11.
A union revival
No matter how bleak things seemed around 1978, there were grounds for hope if you knew where to look. The sharp union defeats of the early Fraser years, especially Medibank and the Latrobe Valley strike, had sent industrial militancy into a sharp decline which at the time seemed far-reaching, even irreversible. Yet in reality organised labour’s basic strength remained intact. Amidst high unemployment workers might not be confident about claiming wage rises, but the unions had deep roots and were hard to dislodge from key positions. This was demonstrated in 1977 and 1978 when five individual right wingers tried to break open several closed union shops, typically claiming some issue of conscience. In reality their objective was to weaken the unions. While some saw their efforts as a Liberal conspiracy, Alec Kahn’s assessment was more plausible:
It is hardly likely that the Liberals would have picked stooges as easily discredited as Krutulis (a member of the nutty, extreme right-wing Workers Party), Latham (hated by his workmates), or Kane (twice saved by his union when sacked for drunkenness). A far more likely explanation is that the atmosphere the Liberals had created … simply encouraged these glory-seekers to come out one by one.
The first battle was brief. When swimming instructor Kerry Ferguson refused to join the Municipal Employees Union at Holroyd Council in Sydney, 160 MEU members refused to work with her; after a ten day strike the council stood her down until she successfully applied for conscientious objector status. The union then accepted her employment but Ferguson resigned, claiming harassment.
The next conflict, at Broken Hill, was much more protracted. After Noel Latham reported a subordinate for refusing to clean a bulldozer’s radiator (the man claimed it wasn’t his job) the unions’ Barrier Industrial Council fined him $50 for “dobbing”. Latham declined to pay, so the AMWU refused to renew his membership and council employees refused to work with him. Litigation produced a compromise settlement, but when Latham returned to work in September 1977, 90 council workers walked off the job. In the face of such resistance, no court could reinstate him. When Latham had earlier asked the NSW Industrial Commission whether any “lawful document” legitimised such union power, Justice Cahill replied: “That is a rhetorical question. What I have been pointing out is what happens in Broken Hill.” Claude Forell found Latham had little support from local people, who detested him “as a scab and a stirrer.”
Latham’s frustrations were shared by several would-be heroes in Victoria. In 1977 Paul Krutulis gained an exemption from union membership from the Arbitration Commission as a conscientious objector, only to find that tramway workers at Kew planned to stop work as soon as he appeared. Commissioner Cohen then recommended his dismissal, saying she “had to deal with the reality of the situation.” Krutulis later became president of a group called People Against Communism, before being murdered in September. Thus Krutulis departed the scene to be followed in early 1978 by motor mechanic Jack Kane, who had crossed a picket line at a Melbourne City Council depot. The AMWU forced the Council to sack him before it would end the strike.
In September of the same year, Barbara Biggs succeeded in provoking a confrontation in the tramways where Krutulis had failed, by refusing to join the union and prompting 100 unionists at Brunswick depot to go on strike. The union executive had arranged token action confined to this depot, but the members wanted more. The strike spread to Preston, then 2,000 trammies at a mass meeting voted for an indefinite strike amidst “rowdy outbursts”. When Biggs complained at being excluded from the meeting a conductress told her, “We should have let you in, love. You would have been torn to pieces.”
A range of anti-union forces now raised their heads. The Age ran a letter headed “Boorish Hullaboloo of Yelping Pack of Union Yahoos”, while the Industrial Relations Bureau threatened to intervene and Industrial Relations minister Tony Street made ritual accusations of union “blackmail”. As late as 6 September The Age argued that the union faced “an almost unwinnable contest” but on the same day, the Access Age short letters’ column showed the tide was turning: seven out of eight letters were hostile to Biggs. As the industrial defiance spread, union arguments were gaining ground. It emerged that Biggs had been a member of the Liquor Trades Union, which exploded her claims to be a conscientious objector, and some past legal offences came to light, shattering her pose of high moral principle. Five restaurants refused to serve her, while passers-by abused her in the street. Biggs finally settled for a clerical job in the Transport ministry, and the trammies had again saved their closed shop.
The Industrial Relations Bureau eventually prosecuted the AMWU over the Frank Kane affair, but faced with a firm ACTU stand it proved ineffectual. Although Noel Latham later won some damages in court, this had little industrial impact. Perhaps the greatest losers were the People Against Communism, whose short involvement with Paul Krutulis was followed by a flirtation with Barbara Biggs; the group had looked silly enough before these catastrophic liaisons.
The tide turns: from Sydney to Paraburdoo
Getting rid of scabs was essentially a defensive exercise, but in 1978 the unions came closer to taking the offensive in telecommunications, where Telecom had announced a $2000 million plan to computerise its exchange system. The technicians’ union ATEA said the new system eliminated the need for a maintenance crew at each exchange, as up to 14 of them would be serviced by regional Exchange Maintenance Centres (EMCs). The resulting redeployments would impair promotion opportunities, so in early August 1978 the ATEA banned repairs and maintenance, its main target being Telecom’s revenue recording devices which had recently been centralised and were particularly vulnerable.
