain our culture, sense the cues from above, then produce ideology for the conservation of the current state of things, but are not conscious of the reasons for their actions.
So, the objective function of our culture is to stop people from breaking away from the hierarchy, but at the same time allow them to develop specialised areas of competence and creativity so that they can participate in production and even develop the economy. Our culture treats you in two different ways depending on whether you are born into, or moving towards, the lower stratum or the middle stratum of society.
Workers need only limited intellectual tools. After a basic education, the face that Culture shows the lower stratum is one that has the objective function of deterring them from unauthorised intellectual activity, that is to use their language and their knowledge to analyse our society and their position in it.
It is therefore wrong, as the present prejudice does, to regard the lower stratum as hopeless yobbos who refuse to participate in a cultural life that would make their lives richer. On the contrary, they are right in rejecting most of our culture, but they throw out the baby, the useful intellectual tools, with the bath water. Most people unnecessarily have a bad conscience for their lack of interest in culture. They shouldn’t. Most of our art, literature, history writing, philosophy, social thinking and so on really is as irrelevant as most people think. Not by accident, not because those who made it are useless and isolated from real life, but because it is one of the objective functions of our culture to deter most people from acquiring intellectual tools. I think that much of our official culture exists in order to scare the majority of the people away from acquiring the habits of critical reading and analytical thinking. And at the same time as our schools often fail to interest children in reading and social and political analysis or even convinces them that such activities are futile, students are given the option of taking subjects like Soccer Excellence or Rugby League Excellence or Film Studies at High School as if these are the qualifications necessary for their futures.
And if people can’t be prevented from independent thinking by means of discouragement and strict formatting, there is a last net which catches almost everybody who makes it that far. I believe that most of what is seen as progressive and radical thinking today in our cultural, academic and intellectual life are simply diversions for keeping rebellious minds occupied and isolated from the social predicament of the lower classes.
The great mistake of the Social Democrats of all countries is that they put all their efforts into economic redistribution and failed to build a movement that could take up the battle about the laws of thought. The Social Democrat leadership thought they were going to solve the problems with some major reforms and settlements between industrialists and representatives of the majority. Now when the economy is changing, and the Welfare State is being dismantled, the majority of the population are unable to take part in the analytical debate about their future.
Of course many people will think it is outrageous when I dismiss much of our contemporary cultural and academic life as being just a big confusion-producing mechanism in the service of social stratification, that keeps dissenters occupied and makes it difficult for people to analyse our society so that they can organise themselves politically and try to rid society of the things that divide us and consume our energies (drugs, crime, ethnic conflicts, discrimination and so on).
But I have been driven to this desperate conclusion by the fact that our current thinking can't provide any solutions to our problems. And for Aboriginal people, the prevalent analyses are more than confusing, they are destructive.
Aboriginal Policy is weighed down by mixed-up confusion. Many of the conventional ideas and policies in Aboriginal Affairs – ideas and policies which are considered to be “progressive” – in fact are destructive. In thinking about the range of problems we face and talking with my people about what we might be able to do to move forward, the conviction grows in me that the so-called progressive thinking is compounding our predicament. In fact when you really analyse the nostrums of progressive policy, you find that the pursuit of these policies has never helped us to resolve our problems – indeed they have only made our situation worse.
Take for example the problem of indigenous imprisonment. Like a broken record over the past couple of decades we have been told that 2% of the population comprise more than 30% of the prison population. The situation with juvenile institutions across the country is worse. Of course these are incredible statistics. The progressive response to these ridiculous levels of interaction with the criminal justice system has been to provide legal aid to indigenous peoples charged with offences. The hope is to provide access to proper legal defence and to perhaps reduce unnecessary imprisonment. To this day however, Aboriginal victims of crime – particularly women – have no support: so whilst the needs of offenders are addressed, the situation of victims and the families remains vulnerable. Furthermore, it is apparent that this progressive response – providing legal aid support services – has not worked to reduce our rate of imprisonment. In fact Aboriginal legal aid is part of the criminal justice industry which processes Aboriginal people routinely through its systems. It is like a sausage machine and human lives are processed through it with no real belief that the outrageous statistics will ever be overcome.
