A menace is stalking our workplaces – the menace of global capital.

All the Powers of the old Market remain intact but new, global, forms of oppression are emerging: the unprecedented and worldwide explosion in credit which traps and enslaves not only individuals and households but also entire countries and regions, stripping them of their sovereignty and forcing them to adjust budgets and social policies to the dictates of international financiers; the cannibalising of one nation’s essential industries and services by the business interests of another; the almost total dependence of some nations on natural resources found only in the lands occupied by others; the massive militaries seen worldwide with their equally massive expenditures which drain national budgets.

All these have formed an un-holy alliance so overwhelming that the political class no longer makes even a pretence of governing for the common good, but has abandoned all our destinies to ideologies of ‘free trade’, ‘the invisible hand’ and ‘de-regulation’ in the vain hope that the ‘market’ will achieve what it cannot: social cohesion.

The mainstream political class has long ago decided that Australia’s future will be subjected to the demands of a globalised economy and to that effect has acted to reduce the role of government as near as possible to none at all. In Margaret Thatcher’s words ‘It’s government’s job to get the finances right and to provide a framework of law in which free enterprise can operate’.1 That much and no more, she might have added.

Those in the political class who are the natural inheritors of this philosophy, flushed with the seeming invincibility of their ideology and noting the degree to which some in the working class have adopted their beliefs and granted them political support, triumphantly declare: ‘we are all conservatives now.’2

On the other side, those who have traditionally opposed market forces, always lukewarm and piecemeal in their opposition, have crumpled before the onslaught of global capital and now themselves look to ‘free enterprise’ to arrange society’s affairs and to solve society’s problems.

Once their ranks were full of workers with experience in industrial struggle, workers who knew that their power lay in solidarity and collective action and were willing to use that power in defence of their rights, workers who understood that they were a distinct class whose interests and destiny were antagonistic to the interests and fortunes of employers and property owners. Now they are careerists who share the dominant view of our times, which holds that discord is not to be found in different class interests but in the corruption of individuals.

Discord follows misguided regulation by a government, failed interference in the market, or corruption. Modern problems are the problems of individuals — problems of corruption or collusion by individuals to benefit themselves through either state intervention on their behalf or monopoly activity of government owned corporations. The solution is to end worker collusion of unions, privatise government enterprises and limit the public sector.

A clear example of such ‘individual’ failure in modern economics is unemployment. The cause is seen as either corrupt business management or, more likely, failure of the individual unemployed person. The unemployed are failed individuals. They do not seize the opportunities offered by the market.

“Get your lawnmower, go out and mow lawns.”
– Peter Costello, Australian Treasurer, Words of advice to the unemployed, spoken in the Australian parliament

When it is difficult to pin societal problems down to individuals they are attributed to races, religions or failed nations. These groups interfere with the market in the same way as individuals. They fail to seize opportunities offered by the market because they are limited by old or primitive cultural practices, e.g. tribalism.

It is ‘outdated practices’ that limit human progress, not the expropriation and accumulation of wealth by the few. The European imperialist plunder of the world in the 19th and 20th centuries and its modern U.S. equivalent did not create discord but harmony. Some call it ‘liberation’, the coming of ‘freedom’. This conquest smashes the barriers to human progress by the expansion of global markets.

So also with workers in their industries: they should not collude or be allowed to form common cause with their comrades. They should ignore them. If necessary they should compete with them. Only in this way will workers advance as individuals.

These views currently dominate our society. Few question this logic. It is logic sharply distinct from class analysis. Class analysis holds that the market – supported by state power – acts in the interest of one class – the owners of property – to the detriment of the working class.

Should those who live by their labours accept the dominant view?

This question prompted the collective of LeftPress to write a pamphlet centred on an example of workers ‘resisting progress’ – the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA). On the surface a battle over the number of shipping containers that can be moved every hour through an Australian port may not appear momentous but it was more than this. It was an issue embroiled in the rights of workers to have a say over their employment conditions and to express this right through an organised union.

Was the MUA dispute of 1998 a continuation of the workers’ right to challenge a system of exploitation, by collective action in unions, or was it a misguided challenge to human progress?

The MUA and its predecessors, the Waterside Workers Federation (WWF) and the Seamen’s Union of Australia (SUA), were among the most powerful and militant unions in Australia during the period 1950 to 1998. Their members had achieved better wages than most other labourers. By 1998 the MUA’s membership, as a result of increasing mechanisation of work on the waterfront, had become relatively small. It retained, through high membership and participation among waterfront workers, considerable influence over the work practices in the maritime industries. Maritime companies, recognising a prevailing decline of workers’ union power in the late nineties, in collusion with government, sought to reduce union influence in order to increase their profits.

The dispute was triggered by an employer lockout. It was viewed by other Australian workers as symbolic. Some saw it as a last stand of strong unionism. For this reason they gave waterfront workers significant support, but for many reasons active participation in the dispute was low. Underlying this were onerous legislative secondary boycott provisions. Few unions mustered strike action in support, even though the employer action was recognised as a challenge to the right of all unions to organise. Preference was given to public protests. In the state of Victoria these made an impact. Overall, unions relied more on legal challenges through the courts than on industrial and political action.

This reflected an acceptance by union leaders that workers’ class consciousness was limited or at a low ebb.

As a result the dispute, though highly focused, was small. It did not expand into generalised action or even to other firms in the maritime industry. Major terminal operators, other than the protagonist, Patricks, continued operations throughout the dispute.

This containment meant that the dispute did not revive unionism as many had hoped. Not did it provide any momentum for political success for the Australian Labor Party.

It could be said the workers shouted but later became quiet. Today in Australia this is how they remain.

‘The workers are quiet.’

This book focuses on the decline in unionism from 1985 onwards and implications for future struggles. It aims to improve our capacity to combat the opponents of unions by addressing difficulties that occur within unions, including:

• Problems with union leadership;
• Tensions between leaders and the rank-and-file; and
• Weakness in rank-and-file responses to repression.

Other points we set out to discuss in this book are the internal relationships within unions, the relations between different unions and those between unions and socialist groups.

With this book we hope to open a dialogue about the defence of the right to organise in unions with union members, delegates, organisers, industrial officers, union officials and union well-wishers.

After years of quiet, activists are trying to set up union support groups in one form or another. Among these are groups that hope to revitalise the political struggle for socialism. We believe that the future of unions and the struggle for socialism are inextricably linked, but that the relationship between workers organisation and political ideals requires serious thought. This book is a contribution to the debate about strategy and organisation that we hope is useful in building workers’ political organisation.

LeftPress Collective

November 2007

• 1ABC Radio National, Hindsight program 15th April, 2007: An attitude of mind and faith – liberalism in Australia’s political history.
• 2Janet Albrechtsen (Pauline Hanson of the tertiary educated) writing in The Australian after the 2004 federal elections.

In early 1998, around Australia, thousands of workers massed in solidarity with the Maritime Union of Australia. “MUA HERE TO STAY,’’ they chanted. Many workers and socialists were hoping that the tide had turned, that unionism was returning as a growing force in the Australian political landscape. The pickets, the rallies and the overwhelming sense of solidarity contributed to the determined resistance and the euphoria surrounding the victory in the High Court which permitted the wharfies, who had been sacked by the stevedoring company, Patricks, to return to work.

In the following years, it became clear that the optimism of the period did not translate into a resurgence in union membership. The membership levels of unions continued to fall, particularly in the private sector. In 1960 union membership was about 60% of all workers, by 1998 it had fallen to approximately 30% and in 2005 it fell below 20%. The graph overleaf illustrates the broad trajectory of trade union membership levels in Australia throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century.1

From the beginning of the First World War to the beginning of the Second World War the number of trade union members nearly doubled, in spite of the difficulties faced during the Depression. After the Second World War the efforts of the union militants were rewarded with strong union participation by the working class in the 1950s and 1960s. This period saw unions at their strongest at the May Day, Eight Hour Day or Labour Day celebrations (depending on which State you were in). Rank upon rank of union members marching proudly down streets in towns and cities were clapped along by crowds of onlookers, family, friends, and other supporters. None of this would probably have been possible without the hard organising work done in the 1930s by the communists in the militant minority movement, the unemployed workers’ unions and others.

“Riotous Demonstration in City Streets”

So began the news story in the Sydney Morning Herald reporting the 1927 timber workers’ struggle in its usual sensational anti-worker style.2

The report continued with time-worn stereotypes of worker and unionist:

Ballot Papers and Effigy Burned

Police Draw Batons

Riotous scenes unprecedented in Australian trade union history were witnessed in the city last night when the striking timber workers, led by the Communists, held a street procession and demonstrated as a protest against the Lukin award.3

In defiance of warnings by the Federal authorities and the police, ballot papers were collected from the strikers, placed in a large canvas bag, saturated with kerosene, and publicly burned in a kerosene tin outside the Trades Hall. Later an effigy of Mr. Justice Lukin was burned by the Communist section of a crowd in Hyde Park although an undertaking had been given to the Commissioner of Police by Mr. J. S. Garden that this would not be done.

Traffic was blocked and standing room was scarcely possible. As the ballot papers, saturated with kerosene, burned brightly, the ‘Red Flag’ and ‘Solidarity Forever’ were sung. Derisive jeers for Judge Lukin followed and then orders were shouted from a Trades Hall balcony for the men to take their allotted places in the procession.

Posters displayed were ‘Lukin award means – heads the bosses win, tails the workers lose.’ ‘Result of the secret ballot can have no effect on the award; award must continue whatever the result of the ballot may; therefore, this ballot is the best joke of the year.’

Notwithstanding the sensational reporting, the story shows that the approach to advancing workers interests was clearly based in the militant collective action of the workers themselves. Seventy years later, events leading up to the 1998 MUA dispute showed glimpses of this strategy.

In the ongoing dispute with Patricks Stevedores, CEO Chris Corrigan sacked 55 wharfies in Sydney in 1994. The wharfies took their redundancy payment cheques to the Waterside Workers Federation offices to be put in a plastic bag until the dispute was over.4 After the men were re-instated the then MUA national secretary, John Coombs, took the cheques and dumped them on Corrigan’s desk.

Solidarity from the other unions and the community in the 1998 MUA dispute was also a flashback to the past, mirroring support received by the Timber Workers of 1929. However, more often than not, current trade union strategy is subsumed in legal manoeuvring, not the defiant burning of ballot papers by strikers.

The right to organise

Unions now struggle for relevance in Australian social and industrial worlds, yet they are needed just as much as at any time in the past 120 years. In the capitalist system, workers engaged in the selling of their labour remain in fundamental opposition to the employers who benefit from their exploitation of workers. It is also still true that workers are best served by unions that organise to represent them as a collective whole.

While the opponents of unions have ridden high since the election of the Howard Government, it may be comforting to think that it was easier to combat these opponents in the past. However, this is not the case. Over forty years ago, Jack McPhillips, former assistant national secretary of the Iron Workers Union, said:

“Workers won the right to organise, form unions and act together to defend and improve wages and working conditions only after bitter struggle against the combined forces of employers and governments.

Moreover the media has stood against workers and their unions since their very beginnings:

“The trade unions are, we have no doubts, the most dangerous institutions that were ever permitted to take root under the shelter of the law in any country’ (The Morning Post, 29 March 1834).”

Unions are now accused in the media of pursuing sectional interests against the common good. For instance, while the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) and its predecessors, the Seamen’s Union and the Waterside Workers Federation, had struggled hard to win good wages and conditions for their members in the 1950s the union continued to be vilified in the mass media as a corrupt organisation rorting the system on behalf of a privileged group of workers. So effective was this propagandising by the media that many within the working class to this day believe that wharfies had it easy and that the system needed reform.

The mass media took up the Federal Government’s portrayal of the 1998 MUA dispute as a dispute about wharf productivity. However the working class movement understood instinctively that the allegations of low container loading rates were an assault on the union’s right to collectively organise.

The dispute showed workers’ employment contracts were not legally enforceable and only had weight through the collective strength of waterside workers’ organisation. Corrigan’s use of labour hire companies to lock out the wharfies and rob them of their entitlements was only possible because there had been a serious decline in the industrial power of workers and unions since the early 1970s.

The 1996-2007 Federal Government continued the assault on the organised working class by successive governments, undertaking to get rid of collective bargaining and the right to strike. One of the strategies was the introduction of secret ballots, designed to undermine decision making. Secret ballots are part of the arsenal of employers in isolating workers, creating fear and eroding the solidarity between workers, and so diminishing their collective strength.

During its history, the union movement overcame attacks such as these and established certain minimum union rights. These rights became an integral part of the struggles to defend and improve living standards.

Jack McPhillips listed trade union democratic rights as:

[list=1]

• 11301.0 – ABS Year Book Australia, 2003
• 2Thornton, Ernie. Stronger Trades Unions—Opponents Answered. The facts of Amalgamations, Secret Ballots, Balance Sheets.
• 3On 13 January 1929, Arbitration Court Judge Lukin made a new award for timberworkers, which increased hours to a standard 48 for all timberworkers, cut wages 10% (despite a 5.7% increase in the cost of living), and increased the employment of youth at lower wages (likely to displace 2,000 men). This was definitely one of the worst awards in Australian history. From the Plague to Reith By Eric Petersen in Marxist Interventions http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/interventions/law.htm
• 4Coombs told this story at the first stop work meeting in Brisbane just prior to the April 7 mass sackings. He described how the wharfies in Sydney had dealt with previous attempts by Patricks to sack them. He pointed out that none of his officials had asked them to surrender the redundancy cheques. They knew that redundancy on Patrick’s terms spelt the end of the union. This will be dealt with in more detail later.
• 5McPhillips, Jack. Penal Powers Cost Unionists £1,000,000! (Sydney: Current Book Distributors 1963 at p13).

Australian Labor Party (ALP), Trade Unions and Economic Policy

After the end of World War II the economic and political program of Australia’s trade unions edged closer to the ALP. Trade union leaders were overwhelmingly ALP members. Most trade unions maintained direct links to the Australian Labor Party, through affiliation and support.

While trade unions moved closer to the ALP, the party’s political and economic program moved closer to the general trend of orthodox economics. This trend toward economic rationalism gained pace after the dismissal of the Whitlam Labor Government in 1975.

The ALP was formed to gain parliamentary political power. From its formation a debate constantly raged as to the extent of compromise acceptable to achieve this goal. In the 1980s and 1990s this internal battle chose between adherence to the working class or opportunistic pluralism to attain parliamentary power. It was finally resolved during the Hawke-Keating Labor governments.1 The importance of parliamentary power became paramount. This meant that the intellectual base of the party was embroiled in the conventional debates of the ‘pluralistic’2 society, whose parameters were dominated by the ruling elites. ALP politicians and trade union officials followed, avoiding a socialist critique of society, in an attempt to increase credibility across classes. Consensus politics superseded class politics.3

The parallel consensus within the party was that power was only possible with the support or at least the indifference of the masters of capital internally and U.S. power externally. The party adopted conservative, anti-socialist views and embraced market capitalism.