The ATEA’s peculiar strengths help explain why it could take the lead for the unions as early as 1978. As a public sector union it was not directly affected by unemployment. New federal and State leaderships had been elected in the mid-seventies, and the new leaders in Victoria had fought a victorious struggle over work organisation at that time, boosting their members’ confidence. The union’s ability to target sensitive telecommunications facilities meant it could directly threaten business profits and even the functioning of the stock exchange. In addition the ATEA was fighting over the consequences of technological change, at a time when much of the public was worried about them. Thus the Telecom workers had a considerable reservoir of public sympathy.
In mid-August management started standing down technicians, but to little effect. The union bans, by contrast, proved very effective. By 21 August, telecommunications in NSW and Western Australia were near collapse, and Telecom was losing $1 million a day in revenue; a few days later the breakdowns had spread to Victoria and South Australia, placing Malcolm Fraser under increasing pressure to act. But what was he to do? Union-bashing rhetoric found little resonance amongst a public enjoying free STD calls. When Communications minister Tony Staley warned that the dispute could endanger planned cuts in STD charges, the threat was hollow, for the cuts were necessary to get the public phoning off-peak. When Fraser had the army set up special equipment at his Nareen property so he wouldn’t be cut off from Canberra, he looked all the weaker. Union solidarity was growing, with telegraphists at the Sydney GPO stopping work, and Adelaide telephonists threatening to walk out if asked to do technicians’ jobs.
Finally the Arbitration Commission sealed a partial union victory. Bob Hawke got an agreement that Telecom could negotiate independently of Canberra, and management promptly softened its stand. It accepted a union plan to create Exchange Support Centres alongside the EMCs and made concessions regarding job satisfaction, career opportunities and classifications. A final sticking point was back pay for 4000 ATEA members stood down. The union doggedly demanded this concession, which was political dynamite because it would destroy stand-downs as an effective management tactic. Finally Justice Gaudron found a loophole: 70 percent of those laid off had not refused to do their own jobs, only to scab on their mates. These got back pay.
The union also won a measure of control over new technology. ATEA officials were premature in boasting that “the technology will be settled on our basis, not theirs,” for the trialing was to yield further disputes, but they had a right to feel pleased.
A year later the ATEA won a second round, this time over pay. The union wanted a $20 per week rise, and the government resisted, responding to union bans by proclaiming the Commonwealth Employees (Employment Provisions) Act (CEEP). This gave Telecom the power to suspend or sack employees engaged in industrial action, as well as providing Bob Hawke an opportunity to enter the dispute and broker a settlement through a work value inquiry. A sizeable minority of the membership voted against the settlement, with Queensland branch secretary Alan Muir arguing that the claim could have been won through direct action, as members were militant and confident “right up to the end of the dispute.” Even so, the union did relatively well out of its work value case, while Fraser’s impotence was again exposed. Proclaiming CEEP had achieved nothing. The government had chosen not to use the previous year’s stand-down tactics, and now it avoided using the more drastic provisions of CEEP. A mere seven hours after the Act’s proclamation, a Full Bench had agreed to the work value inquiry, effectively warning Fraser to back off. The unions took this as a clear signal that the tide was turning in their favour.
Union power was increasing because the economy had started to revive. In fact from about 1979 onwards Malcolm Fraser was suggesting that prosperity was just around the corner, on the grounds that an international oil crisis was forcing up energy prices and signalling a “resources boom”. Phil Lynch’s Department of Industry and Commerce reported that planned investment in mining and manufacturing into the 1980s exceeded $22.6 billion. While the resources boom turned out to be overrated and short-lived (only $6.5 billion of that total was “firm”) and even at its height left unemployment at 5.6 percent, it did tighten the market for skilled labour, which enhanced union bargaining strength. Employers were tempted to concede union claims on the basis that they would make up the cost through increased profits later on.
Logically this equation first made itself felt in the mining industry. At Utah Development Company’s four open cut coal mines in central Queensland, 1750 members of the Combined Mining Unions (CMU) imposed overtime bans in February 1979, followed by guerilla stoppages in March. Next came a six-week strike -- and the company began offering money, first $17, then $30. But the unions flatly refused the attached conditions, particularly company demands that everyone work “continuous rosters”, a series of seven-day shifts. They would not make this sacrifice for any amount of money. They ran their strike well, meeting weekly to pass stern, unanimous motions against continuous rosters, while the CMU liaison committee toured NSW mining towns to raise funds and secure moral support. This was an impressive effort, given that few of the open cut miners had previous union experience.
Malcolm Fraser kept a low profile, though Joh Bjelke-Petersen made dark references to Communist involvement. Bob Hawke eventually sought to play his famous mediator’s role, but cautiously, for the miners weren’t likely to swallow an unsatisfactory settlement. Finally in July the company conceded $35 plus productivity and Christmas bonuses along with various fringe benefits, abandoning its call for continuous rosters. The productivity trade-offs, which appeared superficially to be a gain for the company, were seen by many informed observers as bogus, a mere device to get around the indexation guidelines.
The Utah dispute intersected with a curious battle over taxes. Threats to apply fringe benefits tax to miners’ rent subsidies led to a six-day strike by all coal miners in Queensland during 1979. On a visit to Blackwater, Fraser assured the mining communities they could “sleep tight at night” without worrying about the issue but he later backtracked, so that in 1980 the strike resumed. During a visit Doug Anthony and John Howard were bombarded with eggs, and one demonstrator got Howard in a headlock.