The truth is that, at least in the communities that I know in Cape York Peninsula, the real need is for the restoration of social order and the enforcement of law. That is what is needed. You ask the grandmothers and the wives. What happens in communities when the only thing that happens when crimes are committed is the offenders are defended as victims? Is it any wonder that there will soon develop a sense that people should not take responsibility for their actions and social order must take second place to an apparent right to dissolution. Why is all of our progressive thinking ignoring these basic social requirements when it comes to black people? Is it any wonder the statistics have never improved? Would the number of people in prison decrease if we restored social order in our communities in Cape York Peninsula? What societies prosper in the absence of social order?
Take another example of progressive thinking compounding misery. The predominant analysis of the huge problem of indigenous alcoholism is the symptom theory. The symptom theory holds that substance abuse is only a symptom of underlying social and psychological problems. But addiction is a condition in its own right, not a symptom. It must therefore be addressed as a problem in itself. Of course miserable circumstances make people in a community susceptible to begin using addictive substances, but once an epidemic of substance abuse is established in a community it becomes independent of the original causes of the outbreak and the epidemic of substance abuse becomes in itself the main reason for why addiction and abuse becomes more and more widespread. The symptom theory absolves people from their personal responsibility to confront and deal with addiction. Worse, it leaves communities to think that nothing can be done to confront substance abuse because its purported causes: dispossession, racism, trauma and poverty, are beyond reach of social resolution in the present.
But again, the solution to substance abuse lies in restriction and the treatment of addiction as a problem in itself. When I talk to people from Cape York Peninsula about what is to be done about our ridiculous levels of grog consumption (and the violence, stress, poor diet, heart disease, diabetes and mental disturbance that results) no one actually believes that the progressive prescriptions about “harm reduction” and “normalising drinking” will ever work.
A rule of thumb in relation to most of the programs and policies that pose as progressive thinking in indigenous affairs, is that if we did the opposite we would have a chance of making progress. This is because the subservience of our intellectual culture to the cause of class prejudice and stratification is so profound and universal. What we believe is forward progress is in fact standing still or actually moving backwards.
Much of my thinking will seem to many to indicate that I have merely become conservative. But I propose the reform of welfare, not its abolition. Like all of you here tonight I am also concerned for the long term preservation of our commitment to welfare as a nation. If we do not confront the need for the reform of welfare and to seize its definition, then we will lose it in the longer term.
The fact is that Australia is at a critical time in the history of the Welfare State. Its reform is imperative. It is worth remembering that Paul Keating actually commenced the new thinking on welfare with Working Nation.
This country needs to develop a new consensus around our commitment to welfare. This consensus needs to be built on the principles of personal and family empowerment and investment and the utilisation of resources to achieve lasting change. In other words our motivation to reform welfare must be based on the principle that dependency and passivity are a scourge and must be avoided at all costs. Dependency and passivity kills people and is the surest road to social decline. Australians do not have an inalienable right to dependency, they have an inalienable right to a fair place in the real economy.
There is an alternative definition of welfare reform that will take hold in the absence of the definition that I have just outlined. This alternative definition sees welfare reform as a matter of moral judgment on the part of those who have security of employment and who ‘pay taxes’ in relation to people whose dependency is seen as a moral failing. Indeed this alternative definition is laced with the idea that welfare reform should be about punishment of bludgers. In other words we are seeking to reform welfare because we are concerned about the sentiments of those who work and who pay taxes – and welfare recipients owe these people a moral obligation. Welfare reform in this alternative definition could also be merely a means of reducing government commitments and decreasing taxation of those who already have a place in the economy.