From the 1970s, following a surge in inflation (or stagflation, as it was known, because inflation and recession occurred in different parts of the economy) in industrialised countries4 , the consensus within mainstream modern economics became directed towards a return to classical economics — re-invented as neo-classical economics.5 This return to classical economic theory meant a ‘freeing’ of the market, reduction of the government sector, and reduction of government regulation (except for interest rate policy). The neo-classicists argued business failure and unemployment resulted from the failure to curb inflation. Conveniently these problems were not seen as inherent problems of the capitalist economy with its unstable business cycles or poor market-driven business decisions.

What was needed was a rationalisation of the economy, which would fix itself with less engineering of it. The term economic rationalism was born.

Economic rationalism implies the existence of an inherent natural law unaffected by human endeavour or weakness. The contradiction in neo-classical economic theory ignores the reality of powerful interests like monopoly capital distorting the market. It makes the dubious assumption that naked self interest is the only rational driver of decision making. Neoclassical economists posed their glimpse of human progress as the foundation of a rational society.

Economic rationalism was heralded as immutable truth, and ignored success derived from human cooperative behaviour.

The central unit of neo-classical economic systems is the firm. To encourage the private sector firm, Australian governments, both Labor and Liberal, reduced the size of public sector investment.

Neo-classical theory says the private sector will step in. But this is false. The firm’s imperative for short term profits means it won’t take up long term investments previously performed by the public sector. This tendency often turns to suppression of wages to avoid business failure. The relentless search for short term profit can send the business cycle and the economy as a whole through lower public consumption, into crises during which the firm suppresses wages to avoid business failure.

In the past, during the period of Keynesian economic policy, the system relied on the government to step in and patch up private consumption gaps. Even this modern intervention was frowned upon and resisted by monetarists of the modern era who promote radical individualism. Firms bent on further short term gain demand less taxation and budgets of governments to be cut or opportunistically allow funds to be diverted to military and security spending, avoiding productive long term investment.

Much of the current consumption is dependent on sale of resources to China. But riding the wave of Chinese economic growth will not immunise Australia from world economic failure. Chinese economic expansion will face its own bottlenecks and is increasingly dependent on consumption patterns in the U.S. and Europe. The U.S. seems destined to end in severe crisis because its economy has chronic trade deficits and its legislature has passed budgets geared to military expenditure to defend the status of its economy. Worldwide, the pattern seems the same:

[list=1]

• 1Ernie Lane said long ago that ‘figs do not grow on barren trees’ in his memoir about the Labor Party during the period 1900s to the 1930s. In Dawn to Dusk – Reminiscences of a rebel. Lane provides some insight into the failings of the ALP from its outset. The contradiction between the desire for parliamentary political power and socialist objectives were always present. However a strong force within the labour movement (and as a result the ALP) for socialist purpose remained until the Hawke/Keating years.
• 2In politics, liberals argue that pluralism ‘is a guiding principle which permits the peaceful coexistence of different interests, convictions and lifestyles’ — see Wikipedia.
• 3Strangely during this time its protagonists assumed successfully an increased ideological position to the right.
• 4Stagflation is a period of high inflation combined with economic stagnation, unemployment, or economic recession. In the early 1970s stagflation occurred in the US by expansionary spending during the Vietnam War and the sudden shock of a rise in the price of oil (from Wikipedia).
• 5This was championed by the Chicago School of Economics led by Milton Friedman.
• 6The Future of Capitalism: How Today’s Economic Forces Shape Tomorrow’s World, Lester C. Thurow, 1996, William Morrow and Company.
• 7Gore Vidal — US author & dramatist (1925 – )
• 8A double header is two consecutive shifts worked by a waterside worker (usually of 15 hours duration). The pay rate is higher (up to 2 1/2 times the ordinary rate). There is a short break between the two shifts. A triple header is one shift more. These concessions by the MUA have not been given without criticism from within the organisation. For example, at the time, the retired members association in Queensland warned the MUA about the risk to the union of sacrificing jobs in exchange for working longer shifts (i.e. ‘double’ or ‘triple headers’) in a period of high unemployment.

  Greg Combet of the ACTU said: ‘John Coombs (MUA secretary in 1998) and I are on record as saying the way to fix the problems [prior to the settlement] was to get rid of double shifts, put people on an annual salary. We’ve achieved that in the wash-up.’ At p225 of Under the Hook by Tom Hills and Wendy Lowenstein.)

  And again at p226: ’The wharfies never worked double headers until 1991. Employers wanted them-we didn’t. I did that negotiation with John Coombs and we regret it. Glad we’ve got rid of them now.’

  At p227 of Under the Hook a wharfie’s wife commented that the abolition of the double header was in fact a worse position: ‘The new agreement is a disgrace. They will start the day shift at seven. Must be on call two hours before, and two hours after. If the ship is there longer, you work longer…men will get killed.’ The Wharfies wife was asked why a double header, sixteen hours at a stretch was not worse. She replied: ‘Double headers were safe because you only worked two hours at the one job then did something else. Got a ten minute break. The bonus was shared by all the men not to a panel who worked hardest on a particular job.’

• 9A taxation system where, the more you earn, the higher are the rates of tax you pay.
• 10GDP is a measurement of the flow of goods and services produced in an economy in a given period, usually one quarter or a year. In calculating GDP, an attempt is made to put values on these goods and services and by doing so to provide a national aggregate. It also goes under the title of gross national product or GNP.
• 11Paul Keating’s comment on the 1990-91 recession.
• 12Unions @ Work — the challenge for unions in creating a fair and just society Report of the ACTU overseas delegation. August 1999. See pages 53 and 57.
• 13CPA Promotion of Paul Keating as a keynote speaker at a business luncheon sponsored by Canon Pty Ltd on 23 March 2007.
• 14The dynamic nature of human labour is lost or disregarded in this model
• 15The Future of Capitalism: How Today’s Economic Forces Shape Tomorrow’s World page 9
• 16Ibid Thurow page 9
• 17Ibid Thurow page 9
• 18Ibid Thurow page 11. Note these limitations have not been placed on Chinese economic expansion.
• 19Ibid Thurow page 12. Perhaps a worker’s labour is not as convenient an input as other raw materials.
• 20This challenges the very foundation of the arguments in favour of economic rationalism.
• 21The mean or average is the sum of all workers wages divided by the number of workers. This hides the significant boost in average wages caused by the increase in wages of the managers. For example the million dollar packages paid to company executives.
• 22Note the ABS warning in its statistics for 1996-2006: ‘Mean weekly earnings of employees in all jobs has increased from $532 in August 1995, an increase of 62% over the 11 years to August 2006 (note that data was not collected in August 1996). However, it should be noted that changes in average earnings may be affected not only by changes in the level of earnings but also by changes in the overall composition of the employee workforce, including changes in:
  • proportions of full-time and part-time employees
  • number of hours worked
  • mix of occupations and industries.’

• 23ABS Year Book extract Company Profits 1993-2005
• 24According to CEO Corrigan as reported in the Business section of THE AUSTRALIAN 19 Oct 2005.
• 25Reviewing Recent Trends in Wage Income Inequality Peter Saunders Social Policy Research Centre (UNSW) Feb 2005
• 26ABC TV News 29 August 2005
• 27Building worker at 2005 Rally against WorkChoices legislation
• 28The Future of Capitalism by Thurow
• 29Thurow, ibdi p. 326.
• 30From The Australian, Cut & Paste column, March 14, 2006 [which was a quote from Australian Prospect online, on the new communitarian movement in Winning over the Howard battlers in the new era]. Is Rudd saying that we are the true liberal party and the other mob are the conservative party? [Editor's note: Rudd became prime minister in 2007]
• 31Foreword to Demons and Democrats by Gavan Duffy at pp 3 & 4.
• 32The ALP’s socialist objective had died; it was buried during the Hawke-Keating years. The market failure of the great depression and the role of banks within it were forgotten; the short term economic success for the few was heralded as godlike, leaving demon capital poised to reclaim its mantle where capitalist greed again exceeded its capability.
• 33In defence of the Whitlam government it coincided with a period of world-wide downturn; but, notwithstanding this, the Labor ministry displayed poor practical application of ideas and a poor understanding of the limits of government.
• 34National Archives of Australia, Cabinet records 1972-1975.
• 35To be fair the Australian working class, as a whole, was not prepared for revolutionary action even though at this time it did have a significant militant section within its ranks. It would have required a quick amount of learning militancy on the job for many workers. History is littered with examples where this has happened but it also contains examples where the opposite is true. No one could be certain of the outcome of an alternative strategy.
• 36Neoclassical (or neo liberal) economics is also referred as economic rationalism.
• 37This made it easier for free marketeers to instil in workers’ minds the idea that a house is ‘wealth – an economic investment’ rather than a home in which to nurture children and cultivate family life. Thus workers could be more easily persuaded to abandon their youngsters to child care in order to work the excessive hours required to service increasingly unpayable mortgages.

Long before WorkChoices, industrial relations and other laws were anti‑worker. The law recognises workers as the subjects of capital. The system relies on workers’ compliance — forced or misled, stick or carrot.

Unions have already begun to oppose such laws more rigorously. But what strategies are to be followed?

1. Accept the IR legislation and the current system

Reform the laws through parliament

The union movement currently operates, by and large, through the system of industrial law. Even the Patricks dispute saw very little organised defiance of laws, unions putting great emphasis on a legal approach. As time is beginning to show, the legal victory in that dispute was not necessarily an advance for workers.

One risk in constantly trying to play the game, and use the rules to the workers’ advantage — resting on the belief in the ‘independent umpire’ — is that the unions are likely to be bound by the rhetoric, and the law, and find themselves caught in a destructive system out of which they won’t be able to break. The unfortunate thing is that there isn’t a union leader who, for a single minute, believes that the system is fair.

Playing by the rules may empower a legal fraternity and a small section of the union movement but may also disempower the vast majority of workers. This will be death by a thousand cuts, as workers’ rights and conditions are whittled away by a system that can’t keep still, and has to search for any way it can to increase the exploitation of labour.

The continuation of the existing system will see, increasingly, workers fighting among themselves, loss of militants to self-employment and social movements, workers abstaining from industrial action, declining union memberships, a growing distance between union officials and the rank-and-file, while the employers rub their hands with glee. With time we will be left with a dying generation of unionists bewildered by a new generation of workers who see little relevance in unions.

Benefits are few. The structure remains intact and there are systems in place to stop gross abuses of workers. There are career paths for a few unionists into bigger unions, better paid jobs in parliament, onto the boards of superannuation funds, and even into the industrial relations courts. For the majority of unionists, it’s an occasional blue, a two percent wage rise every once in a while, and a few drinks on Labor Day, superannuation that pays for a trip around Australia in retirement and a decent burial at the end.

Reform through parliament aims at overturning the wide range of anti-union legislation that has been passed in parliament over the past 30 years (ranging from the 1976 secondary boycott legislation to the Workplace Relations Act amendments of 2005). The focus is on getting worker representatives into parliament.

While perhaps all strategies short of a revolution aim at better laws, this option is characterized by union affiliation with the ALP, lobbying and financial support. It means engaging with pre-selection processes to choose candidates, and holding the successful ones to a pro-worker position.

This strategy demands that unions avoid embarrassing their parliamentary allies through partisan demands, and adhere to their demands to serve the ‘national interest’.

Extend Enterprise Agreements till after 2007 election

The strategy is to push employers into workplace agreements that merge the conditions in Enterprise Bargaining Agreements (upon expiry) with award conditions. This is to ensure that there is no loss of conditions such as penalty and overtime rates and union representation in disputes. These conditions were taken away under the WorkChoices legislation enacted on 27 March 2006.

Under s116B (1) of WorkChoices amendments there are 12 conditions of employment which can no longer be included in awards. These were previously known as allowable award matters. The abolished award conditions are:
[list=a]

• 1 WorkChoices legislation – 116B Matters that are not allowable award matters.
• 2SEQEB = South-East Queensland Electricity Board
• 3The QCU is the representative of the ACTU in Queensland.
• 4Light the Fuse rallies were a series of rallies throughout Queensland conducted by the five unions listed in the text above. They were divided into three regions North, Central, and South-East Queensland. They commenced in the North just after Cyclone Larry devastated North Queensland towns like Innisfail.
• 5One ETU worker was heard at the rally to yell out over noise of the PA: ‘The ACTU are like Diary Farmers, they milk the workers.’
• 6The full motion passed could be viewed at this website on 11 April 2006. See http://www.vthc.org.au.
• 7Prohibited content in workplace agreements in Division 7.1 of the WorkChoices legislation.
• 8Labour Law – an introduction by Creighton and Stewart, Federation Press 2000, 3^rd Edition, at p422 in [13.100] ‘Under the earlier Workplace Relations Act 1996 there was provision, in theory at least, that unions could always bargain upwards from the wages and conditions set by existing awards which are now regarded as a safety net.  Interestingly there was never any test case in the AIRC that defined exactly how the NDT was to be applied.  Was no worker to be worse off or were the conditions for workers across the board not to be undercut.  In practice there were trade-offs where some conditions were improved at the expense of others despite the power of the AIRC to refuse to certify an EBA where workers would be disadvantaged by the loss of those conditions traded off.  During the nine years of its operation under the WRA 1996 AIRC took a conservative stance preferring to stay on side with government and employer than to support the rights of workers.’
• 9I didn’t do that: waterfront lawyer by Dan Box, THE AUSTRALIAN, May 14, 2007
• 10Your Rights at Work Worth Fighting for — UNION IR UPDATE 2006 ISSUE 1 available at http://www.nswactieu.labor.net.au/campaigns/general/253.html (url checked on 29 December 2006).
• 11Living Low Paid: Some Experiences of Australian Childcare Workers and Cleaners Helen Masterman-Smith*, Robyn May**, Barbara Pocock* This report arises from a project funded by the Australian Research Council and the Brotherhood of St Laurence, Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union (LHMU), SA Unions, Unions NSW and the Victorian Trades Hall Council. See http://www.lowpayproject.com.au (url checked on 29 December 2006).
• 12Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/4895164.stm (url checked on 29 December 2006).
• 13A union support group may be a Workers’ political organisation.

When enterprise bargaining was introduced many unionists thought that EBA negotiations offered improvements for workers. Many still say that today. But is this an illusion? Was it only an improvement for the insiders in the Industrial Relations club? Or were there real advances for workers? Did wage parity go out the door and some workers get ten times greater increases than others, as claimed by the ABC TV News on 29 August 2005?

Labor Prime Minister, Keating, said in 1993 that Labor wanted a model of industrial relations that:

"... places primary emphasis on bargaining at the workplace level within a framework of minimum standards provided by arbitral tribunals…

Over time the safety net would inevitably become simpler. We would have fewer awards with fewer clauses…

For most employees and most businesses, wages and conditions of work would be determined by agreements worked out by the employer, the employee and their union.”1

According to Keating, enterprise bargaining introduced by Labor was collective bargaining at the enterprise level. Under this system moderate wage increases could be negotiated in return for increased productivity by workers thus protecting profit margins in the case of the private sector and placing a restraint on government budgets in the case of the public sector.

