[PEN-L:2346] Re: Australian trade unions

[bill mitchell <ECWFM@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Peter wrote (with deletions):

>Whilst I am aware that most people on  PEN-L do not share Bill Mitchell's
>virulently anti-union views

hardly anti-union - just anti some of what gets called the union movement
these days.

>
>How the
>labour movement can both promote long term radical social change and
>simultaneously service the demands of members for better living standards
>right now within a capitalist system is also an interminably vexed
>question.

yes it is and it has been the substance of my posts on the topic. i note that
only one person (paul phillips) has actually tried to address these issues.
others have been content to recite a mantra or two, call me some names, and
then leave their shibboleths intact.

However, I consider Bill to have engaged in levels of
>misinformation with respect to Oz unions which are malicious or ignorant or
>both.  I will cite two examples:
>
call me names and then leave their shibboleths intact.

hardly malicious (having evil intent to cause damage) and, well,
the more i learn the more ignorant i realise i am. so fine by me.

1) peter then went onto to discuss fine detail about the history of the BLF and
their deregistration, all of it accurate (except he left out the myall lakes
campaign which was the best green work the nsw branch of the union did).

i don't see how any of the detail in the slightest way addresses the issues
that i had been raising. on the detail, it still remains that the ACTU was
prepared to jettison a major union to fulfill political goals - it was prepared
to abandon a large number of labourers whose boss was imprisoned for
corruption.

2) peter also went into some detail about about union membership in OZ.

i had said:

>>in the last 12 months australian unions
>>have lost 5 per cent of their membership. the once highly unionised labour
>>market is now around 25 per cent unionised.
>>....this is not b/c the capitalists have been successful,
>>it is b/c the union movement has lost touch with the issues. the active
>>youth are heading into green groups. they don't care
>>about 2 per cent wage rises. more than 35 per cent of them haven't a job.
>>they care about the planet. "

peter replied:

>my ABS stats with me) that relates to the private sector and ignores the
>much higher rate of unionism in the public sector (around 60-70%) which
>pushes the 25% up several percentage points.
>
>
The figures are as follows. From June 94 to june 95, the numbers of trade union
members declined by 133,000 or 5 per cent. both male and female membership
fell.  There are now 13 per cent fewer women members now than at the mid 1001
peak, and there has been a 25 per cent decline from a mid 1990 high among men.

Trade union m'ship fell by 626,300 in the four years since reaching its peak of
3,382,600 in mid 1991.

in the early 1970s, trade unions covered around 50 per cent of the LF.
in mid 1991, trade unions covered 40.5 per cent
and in mid 1995, the figure was 30.5 per cent.


peter:
>
>It is simply not true that young people or any other group of society are
>heading into green groups in a big way.  The Wilderness Society here (the
>organisation most involved in forestry campaigns) lost over two thirds of
>its membership between 1990 and 1993.
(It has since recovered some.)
>Greenpeace Australia and the Australian Conservation Foundation also
>retrenched large numbers of staff due to falling membership and donations.

note i said the *active* youth. national surveys indicate that the youth cite
the environment as the most important concern they have. the fact that
donations are falling is not in the slightest evidence of peter's assertion.
the youth are now among the poor of australia, unless they are still supported
by parents. the unemployment rate is very high.

and moreover, the activism is not being channelled through these corporatist
type groups who think being green is getting your sticker on a box of soap
powder telling people to support this capitalist multinational over another.
the green activists have abandoned these groups that is true in search of their
own solutions. there is now a burgeoning black (green) economy which bypasses
conventional markets. the link to mainstream society is that many of the
participants receive unemployment benefits.

and a large proportion of the trouble in the green organisations is due to its
corporatist nature. the leaders seem to gravitate to wearing swish suits and
hanging around canberra (national capital and seat of federal parliament and
bureaucrasy), eating lunches in expensive restaurants and doing deals with all
sorts of shonks. there is a crisis of confidence in the way the green movement
is being led rather than a lack of identification with the issues.