I have departed somewhat from the traditions of this annual lecture in that I have not explicated my vision about the Light on the Hill. But in order to have a vision one needs to have an analysis of ones’ present situation. I contend that people who want to be progressive today, are in objective fact, regressive in their thinking. This is especially and painfully obvious if you know the situation in the Aboriginal communities of this country. Petrol sniffing is in some places now so endemic that crying infants are silenced with petrol-drenched rags on their faces. In one of our communities in Cape York, among less than a 1000 people there were three murders within one month a few months ago. And we don't know what to do.
And to be honest, in its cups, the late Prime Minister Ben Chifley’s party today does not know what to do now that the economy has changed and by default its traditional political base is decreasing, and the class divisions are widening. Too many Australians remain with uncertain prospects. How could we be so bereft of solutions today when these negligent thinkers and trustees in the academies and the bureaucracies who most benefited from the Welfare State that was created from the sweat and organisation of working people, have had a century to anticipate our current predicament and to prepare us for this day – at the least prepared with understanding?
Those of us who wish for social progress must realise that there are important insights in the materialist interpretation of our history and our culture, which the labour movement unfortunately left behind in favour of the confusions that have preoccupied and diverted those academics, bureaucrats and parliamentarians who became the intellectual trustees of the Welfare State and the interests of working people and their families – a responsibility which they grievously failed to fulfil.
by Neale Towart
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The Commonwealth Bank Bill (this was establishing what became the Reserve Bank) set out the duty of the bank: "It shall be the duty of the Commonwealth Bank, within the limits of its powers, to pursue a monetary and banking policy directed to the greatest advantage of the people of Australia, and to exercise its powers...in such a manner as, in the opinion of the Bank, will best contribute to -
What is wrong with these general principles?" Ward asked.
McFarlane clearly thinks money might fall into the wrong hands i.e. the people who earned and paid it out as taxes. So he attempts to bully the politicians (who unfortunately don't need much persuasion) into keeping the wallet shut for fear of actually improving the living standards of workers.
Ward makes interesting reference to the AMP Society (recently demutualised to the benefit of the few) who had been running the following in advertisements:
"...in 40 years hence:
This is the "new order" which the reactionary elements have in store".
Sounds a bit familiar. The 20-80 society (as suggested by The Global Trap authors and others) was on the drawing board in 1945.
Also familiar are the cries of government interference in banks, supposedly against the people's interest. The private banks vehemently opposed any government role, urging people to "write to your Member of Parliament and protest against any Government interference with private banking institutions."
Ward's advice to electors was to ask bank managers the following questions:
Ward is referring to the 1893 financial crisis in NSW that brought down the NSW government.
He continued in the same vein strong criticism of the private banks behaviour during the 1930s, and during the war. Menzies tried to support the banks, arguing that their profit rates fell during the war as the responded to the national crisis. Ward's response: "Well, it is just another illustration of the truth of the saying that figures cannot lie, but liars can figure." Ward was part of the Labor tradition of Frank Anstey, who also warned against the money power in the early decades of last century. Ward was for a long time on the outer with the ALP because of his strong links with Jack Lang.
He was the member for East Sydney from 1931 until 1963 and the Speakers' phrase "Order, order, the Honourable Member for East Sydney will resume his seat" was heard a great deal during his time as an MP. He was probably most comfortable in opposition, whether opposing his own party on various issues or attacking Menzies, which he did frequently throughout his time in politics.
The "Firebrand of East Sydney" was a distinctly Australian radical. His story is told in Elwyn Spratt's biography, "Eddie Ward: Firebrand of East Sydney, published by Rigby in 1965.
John Maynard Keynes was an advocate of the fine city minds who should control the economy, but even he called for the "voluntary euthanasia of the rentier" and the "somewhat comprehensive socialisation of investment."
Frank Stilwell in Workers Online no. 63 seems to be correct in predicting interest rate rises and a further tightening after the Olympics. He also advocates reconstruction in terms of regional policy and industry policy to revitalise key parts of the Australian economy that the current economic "faith" has effectively closed down, forcing a reliance on imports and thus a fear of currency movements.
by Tim Connor
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Rights campaigners including the TCFUA, Community Aid Abroad-Oxfam Australia and Fairwear want Nike to sign the Homeworkers Code of Conduct - as 120 other fashion companies already have.