Under the Workplace Relations Act 1996 and its amending WorkChoices legislation enterprise bargaining provides for three main types of agreement:
[list=1]

• 1Sydney Morning Herald Work in progress Friday, 27 May 2005
• 2Australian Bureau of Statistics No. 6306.0 – Employee Earnings and Hours, Australia, May 2006
• 3Awards, Minimum Standards and Bargaining after WorkChoices presented at Workers or Slaves: Strategies of Resistance against WorkChoices, Brisbane Labour History Conference 25 February 2006.
• 4Australia has a hybrid industrial relations system with awards as the platform with certified agreements specifying conditions as part of enterprise bargaining.
• 5Enterprise Bargaining Under Labor, National Institute of Labour Studies Inc, Flinders University of South Australia.
• 6ABC Radio National on The National Interest – 15 April 2001 – Unions; Australia’s trade @ http://www.abc.net.au/rn/nationalinterest/stories/2001/280162.htm
• 7Combet, formerly a senior industrial officer of the MUA, was elected ACTU Assistant Secretary in 1996.
• 8Industrial Disputes (6321.0) Australian Bureau of Statistics January 1999.
• 9Playing John Coombs by Drew Warne-Smith The Weekend Australian April 30, 2007
• 10em>Playing John Coombs Op. Cit.
• 11See http://www.alp.org.au/media/0407/msirloo280.php (checked 21 May 2007).
• 12The Fair Pay Commission took over this function in 2006 from the AIRC under WorkChoices.
• 13These finding are from the Cole Royal Commission into Building and Construction Industry. Details from this reference have been deleted to protect union organisers involved.
• 14This tactic was used by the employer in the case in the AUSTRALIAN INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS COMMISSION Workplace Relations Act 1996 s.170LW application for settlement of dispute by Ian Curr and the Australian Taxation Office. The employer was able to defer the dispute resolution procedure for five months until it had sacked the union member with the dispute before the Commission.
• 15Forward with Fairness — Labor’s plan for fairer and more productive Australian workplaces at page 13.
• 16S45D & E of the Trade Practices Act (the secondary boycott legislation) has been used against the Transport Workers Union and two rank-and-file members of the same union have faced Federal Court action under the Workplace Relations Act. (B. Dowling in Big Rigs published by Queensland Times on 1 May 1998)
• 17Address by MUA National secretary John Coombs Australian Institute of Management 1998 Annual Conference (16 October 1998): Getting it Right: Changing the Rules of Management Managing Their Way.
• 18Unregistered Agreements may or may not exist on paper, i.e. they may be verbal; when they do exist on paper they remain unregistered.

The future of unions is of paramount importance, and unions themselves have played on the grim statistics to try to shore up commitment to recruitment. The ACTU-supported publication Power at Work argues that if the percentage of workers in unions declines at the current rates the union movement has only eight years to live.1 This forecast is most likely exaggerated with a more probable scenario being unions confined to the public sector and big industries such as mining and construction.

Such hyperbole, if designed to cause panic among union officials and members, is a little late, in that union leadership was warned of the crisis to come by the 1998 MUA dispute and its aftermath. Union leaders have had plenty of time to analyse and adjust to the prevailing conditions since the Patricks dispute, but perhaps the real worry is the failure of strategies employed to date.

Membership levels – strategies for recruitment

A period of militancy after the 1998 MUA dispute coincided with a brief halt in the decline in union membership followed by another sharp fall between 2001 and 2002 and subsequent decline (see table ABS Trade Union Membership Figures 1993-2006).

ABS Trade Union Membership figures 1993-20062

[table]
[row]
[col]Year[/col]
[col]% [/col]
[col]Membership[/col]
[col] Total workers[/col]
[/row]
[row]
[col]1993[/col]
[col] [/col]
[col]2,376,900 [/col]
[col] [/col]
[/row]
[row]
[col]1994[/col]
[col] [/col]
[col]2,283,400 [/col]
[col] [/col]
[/row]
[row]
[col]1995[/col]
[col] [/col]
[col]2,251,800 [/col]
[col] [/col]
[/row]
[row]
[col]1996[/col]
[col] [/col]
[col]2,194,300 [/col]
[col] [/col]
[/row]
[row]
[col]1997[/col]
[col] [/col]
[col]2,110,300 [/col]
[col] [/col]
[/row]
[row]
[col]1998[/col]
[col]28[/col]
[col]2,037,500 [/col]
[col] [/col]
[/row]
[row]
[col]1999[/col]
[col]26[/col]
[col]1,878,200 [/col]
[col] [/col]
[/row]
[row]
[col]2000[/col]
[col]25[/col]
[col]1,901,800 [/col]
[col] [/col]
[/row]
[row]
[col]2001[/col]
[col]24.5[/col]
[col]1,902,700 [/col]
[col] [/col]
[/row]
[row]
[col]2002[/col]
[col]23.1[/col]
[col]1,833,700[/col]
[col]7,938,095[/col]
[/row]
[row]
[col]2003[/col]
[col]23.0[/col]
[col]1,866,700[/col]
[col]8,116,087[/col]
[/row]
[row]
[col]2004[/col]
[col]22.7[/col]
[col]1,842,100[/col]
[col]8,116,500[/col]
[/row]
[row]
[col]2005[/col]
[col]22.4[/col]
[col]1,911,900[/col]
[col]8,526,600[/col]
[/row]
[row]
[col]2006[/col]
[col]20.3[/col]
[col]1,786,000[/col]
[col]8,776,000[/col]
[/row]
[/table]

Declining membership has followed the strategic failure by the union movement to adequately represent workers' interests. The union leadership's focus has been on entering the power structures such as the Parliaments, the Reserve Bank, the Industrial Relations Commission and the boards of various public utilities and super funds.

The ACTU has consistently been fixated on building the corporate strength of union management structure when it should have focused on building solidarity and membership through shop floor action.

Most often, union membership increases follow activity in the workplace and workers' recognition of the need for cooperative action, rather than the skill of union management or changes in union structures. Growth in membership often follows success, not the converse.

The author of Power at Work, Michael Crosby, says that Australian unions will reverse membership decline with a so-called organising model followed by unions in the USA:

"They should embrace an American model, with less concentration on providing supplementary services and more emphasis on organising in workplaces."3

But it is nearly as far from the ACTU to the shop floor as it is from US unions to Australia. Furthermore the success of the 'organising model' in the USA is dubious, where union membership levels were at 14% in 2002 and still in decline.4 Moreover US unionism has been concentrated mainly in only three centres: San Francisco, New York, and Detroit/Chicago.5 This concentration of unionism has its parallel here in Australia where the hub is Melbourne.

Greg Combet, in his foreword to Power at Work, says the book argues that: "unions can no longer rely on institutional support from governments, industrial tribunals, awards or 'passive employers' and unions must direct their resources towards building organisational power in the workplace and the industry."6

These are strange words indeed from an ACTU leader who sought refuge in the courts during the 1998 MUA dispute then sought minimum wages to be set by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission and finally sought a seat in parliament. Who helped give credibility to these institutions if not the unions themselves?

In the lead up to the 2007 federal election campaign, union leaders were on the lookout for workplace disputes that would deliver their message against the IR laws to the electorate. But what about the workers? In 2005 ALP officials paid lightning visits to hotspots like the Boeing workers' pickets in Newcastle. It was like the Prime Minister's quick visits to Baghdad. What would Kemalex workers picketing after a lockout think of Bomber Beazley's meagre words of encouragement outside the gates?

During the 1998 MUA dispute Labor members and candidates, some cynically carrying slabs of beer to dry pickets, visited the wharfies' tents to win favour with the workers. This behaviour is no different from left-wing political organisations selling newspapers at pickets and thereby looking for a foothold in a union through connections with militant workers.

Combet might be thinking of unions as propaganda units in a Labor Party game of arbitration and industrial relations policy; the groups outside the ALP might simply want more newspaper sales.

Some hoped militancy would continue to grow under the Federal Coalition Government. However leftists have tended to fall in behind the ALP which played the role of dampening what militancy there was. This brought about tensions between unionists themselves and seriously threatened the unity of the union movement.

About the time of the MUA dispute several Victorian unions signalled they could break with the ACTU's continued support of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC).

One such unionist, Michelle O'Neil, said:

"Well, I think there’s only so many times that you get sold out."7

Victorian unions abetted by the Federal Labor government left the State Industrial System en masse in the early 1990s to submit to the federal umpire. To worsen matters, the conservative Victorian state government of 1996 referred its power to legislate on industrial relations to the Commonwealth with significant consequences. The upshot was the unions shooting themselves in one foot and having the other hacked off by conservatives.

The unions pursued a short-term strategy that depended upon the Labor Party remaining in power federally for its continuing success. The Labor Party's inevitable loss of office exposed the poverty of a strategy which preferred legal manipulations to organising workers' industrial strength.

Other Australian states retained their own conciliation and arbitration systems. These mirrored the federal laws but they were perceived under Labor to offer a softer approach to unions.

Under successive ACTU leaderships of Kelty, George, Burrow, and Combet, tensions arose between the ACTU and some Victorian unions. This led to the emergence of alternative union leadership contenders such as Dean Mighell (ETU), Michelle O’Neil (TCFU), Martin Kingham (CFMEU) and Craig Johnston (AMWU).

Existing trade union leaders seem more preoccupied with developing their career path outside the trade union movement – either as members of parliament or corporate consultants – than with the development of a strong labour movement. Such leaders can hardly be expected to make workers’ interests paramount when they are conscious that their desired “career” depends upon ingratiating themselves with those opposed to working class power.

Are emerging trade union leaders destined to follow the path of many other ACTU union leaders to safe Australian Labor Party (ALP) seats? Jenny George obtained a sinecure as a senator in the NSW upper house. Bill Kelty became a director of large super funds. More recently, ACTU secretary, Greg Combet, obtained ALP endorsement in the safe seat of Hunter in NSW.

From 1999 the ACTU took up what it calls the'Organising Model of Unionism.' The idea behind this model is to run "campaigns where the union focussed on person-to-person contact, housecalls, and small group meetings to develop leadership and union consciousness and inoculate workers against the employer's anti-union campaign."8 The ACTU is taking advice to get away from leafleting at the workplace entrance, mass meetings and mailings to non-union workers.

Greg Combet says:

"At a time of unprecedented change and challenge many unions have trusted Michael (Crosby) to shine a light into every nook and cranny of their organisation. He has advised them how to modernise their union and to rebuild their membership. His experience, and his passion for change, has informed this book [Power at Work]. His account of the strategic imperatives confronting Australian unions in the 21st century is the most comprehensive statement of the issues yet written."9

Union membership and revenues

For all the dire predictions, the ACTU speaks for a workforce of more than 8.7 million workers, about 20% of whom are union members. In 2004 those unions had an estimated annual revenue of $506 million.10 They maintain costly resources: head offices and call centres in capital cities and expensive lawyers to run court actions, and paid advertising in the press, on television and radio.

However, in a sharp contradiction with their resources, they are at their weakest where it counts – on the shop floor.

While almost all union officials would argue they are acting strictly in the interests of their members, they also have a vested interest in their future within these organisations. It may be that they take decisions that aim to minimise risk to the structures that underpin their power. The flow of officials into the political elite would suggest that their personal interests and those of their members may not be one and the same.

Membership (and with it, revenue) is only one indicator of the effectiveness of strategy. Active participation (militancy) is another.

But what is needed for workers' organisations to grow strong? Is it numbers alone, or is it militancy?

Victorian Militancy

Following the 1998 MUA dispute there was a growing militancy within union ranks in Victoria where the mobilisation of workers had been greatest. In March 2000, the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union undertook vigorous campaigns like the building workers' 36-hour-week campaign. Militants like Dean Mighell, Martin Kingham and Craig Johnston were elected to the leadership of the ETU, the CFMEU and the AMWU respectively. Their collective strength was established through a system of pattern bargaining, which proved to be an effective strategy for improving wages and conditions. Later Joan Doyle was elected by the rank-and-file to lead the Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union (CEPU) postal and telecommunications branch.

This new militancy was soon to come into conflict with employers and government officials keen to curb this growing tendency.

The Cole Royal Commission was established to attack the unions representing workers in the building industry, and soon produced its first casualty, with Martin Kingham from the CFMEU being charged with contempt. The contempt charge flowed from Kingham’s refusal to provide information to the Royal Commission about shop stewards who attended a CFMEU training course.

While militancy grew, there was no effective strategy to defend workers who were taking greater risks. This is exemplified by the case of Craig Johnston who was jailed for defending the jobs of locked out AMWU members.

Workers First

A group of militant workers in the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union created Workers First. After a number of campaigns the Victorian Branch of the AMWU, Workers First broke with the ALP faction that held control of the federal AMWU (under the leadership of Doug Cameron).

Workers First initiated a campaign of defiance of Section 45D of the Trade Practices Act (TPA) through 'pattern bargaining'.11 Craig Johnston voiced the feelings of a number of unionists when he said:

"These laws (Industrial Relations legislation) are bad laws, they are crook laws, they need to be broken."

But Johnston, despite the support of many rank-and-file workers, Workers First, a few union officials and the Socialist Alliance, still ended up in jail. After being involved in an action in response to a lockout, Johnston was charged with affray.12 At the court hearing five thousand workers stood outside the court with placards claiming Johnston's innocence while inside his lawyers entered into plea bargaining with the expectation of mercy from the court.

The Green Left Weekly portrayed the incident that led to Johnston's jailing:

"The media has perpetuated an image of the sacked workers’ protests being violent. But there were no threats or acts of violence towards any people during the protests. However, some property was damaged. The protest on each premises only lasted a few minutes."13

Johnston was not guilty of the charge of 'threat to kill' or the charge of 'affray'. However Johnston's lawyers did not account for the resolve of the employers and the establishment in Victoria to make an example. He was sentenced to two years and nine months’ jail, with nine months to be served prior to parole. In hindsight, Johnston was poorly advised on the guilty plea.

In the end, both Kingham and Johnston relied on the same strategy that led to the reduction in MUA militancy and loss of jobs and conditions on the waterfront in 1998. They both sought refuge in the legal system to extricate themselves from repression. Their approach of defying repressive industrial laws was not matched by the same defiance in fighting quasi-criminal (the law of contempt which was the charge against Kingham) and criminal laws (the criminal law of affray). This reflects a lack of experience in the union movement of how to combat the full arsenal of repression available to the state.

The militancy of Workers First created tensions with the leadership of the ACTU, and eventually saw a split in the AMWU, with the ALP-aligned federal AMWU secretary, Doug Cameron, wresting control of the Victorian branch from Workers First. Cameron and the ACTU thought tactics used by the emerging militant unions might threaten their position and disassociated themselves from Johnston. Cameron publicly supported Johnston's jailing under the pretext that he was a bullyboy. On the other hand Kingham secured sufficient ALP support to beat charges of contempt brought by the Cole Royal Commission inquiry into the building and construction industry.