Peter continued:

>
>Interestingly, the leader of the conservative party here (called the
>Liberal Party for arcane historical reasons)  chose this week to make
>industrial relations and the role of unions the main point of contest with
>the Labor Party government for the forthcoming national election (due by
>May this year). Not green issues, not interest rates, not taxes, not social
>wage expenditure.  The right of unions to organise, the right to
>collectively bargain and the right for workers to have protection in the
>form of minimum wages and conditions are emerging as big election issues.
>
>In this context it would be nice if "progressive economists" such as Bill
>Mitchell were not in the same camp as the legion of right wing economic and
>IR journalists such as Paddy McGuinness, Judith Sloan and David Clark who
>both trumpet and demand the demise of trade unions.
>
more personal abuse.

the major issue is not on unions as peter asserts. the libs have declared a
policy rather similar to the labour party (with some differences and far more
moderate than they tried to go to the last election with), as a tactic to stop
the labour party pretending that they are the souls of the working class.  the
issues will be youth unemployment, high interest rates and family values.

not green issues - no way, neither of the mainstream parties care about these
issues and see them only in political terms.

the right wing journos who i am "camping" with according to peter, have almost
nothing on common with me. they want to destroy unions b/c they see virtue in
unfettered market capitalism and want to eliminate constraints on capitalists
in their dealings with labour. they want minimum conditions of employment,
mostly in the safety area. they do not want any government intervention except
in the law and order area.

if peter reads my postings as indicating my desire for any of the above then i
cannot help that.

the facts are as follows:

1) i started talking about unions in the context of the french struggles. i
declared support for the unions as a means to further ruin the middle class
complacency but raised serious questions about the motivations of the
unionists. events have borne out my interpretation. the reforms with very few
concessions (mostly to train drivers) have gone through leaving students, the
unemployed and low wage workers worse off. the train drivers still retire on
relatively attractive pensions at age 50 and do not march in the streets when
the french drop bombs in my region.

2) trade union membership is falling right around the world. why? i think it is
due to the way the unions are run and the policies they have pursued.

3) since the labour party have been in federal parliament, and the unions (via
the ACTU) have been co-operating via the ACCORD, workers conditions have been
substantially reduced. there has been a consistent decline in the real wage (up
to a 13 per cent shift in aggregate factor shares) since 1983. while
unemployment fell for a time in the mid 1980s, it is now at 8.1 per cent and
has been persistently high for many years.

what logic is there in joining an organisation that does deals with the govt
which have systematically cut their real wages?

4) it gets worse. since 1988, the ACTU has allowed the Govt and the Arbitration
Commission to introduce enterprise bargaining as a means of increasing
(neoclassical) efficiency and placing us better in the global competitive
economy. these are not my words but i got them from a paper issued by the ACTU.
it talks about efficiency, competition and labour market flexibility.

how they think that OZ can compete with the low wage asian economies at our
present wage rates, given our productivity growth is so low is beyond me. but
that is the rhetoric.

what has happened is that the govt has introduced new legislation which does
threaten the unions. the recent dispute at Weipa with CRA shows just how far
the ACTU underestimated the legislation and how exposed they have allowed
workers to become.

the liberals who peter mentioned above are now going to be able to worsen the
situation b/c the labour party have already softened the workers up. similar to
NZ btw.

5) the ACTU supports a govt who has abandoned the aim of achieving socialism
from its political platform. the labour party was the political arm of the
trade union movement. it gets large funding support from the unions. it should
reflect the attitudes of the unions. but the ACTU has allowed the aim of
socialism to be deleted.

6) the ACTU supports a govt which has abandoned the East Timorese and which has
just signed a deal with the Indonesian govt for closer military ties. sickening
in the extreme and the union movement should be ashamed for saying virtually
nothing about this.


how does an organisation like this get us to a green socialist world? that is
the question i have been trying to get dialogue about.

i also should note that in a political sense i would not be scathing about the
unions in public. i do work for the unions (they pay lousy rates btw and expect
the world!), and generally in public speaking support them. but on pen-l, for
example, i think we can talk more directly and share our ideas. i also think it
is a place where the left can work out their line on things and should not be
contaminated by politics. one way to do this is to push a position and see what
the rebound is like.

it is a way of proceeding.

kind regards
bill

--

         ####    ##        William F. Mitchell
       #######   ####      Head of Economics Department
     #################     University of Newcastle
   ####################    New South Wales, Australia
   ###################*    E-mail: ecwfm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
   ###################     Phone: +61 49 215065
    #####      ## ###             +61 49 215027
                           Fax:   +61 49 216919
                  ##
WWW Home Page: http://econ-www.newcastle.edu.au/~bill/billyhp.html