Australian campaigners have also linked up with international groups to push the company to allow independent monitoring of rights in Asian contract factories which make Nike product.
Former US professional soccer player Jim Keady will be at the forefront of campaigners' efforts to highlight Nike's poor human rights record.
Keady arrives in Sydney on September 2 to join forces with NikeWatch Campaigners immediately before the Sydney Olympics. His visit includes a series of public events to draw attention to Nike's treatment of its workers. Highlights are a Parliament House debate chaired by Meredith Burgmann and an alternative Olympic opening ceremony on September 11.
Nike is resisting pressure from NikeWatch to make changes in their labour policies. Campaigners are calling on Nike to make known the locations of factories and to allow regular inspections by credible and independent human rights groups. They are also calling on the company to allow workers to make confidential complaints to an independent body.
During August whilst living with Nike factory workers in an Indonesian slum, Keady is attempting his own version of the Olympic marathon. He is living on a Nike factory worker's basic monthly wage (including cash bonuses) of 325 000 Rupiah (Rp) that is about 13 000Rp or $A2.65 per day. Nike reckons this is enough for workers to meet their basic needs and help support other family members or build up some savings. Keady's experience suggests Nike is wrong.
After paying major bills and bus fares a Nike factory worker in Indonesia is left with around 7100Rp a day. Out of this must come meals, at 2500Rp each, clothes, shoes, soap and other necessities.
"The basic wage is simply not enough," says Keady. "The reality is even with 18 - 30 hours overtime every week workers still cannot make ends meet."
Based on interviews with Nike factory workers Jim reports they must work 11-15 hour days just to survive, with few breaks and often in unsafe conditions. Living in the slum and meeting his neighbours who work for Nike, Keady is rethinking his heroes.
"The real heroes are the workers," he says. "They face more hardships and overcome more obstacles than any athlete I've ever met.
US professional soccer play tries to live on Indonesian worker's wages. Read his diary, send him a message www.nikewages.org
NikeWatch needs activists with campaign and media skills over the next few weeks. Contact tconnor@nlc.net.au
by Frank Stillwell
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'Nation states are dinosaurs waiting to die' - Kenichi Ohmae.
'Globaloney' - anon.
'Globalisation' seems to be the buzz-word of the present era. It is recurrently heralded by politicians, business leaders and media commentators as being inevitable, if not wholly welcome.
We are encouraged to accept the logic of closer international integration and to make the appropriate adjustments in economic and social structures.
The process of globalisation is represented as one driven by the progressive forces of technological change and economic liberalisation, breaking down the barriers formerly imposed by the tyranny of distance and by political parochialism. It is exemplified by the assertion that globalisation is 'unavoidable, necessary and desirable'.
Against that is a rapidly growing recognition of the contestable nature of globalisation, both as a concept and as an actual process.
Is it a useful 'way of seeing' contemporary political economic trends? Is it really such a sharp break with the past?
Some analysts emphasise the uneven character of globalisation, as between its impacts on labour, capital and finance, for example, or between different parts of the globe. Some emphasise the continued growth of economic, social and cultural interchange between nations, while denying the waning of the significance of nation states which the term globalisation is commonly held to imply.
Other writers note the lack of congruity between the economic aspects of globalisation and the local places and spaces which are the focal points for identity and participation in the social, cultural and political aspects of our lives.
On this view, the limited nature of globalisation, and its disjuncture with other contemporary concerns, leaves plenty of space for political choices at local, national and supra-national levels.
The contradictory character of globalisation is increasingly evident. The balance between global production and consumption is a case in point.
To the extent that investment by transnational corporations in production facilities is attracted to particular localities by low-wage labour, there is a 'race to the bottom' in living standards. Different localities engage vigorously in beggar-thy-neighbour competition. But that leaves the question of from where the additional demand for the products will come.