In the short term, Johnston's jailing severely weakened the attempt by Workers First militants to challenge industrial laws and militants to challenge ALP leadership of the union movement.

Comparison with the case of Ted Roach

Johnston's case is reminiscent of a prior era when Communists in the Waterside Workers Federation were jailed opposing the penal and other anti-union provisions.

Yet the contrast between Ted Roach (WWF) and Johnston (AMWU) is striking. Roach was a member of the Communist Party of the 1950s and was sentenced to jail under the following circumstances described in his own words:

"In 1949 the Chifley (Labor) Government decided to bring down legislation to prevent the miners obtaining any funds, so they froze trade union funds … The WWF (Waterside Workers Federation) had three Branches on strike and had a five shilling levy collected for strike pay. I quickly drew all the money out and put it in three different places so I had access to it and the only other person who knew where the places were, was Della Elliott, the wife of E V Elliott, the secretary of the Seamen's Union. I’m paying the strike pay and they whacked the miners and McPhilips (another prominent Communist). They sent them all and give them 12 months. Then I get up to show cause why he shouldn’t sentence me and I’m doing a bit of haranguing and he said 'It is the law Mr Roach.' I said 'Yes your Honour it is the law to starve the miners’ wives and their kids.' … Isaacs said 'I’ll hold you responsible for this unseemly outburst in my Court.' He said '12 months.' The law to starve the miners’ wives and kids… didn’t like me saying that. We got out in six weeks anyway, with demonstrations."14

However there was no getting out in six weeks for Craig Johnston, who served the full nine months of his non-parole sentence and had the threat of two more years in jail if he were involved in similar actions.

Political alignment

The emergent leadership of the militant unions in Victoria had sworn to support each other, and they did, up to a point. The new militant leadership could mobilise on an industrial agenda; but could they defend a political one? When Kingham and Johnston went to court their support base rallied outside the court in protest. But that was as far as it went.

They lacked a coherent political focus as was apparent from by their diverse political affiliations. This reflects the lack of an effective political organisation and strategy to bind militant workers and union officials together.

Kingham was in the socialist left of the ALP, Mighell had a brief flirtation with the Greens, returned to the ALP and was asked to resign in May 2007 by the new ALP leader, Rudd. Mighell swore not to go back. Johnston signed up with Socialist Alliance. And when the federal ALP opposition reversed its party platform of tariff protection for the footwear, clothing and textile industry prior to the 2004 federal election O'Neil threatened the TFCU would withdraw from its relationship with the ALP.15

The spike of militancy proved to be just that. No new workers' political organisation emerged from it. However this is what was needed; workers' political organisations were needed to build militancy and organisation to improve worker conditions.

After the 1998 MUA dispute there was little socialist organisation apart from the occasional protest or public meeting. There were a few public meetings held when Craig Johnston was sent to jail but these subsided as the reality of the repression sank in.

Emphasis has been placed on protest by Left groups to try to re-establish some links with the rank-and-file lost in the years of the decline of the Communist Party and the years spent in single-issue campaign groups like Refugee Action and Stop the War collectives in each state.

In the US, Europe and to a limited extent in Australia protests took the form of an anti-globalisation movement. In such a political climate the ideas of socialism lost meaning to workers. The risk of pushing for real change became too great. The sins of capitalism are evident and may be opposed through protest; but, in the end, what would replace it?

The workers have little say or involvement in the capitalist world and could only watch the antics of the machine men in the union or the socialist newspaper sellers at protest rallies. Union delegates are either lectured by paid officials or by others preaching that it is up to the workers to win the EBA contest or even to stop the war in Iraq.

These Left organisations are hampered by their inability to rise above the failure of their political strategies. The ideas of Marx are still relevant but today's socialist organisations have been unable to effectively deal with the changes brought about by the capitalists, their imperialist wars and the suppression of workers' rights. Marx famously said "the traditions of the past weigh like a nightmare on the brains of the living."16

Existing Political Parties

The Labor Party was one of the earliest workers' political organisations in Australia. However, despite its support from rank-and-file workers, the Labor Party has always rejected any suggestion of representing class interests. Rather, it has portrayed itself as representing some broad "national" interest, which rests upon the false assumption that bosses and workers share common interests. The ALP, long ago adopted the corporate culture which surrounds it.

Within the trade union movement, the dominant tradition has been one which emphasized cooperation between classes. Notwithstanding a more militant leadership than today's the ideas of social democracy dominated unionism during its heyday in Australia from 1945 to 1975. This coincided with the post-war capitalist boom. Beyond 1975, capitalist ideology has been on the up and socialist ideology in decline: waves of capitalism have weakened worker organizations.

Increasingly, union leadership has adopted the language and ideological assumptions of corporate capitalism.

To quote a transport worker:

"'Best practice’ unionism is an empty phrase; we want militant unions with a socialist focus. Terms such as ‘strategic unionism’, ‘corporate unions’ or ‘best practice unions’ come straight from business text-books and reflect a mentality and agenda totally at odds to the cast of mind which workers must develop to fight the forces mounted against us. We need militant unions engaged in action, every day, which always makes it clear to the membership that their interests are not only opposed to those of employers but are in fact crushed by the employers’ agendas."

It may take a hurricane for the ACTU to adopt this proposal. The ACTU performs a dual role. It looks after the political interests of the Labor Party as well as being the peak body of the union movement. This close association is no more evident than in Queensland where the Queensland Council of Unions (the ACTU) is a tenant in a building where the ALP has its Queensland headquarters. To be employed as a media officer, organiser or industrial officer often requires ALP membership as a pre-requisite.

Several attempts have been made by rank-and-file groups to win positions in union bureaucracies dominated by Labor Party members. Most have failed.

Some support (up to 30% in some union elections) has been generated from disaffected workers burdened by large mortgages, declining public education for their children, and the failure of the health system. However no organisation has been able to follow this through and to build rank-and-file organisation, even though fledgling attempts exist.

For example, in September 2007, there was rank-and-file concern about the use of a fund set up by the NSW branch of the Transport Workers Union. The fund was financed directly by labour hire companies employing workers at Sydney airport to carry out contract work for QANTAS. The employers and union did a secret deal in exchange for 1% of the workers' payroll. This deal was to fund the Transport Workers Union's salaries and expenses bill for lawyers, consultants, and officials. It is clear that the rank-and-file were not told about the secret deal or the fund.

When rank-and-file members of the union became concerned that their wages and conditions may have been traded off, who did the rank-and-file turn to?

They turned to the Labor Party.

More specifically they turned to Kevin Rudd whose wife runs labour hire firms like the ones that did the secret deal with the TWU officials. It was the NSW Labor Party who had set up this scheme and hidden it from rank-and-file workers for ten years. And who did the ALP send out to defend the union? The Labor Party sent out the president of the ACTU, Sharan Burrow, the same person the ALP sent out to defend Therese Rein's labour hire companies both here and in the UK:

"The leader of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Sharan Burrow, said she would seek briefings with the British union on whether Work Directions UK would harm workers…"

After Ms Burrow's inquiry the media were able to obtain a clarification from the UK union:

"But yesterday Mr Flynn said his union (British Public and Commercial Services Union) had voiced general concerns over the privatisation of work-placement services, not Ms Rein’s company in particular."17

The rank-and-file had turned away from their own power as heart and soul of the union and gone to the architects of corporate unionism, the true believers in top-down unionism. They went to the very people who forsake the interests of rank-and-file workers to finance corporate unionism. Sharan Burrow's predictable defence was to argue that union officials had followed sound business practice in having appointed independent auditors to ensure that the TWU fund was constitutional and that the constitution had been followed.

We argue that this is but one example of how the debate over the future of unionism in Australia remains centred in success or failure of social democracy. We do not accept that the Labor Party can deliver to workers good conditions and wages. This is because the ALP rejects working class interests, making them subservient to the 'national or the public interest'. We argue that social democracy (the ALP) is wedded to business and the employer class.

Socialist Groups

We have not analysed various theories put forward by existing socialist groups. These theories remain like our proposal for workers' political organisations — one view of how to advance the interest of workers. We do not believe that the various alternatives have taken any lasting root in workers' thinking or practice in Australia for a long, long time. It would be utopian to think they had.

Most of the book’s critique is aimed at social democracy. There is no sustained analysis of the far left at all. We doubt the existence of socialist organisation in the working class in any meaningful sense. We do not pretend to have any easy solution for the continuing isolation of socialist groups.

The distractions have been many.

Broad issues of war and refugees have been the focus with a narrow base of supporters. Disheartened rank-and-file candidates (in union elections) have fallen back into the rat race, working longer hours to find some refuge in the consumer society they oppose.

But the working class is always far from defeat. An alternative to the focus on strategic unionism, modernisation and rebuilding membership is to re-establish working class consciousness through workers' political organisation.

In arguing for a political alternative aimed at advancing working class interests, the following questions need to be addressed:
[list=1]

• 1Power at Work – Rebuilding the Australian Union Movement by Michael Crosby The Federation Press 2005
• 2ABS Employee Earnings, Benefits and Trade Union Membership Cat No. 6310.0 August 2006.
• 3Michael Crosby quoted in Drastic remedies prescribed for shrinking unions Sydney Morning Herald Weekend Edition September 24-25 2005.
• 4ACTU’s Union Renewal in Australia 02 October 2002 by Michael Crosby.
• 5The ACTU sent a delegation to the US in July 1993 and it was from this time that unions in Australia began to study seriously the strategies being pursued by American and Canadian unions.
• 6Power at Work, Crosby op. cit.
• 7Victorian secretary, Textile Clothing and Footwear Union (TFCU) in 2004.
• 8Bronfenbrenner, Kate and Juravich, Tom, Union Tactics Matter: The Impact of Union Tactics on Certification Elections, First Contracts and Membership Rates, Institute for the Study of Labor Organisations, Working Paper
• 9From the Foreword of Power at Work by Michael Crosby
• 10The ACTU claims that union officials generally are poorly paid. The low level of wages is a function of the ‘poverty’ of most Australian unions. Annual subscriptions’ range given in Union Renewal in Australia were from $200 to $350 p.a. These are conservative figures with some union fees charged on a sliding scale up to $500 per annum.
• 11Pattern bargaining is collective bargaining to achieve good conditions across different workplaces. It is banned under the Trade Practices Act and WorkChoices Legislation.
• 12Affray is a charge where there is unlawful fighting or unlawful violence used by one or more person against another, or there was an unlawful display of force by one or more person without actual violence.
• 13From Green Left Weekly, 1 September 2004.
• 14Interview with Ted Roach 1990: Recording by Greg Mallory but omitted from Mallory’s book about Ted Roach and Jack Mundey Unchartered Waters 2005.
• 15Labor lily-livered over tariffs: union ABC Radio National PM – Tuesday, 30 November , 2004 Reporter: Louise Yaxley
• 16From The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx.
• 17The Melbourne Age “UK union backtracks on Rein criticism” Julia May, London September 27, 2007
• 18Young, Pam, 1926-, Proud to be a rebel : the life and times of Emma Miller, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Qld, 1991, 286 pp.

Political Framework of the MUA Dispute

In Australia, economic rationalism has dominated our political system and economy since the defeat of the Whitlam government in 1975. Both Labor and Liberal/National governments have subscribed to the philosophy of the free market, and overseen the deregulation of the labour market. This is really re-regulation — with institutions like the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) promoting free trade while saying that it is looking after the interests of everybody i.e. by prosecuting cartels. Twenty years of failure to provide full employment, growing environmental degradation, increasing insecurity at many levels, and fear of crises have brought economic rationalism into question. However, the protagonists simply say it is not working because there are still impediments to competition, such as the trade unions.

The Conspiracy.

The 1998 MUA dispute was a conspiracy by the Australian government, an employer, Patricks Stevedoring, and the National Farmers Federation to rid the Australian waterfront of the Maritime Union of Australia. Significantly, Bill Kelty, the secretary of the ACTU had warned the government, if it were to take on the wharfies, they would see the biggest picket lines in Australian history. The conspirators planned to sack the entire union workforce employed by Patricks and to replace them with scab labour supplied by the National Farmers Federation. Redundancy entitlements were to be provided using government funds (to be called a levy) on stevedores. The repayment by the stevedores of the redundancies has been put back until 2010. The levy has been passed on as an extra charge to consumers and exporters.

The plan was disguised as an attempt to increase productivity on the waterfront. The benefit for the conspirators would be to reduce wages, conditions, and union power in a strategic industry through the introduction of non-union contract labour. This would pave the way for reduced wages and conditions across the entire workforce and hasten the demise of trade unionism in Australia. Patricks hoped to dramatically increase the price of its shares. Corrigan hoped to increase his own wealth. For the farmers it was supposed to mean lower costs. The Patricks CEO Corrigan later referred to the dispute as a conspiracy himself when he said that the dispute was an attempt to emulate what Murdoch had done to the print union workers in Fleet Street in London by setting up an alternative workforce of scab labour at Wapping.

The following events revealed the conspiracy against the MUA —

Cairns. In September 1997, International Purveyors, a stevedoring company in Cairns, bypassed MUA labour. At that time, only seven MUA members had permanent work in Cairns and there were 29 casuals. It was seen as a weak link in the union. The workers stood firm and picketed this employer of non-union labour. The Maritime Union of Australia sought support from the International Transport Federation (ITF) requesting a ban on a ship, the Java Sea, from docking at Cairns. This international action bypassed the secondary boycott provisions which have no effect outside Australia. The employer relented and an agreement was reached for MUA labour to load the ship when it arrived. The first blow had been struck. The war on the waterfront had commenced but the union had countered successfully, to the surprise of many.

Dubai. On December 3, 1997, the Maritime Union of Australia revealed that non-union labour was being sent to Dubai to train as wharfies. The International Transport Federation (ITF) threatened to blockade Dubai and the exercise was abandoned… for the time being. On December 14, the union movement claimed a victory after the United Arab Emirates cancelled the working visas of Australian army personnel training in Dubai because The International Transport Worker’ Federation threatened to blockade Dubai.1 The second counter punch had been landed, but the dispute had intensified.

Webb Dock. Executives of the National Farmers' Federation set up companies including Producers & Consumers Stevedore Pty Ltd to employ and train non-union labour at Webb Dock, Melbourne. This was portrayed as a training exercise. But on January 28, 1998, Patricks Stevedores locked out 180 wharfies from Webb Dock.

Mass Sacking. Patricks Stevedores CEO Chris Corrigan sacked his entire workforce nationwide on Tuesday, April 7, 1998.

The war had commenced.