The miners invited their wives to attend meetings and vote on some issues, so the women strongly backed the strikers. Not one, wrote a journalist, was “sour, sad, disappointed, doubtful or weak in attitude or action.” Polls showed almost 60 percent of Australians supported the strike, money poured in, and the strikers got a sympathetic telegram from the Japanese miners’ union TANRO. They stayed out for ten weeks before achieving a compromise settlement.
The Pilbara was another new mining area with highly profitable companies and a raw and rebellious workforce, a region where “yesterday’s disputes are re-fought today with new union convenors and new supervisors. Or companies find themselves stuck with a tough union convenor who cuts a dashing figure among a membership turning over at up to 100 percent a year.” An era of rapid expansion in iron ore mining between 1966 and 1973 had been followed by a phase of consolidation and slower growth. The two phases had also seen the establishment and consolidation of strong combined union committees among the shop stewards at all the iron-ore sites, which were largely independent of the State union leaders 2000 kilometres away in Perth.
By 1979, Hamersley Iron management had decided it was time to break the shop stewards’ power, having become concerned about a looming recession in the Japanese steel industry, which would eventually reduce the demand for iron ore. The workers, on the other hand, seeing a still highly profitable industry while hearing talk of a resources boom, had decided it was time to squeeze the company.
The workforce was dissatisfied with its industrial agreement and impressed with the victory at Utah. They were also angered by two leaked company documents citing plans to cut housing subsidies and contract out cleaning services -- and containing insulting proposals to “encourage local convenors towards activities which will constructively occupy them and channel their efforts away from strike agitation, whilst satisfying their ego.” The company was clearly making plans to smash local union organisation, but events were to show that these plans were premature. Union mass meetings voted by 98 percent for strike action. They also resolved:
We reject the concept of negotiations and the company’s counter claims, and withdraw our labour indefinitely or until such time as the negotiating committee receives a realistic offer from Hamersley Iron.
Apart from a 40 percent wage increase, the union log also contained four “non-negotiable” demands for better conditions. This was a sizeable blue, but it might have remained little known without political intervention by the State government. Two weeks into the strike, several union officials travelled to Karratha to attend a mass meeting. The police had warned that under the WA Police Act, the meeting was illegal, as they had no permission from the Police Commissioner -- a blatant provocation, since the police had refused a union request to telex for this very permission. Laurie Carmichael and another official, Jack Marks, were arrested on their return to Perth, with eight others being arrested later in Karratha.
Unionists throughout the north west promptly walked off the job, the AMWU made plans for a national stoppage, and finally the ACTU called for a “day of national protest” on 21 June. It was the occasion for some aggressive comments from Jack Marks, who said that if the arrested officials were penalised “there will be little moving except the palpitations in the parliamentarians’ hearts.” But rather like the final Medibank strike three years earlier, the national stoppage was a token event. Because the national response was bureaucratically run from the start, and the mood in the working class was more apolitical, it had even less impact. Those arrested were later given trivial fines, quickly paid by an anonymous donor. Still, for Hamersley Iron workers -- suddenly national heroes -- these events meant a morale boost, a flow of donations, and renewed determination.
Immediately afterwards the company offered concessions on the date of commencement and meal breaks, but the workers did not budge. It was all still “non-negotiable”. The strikers’ wives were organising, and they had published a “Message to Women Everywhere” arguing the union case, having learnt a lesson from an earlier strike at Mt Newman:
At that time a few staff members’ wives had started an anti-strike women’s committee to drive a wedge between males and females in the working class … There is no doubt that the activity was detrimental to the struggle at Mt Newman, and the women at the Hamersley sites were not going to let it happen again.
The company had been prepared for a long dispute, but had clearly underestimated its adversaries. With the two sides deadlocked, outside forces came into play. Conservative politicians in Perth and Canberra threatened to shut down the entire iron ore industry; Senior Commissioner Kelly hinted at deregistration; Bob Hawke contacted CRA’s managing director Rod Carnegie; and WA TLC secretary Peter Cook began to play a greater role in the negotiations, which became partly a search for a face-saving formula to get around the unions’ “non-negotiable” stance. On 1 August a deal was struck. It provided substantial pay hikes ($30 to $40) and the unions got their way on most other issues. prompting the AMWU journal to proclaim a “great victory”.
The rank and file were not so sure. While the agreement in principle was ratified at all sites, Paraburdoo and Tom Price greeted the full package with a sizeable “no” vote. It took some frantic activity by the negotiating committee to turn the situation at Tom Price around (at Paraburdoo a second vote was avoided). The mining sites were unhappy that the pay rise didn’t cover their strike losses, and that the agreement allowed house rents to be indexed to CPI; many thought Hawke and Cook had sold them out. So the miners’ strikes were not 100 percent victories, contrary to some union claims, but like the two Telecom disputes they seemed to show that the union movement had turned the corner.