For any one export-oriented nation this is not a problem, since the sales of the products do not depend on the incomes of the local workforce. Low wages at home and high incomes abroad is the optimal situation for such a nation's exporting businesses.
However, if all nations are simultaneously engaged in reducing labour costs, there is a global tendency to economic over-production (unless the enhanced spending power of managerial and professional elites outweights the depressing effect of wage-cutting).
This is one way of interpreting the financial crisis of the South East Asian region in the late 1990's - as a mis-match between productive capacity and the level of effective demand, resulting in cuts in the volume of economic activity and increased unemployment.
A second contradiction concerns the fiscal crisis of the state. The financial problems of national governments are accentuated by the way that international competition generates a second type of 'race to the bottom' - the depression of corporate taxation levels as a means of attracting mobile capital.
That undermines the capacity of government to finance substantial public expenditures. This in turn limits the employment-generating capacity (both direct and indirect) of the public sector. Neo-liberal ideologies emphasising the desirability of 'small government' seek to legitimise this outcome.
In practice, the outcome is typically 'different government' - more directly serving the interests of private capital - rather than smaller government. But the effect of both the policies and the supporting ideologies is to further undermine any residual commitments to the pursuit of full employment through expansionary fiscal policies.
Employment levels come to be regarded as incidental outcomes arising from global market processes. But, here too there is a potentially troublesome tension. To the extent that permanent pools of unemployment lead to the development of a social 'underclass', that is threatening to the social order and the perceived legitimacy of the underlying economic system.
A third contradiction arises because of the clash between the economic aspects of globalisation and the ecological constraints on economic growth.
Globalisation driven by capital accumulation is by its very nature anti-ecological. It produces a third type of 'race to the bottom', as firms relocate their resource-extractive and/or polluting activities in these countries most keen to attract capital investment, even at the expense of environmental standards. Limiting that tendency are some embryonic forms of global environmental regulation, restricting environmentally-degrading activities.
The various 'summits' at Toronto, Montreal, Rio de Janiero and (most recently) in Kyoto, are illustrative. While the implementation of these international environmental agreements depends on voluntary compliance by nation states, the competitive economic pressures will tend to continue dominating the cooperative elements necessary for more ecologically sustainable outcomes.
However, in the longer term (and in some cases a relatively short term) the resource and environmental constraints can be expected to bite harder. The growing concerns about depletion of oil reserves are a case in point. To the extent that the globalisation process is directed towards the acceleration of economic growth it accentuates the economy-environment conflicts.
These three contradictions are illustrative of the tensions associated with contemporary globalisation. The pursuit of a 'level playing field' for global capital thereby accentuates some major imbalances of the capitalist economy - between capital and labour, between economy and environment, and between the private power of corporations and the democratic institutions within nation states.
These contradictions make the process of globalisation intensely political. Not surprisingly, responses occur at various levels - global, national and local. Their coordination has become a key feature of contemporary progressive politics.
Selected References on Globalisation
K. Ohmae, The End of the Nation State: the Rise of Regional Economics, Harper Collins, London, 1996.
R. Catley, Globalising Australian Capitalism, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1996.
M. Latham, Civilising Global Capital: New Thinking for Australian Labor, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1998; and L. Tanner, Open Australia, Pluto Press, Sydney 1999.
P. Hirst, and G. Thompson, Globalisation in Question, Polity Press, Oxford, 1997.
J. Wiseman, Global Nation? Australia and the Politics of Globalisation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998.
H.P. Martin and H. Schumann, The Global Trap: Globalisation and the Assault on Democracy and Prosperity, Zed Books, London, 1997.
P. Dicken, Global Shift, 2nd Edition, Harper & Row, London, 1992.
M. Horsman and A. Marshall, After the Nation State: Citizens, Tribalism and the New World Disorder, Harper Collins, London 1994.