The sacking of the entire Patricks workforce differed from other industrial disputes. Not because it was a lockout by the employer rather than industrial action by the workers. Not because of the use of security guards with dogs to evict the workers in the dead of night. No, because the union leadership and the ACTU knew from the outset the actions contemplated against them. Greg Combet of the ACTU commented on the superior intelligence held by the MUA leadership:

"I think we filed the first allegation of conspiracy in mid-February, had applied for an injunction. We arrived at the court the morning after everyone was sacked, had them on the defensive. It was very important… a great highlight."2

It was this intelligence; often detailed in nature, Patricks and the Government underestimated. For example, in the Easter break of 1998, John Coombs flew to a meeting of most of the waterside workers employed by Patricks in Brisbane and many of those employed by P&O to canvass the possibility they were about to be sacked by Corrigan. In considerable detail, he outlined Corrigan's plans to the workforce assembled at the Wynnum-Manly Junior football club. The detailed intelligence had been obtained by Coombs from 'three defectors'.

Three men, employed by the National Farmers’ Federation, PC Stevedores, Webb Dock operation, defected from Webb Dock in the weeks leading up to the lockout. Two, Richard Scougall and Lucas Rene (who gave sworn affidavits) exposed how the training at Webb dock was a sham.

One, Jamie Meek, warned that Patrick Stevedores would sack its entire unionised workforce by Easter – symbolically Crucifixion Day. But the plans were rushed forward when, forearmed, the MUA took pre-emptive action in the Federal Court."3

He told the story of the 55 wharfies in Sydney who took their redundancy cheques to the union office for safe keeping until the last dispute with Patricks was over.

He remained unsure as to whether Corrigan would sack them first in Brisbane or Fremantle or, as it turned out, sack everyone at the same time. At this stage, he probably knew only a little less than Reith about the detail. He told the men that he was in daily contact with secretary of the ACTU, Kelty, and that they could expect ACTU support. He said that he had the support of the leader of the Federal Labor Party in opposition, Beazley. Coombs announced that they would not win the dispute in the courts, and he added that "win or lose" he would be back to cop the flak. Then and there all of the officials and members pledged support.

This early meeting with the Brisbane wharfies says a lot about the dispute. The Nestles/Cobar option of sacking the entire workforce was to be invoked by employers and government.4 However, for the first time, the union leadership was fully briefed. Despite Coombs' espoused mistrust of the courts, it was in the courts the union took its first steps to defend themselves. No industrial action was called. However, Coombs said this was the first time it was necessary in the recent history of the union for them to call for support from other unions. He said there were unions with considerable funds that must be committed to the defence of the MUA. No wharfie was to cross the picket line because of want by him or his family. There was to be no one who could say that they scabbed because the union was unable to provide for his family.

This is how the dispute was fought: picket lines outside the Patricks terminal, solidarity camps, court actions in the Supreme, Federal, and High Courts.

Fremantle

Fremantle pickets, at times approaching two thousand strong, prevented trucks from moving on and off Patricks wharf. An attempt by a convoy of farmers' trucks to break through the picket line only seemed to strengthen the resolve of workers and swelled the numbers of picketers. In solidarity with the Patricks workers, P&O MUA members walked off the job in protest causing the farmers to end their action.

In Western Australia the Liberal government also tried to break up the protest camp with riot police. Again, this only increased the resolve of workers and within hours the picket was reformed.

Sydney

Sydney pickets were effective in halting movement through the wharves at Darling Harbour and at Port Botany. When police moved in to remove pickets others quickly replaced them. When those detained were later released they returned to take up their positions. Trucking companies bowed to the power of the unionists and refused to send trucks through the picket lines. The NSW government played a subdued role by keeping its police force from using violence against workers. On these picket lines building workers and miners (led by John Maitland) played significant supporting roles.

Brisbane

In Brisbane, perhaps the weakest link in the nationwide workers' action, union leaders were reluctant to condone any action that would invoke the secondary boycott provisions of the Trade Practices Act. Most of the action was symbolic and it was here in Brisbane Patricks was able to display a semblance of normal operations. This weakness was exacerbated by the determination of the union leadership not to spread the dispute to the P&O wharves, again because of the risks of legal action this would entail.5

At this port Patricks were able to move trucks on and off the wharf. Within this climate, credit should be given to those determined workers, including those from other unions like the TWU (led by Hughie Williams), that showed courage in an isolated position. The lack of courage of most other union leaders to commit to action meant that the rank-and-file support was not tested, leaving only determined participants at Camp Solidarity and Camp Unity to face up to relative isolation.

Ironically the court decision was announced at a crowd of ten thousand unionists and MUA supporters at the largest political rally in Brisbane during the dispute (see May Day in Brisbane below). What would have happened had the decision not favoured the union?

Melbourne

The pickets on East Swanston Dock in Melbourne were a telling factor in the failure of the strategy by the government and Patricks. At the point when the NFF were most keen to get their scabs on the docks they were unable to prevent ten thousand pickets massed at the gates of the East Swanston Docks. But more than that, when the Victorian police were preparing to remove the pickets they were outmanoeuvred by the building workers who marched up behind them. The CFMEU had answered the call of the MUA in the best way possible.6

This incident became known as The Long Night and was the turning point of the dispute. Indeed, it was decisive. The police were unable to contain the pickets. Mass action had overwhelmed the coercive power of the state and the court system.

Across the board

In Fremantle, police practised riot control measures. But that was it.

In Brisbane, pickets, at times, tried to stop trucks entering the wharves, with limited success.

In Sydney, the pickets were larger and more aggressive. Police were ineffective. The NSW Labor government was said to be responsible.

In Melbourne, mass action brought stevedoring to a standstill. Eventually the High Court provided a compromise resolution

The Long Night

Click here to listen to a reading of The Long Night by Pamela Curr

The tension in the room was palpable as members of different unions spoke. It was 4pm on Friday 17th April and eighty of us were sitting in a circle in the MUA headquarters in West Melbourne. Information had been gathered from workers in different unions which backed up the belief that Kennett had delivered an ultimatum to police to clear Swanston Dock and open it up for Patricks.

The facts were gathered from union members and pieced together to reveal the plan. Members reported buses had been arranged to take a large number of police from a city railway station to the docks probably after midnight. Another union had been informed by their members that hundreds of warrants had been written up to expedite predicted mass arrests. No police from the local area around the docks were to be used in this operation. Then the barrister for the union revealed that the watch-house which was always chronically overcrowded had been magically emptied. The evidence was conclusive a move was to be made on East Swanston Dock that night.

I was there with women unionists as a community member to express support for the MUA and tell them that the community wanted to stand alongside the Wharfies. We recognised them as the frontline for workers. If the government could knock them off, we were all done for. Over 100 years of union struggle was not going to be wiped out. One of the male workers stood up and thanked me but said he did not want 'ladies' on the line. He felt this was men's business to which a woman unionist responded, "This is workers' business and women are workers too and want to stand up and be counted just like the rest of you." This finished the gender argument once and for all. The stakes were too high for division. Decisions were made fast and furious under pressure. Mobile phones interrupted with news as it came to hand.

It was agreed all unions would take turns in manning the picket. The women workers at the MUA were setting up a 24 hour phone service. They had mattresses in the office and would take turns bunking down for sleep and maintaining communication. Community Radio 3CR gave out MUA headquarters phone numbers so that any information could be forwarded quickly to where it was needed. 3CR also called up supporters to get down to the picket telling them when they were most needed. This was community radio's finest hour – a direct link to the people. We left the meeting knowing a long night was ahead of us and that we could all be arrested by morning.

The crowd swelled steadily from 7pm down at Swanston Dock. The marshals called them to practice every half hour or so and we all learnt how to link arms and interlace our fingers so that the police would have to pry us apart one by one to break this line. We agreed that we would be arrested. We were not going to make it easy for the government. Fires were keeping people warm. Their spirits were lit from within with the resolve to win this fight. There was only one toilet just inside the gate and the line was long but practicalities had to be attended to. We knew to be locked in a paddy wagon with a full bladder would be murder.

As the night wore on the crowd grew more resolved. We were now assembled in front of the gates. The marshals on the speaker system letting us know what was happening as news came to hand. At 2am lookouts reported police getting into buses in the city. We knew the time was approaching when we would be tested. Next they were marching down to the dock. It was too dark to see much but we could make out the shadowy outlines of 400 police. Then the helicopters started buzzing us with bright search lights. Back and forth for 40 minutes. It was irritating but good humour and black jokes mitigated the intended effects which were to rattle us.

As dawn was breaking the seagulls wheeled in the rosy light. The marshals on the loudspeaker kept us informed and there we stood 3000 of us facing off 400 police, both implacable. The 7am news bulletin on the ABC informed us that many of the police had removed their badge numbers. A roar of disapproval went up from the crowd. It was too dark for us to see but the journalists were close enough to take in such details.

As light broke we began to see the police more clearly. Our legs were aching after hours of standing on the cold hard bitumen. At least the unpredictable Melbourne weather was being kind – no rain.

By eight o'clock in the morning we were exhausted. The camaraderie was strong; strangers were sharing laughs, mandarins, water, and chocolates, whatever we had. We were at a stand-off when a roar started. What a sight! Builders' labourers marching down the road toward us. We waved and shouted and cheered them in. This put the police in a pickle. They were now sandwiched between weary but steadfast picketers and fresh building workers. Discipline held firm as we cheered the new recruits onto the picket line. Leigh Hubbard from Trades Hall led the police off the dock and they retreated to a Mexican wave and voices singing, "goodbye, farewell, sad to see you go." Like hell we were! We had won!

Tired and exhilarated we headed home to sleep leaving the picket in safe hands. This was the beginning of a remarkable period in Melbourne. Swanston Dock, which until then had been as foreign to most of us as Timbuktu, was to become as familiar as a second home over the next two weeks. Restaurants and theatres emptied as night after night Victorians gathered on the docks. On weekends country folk came down to join their city cousins bringing sausages and chops for barbecues. All the churches were represented standing in support of the wharfies. A Buddhist shrine was erected under some bushes with "MUA Here to Stay" across the top. Tents sprang up to feed and tend the growing community. Young environmentalists came down from the forests and cooked community meals for the picketers. A stage was erected and singers and comedians entertained the community. This was the essence of community and it started on the long night when workers and community came out in support of a group of workers who have always been the frontline defence of the Union Movement. The government thought this would be a pushover. They never dreamt that the community would rally for the wharfies. They were proved wrong on that night and in the weeks to come as the crowds swelled every night at the Peaceful Assembly on Swanston Dock chanting the familiar refrain 'Workers United, Will Never Be Defeated.'
– Pamela Curr, FairWear Campaign,7 5 April 1999

May Day in Brisbane

May Day 1998 in Brisbane was the largest since the days of the Right to March campaigns of more than 20 years earlier. Those anti-Joh May Days were swelled by a huge non-union aligned 'red contingent', which over the years has dwindled into near insignificance.

In 1998, the red contingent had been reinvigorated a little, but the big increase in numbers to 10,000 was from unionists supporting the MUA. Many of these friends of the MUA had given May Day a miss in previous years.

Unions representing occupations a million kilometres from the wharves linked their fortunes on banners, signs, and floats with the Maritime Union.

MUA - here to stay!

As the thousands slowly swelled Albert Park, news spread that the decision of the Federal Court was being broadcast.

Mighty roars erupted as Jim Tannock, the MUA official on the May Day platform told of the MUA court victory.

Smaller pockets of cheers erupted as the news rippled through the march to those in the red contingent still arriving at the park.

As Tannock thanked everyone for their support in the struggle, his every phrase was greeted with applause, laughter, and cheering. The workers united will never be defeated, M-U-A Here-to-stay. The crowd of ten thousand was as one. As workers gathered around the stage, Jim Tannock took up the cry of victory from the crowd. His speech was a simple recount of the history of the dispute but to the workers it was a mighty shout of defiance.

The man who would be Premier, Peter Beattie, followed Tannock. Enthusiasm for what Beattie had to say evaporated when it became obvious he was trying to turn the campaign to the advantage of Labor at the upcoming election.

It was as if the amphitheatre at Albert Park was a balloon, which had been pricked.

As Beattie prattled, the air of exhilaration escaped. In the background some workers had picked up Tannock, a big man, and tossed him repeatedly in the air. Beattie droned on. Even before he finished, people shuffled off home.

During the next week MUA members all around the country marched back in through the Patricks gates.
– Bernie Dowling, unionist.

Strategies for Union victory

From the outset of the dispute, the MUA strategy was clear. First and foremost the union determined that it must survive. Second they would continue the struggle until all MUA members were returned to their jobs. Then the union would negotiate reforms. To meet these objectives the union actions can be divided into three components which in some respects complemented each other; in other respects they were contradictory.

To this extent they can be ranked in order of importance as below:

• Legal,
• Industrial, and;
• Political.

The Legal Strategy in the MUA Dispute – a dangerous road

It is appropriate to consider the court action by the MUA. Notwithstanding the statements from John Coombs to the contrary, most of the union's hopes were staked upon the courts. Without significant opposition from the rank-and-file, the leadership of the union turned to lawyers for the first time in its history to save itself. John Coombs staked his future on this and in return was pledged support at many mass meetings.8

At a combined delegates' meeting of all unions, attended by many rank-and-file members of the MUA and other unions in Brisbane's City Hall, a loose coalition of socialist unionists proposed a 'Clarrie O'Shea' style campaign, including a 24 hour stoppage. The ACTU (Qld) leadership opposed the motion. The proposal did not gain broad support from the rank and file – their confidence in the leadership at this point remained unshaken.

This reliance upon the courts provided a contrast with the past history of the union, when court action was a defensive complement to the direct action of the rank-and-file.

On this occasion, court action would be given the leading role, followed by rank-and-file action to provide support and hold the ground while the courts deliberated. It was a strategy of great risk. Such strategy may well have been as risky as a straight confrontation of the laws mounted by the trade union movement. It carried the added risk of further demobilising workers at large and so preventing any recovery of the union position by rank-and-file action. It did have the short term advantage of avoiding putting the whole of the union movement on the line by direct confrontation with the government. Yet, it disregarded the long-term consequences of failing to mobilise the union movement with the strongest unions leading, a measure which might have arrested the decline of trade unionism discussed in the introduction of this book. It further encouraged other unions to follow this course with dire consequences, for example, the Construction Forestry and Mining Union representing the Gordonstone miners in their unfair dismissal case.

In February 1998 the CFMEU won an early round in their unfair dismissal case in the Federal Court. Industrial Commissioner Hodder ruled that when the mine reopened, the illegally sacked miners should have preference of employment. This was overturned by a majority decision of the Full Bench of the Industrial Commission. Because of a legal technicality arising from the Workplace Relations Act, the Federal Court ruled that although the Gordonstone miners were illegally dismissed and were entitled to be re-employed, the Court did not have the power to quash the decision of the Full Bench of the Industrial Commission.