The big wage push
1979 found unionists talking about a “wage push” to make up for the fall in real wages they had suffered in the early Fraser years. For some time employers and politicians had been telling workers that “excessive” wages had caused recession and unemployment, yet the case was far from watertight. For example, a survey by Commonwealth Industrial Gases following a 17.5 percent currency devaluation in 1976 showed Australian wages were below those paid in Canada even before the dollar fell -- and after devaluation, they were well below those paid in Japan.
More immediate and telling comparisons appeared in the press later in the decade. In 1978, when average weekly earnings were just over $11,000 per year, Malcolm Fraser was earning $80,000 and Joh Bjelke-Petersen more than $60,000. In 1980 the National Times announced that “executive pay is skyrocketing”, while the Bulletin declared bluntly that “the bosses have been doing better than the workers in the last five years, with corporate profits growing at a much greater rate than both wages and inflation.” Top executives were reaping the rewards:
The list of perquisites that go with the job of chief executive is growing longer: company-paid superannuation, a prestige car, low-interest loans, company credit cards and a generous entertainment allowance are considered to be the bare essentials.
As economic recovery boosted their bargaining power, trade unionists were less inclined to tolerate these double standards. They thought it was time wages rose. At the same time, ironically, the Fraser government was pushing the other way, by arm-twisting the Arbitration Commission to reduce wage indexation hearings from quarterly to six-monthly intervals. Something had to give, and it did. The indexation barrier sprang a leak.
Workers in factories around the country began securing over-awards directly from their employers. When the AMWU’s Jim Baird said in late 1978 that “we are winning increases of between $5 and $7 in over-award campaigns in thousands of shops,” he might have exaggerated yet the trend was undeniable. In industry-wide bargaining, such informal deals were not yet an option, but in their place a legal loophole appeared: section 7(a) of the indexation principles, which allowed higher pay for a change in work value.
In the Latrobe Valley dispute Commissioner Mansini had interpreted this section very narrowly, but in a 1978 waterfront case Justice Robinson loosened it again by giving every wharfie in Australia an $8.60 pay rise. The decision was based on the “value of the whole industry”. By October 1978, 2000 employees of the NSW Electricity commission had won a $7 rise based on work value, and by early 1979 the rush was on. Two-thirds of transport workers in the airline industry won increases of $8 to $11, which then flowed on to other drivers, who in turn set a benchmark for storemen and some fitters.
Whereas in 1975-78 about 95 percent of all wage movements had come through wage indexation decisions, now the indexation system was suddenly in doubt. No matter how willing Malcolm Fraser might be to fight to the last drop of their blood, the bosses were more inclined to make commercial decisions. Ruling class backing for Fraser had always been fragile; it had largely held together as long as he could win. Now he looked like a loser. An employer representative lamented:
We only have two choices -- give it all round now and carry the extra cost, or fight it all the way and carry the cost of continual industrial disputation. My personal opinion is that we’d be better off giving it now.
Fraser couldn’t count on public support, either. Philip Lynch might claim the community was “sick and tired” of industrial unrest, but it also seemed to be sick and tired of government posturing -- and anyway, large sections of the community were themselves striking for higher pay. In 1979 Jim Baird told the Arbitration Commission that the metal unions planned a 48 hour strike, after 67 mass meetings attended by 35,000 metal workers: “the biggest gathering of workers that I ever recall”. The flow-on logic was irresistible, said another union official. “Our members are not crazy. They saw what happened in relation to the transport workers where they got the $8.” The “magic $8” was rapidly becoming a community standard.
The ACTU Congress opened in September 1979 with much of the union movement charging ahead. Naturally, Bob Hawke wished to appear to be leading the charge, so he warned the government that if it believed in the free market for business, it must expect unions to exploit the market where they could. The Congress announced an 8 percent productivity claim and signalled its rejection of those indexation guidelines which restricted collective bargaining, and there was increasing talk of bargaining outside arbitration. The writing was on the wall for wage indexation. Having eroded its benefits while workers were on the defensive, Fraser had little hope of convincing them to stick by it now. A remarkable wool handlers’ dispute showed this beyond any doubt.
In December 1979 that colourful figure Justice Staples awarded rises of between $12.50 and $15.90 to Storemen and Packers in the wool industry. This was well above the $8 figure, which had by now become a virtual “phantom guideline”. As recently as the previous month, metal workers had received $7.30 to $9.30. But the labour market was still tightening, and Staples did not intend to be an “$8 automaton”. The 1907 Harvester judgement had sought to “ensure the workman food, clothing, frugal comfort, provision for evil days, etc” and Staples’ award placed a wool storeman with a wife and three children just $24.90 above the poverty line. “Are these rates fair, reasonable or extravagant? I leave that to others to judge.”
Staples was on the way to outraging the entire arbitration hierarchy, however what irked them was less his sympathy for workers, which was not consistent by any means, than his exposure of the system’s logic -- or lack of it. With wages being set in response to industrial pressure, the old arbitration formulas were losing credibility:
What shall be the measure? It may not be discovered in the profitability of the enterprise and not in the increased productivity … It may not be an adjustment to the burden of taxation on the wage earner nor reflect any movement in the cost of living … nor may it derive from a comparison with rates paid in other industries … I shall simply select a figure as Tom Collins selected a day from his diary and we shall see what turns up.