R. Burbach, O. Nunez and B. Kagarlitsky, Globalisation and Its Discontents: the Rise of Postmodern Socialisms, Pluto Press, London, 1997.
R. Bryan, and M. Rafferty, The Global Economy in Australia, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1998.
by The Chaser
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The Minister for Health, Mr Michael Wooldridge said that "socially infertile" women would not be entitled to Medicare coverage of IVF treatment because they had a non-medical alternative "which is intercourse". "We're sending a clear message tolesbians: 'Get fucked'" Mr Wooldridge said.
Catholic Archbishop George Pell has also expressed his disapproval. "If single mothers can have children by themselves, children will miss out on having an absent father who forgets to call on birthdays," he said. "There will also be no-one around to evade their alimony payments."
Bill Muehlenberg, of the Australian Family Association, has roundly criticised the decision as a acceptance of the lesbian relationships. "Studies show that a heterosexual family is the most rounded way to bring up a child," said Muehlenberg. "Who will teach these children how to play football, how to burn sausages and how to get beaten to within an inch of their life if there is no father present in the home?"
Mr Muehlenberg believes that allowing a woman to become pregnant without a man goes against the natural order and years of practice. "If a woman wants to have a child without a husband then she should have to go out and have a series of one night stands with strangers," said Muehlenberg.
"I mean it's just disgusting that a child should find out that they were born due to some medical procedure rather than a beautiful tale of drunken shagging in some pub toilet with an anonymous stranger."
Members of the gay male community have breathed a sigh of relief at the finding.
"It was getting to the point that every week some dyke would ask me to make an exception and impregnate her," said Paul Markenson of Darlinghurst.
In unassociated news, stocks in Turkey Basters have plummetted.
by Michael Costa
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Australian unions have been fortunate not to have faced the overt union busting that is a feature of US Labor relations. Union busting is a billion dollar business in the US. It thrives on the complex representation process prescribed by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).
Briefly, under the NLRA, employees are required to bargain in "good faith" with a representative selected by its employees. The method for selecting a bargaining representative is a secret-ballot conducted by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
The NLRB will conduct an election when it receives a petition requesting a ballot, supported by a substantial number of employees, usually at least 30% of those at the unit seeking a representative. So difficult is the election process that most unions will not file for a ballot unless they have at least 70% of the employee committed to the ballot.
The NLRA also provides for desertification elections, (ie, elections to remove the right of unions to bargain on behalf of employees). The desertification ballot requires the support of 30% of employees covered by the collective bargaining agreement.
Theoretically, the NLRB is supposed to authorise an election within 30 days of a petition being filed. Recently, Martin Jay Levitt, a union buster with over 250 union busting campaigns under his belt, has described, in vivid detail, the way he went about busting unions.
According to Levitt:
"Union busting is a field populated by bullies and built on deceit. A campaign against a union is an assault on individuals and a war on the truth. As such, it is a war without honour. The only way to bust a union is to lie, distort, manipulate, threaten, and always, always attack. The law does not hamper the process, rather, it serves to suggest manoeuvres and define strategies. Each "union prevention" campaign, as the wars are called, turns on a combined strategy of disinformation and personal assaults.
When a chief executive hires a labor relations consultant to battle a union, he gives the consultant run of the company and closes his eyes. The consultant, backed by attorneys, installs himself in the corporate offices and goes to work creating a climate of terror that inevitably is blamed on the union.
Some corporate executives I encountered liked to think of their anti-union consultants as generals, but really the consultants are terrorists. Like political terrorists, the consultants' attacks are intensely personal. Terrorists do not make factories and air strips their victims; they choose, instead, crippled old men and school-children. Likewise, as the consultants go about the business of destroying unions, they invade people's lives, demolish their friendships, crush their will, and shatter their families."
For union busters, like Levitt, the NLRA is a "union buster's best friend".