Even though the technical reasoning by the Court was wrong, the miners' appeal was not upheld in the Federal Court. Justice North gave a technically correct ruling in the MUA case that a conspiracy 'may' have occurred. This led to a compromise deal, so the case was never actually tested. The unfair dismissal of the Gordonstone miners has not been resolved to this day. Fortunately, the miners union has sufficient clout to see 14 of the 16 miners have jobs elsewhere. Yet these are the dangers of pursuing the legal road. Who is to say that the MUA would have ever won its conspiracy case even if it proved the facts of the conspiracy? Workers all know the conspiracy case to be true, but that is not to say that a court would regard the case as having technical merit. In another conspiracy case brought by the MUA against two West Australian government ministers and the Geraldton Port Authority in the first week of July 1999, the union was unable to get past the first hurdle of proving the facts.

This is the crux of the weakness of legal action. Workers' futures are not only decided by political bias, they can turn on judges' interpretation of delicate points of law. For the lawyers it is the fun of the lucrative game; for workers, legal decisions can be disastrous, or frustratingly indecisive.

From the outset the dispute turned on court battles between the MUA on one side, and Patricks, the National Farmers' Federation and the Federal Government on the other. The ACTU in particular put great store in the law of the land to protect workers' rights. Picketing and mass action were to be largely support action to hold ground while the court action proceeded.9 The courts became the central focus of the campaign and all else hinged on their decisions. There was something of a lottery in all this as the political standpoint of judges had a marked influence on their interpretation of the laws. The judges' early verdicts were in favour of the MUA – but they never went further than saying the union had an 'arguable' case of conspiracy. Had the union failed to obtain the temporary orders against Patricks, the legal strategy would have been doomed. Even if the union had then gone on to win the conspiracy case, the victory would have largely been a pyrrhic one.

The Legal Manoeuvres

The Patricks stevedoring operation was a group of companies, all ultimately controlled by a corporation known as Lang Corp. In September 1997, there was an extensive financial and legal reorganisation of these companies, in preparation for the attack on the MUA. Wharfies on the Patricks wharves were employed by five different companies within the Patricks groups. These employer companies also owned assets connected with the stevedoring business, and in effect, ran the Patricks stevedoring business on the wharves.

From September 1997 onwards, these five 'employer' companies were divested of all their assets, which were ultimately transferred to another company in the Patricks group. This company also took over the running of the stevedoring business. To run the business, this company entered into contracts with each of the Patrick's 'employer' companies which would supply the labour to work on the wharves.

The companies which employed the wharfies were thus turned into labour hire companies which supplied labour to another company in the Patrick's group, which now owned and ran the stevedoring business. The reason behind Corrigan's strategy is explained by the MUA:

"The labour hire agreements gave Patrick Operations the right to terminate their employment agreements without notice and permitted them to hire employees from elsewhere."10

The 'employer' companies no longer had any significant assets. The only income that the 'employer' companies received came from the labour hire contracts with another company in the Patrick's group.

In early April 1998, the MUA received 'intelligence' that Patricks was about to act and dismiss its workforce. The union's first response was to commence legal proceedings, trying to obtain an injunction to prevent MUA members from being sacked. The union filed these proceedings on 6 April 1998 in the Federal Court, but the Court would only be hearing the matter on 8 April.

On 7 April 1998, the Patricks company which controlled the business, cancelled its labour supply contracts with the Patricks 'employer' companies. The same day, the company entered into new contracts to obtain a new workforce comprised of non-union labour. The wharfies had not yet been sacked, but the 'employer' companies had all lost their only source of income. In theory, the Patricks 'employer' companies no longer had any work for their employees to do, and no money with which to pay them wages. The 'employer' companies were instantly insolvent – broke. These companies were not insolvent because the stevedoring business was losing money or because the waterfront was inefficient. They were broke because of the machinations of those who controlled Patricks. Patricks deliberately took steps to make sure that their own companies supplying MUA labour went broke.

Not the first time a modern capitalist like Corrigan had set up phoenix companies; new companies, unencumbered by debt, rise from the ashes of the old. This is the stock-in-trade of the merchant banker: frustrate your creditors. In this new world the wharfies had become Corrigan's creditors through their unpaid wages, leave entitlements and superannuation, not to mention future redundancy money. The workers had entered the dog-eat-dog world of their employer, as creditors not as employees.

On this same day, 7 April 1998, Patricks appointed administrators to run the 'employer' companies. Administrators are appointed to an insolvent business as a first stage in the eventual winding up of that business.

On 8 April 1998, the Federal Court granted a temporary injunction preventing the administrators of the Patricks 'employer' companies (the newly created labour hire firm) from sacking any wharfies until the Court could begin hearing the union's case on 15 April. The hearing commenced on 15 April before Justice North. On 21 April, the Court essentially granted the MUA the interim orders it had applied for. These orders basically required Patricks to return the employment arrangements on the wharf to the status quo prior to 7 April 1998, until such time as the main legal action could be heard.

The MUA took legal action against all of the various Patricks companies, claiming that Patricks was conspiring to replace union labour with non-union labour on the waterfront. The union was relying upon a claim that Patricks was guilty of an illegal conspiracy and breaching the 'freedom of association' provisions of the Workplace Relations Act. One effect of these provisions is to make it illegal for an employer to (financially) injure or prejudice an employee simply because that worker is a member of a union.

However, the MUA's claims of conspiracy and breach of the 'freedom of association' laws were never actually decided by the Courts. The hearings in the Federal Court of Australia were only preliminary hearings about procedural matters. The MUA applied for the Federal Court to make interim (temporary) orders until the Court could conduct a full hearing of the union's case. The union applied for orders requiring Patricks to continue to use only MUA labour on the wharves up until the conspiracy/freedom of association claims could be heard by the Court. The court cases in April 1998 dealt only with the legal issue of whether the courts should make these temporary orders.

While the MUA received the interim orders it applied for, this was no guarantee that the MUA would have succeeded in the main legal proceedings. The MUA and Patricks arrived at a compromise deal before the main legal proceedings came before the courts.

We have analysed the judgements of Justice North in the Federal Court, looked at the preliminary comments by the Full Federal Court, and read the judgements of the High Court in giving the administrators power to order a return to work. Contrary to what has been said by the courts themselves, many of the judges' political views played a role in the decisions.

The Court Decisions

The decision of Justice North was confined to the issues to be heard – his judgement was the least political.

By contrast, the Full Federal Court made the following statement at the outset that was clearly political, extra-legal and unnecessary:

"As individuals, each member of the Bench, like all sensible Australians, is in favour of an efficient waterfront. Export income is the economic life blood of our nation. Most of our exports depart by sea, many through container terminals. It is obviously important to ensure that the operation of container terminals is as efficient and economical as reasonably possible… Just as it is not unknown in human affairs for a noble objective to be pursued by ignoble means, so it sometimes happens that desirable ends are pursued by unlawful means. If the point is taken before them, courts have to rule on the legality of means, whatever view individual judges may have about the desirability of the end. This is one aspect of the rule of law, a societal value that is at the heart of our system of government. It follows that this judgement should be seen only as a judgement about legal issues, not a view about the social, economic and political arguments concerning waterfront management that have dominated the media during the last couple of weeks…"[emphasis added].

The Full Court obviously felt the need to apologise for upholding the MUA's legal arguments.

Place the court's statement above alongside the following report from Drewry Stevedoring Consultants which appeared in the media at the same time and the emphasis placed on waterfront reform by the judges can be brought into question.

"The report, by Drewry Stevedoring Consultants, says the slow crane rates in Australia compared with other countries' ports are due to ships unloading less cargo at each dock here. The report says that this slows the average crane rate. Drewry claims that when this is taken into account, Australian ports have a relatively high level of productivity. Patrick Stevedores has declined to comment.

We can only conclude that the MUA lawyers were very lucky indeed to get before Justice North rather than one of the judges of the Full Federal Court. They were also lucky to be supplied with the information (through ALP sources, no doubt) that gave them the exact nature of the conspiracy against them by Patricks, Reith, and the Australian government.11

Not surprisingly, it was the government propaganda that the High Court judges and others swallowed.

The High Court

This is the most politicised court in the land where appointments are made depending on which political party is in power. For example, the Coalition government has further shifted the balance of the Court against workers through the appointment of a conservative Chief Justice and a judge who was a Queensland National Party barrister during the Joh years. The MUA should consider themselves lucky not to have fronted these judges at the outset of their court appearances. Under a legal strategy, at the end of lengthy court proceedings, the MUA would always face a conservative court. This means that the MUA case may never have been proven. Thus the conspiracy case against Patricks, the banks, and the government, could only supplement a political struggle. In effect, the legal process was more likely to assist in electoral success for the ALP than the reinstatement of the wharfies. Note the plight of the sacked SEQEB workers in Queensland which ended up in the High Court with no reinstatement or damages. In the following year the Goss Labor government was elected and it never reinstated the linesmen and never repealed the changes made to the Transport Act made by the National Party government to prevent picketing of essential services.12

It took 20 years for an ALP government under pressure from business consumers facing summer blackouts to start replacing the linesmen who were lost as a result of the sacking of 1100 men by Bjelke-Petersen.

The MUA lawyers were forced from the more comfortable (and for unionists, familiar) arena of the Industrial Commission because of the Workplace Relations Act. Their strategy was to take on the government and Patricks in the arena of corporations law – an arena where workers rank last, behind other creditors and the banks. Take, for example, the voluntary administration of Patricks' labour hire companies. The secured creditors, the banks, rank first in any deed of arrangement between the employer, the banks, and workers.13 The workers rank last because the vote for the terms of the deed of arrangement in the creditors meeting is not based on numbers of people; it is based upon the amount of debt. As with this case, the banks almost always rank first in such arrangements because they carry the most debt. So the banks's vote was crucial to any arrangement for the companies to continue trading. Under voluntary administration, the most likely outcome was that the labour hire companies would go into liquidation and all of the wharfies would lose their jobs for a second time.

The MUA benefited to some extent by the tactics used by Corrigan because he took the extreme option on every occasion through:

• The artificial scheme of setting up the labour hire companies for insolvency;
• The premature winding up of the labour hire companies by withdrawal of funds to the parent company, Lang Corp;
• The sacking of the entire workforce in one hit rather than port-by-port sackings;
• The requirement by the parties to the conspiracy that the government pass legislation to fund the redundancy payments to the wharfies; and,
• The application in the Federal Court by Corrigan for the deregistration of the MUA despite the fact that it enjoyed the support of the ACTU. This gambit usually only works when the ACTU and the ALP betray a union as Hawke and Kelty did when the BLF was deregistered.

The courts are for the corporations, the employer, and the parliament. When the parliament passed the Redundancy Bill in order to attempt to bribe the wharfies to break with their union, no lawyer or court was ever going to say it is illegal to pay unionists to give up their union.

When Patricks sacked the 55 wharfies in Sydney in 1994, was it the courts that ordered the money to be given back? No – it was the wharfies who took the redundancy cheques to their union to be put in the union safe. And later when the 55 were reinstated after a national stoppage it was the union officials who took the plastic bag full of the cheques and dumped them on Corrigan's desk. Alas, history was not to repeat itself.

In 1998 there was to be no public burning of the redundancy cheques with wharfies refusing any compromise as had happened in the 1928 timberworkers' strike where the workers burned the ballot papers they had been given by the timber companies to conduct a secret ballot on industrial action.

The fact that courts – and the laws that they enforce – exist to protect corporate interests leads to the greatest inherent weakness in the union giving pre-eminence to a legal strategy. Pursuing first and foremost a legal strategy commits the union at the outset to making a compromise with the employer's agenda. Union leaderships (including that of the MUA) are well aware that our legal system is weighted heavily against their interests, that laws, law makers, and judges are ideologically committed to ensuring that capitalism functions smoothly and efficiently – to the detriment of working people.

As noted earlier, the so called 'legal victory' of the MUA only granted them a temporary reprieve, requiring the employer to use MUA labour until there could be a full hearing of the MUA's claim of a conspiracy by Corrigan and his cohorts. The courts decided that the MUA had, at least on the surface, a strong case, but there are no guarantees in the court system – especially not for unions or unionists. Had the MUA lost the main legal action, the consequences for the union and the dispute would have been catastrophic. The loss of the legal action would have undermined the political/media campaign conducted by the union, which relied heavily upon assertions that Patricks had acted illegally or unlawfully. Given the relatively minor role played by industrial action in the MUA campaign, it seems doubtful that the union could have suddenly propelled an industrial campaign to the forefront in the aftermath of such a legal defeat.

For these reasons, it was always unlikely the MUA would have pursued the legal action to a final hearing. Its leadership understood the stakes involved. Of course, there were risks for Patricks in the courts also. Therefore, the union's legal manoeuvres were primarily about forcing the employer back to the negotiating table, where a compromise could be reached. The temporary orders requiring Patricks to employ MUA labour meant that Patricks could not ignore the union as it could when MUA members were locked out.

It is not denied that there were risks associated with whatever type of campaign was mounted by the MUA. But focussing on a legal strategy was the weakest option, because the best result that could be achieved from such a strategy was a compromise which conceded at least part of Patricks' 'waterfront reform' agenda. A more aggressive focus on industrial action or a real political campaign (challenging anti-union laws, not merely attempting to bolster ALP electoral prospects) would have required greater organisation and effort, but would also have provided greater options for the MUA. Successful industrial action could have halted completely Patricks' (anti-worker) agenda for 'reform' of the waterfront. If a combined industrial-political campaign had undermined the trade practices laws, the results would have been a boost to the trade union movement throughout the country. None of these alternatives precluded the union pursuing legal action as a means of keeping the 'compromise' option open.

No doubt there may be occasions when, despite its weaknesses, circumstances dictate the pursuit of a legal strategy. However, allowing a legal strategy to become the standard response to an industrial dispute guarantees the long term decline and defeat of the union movement. The risks, costs and other exigencies of court action all exert pressures that point in the direction of compromise and gradual concessions to the employer. To forgo real industrial and political struggle in favour of the courts is to accept that each new dispute will produce not the advancement of working class interests, but a reversal. Such reverses may sometimes be minor, perhaps less than the reversal that the employer wanted to inflict upon its workers. But, with each new dispute, there emerges a new compromise, in which some further concession is made. The employer is able to erode away, piecemeal, the conditions that working class solidarity has won for workers in the past. Indeed, the foregoing is perhaps an apt description of the history of the decline of the Australian trade union movement over the last forty or fifty years.

There is little doubt that the leadership of the union turned to court action in order to relieve itself of risks of a direct confrontation with the secondary boycott provisions. To this extent Employment and Industrial Relations Minister Reith was correct when he took solace from the fact that the strike did not spread to other wharf companies or lead to action from other unions. It seems clear, despite noises to the contrary, that neither the union movement in general nor the MUA in particular was prepared for the risks this strategy entailed. They had not undertaken the preparatory actions that corporations always do to put a legal veil around their entities or place funds overseas to escape Australian laws.

As direct action recedes further into history, the question arises whether future union leaders, nurtured on law and media PR, will even be able to effectively co-ordinate a rank-and-file campaign.