The Fraser Government was horrified, as was the National Farmers’ Federation. Together they encouraged the wool brokers to appeal and the Full Bench threw out Staples’ decision, causing a lengthy strike. Ultimately the brokers agreed to pay $10.75 to $12.75. Given most workers were paid at the lower end of the range, this was not dramatically below the original decision. Moreover the deal was only for one year, whereas Staples’ award would have applied for two -- which, amidst the wage spiral of the time, was a big plus for the unions. “We should have given in to the bastards in the first place,” lamented the wool brokers. It was a conclusion numerous employers began to draw as the wage push rolled on.
In some ways this conclusion was premature. There was still substantial unemployment, so that any downturn in the economy could rapidly puncture working class confidence. The level of rank and file job organisation had not revived significantly, so that it would not be hard for the union officials to turn off the tap of industrial struggle when they decided the time was right. Finally, the disputes of 1979-81 were overwhelmingly about bread-and-butter issues. There was little political radicalism, either from the rank and file or from the left union officials. Thus this burst of militancy at the start of the eighties was both limited and fragile, but it was not until the resources boom came to an end that the weaknesses became clear.
Campaigning for shorter hours
As workers gained confidence on the wages front they began thinking about a shorter working week. This was an area of hard-won conquests. In launching a booklet on the 35 hour week, AMWU president Dick Scott reminded his audience of the battle for 40 hours, quoting the 1947 Arbitration judgement:
It has been the historic role of employers to oppose the workers’ claim for increased leisure … The arguments have not changed much in 100 years. Employers have feared such changes a threat to production; a limitation upon industrial expansion; and a threat to internal and international trade relations. And history has invariably proved the forebodings of employers to be unfounded.
Initially the issue was linked to problems of unemployment and technological change. When the Bank Employees announced a campaign for the 30 hour week in 1978, NSW secretary Allan McArdle said: “The Telecom dispute brought our situation to a head … Our first priority in this campaign is to protect those working in the industry. Our second is to create new employment.” The 35 hour week campaign at the Altona Petrochemical Complex in Melbourne showed in practice how shorter hours could create jobs.
The Altona dispute dated from 1974, when two oil refineries had granted a 35 hour week to bring conditions into line with their US parent companies. Despite an “understanding” that the deal would not flow on to other plants, Australian Carbon Black nearby had a 35 hour week by September 1975. The other plants wanted it too, but in the difficult years from 1976 to 1978 they won nothing despite months of bans, partly because management undercut strikes by using staff labour.
Finally in August 1979, with the industrial climate improving for the unions, workers at Union Carbide more or less spontaneously decided to keep staff labour out by occupying their plant. Management were beside themselves. Said electrician Vic Williams: “There was people rushing around sacking us left right and centre. Some people were sacked about ten times.” Australian unions had little tradition of occupying workplaces, yet here 55 men staged a 51 day sit-in. The occupation became a cultural event, when a Sunday barbecue outside the gate was turned into a rally and festival, attracting performers like Frank Traynor’s Jazz Band and Redgum, and a large crowd to buoy union morale.
With the company threatening to use punitive sections of the Arbitration Act, the occupation ended on 16 October after a close vote. Although Vic Williams had argued to continue the struggle because “we were shifting the management and our strength was developing,” union organisers convinced the majority to await an on-site investigation by Justice Coldham.
Coldham’s report in July 1980 resolved little, and the dispute seemed set to bog down in arbitration once again. But two days later, B.F. Goodrich management decided to use staff labour during a 48 hour stoppage, the unionists in the plant went on an indefinite strike -- and a second blue was on at Altona, where every unionist in the complex agreed to a $25 per week levy for the Goodrich workers. The strikers set up tents at the plant entrance, and Goodrich became the next battleground.
The strike lasted eighteen weeks before the issue again came before the Arbitration Commission. This time the Commission was ready to settle the dispute, but it wanted some semblance of productivity offsets for shorter hours, forcing the parties to conjure up a series of trade-offs everyone could live with. Opinions differed on how real the trade-offs were, with many unionists insisting privately that “we didn’t give anything away, not really.” Certainly on the employment front it was a major victory, creating 100 new jobs. Unfortunately, the wider union movement did little to build on this accomplishment.
In fact the wider 35 hour week campaign was plodding along rather slowly. The ACTU, now headed by Cliff Dolan following the launch of Bob Hawke’s parliamentary career, was reluctant to argue an industry-wide case in arbitration, preferring to translate productivity increases into earlier retirement or increased long-service. And notwithstanding the new eagerness amongst the rank and file, the top union body was in no hurry. “The ACTU approach,” wrote Bob Carr, “seems to envisage progress made over 10 years.” In mid-1980, fearing the Arbitration Commission would delay the national wage case, the ACTU executive instructed the metal unions to postpone their campaign, only to find the membership so restive that mass meetings refused to comply.
The Fraser Government tried to stiffen the employers’ backbone with threats to refer sweetheart deals to the Prices Justification Tribunal, or have the Industries’ Assistance Commission review firms’ tariff arrangements. Given the balance of industrial forces, however, this had little impact: almost immediately following the announcements, two tobacco companies announced a shorter working week. The Metal Trades Industry Association was more effective than Canberra. MTIA propaganda attacked union claims that shorter hours would create jobs, countering that they would cost jobs by bankrupting small shops. This counter-offensive made a considerable splash and enabled many employers to hold the line for a while. At the end of 1980 the number of employees working a 40 hour week had fallen only slightly. “At present, we are two immovable objects waiting for a breakthrough,” said Society of Engineers’ secretary, Terry Addison. But with the economy still strengthening, Laurie Carmichael correctly predicted a “crescendo” for 1981.