According to Levitt, "in its complexity the nation's fundamental Labor law presents endless possibilities for delays, roadblocks, and manoeuvres that can undermine a union's efforts and frustrate would be members." The union buster's key strategy, when confronted with an election, is delay the ballot, thereby buying time to organise a so called counter campaign known as "Counter organising drives".
The two key targets of the "counter organising drives" are the rank-and-file worker and their immediate supervisors. Supervisors serve as the shock troops of the union buster - The union buster aims to create a climate where the supervisor feels personally threatened by the union - "I knew that people who didn't feel threatened wouldn't fight", Levitt confesses, "So through hours of seminars, rallies, and one-on-one encounters, I taught supervisors to despise and fear the union. I persuaded them that a union organising drive was a personal attack on them, a referendum on their leadership skills, and an attempt to humiliate them. I was friendly, even jovial at times, but always unforgiving as I compelled each supervisor to feel he was somehow to blame for the union push and, consequently, obliged to defeat it like any hostage - most supervisors could not resist for long. They came to see the fight through the eyes of their captor and went to work wringing union sympathies out of their workers".
Having turned the supervisor into an anti-union force, Levitt turned his attention to workers with union sympathies - what he termed "pushers". The strategy here was to personally discredit unionists. This required information. No means of obtaining information was ruled out. According to Levitt his team of union Busters "routinely pried into worker's police records, personnel files, credit histories, medical records, and family lives in search of a weakness that we could use to discredit union activists".
Where it was not possible to get "dirt" on a unionist, Levitt made it up. "To fell the sturdiest union supporters...I frequently launched rumours that the targeted worker was gay or was cheating on his wife. It was a very effective technique, particularly in blue-collar towns.
If the lies and rumours failed to muzzle union activists, the union buster resorted to sackings. These sackings are illegal under the NLRA. Section 8(a)(3) clearly outlaws discharging employees because they urged other employees to join a union. Nevertheless, union busters know that reinstatement procedures are complex, some dragging out for years after the incident. The aim of the union buster is to remove the union support, based in the crucial period, prior to the ballot.
Levitt's confessions not only highlight the defects of the US Labor relations framework, they also provide crucial insights into the important role supervisors play as opinion setters in workplaces. The lesson for unions seeking to organise the unionised workplace is - ignore the supervisor at your peril. Unions seeking to organise a workplace must ensure that supervisors are won over, or at worst, neutralised.
by Peter Lewis
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The deal is this: ten people from different walks of life set up camp in the house - which is really a series of TV studios dolled up into living quarters. The cameras never stop rolling and each night highlights are screened on TV - once in prime time, with a special adults version (complete with swearing) at 11pm. Each week one contestant is expelled from the house until there is only one person left; and they walk away with 70,000 pounds. The twist is that while the flatmates vote for two people to be expelled each week, the final choice lies with the home viewers, some one million of whom are voting each week.
It's cringe material that has captured Britain, the tabloids run front page attacks on various characters and expelled housemates get to tell their real story once they return to the outside world. Because the contestants have no contact with the outside world, they are filmed slowly going mad, exposing themselves to public scrutiny, ridicule and sometimes outright hate, all in the name of a fistful of dollars. At the end of the day, every single contestant except the final winner will be publicly rejected by the British public - a fate hitherto reserved for their political leaders.
In fact, there are those in the British labour movement who wish it was that easy to punt Tony Blair - or 'Tory Bland' as more and more unionists from both the right and left are coming to know him as. If Blair delivered the trade unions from a long era of Conservative rule, the goodwill is fast dissipating. The criticisms come from the left, right and centre, and range from irritation at his apparent preference for wealthy corporate types over normal working people to fundamental issues with the direction he is taking England.
On the positive side of the ledger are reforms to labour laws that have created, for the first time, a minimum wage and made it easier for trade unions to be recognised in workplaces - the threshold that must be passed before a union can play a formal representative role in the workplace. But to many these reforms amount to little more than a few crumbs; unions have been locked out of many of the key policy making bodies, their places going to the new entrepreneurs and old money. Blair talks like any other populist politician, more interested in