ACTU secretary Bill Kelty was aware of the resources that the government could put at the disposal of Patricks. He had seen at close hand how a Labor government under Hawke had destroyed the Pilots' Federation in 1989. Hawke made available the resources of the Office of the Prime Minister to the Director of Ansett, Sir Peter Abeles. About $100 million of public money was made available to the airlines through a moratorium on aircraft landing charges and airlines being undercharged for the use of military aircraft. None of this money was the subject of a parliamentary appropriation bill.

Hawke declared a'national emergency' on 23 August 1989 to justify the use of military aircraft to break the pilots' strike and then Sir Peter Abeles brought in the scabs.14 The strategy of Reith and Corrigan to train army personnel in Dubai was not that much different to the strategy Hawke and Abeles used against the pilots by having the air force provide essential passenger services and scabs to do the rest. Also Reith as Minister for Industrial Relations persuaded the government to fund the redundancies. The proposal was that the exporters would pay it back through a levy. Seven years later it remains unclear whether the redundancy money was actually recovered. Stevedoring costs were never lowered as promised by Patricks and the government.

The unions did not undertake any major political campaign in their own right, as in the 1950s, to confront the legislation to render secondary boycott legislation ineffective. This was so notwithstanding the fact that the legislation had been around for quite a period before the dispute and mirrored similar unjust legislation in other countries such as the UK where it had been used to great effect.

The risk of undertaking secondary boycotts without a legal veil was bankruptcy of the union, its leaders, and members. This was precisely why the legislation was set up – to diminish trade union rights. The unions, because of their recent history in Australia under a long period of social contract, had demobilised the rank-and-file. Rank-and-file unionists under the burden of Labor's social contract had become compliant. So even if the MUA leaders were confident of their own members, they were unsure of obtaining the necessary support from the ACTU and the rest of the union movement. The rank-and-file was not putting significant pressure on their leadership and the leadership responded accordingly by not expecting strong action from the rank-and-file. It represents a political failure in the sense that without an effective militancy to reinvigorate the union movement it fell back on the options offered to it by the capitalist system – compromise through the courts. The quid pro quo to the unions for their survival was reduced power and poorer conditions for workers. In return, the system recognised that though it could deliver punishing blows to workers and their unions, it could not deliver the knockout. There had to be a compromise and the compromise was to be this: if the union accepted the supremacy of the courts and the law, union coverage on the waterfront could continue but only if reform (read: loss of jobs and workers' conditions) was allowed.

For the union, success in the courts would allow continuation of MUA coverage of the waterfront and the reinstatement of the workers, but it could never prevent the redundancy push by Corrigan and the government. Further it could not prevent a worsening of work conditions for all MUA members. Only union power could stop this.

The courts then, while not supporting Corrigan's methods, were supporting his aims. Effectively, they ruled that workers should be allowed to continue in the union and the employer must pay the redundancies prescribed by law. They did not accept Corrigan's unfettered right to increase his profits but placed some limits on him. The court's position was portrayed as the middle ground– a theme taken up by the media. But a middle ground which meant that workers were always going to lose conditions and many would lose their jobs, albeit with some union input as to who would lose their jobs and into the size of the redundancy payouts.

Within this view of the courts is the belief, formed as a result of exposure to conservative propaganda, that the commercial success of industry is synonymous with the national interest and well-being of society. For example, in 1990, Margaret Thatcher and the port bosses made use of this conservative view to assist in the de-unionisation and casualisation of jobs at UK ports. Nicholas Finney, then director of the National Association of Port Employers, described how this was done in a speech to the Australian economic rationalist group, the H. R. Nicholls Society:

"We commissioned economic studies. One particularly important economic study was to try to prove that getting rid of the dock labour scheme (a scheme that guaranteed a union presence) you actually create many more jobs than you lose.

Benefits from this approach… (were) to make sure we could drive a wedge home to isolate dockers and describe them as a selfish, small group of workers who were actually stopping people from gaining jobs in unemployment blackspots."15

This being so, anything which detracts from industry's striving to enhance its commercial position must, therefore, detract from the national interest and the well being of society. Because the MUA's resistance to such 'enlightened' management strategies as redundancies, twelve hour shifts (if not longer), non-union labour on the wharves etc., the union is portrayed as acting against the national interest. No one should be in any doubt about the grudging attitude of the court to the irritating fact of workers insisting that they have rights which they are not prepared to relinquish simply to enable corporations to operate in a 'more commercial manner'. It was only with a great reluctance the judges were prepared to concede that 'export income' and 'efficient container terminals' were not such wonderfully desirable things as to be pursued by 'ignoble and unlawful means.'

Industrial Campaign

The focus of the industrial campaign was with pickets formed at Patricks-run ports around the country. In the international arena the International Transport Federation indicated its support. Members of the MUA and many supporters, particularly in Melbourne and Sydney, formed the pickets. In those cities they effectively closed down Patricks' operations. In Brisbane, police moved the pickets back from the Patricks' gates, a measure demanded by the Port of Brisbane Authority. Thus, the Patricks' terminals kept operating at a reduced level until put on hold by the High Court's decision. Workers around Australia supported the pickets through donations, and with symbolic shows of support. In Brisbane, the MUA effectively abandoned an industrial strategy, with picketing essentially a symbolic, political gesture. More generally, however, steep penalties associated with secondary boycott provisions of the Trade Practices Act caused the union movement and particularly the ACTU leadership to shy clear of mass industrial action.

In Brisbane an action by picketers on Tuesday, 21 April 1998, was not an indication of a broad-based determined campaign to close Patricks. Many workers were frustrated by their inability to shut down Patricks. The mass arrests may have given some credibility and moral high ground for those involved but they did not signal a campaign of mass civil disobedience, nor offer a significant impediment to the operation of the port. At the time of these arrests, scab drivers on scab trucks backed up by security guards, video surveillance and police intervention were driving past the pickets at the other Patricks' facility at Hamilton Wharf in Brisbane. The only impediment to the truckies crossing the picket line was a brief stop to listen to the abuse of the wharfies and their supporters. The charade was even orchestrated by the police allowing the state secretary of the Transport Workers Union, Hughie Williams, to speak with the driver for a few minutes prior to the truck being waved on by the police. The strategy of breaking the law near one of the Patricks' terminals was not part of a wider campaign of confrontation in Queensland.

Industrial action played a minimal role in the campaign following the union lead. As the dispute continued and rank-and-file determination increased, the leadership could have shown flexibility by returning to mass meetings for direction from the rank-and-file. The time was right to go back to the membership and consider a different strategy. The union found new confidence in the success of the pickets, particularly in Melbourne. Despite the threat of punitive government action, the union could have pushed for a better settlement. The lawyers could have been forgotten and the courts placed in a secondary role. The tired policies of the ALP disregarded, a popular industrial campaign could have been used to turn the dispute around. It was a time to shift the issue from crane rates and waterfront reform to confronting a government with its bad laws.

The Union leadership showed no flexibility. It held firm to the course it adopted at the beginning of the campaign and which had been endorsed by its rank-and-file. A strong socialist movement would have been telling at this point in its ability to give workers and unions confidence. Such a movement did not appear, because it is simply non-existent. Though tensions and doubt had grown between the rank-and-file and the leadership, the success of actions taken were sufficient to provide confidence in the union leadership. The workers continued to accept picketing as the secondary role to court action. There was no change from the original strategy.

Was the union movement ready for such a change in strategy and for its consequences? If it was not, and this is likely, why? Was it because the rank-and-file worker still hoped for the benefit of the social contract? Was it because the leadership had contained the movement? Were those who had dissolved the Communist Party contributors to this weakness? Were the lack of unity and ineffectiveness of the remaining socialist forces contributors? The answer lies in all of these.

The leadership of the union certainly showed inflexibility. Australian workers have in recent years lost sight of their collective responsibilities. However, the pertinent question is: who could the rank-and-file have turned to as an alternative leadership without the existence of a coherent and united socialist movement?

As stated earlier, a proposal to confront the secondary boycott legislation was not accepted by the rank-and-file at a Brisbane meeting early in the dispute. No doubt it was put forward in some form or other at other meetings throughout the campaign. The rank-and-file, however, without a clear alternative offered by a coherent socialist movement, was never going to toss aside its leadership or even demand its leadership to follow such a difficult course.

Was an alternative leadership able to step forward as John Coombs had done and state they would be back to accept the consequences of their campaign strategy? Certainly the failure of any new strategy, now that the stakes had been raised so high by Corrigan and the Government was going to have disastrous consequences for ordinary workers. Workers' lives would be shattered like the lives of the SEQEB workers had been in Queensland in 1985 or the lives of many meatworkers since the defeat at Mudginberri. Remember that the MUA dispute was driven by many of the players from those earlier conflicts.

To adopt a strategy put forward by a loose coalition who were not involved in day-to-day union activity within the MUA and represented a weakened political force in society at large has its own problems. Nowhere was this group able to show it had developed political strength through united and effective organisation such that it would inspire the confidence of rank-and-file workers. As such, the criticisms correctly levelled at the current leadership in pamphlets like War on the Waterfront16 while accurate, are simply not telling, as the socialist movement could not really provide an alternative to that leadership. In a sense it was largely a call for the existing union leadership to change its ways. Why should the union leadership have considered these criticisms and ideas ahead of the legal and political advice of Labor Party politicians?

Socialist critics of current union leadership should accept that rank-and-file workers will not stand up and change union leadership when the socialist movement that proposes such changes is weak, divided, and ineffective.

This is not, in our view, an argument in favour of the (reformed) CPA criticism of those who dared to challenge the union leadership. Rather, it is a recognition that part of the problem lies with the socialist movement. If the socialist movement does not put its own house in order to return to past successes achieved by the communists, we will continue to see Tom Bramble's lead in the saddlebags, characterised by a reliance on the courts, a deference to the ALP and unions with top down leadership. It is naivety to think that rank-and-file pressure alone, without a political focus, will turn this around (even if it were allowed to flourish, unchecked by existing union leaderships). Current union leaderships are simply not under pressure from their rank-and-file to change. In fact, rather than strengthening unions, workers are allowing them to decline.

Neither the courts nor industrial action alone should be relied upon to defend workers' rights. It is the workers' political struggle which must lead the way.

Political Campaign

The political campaign conducted by the MUA was unimaginative. It was largely conducted through the media. It pandered to suburban TV audiences; Coombs was painted as a folk hero. Therefore it was inherently conservative, no different from a normal ALP political campaign. But for the union it was not a sausage sizzle, as Coombs said from the outset, this was the 'big one'. The union was drawn in by the lure of the simplistic argument over crane rates. The MUA was drawn away from the real argument. The government reduced the argument to that of individual work performance; i.e. crane rates, downplaying the real attack on workers' collective rights. The failure to recognise the Government's ploy early on in the dispute was one of the problems of the union leadership. The union allowed Patricks and the government to dictate the terms of the political debate, forgoing the opportunity to identify broader issues that could have widened the dispute into a general political campaign.

The actual political campaign centred on the parliamentary processes, the divide between Labor and Liberal. The minor parties and independents receded into the background during the dispute, even though all political parties were strongly lobbied by a delegation of MUA officials and rank-and-file delegates in early March 1998 (when the lockout appeared imminent). Not surprisingly, from the outset, the Labor Party pursued its own interests, that is, election to government, while not facing up to their previous failures while in office. It was opportune to side with the workers because of their mass support, but as the history of the Labor Party shows, it is perfectly capable of turning on workers in different circumstances. The levels of popular support for the wharfies put a bit of backbone into the Labor Party, but the preference for them was to resolve the dispute at a negotiating table.17 They were the 'peace makers'. For them the outcome was secondary. They wanted to be 'statesmen' and win government down the track.

The fortunes of the Labor Party are often tied to defeats in the industrial arena. Historically, the formation of the Labor Party was a direct result of the union defeats in 1890s and consolidated with the massive defeat of the workers in the 1912 Tramways Dispute. The Goss Government in Queensland came to power on the back of the defeat of the SEQEB workers in 1985 and ruled from 1989 to 1996. Within the Labor Party, there is a belief that workers cannot win in the industrial arena, only in the political arena. And the Labor Party believes that it offers the best deal by working out arrangements between labour and capital for the efficient functioning of capitalism.

A defeat in the courts may have brought attention back to the industrial and popular struggle. This would have required the leadership look hard at ways of circumventing the secondary boycott laws and using the most powerful weapon at their disposal, the withdrawing of labour. The flaw in pursuing a narrow political strategy focussing upon mobilising public support for the Labor Party is the same flaw inherent in a legal strategy: such methods put the fate of workers into the hands of people (judges, ALP politicians) whose interests are different to those of workers. Industrial action and broad working class political action have the important advantage of enabling workers to maintain control over their futures, rather than becoming dependent upon the assistance of institutions whose basic function is to protect capitalist enterprises from workers' demands.

A compromise was always the best option for the ALP. Coombs hinted at the strategic use of the strike weapon to determine the outcome early in the dispute. The problem for the leadership was how to use this weapon without it backfiring and bringing down repression through court orders, injunctions, fines and police actions. One possibility was to marry the industrial campaign to a political campaign to circumvent the Trade Practices Act, a political campaign directed against the very laws that prevented the wharfies and other Australian workers from advancing their interests.

Socialist groups were barely in the equation, still recoiling from the dissolution of the Communist Party and unable to break the isolation caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union. They had few members, lacked unity, had little influence and low credibility among both the rank-and-file and the leadership of the MUA dispute. This was a big turnaround in the leadership of the wharfies. In the past, communists have had both influence and credibility in this union. After the dispute was over, the reformed CPA18 and the International Socialist Organisation (ISO) conducted "we were right – you were wrong" in their respective newspapers. Yet, both groups were so marginal to the dispute this went largely unnoticed.

Afterword

A lesson to the 1998 MUA dispute from the 1954 WWF dispute – an industrial and political campaign

The 1954 Dispute.

By contrast, under communist leadership, the recruitment dispute of November 1954 was the most decisive industrial action ever taken by the WWF.19 The national strike ran from 2nd – 15th November and involved 27,000 wharfies in 60 ports, including members of the AWU. The Menzies government through its Minister for Labour and National Service, Harold Holt, wished to recruit non-union labour because of "slow turnaround times and slow loading rates". The Federation asserted that there was a conspiracy between the government and the Australian and overseas shipowners. The WWF obtained the support of the leader of the ALP, Dr Evatt, and the ACTU. On the 4th November 1954, the entire Australian waterfront was idle and Menzies made an address to the nation:

"The laws are to be made, not by your elected representatives, but by the Communist-led Waterside Workers Federation. This is more than a challenge to employers. This is a challenge to Parliament and the whole conception of parliamentary democracy – a precious thing which does not exist in Moscow but is passionately believed in here."

No bluff about crane rates here. Menzies attacked the leadership head on. The WWF was not cowed by the rhetoric. They put their faith in the workers' ability to win the strike. The union was well prepared for the strike. The union branches around the country set up committees with responsibility for picketing, publicity, relief and entertainment (to ease hardship and to foster camaraderie). Solidarity flourished as rank-and-file members and their supporters were drawn into these activities. Speakers went to factories to put the union's side of the issue, thousands of leaflets were distributed, and donations and support flowed from other unions.