The government’s last serious attempt at resistance was in late March 1981, following ratification of the Altona deal, when the Financial Review reported that ICI planned to negotiate with the Chemical Workers. In Cabinet Fraser canvassed various punitive options including a special tax rate and a reference to the Industries Assistance Commission; for its part ICI stoutly denied it was negotiating with the union, and suspended $900 million worth of investments because of government threats. ICI Chairman Milton Bridgland was summoned to Canberra where, as Patrick Weller relates, “Fraser, Lynch, Peacock and Kemp held a long and bitter discussion with him. Fraser brought to bear the full weight of his position, his harrowing aggressive style and his argumentative vigour.” Government pressure finally forced the company to agree to a joint press release opposing the 35 hour week.
However the union campaign was becoming unstoppable. On the very day the press release appeared, Fraser met with the ACTU. Employer spokesman George Polites warned Fraser that “while business was still resisting, survival might eventually require it to give in.” In the same month the Full Bench voiced fears that “industrial reality” would ensure a wide flow-on of shorter hours regardless of whether real productivity offsets were achieved, and it was proved right when metal workers at Fox Manufacturing in Sydney gained the 35 hour week for trivial productivity offsets. By June the deal had flowed through to Fox Brisbane. Wives of Brisbane metal workers were circulating a letter backing the campaign.
In May 1981 the MTIA said it was under fire from its members for not negotiating an orderly retreat; by October it had capitulated. Alcoa conceded a 36-hour week, blaming the government for not providing tax relief to help it resist union pressure. By this time the shorter hours struggle had effectively merged with the wage push: increasingly the target was 38 hours, which was won together with a wage rise. In most cases actual hours didn’t decline, instead more hours were simply paid at overtime rates. Finally in 1982 Fraser threw in the towel. In April Cabinet had secretly decided to soften its opposition, then in June it began negotiating a 38 hour week for those of its own employees still working 40.
On paper, all of these deals included productivity offsets. The truth was that many were bogus. An employer survey found only a third of companies which cut hours had actually secured cost offsets, and even those had recouped only 20 percent of the cost. Although employers did benefit through reduced absenteeism and better morale, the campaign had clearly ended in a union victory.
In another sense, however, it was disappointing. Originally the unions had promoted the 35 hour week as a solution to unemployment. “Let’s have shorter hours and more jobs!” wrote Laurie Carmichael, and the Altona petrochemical workers had gone out and done it. By 1981, however, this aspect had been largely obscured, partly due to the merging of the wages and hours issues (if shorter hours meant more overtime, no new jobs would result) and partly reflecting the benefits to employers (if productivity rose, there was less incentive to hire labour). Workers who understood these facts took the job creation aspect less seriously, while a tightening labour market made it seem less urgent.
There was also a political weakness. The issue had been held up as a panacea: shorter hours would create more jobs without seriously challenging the prevailing social order. Yet in reality the government was deliberately using unemployment as part of its anti-inflation strategy, and a strong case could be made that unemployment was an essential part of the capitalist system, providing a “reserve army of labour”. Left union leaders knew this, but generally didn’t dwell on the logical implication -- that a political struggle was needed to make the government and employers create jobs even where it wasn’t profitable.
Thus the shorter hours/more jobs argument was largely ideological window dressing for a campaign whose real objectives were narrower. The new phase of working class confidence should have been an opportunity to reverse the rightward trend that had dominated Australian industry and politics since 1974, but by the early eighties most union leaders were beginning to seek a new accommodation with the bosses, as the 1981 metal trades settlement was to show.
A backlash fails
In these years it seemed like all of industry was in ferment. The scope of the industrial unrest could be gauged from a small item in the Sydney Morning Herald of 10 July 1981, citing strikes affecting milk, eggs, cinemas, hospitals, driving tests, taxation and Telecom clerks, and transport workers.
Sections of the middle classes were sufficiently perturbed at this wave of industrial agitation that for a short time a big anti-union backlash seemed to be on the cards. After a large anti-union demonstration in New Zealand, led by 22-year old sales representative Tania Harris, right wing forces called similar actions in Australia. Many unionists thought the conservative parties or employer groups had a hand in these developments, though there was no hard evidence. Sales manager Leanne Hayward emerged as Sydney’s answer to Tania Harris; in Brisbane it was Housewives’ Association leader Gabby Horan.
Initially the media showed some enthusiasm, especially Rupert Murdoch’s Daily Telegraph, which generated much of the blanket publicity required to get some 30,000 people marching through Sydney. Despite a small counter-demonstration the event was largely peaceful, but in Brisbane counter-demonstrators fought police and numerous arrests ensued. The media tone then shifted perceptibly. Letters to the papers were mixed, with quite a few pro-union correspondents and others worried about deepening social divisions, a point the Australian’s Buzz Kennedy urgently sought to reinforce. While he thought the marchers’ message “needed to be said … I don’t think it should be said again. This way lies danger.” Some other commentators were worried that among the self-styled “We care” marchers in Sydney, “no one seemed to care that a party of Nazi supporters also took part”.
Melbourne’s procession was set for a day later, and already the opposition had grown, with wharfies stopping work for 24 hours while leftists announced a counter-mobilisation. Now the organisers began to back-pedal, spokesperson Nola Baker telling a bemused public that “this is not an anti-strike march. We believe in unions and we believe in the right to strike. What we are hoping is to instil national pride.” These confused signals apparently discouraged a lot of their supporters, especially those from small business who were anti-union. The prospect of street clashes probably kept others away. A relatively small march was harassed by counter-demonstrators, who managed to get a “Hands Off The Unions” banner in front of the procession.
The anti-union push had been beaten back with relative ease by a small minority of militants. This was only possible because the government and employers were well aware of the strong position the mainstream of the union movement was in due to the resources boom, but still the backlash had failed -- and contrary to the usual fears of labour movement bureaucrats, the aggressive response of pro-unionists hadn’t alienated public opinion. The next day’s letters to The Age were generally critical of the right wing, with one correspondent declaring bluntly: “I am tired of people griping about the unions.”
In federal parliament the government failed to extract much mileage from the issue, which was dissipating fast. A final anti-strike mobilisation in Perth attracted less than a thousand people. As they marched, the ACTU executive was formulating its own pointed comment with reference to right wingers’ professed sympathy for Polish Solidarity: “It is hypocrisy to laud Polish workers and support their right to strike, and then criticise Australian workers who strike for legitimate reasons.”
The fact that the anti-strike mobilisation was so easily beaten back indicated that the power of the ideological right was in decline, a situation in which the unions could have taken the offensive politically -- yet the union officials showed no interest in doing so. From these and other experiences, some rank and file militants concluded that it was time to challenge the union leaders.
Rank and file insurgencies
Rank and file discontent was fairly widespread. At the height of wage indexation pay rises had fallen behind inflation, and what rises workers did get seemed to come directly from the Arbitration Commission with little union input. So by 1979, as the Bulletin put it, “many workers, especially those who wrested heavy increases from employers during the wages boom of the early 1970s, now have the impression their unions are doing nothing for them.” As workers’ industrial strength grew amidst the resources boom, some rank and filers gained the confidence to translate that accumulated discontent into action. This explains why grassroots unrest could increase alongside the sizeable pay settlements which were achieved after 1979.
Leaders of the Metal Workers union got a shock in 1979, when maverick Dusty Miller turfed out veteran organiser Jim Baird in an election. Miller had a left wing background but ran a rather right wing campaign, attacking the Communist Party by name. However his win suggested not so much a political trend as a general mood of discontent. His attacks on the Communist Party were only partly red-baiting. Partly he was appealing to membership feeling that the “communists” Halfpenny and Carmichael were fake lefts. Two years later John Halfpenny only narrowly gained re-election against another outsider.
These poll results reflected a largely unfocused dissent which could not take the union movement forward. A more politically coherent opposition movement was needed to challenge the unions’ rightward drift, and it needed to base itself squarely on the mobilisation of the rank and file in struggle. A number of rank and file insurgencies in these years displayed some of the necessary features, but unfortunately none of them could put it all together.
One area that showed promise was the Sydney building industry. The leadership of Steve Black installed by federal intervention in 1974 was widely despised by militants, so in 1978 the remnants of the old NSW BLF made a determined push to regain control from the pro-Gallagher forces. Because the officials were accused of ballot-rigging, the “Builders Labourers For Democratic Control” demanded a court-controlled ballot. This group had strong support on a number of building jobs including the Qantas site in central Sydney and the big Bondi Plaza project, sites where they had led and won numerous struggles. Given this favourable starting point and the officials’ poor image, they expected to win the vote. Unfortunately, while the big sites were a good base for launching industrial action, election campaigning required a far-flung canvassing apparatus, and here the officials had a sizeable advantage. About thirty organisers went door to door securing votes from the more apathetic members, ensuring that the existing leadership was returned by 687 votes to 481.
The electoral defeat need not have been a disaster. The sizeable opposition vote was a demonstration of strong support from the militants, which they could have presented as a moral victory, then used to launch new struggles on the job. The trouble was that the dissidents had relied heavily on an electoral win, which they presented as the solution to their problems. When they lost they were demoralised and in the aftermath the jobsite opposition to Black and Gallagher declined, while high-profile individuals from the old NSW branch such as Jack Mundey and Joe Owens began to look to government deregistration moves to destroy Gallagher for them.
If electoralism had its dangers, however, neither could even truly massive rank and file mobilisations guarantee success. In 1980 officials of the Municipal Employees’ Union in Melbourne were astonished when a crowd of angry members stormed into their union’s offices after a rally and occupied it for several days. A rank and file group had emerged amidst general discontent after MEU officials took a trip to Europe, supposedly to study garbage collection methods. Rebel organiser Rhonda Pryor alleged that “they were accompanied by a contractor and paid by a contractor [who] wants to introduce a system of garbage collection in Melbourne that is going to put our members out of work.” Petitions forced the leadership to call a mass meeting, which saw further stormy scenes, but the rank and file group was never able to dislodge the MEU leadership, and contract labour became an increasing problem. When garbos at Waverley City Council tried to resist, MEU members held a city-wide strike in their support, but a compromise arrangement by the union executive once again left them isolated. The dissidents were unable effectively to channel the upsurge of rank and file militancy because they lacked a clear political direction.