When Holt called a conference of shipowners, the ACTU and WWF in February 1955 to draw up a new agreement on recruiting, it was an admission of defeat. The wharves would be unworkable unless the WWF maintained the right to recruit labour. The WWF Film Unit named its documentary on the strike, November Victory. Under the headline, 'Costly Defeat on the Waterfront' the Sydney Morning Herald chided Holt for mishandling the dispute. The paper printed the following indictment –

"For the time being the Government has no option but to retreat, but nothing can conceal the humiliating terms of the surrender. The Government's handling of this matter must count as one of the worst blunders of the Menzies Government."

This failure did not prevent Holt from becoming Prime Minister and taking Australia all the way with LBJ into Vietnam, using conscription.20

The 1998 Dispute.

The MUA has succeeded in holding on against the aims of the government to get rid of the union, at least till the time of writing this book. However its legal strategy was at best brinkmanship and never guaranteed success. The union won the legal battle because of the power of the demonstrations in favour of the MUA in Sydney and Melbourne and the quality of the intelligence that was fed to it. Nevertheless, the conservative nature of the judges, the financial cost, and the ultimate wearing down of the rank-and-file support made a legal strategy high risk.

Political and industrial strategies waged alongside each other may have produced a more favourable result as in the 1954 recruitment dispute. For legal strategies to continue to be given the primary focus by the industrial and political support groups increases the risk that disputes may either be lost completely or be won at a price too high to pay. We may well ask if the waterfront redundancies were too high a price.

Nevertheless, running an industrial/political strategy at the forefront has its own dangers. The trade union movement's struggles against the Penal Powers provisions of industrial legislation in the 1950s and 1960s showed the financial cost against the unions could be enormous. Union officials involved will be held in contempt of court and the financial penalties awarded against them as individuals could be considerable.

Finally, those people who were filmed by Patricks and police while picketing the wharves in the 1998 dispute could have had fines brought against them under Reith's industrial relations legislation in the same way members of the Transport Workers Union have faced such charges in their own industrial campaigns.21

The agreement between Capital and Labour can never be just. The only social force possessed by the workers is numerical strength. This force, however, is impaired by the absence of unity. The lack of unity among workers is caused by the inevitable competition among ourselves, and is maintained by it. Trade unions were established to bring unity to labour, or at least to improve it. Unions are our day to day defence against Capital. And it is for this reason we must defend our unions.

It is important to defend our unions but it is not enough to merely shut out criticism. Constructive effort must be made to strengthen all levels of union organisation starting with worker solidarity.

Our criticism does not target any one group within unions to blame for their decline. We hope what will happen is that we will see an end to bureaucratic style unionism and a return to shop floor unionism and the growth of workers' political organisations.

• 1The Dubai Debacle from The War on the Waterfront published by the MUA on its website at http://www.mua.org.au/war/dubai.html
• 2Under the Hook: Melbourne Waterside Workers Remember, 1990-1998 (with Tom Hills) 1982, updated 1998. Page 224 (price $30 Book Workers Press post cheque to PO Box 1033, Hawksburn 3142).
• 3The Defectors from War on the Waterfront published by the MUA at http://www.mua.org.au/war/defectors.html[/url]

  He told them this was the hardest dispute in his memory and in the memory of the old timers who were around for the 1954 and 1956 disputes. "This is the big one," he said. He warned of the weaknesses that could destroy the union. He said that there are different kinds of scab but the worst kind was the one sitting in that very room with his mates. He said:

  "I can understand the scab who I met yesterday who said that he was just out of prison and had no prospect of a job and had a wife and kids to support, they are still fucking scum, but they aren't nearly as bad as the scab that is in this room today."Some of Coombs intelligence came from scabs employed by the NFF

• 4
  This tactic was learnt by employers from two disputes:
  Nestles. John Button in the Hawke Labor government previously advocated the sacking of the entire unionised workforce at Nestles.
  Cobar. With the support of the Howard government, a multinational mining company locked out all of the unionists at the Cobar mines.
• 5See War on the Waterfront by Tom Bramble, Brisbane Defend Our Unions Committee, 1998, Chapter 3 Lead in the Saddlebags for an extensive analysis of this situation. For copy contact the author by phone (07) 3365 6233 or by email (t.bramble[at]business.uq.edu.au)
• 6Under the Hook
• 7FairWear is a campaign exposing companies who disregard the rights of their workers and outworkers and to demand that companies treat their workers ethically.
• 8Ibid Under the Hook
• 9See Under the Hook by Wendy Lowenstein and Tom Hills at page 224, where Greg Combet expressed his confidence that court action got the conspirators ‘on the defensive.’
• 10‘Sweet Justice’ in War on the Waterfront at http://www.mua.org.au/war/Judgement.html
• 11One interesting sidelight is that Howard, Reith & Co (‘the Australian government’) were represented by a Melbourne barrister by the name of Tony Pagone. He made the case for the Commissioner of Taxation against the elaborate tax avoidance schemes in Spotless. It was this kind of advocate needed to defend such a conspiracy. See North J’s judgement:

  “This (the sacking of the entire Patricks workforce) was the result of the effects of a complex transaction (by Patricks) which occurred in September 1997. As a result of the transaction, the administrators had a workforce but no work. The applicants (the MUA) only learned of this transaction on 8 April 1998.”

• 12Allegations that the Qld ALP used the sacked workers’ strike fund in a subsequent Federal election campaign have never been adequately refuted.
• 13A deed of arrangement is a contract between all the parties so that the companies can trade out of financial difficulties. This is the end result that Corrigan left when he set up the deal with the government to sack the wharfies.
• 14A Pilot’s Perspective of the Australian Pilots’ Dispute of 1989 by Alex Paterson @ http://www.vision.net.au/~apaterson/aviation/pd89_introduction.htm.
• 15From MUA Here to Stay! – a Democratic Socialist Party pamphlet, at p.17.
• 16Written by Tom Bramble and published by the Trade Union Support Group after the 1998 MUA Dispute
• 17There is speculation that there were mediators between Coombs and Corrigan at the end of the dispute. It is likely that one of them was a prominent ALP figure like Hawke.
• 18The Communist Party of Australia liquidated itself in the early 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union. This made the name available to the group (the Socialist Party of Australia) that had split from the CPA in 1971. The word reformed does not suggest a political reformation merely the taking of the name by the Socialist Party of Australia.
• 19The Waterside Workers Federation (WWF), together with the Seamen’s Union of Australia, is the precursor to the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA).
• 20Beasley, Margo Wharfies – The History of the Waterside Workers Federation Halstead Press, Sydney: 1996, pp.168-175
• 21S45D & E of the Trade Practices Act (the secondary boycott legislation) has been used against the Transport Workers Union and two rank-and-file members of the same union have faced Federal Court action under the Workplace Relations Act. (B. Dowling in Big Rigs published by Queensland Times on 1 May 1998)

What We Face — Threats to Union Solidarity

Since the end of the Second World War Australian Governments have placed restrictions on the right to strike and have attempted to defeat worker solidarity. After the war, left-led unions prepared to fight for collective bargaining in preference to arbitration and conciliation courts. The weapon they used was collective action which is the direct confrontation with employers by workers and their union representatives — never to be confused with the tactics used in enterprise bargaining.

The main threats attacking union solidarity that have been introduced by Australian parliaments are:
[list=1]

• 1The Law Relating to Industrial Action prepared by the Faculty of Law at Monash University for the Royal Commission into the Building and Construction Industry (2002) at page 55.
• 2For example s45D & E of the Trade Practices Act (the secondary boycott legislation) was used against the Transport Workers Union and at the same time two rank-and-file members of the same union were facing Federal Court action under the Workplace Relations Act. (B. Dowling in Big Rigs published by Queensland Times on May 1 1998)
• 3AMIEU v Mudginberri Station Pty Ltd (1987) 74 ALR 7.
• 4Building Workers’ Industrial Union of Australia v Odco Pty Ltd (1991) 29 FCR 104.
• 5Australian Competition and Consumer Commission website @ http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/87244/fromItemId/378006.
• 6The Law Relating to Industrial Action prepared by the Faculty of Law at Monash University for the Royal Commission into the Building and Construction Industry (2002) at page 31.
• 7For the bosses account of the strategy used against the meatworkers in South Australia see The Industrial Significance of the Live Sheep Export Dispute by David Trebeck published by the HR Nicholls Society.[/url]

  Meatworkers defied the injunction and continued to picket. Elders tried to move the sheep but were unsuccessful.

  Farmers did not rely solely on the court to defeat the meatworkers. The exporters moved ships to another port where there were no pickets and farmers loaded the sheep onto the ships themselves.

  Meanwhile in Queensland the state government placed 600 police on Brisbane's Hamilton wharf to remove meatworkers and their supporters picketing against live export of cattle. Under orders from the then Premier of Queensland, Bjelke-Petersen, police aided by the special branch arrested 45 picketing meatworkers while truckloads of cattle were driven onto the wharves.From recorded report by Howard Sacre Channel 0 Eyewitness News, October 1977.

• 8For a workers account of the live export dispute: “Norm Hughes was Bothwicks shed president (Bothwicks is a meatworks at Murarrie in Brisbane). He was the state treasurer of the meatworkers union i.e. on the executive. Norm was a boner on the job too. Norm understood workers and knew how to iron out anomalies. This rare ability came out of Norm’s long meat industry experience. Even the bosses knew it! Commissioner Gough (from the Arbitration Commission) knew it! In fact it was Gough who advised the bosses whenever they had bottle neck to bring in Comrade Hughes at the bosses’ expense to try to resolve the problems.” — taken from notes by comrade Jim Sharp, retired rank-and-file meatworker and unionist, Brisbane, 2007.
• 9Thanks to Jim Sharp, a retired rank-and-file member of the AMIEU, for the Vanguard article reproduced here.
• 10Labour Law – an introduction by Creighton and Stewart Federation Press 2000 3rd Edition at p422 in [13.100]
• 11Ibid Labour Law
• 12Ibid The Law Relating to Industrial Action at page 16.
• 13Treasurer Peter Costello: Government amendments to the Trade Practices Act 1974 from National Institute of Accountants Technical Advantage Magazine 16 March 2007
• 14Electrolux Home Products Pty Ltd v Australian Workers’ Union [2004] HCA 40 2 September 2004
• 15These are fees paid to unions (n this case) for negotiating an enterprise agreement. It was proposed by Mighell that non-union members should paid these fees before getting the benefit of such union negotiations.
• 16Union loses fight to charge non-union workers Sydney Morning Herald September 2, 2004
• 17The WorkChoices legislation was announced by the Australian Government in October 2005 and enacted in March 2006. This summary of the WorkChoices legislation is taken from Awards, Minimum Standards and bargaining after WorkChoices – a presentation given by Margaret Lee at the Workers or Slaves: Strategies of Resistance against Work Choices at a Brisbane Labour History (BLHA) Conference on 25 February 2006.
• 18After her presentation at the above BLHA conference given by Margaret Lee provided the following notes: ‘Under the earlier Workplace Relations Act 1996 there was provision, in theory at least, that unions could always bargain upwards from the wages and conditions set by existing awards which are now regarded as a safety net. Interestingly there was never any test case in the AIRC that defined exactly how the NDT was to be applied. Was no worker to be worse off or were the conditions for workers across the board not to be undercut. In practice there were trade-offs where some conditions were improved at the expense of others despite the power of the AIRC to refuse to certify an EBA where workers would be disadvantaged by the loss of those conditions traded off. During the nine years of its operation under the WRA 1996 AIRC took a conservative stance preferring to stay on side with government and employer than to support the rights of workers.’
• 19The advantages and disadvantages of each strategy are analysed in Chapter 5 “Courses of Action”.
• 20POISONOUS CAPITAL—the ‘boon’ of the Eight-hour day: 150 years on — a presentation at AHIMSA house in Brisbane on 3 March 2006
• 21Destruction of labour rights Changes to industrial action and right of entry laws Terri Butler BLHA Conference, 25 February 2006
• 22BushTelegraph @ http://bushtelegraph.wordpress.com/2006/10/28/not-guilty.
• 23From Building industry taskforce’s publication on Secondary Boycotts in The Building And Construction Industry
• 24Ibid
• 25Affray is a charge where there is unlawful fighting or unlawful violence used by one or more person against another, or there was an unlawful display of force by one or more person without actual violence.
• 26QLD CFMEU State secretary (Mining division), Andrew Vickers at the Brisbane Labour History Association conference 12 March 2005.
• 27Understanding Australian Industrial Relations by Robyn Alexander and John Lewer, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Sydney, 2nd edition 1992
• 28Victorian AMWU stewards unanimously back leaders at http://www.greenleft.org.au/2002/506/27611 (URL checked 31 December 2006) and What is Workers First? here (URL Checked 31 December 2006)

Unions

ACTU — Australian Council of Trade Unions
AMIEU — Australasian Meatworkers Union
AMWU — Australian Manufacturing Workers Union
ASU — Australian Services Union
AWU — Australian Workers Union
BLF — Builders Labourers Federation
BWIU — Building Workers Industrial Union
CEPU — Communications Electrical and Plumbers Union
CFMEU — Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union
CPSU — Community and Public Sector Union
ETU — Electrical Trades Union
LHMWU — Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union
MEAA — Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance
MUA — Maritime Union of Australia
NTEU — National Tertiary Education Union
NUW — National Union of Workers
QCU — Queensland Council of Unions
QPSU — Queensland Public Sector Union
SUA —Seamen's Union of Australia
TCFU — Textile Clothing and Footwear Union
TLC — Trades and Labor Council
TWU — Transport Workers Union
VTHC — Victorian Trades Hall Council
WWF — Waterside Workers Federation

Political Organisations

ALP — Australian Labor Party
CPA— Communist Party of Australia
DLP — Democratic Labor Party (distinguished from the ALP by the greater influence of Catholic Church)
ISO — International Socialist Organisation
Labor — Australian Labor Party (The ALP took the "u"™ out of "labour")
SA — Socialist Alliance
WPO — workers' political organisation

Government Agencies

ACCC — Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
AIRC — Australian Industrial Relations Commission
ASIO — Australian Security Intelligence Organisation
CES — Commonwealth Employment Service
DEWR — Commonwealth Department of Employment and Workplace Relations

Other Organisations

BLHA — Brisbane Labour History Association
3CR — Community Radio Station in Melbourne
Workers First — A militant section of the AMWU in the 1990s and early 2000s

Other Terms

AWA — Australian Workplace Agreement
BCII — Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act
CA — Certified Agreement
EBA — Enterprise Bargaining Agreement
NDT — No Disadvantage Test
TPA — Trades Practices Act 1974
WorkChoices — Australian Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Act 2005.
WRA — Australian Workplace Relations Act 1996