This was not surprising. Whereas the high point of class struggle in the late sixties and early seventies had seen quite political -- and left wing -- mass campaigns over Vietnam, Clarrie O’Shea, Green Bans and the like, no such political radicalisation occurred during the 1979-81 union offensive. Workers were not even involved in political campaigning at the level of the anti-uranium struggles of 1977-78. Despite the unfavourable circumstances there were some on the left, most importantly the International Socialists, who did try to build a more political rank and file opposition movement in teacher and public service unions. Their experiences offer some hints as to what a sizeable revolutionary party might have accomplished, though their small numbers and relative isolation meant their achievements were strictly limited.
1981 saw an increasing ferment in the Victorian Secondary Teachers’ Association, whose conservative leadership under union president Peter Vaughan had allowed teachers to be forcibly transferred from Seaford-Carrum High School and had overturned a number of decisions made by mass meetings. Some militants, including Tess Lee Ack from the I.S. and Gerry Beaton from a different socialist background, launched an oppositional rank and file grouping which they dubbed Teacher Solidarity in allusion to the Polish events of the time.
Teacher Solidarity argued for the union to present a log of claims in place of its traditional ad hoc campaigns, and to fight around it in more determined fashion. At mass meetings the group was able to get 30 to 40 percent of the vote, and the log of claims idea was eventually accepted. However the log simply became a new vehicle for the same old style of conservative union campaigns. And while Teacher Solidarity rightly argued that mobilising rank and file members in struggle was more important than “changing the faces on the Central Committee,” the reality was that the group could not win on-going leadership of rank and file teachers either. Ultimately the main beneficiaries of this period of rank and file unrest were a trendy group of aspiring bureaucrats who toppled Vaughan at an ensuing election.
The I.S. and its allies could not accomplish much more among public servants, although the unions in this sphere were going through a crisis which offered some opportunities.
Growing staff numbers and the increasingly “proletarian” nature of their work had brought PS clerks a greater union consciousness in the seventies. Traditional leaderships in the “staff associations”, who had trouble coping with the transition to trade unionism, were caught after 1975 between the aggressive cost-cutting measures of the Fraser regime and their members’ rising militancy.
Fraser applied strict staff ceilings, used the Productivity Control System in the Department of Social Security (DSS) to increase the pace of work, had cut maternity leave and had eliminated paternity leave, while new legislation made it easier to sack public servants. State governments also tightened up. The union response was limp at best, and quite a few members wanted to do something about that.
In 1976 Victorian members of the Administrative and Clerical Officers’ Association (ACOA) set up a Reform Group. This grouping was primarily devoted to winning control of the State branch by electoral means, which it accomplished over the following decade, but it contained a left wing minority oriented to building militant workplace organisation. Its success encouraged dissident factions elsewhere, the most important being two “Action Groups” in NSW and the ACT, whose joint paper Grey Collar circulated widely. Socialists were prominent in the Grey Collar current.
Another spin-off appeared in the Victorian Public Service Association (VPSA), where the young socialist Jeff Soar and three others called a meeting to discuss uranium mining. After 20 Victorian public servants marched on Hiroshima Day 1978, the group used this initial base to set up a small ginger group in the VPSA. Unfortunately, although the group was able to tap a certain mood of dissatisfaction among the wider membership -- Jeff Soar won an astonishing 47 percent of the vote for General President -- this mood remained largely passive. Soar’s big vote contrasted sharply with a turnout of less than sixty when the Reform Group called a demonstration against staff ceilings. Like Teacher Solidarity, this VPSA Reform Group was too peripheral to mobilise workers in struggle.
The Grey Collar group in ACOA did have greater success during a 1981 dispute in the Department of Social Security. The ACOA had placed work bans in DSS and was demanding extra staff. The government, which had defeated similar bans elsewhere by standing down unionists, decided to use the same methods in Social Security. NSW members then walked off the job. Grey Collar agitated successfully for a union-wide stopwork meeting, and over a thousand members turned out in pouring rain. Having failed to break the union campaign the government escalated, announcing it would use the CEEP legislation, whereupon ACOA called a 24 hour stoppage together with the clerical assistants’ union.
Grey Collar convinced DSS delegates to call for extending the stoppage, and on Wednesday 9 December, union members at a packed meeting in Sydney Town Hall endorsed the proposal despite strong opposition from their officials. Following the meeting, several thousand of them marched through city streets behind the Grey Collar banner, then workplace delegates set about organising pickets; on Friday over a hundred unionists led by the rank and file group assembled outside DSS headquarters chanting slogans and singing “Solidarity Forever”. However the ACOA officials eventually regained control of the dispute, because the militants had no organisation outside NSW and the ACT, and at a second mass meeting NSW members finally voted to return to work on 19 December. A militant tradition did remain in Sydney DSS offices, providing the basis for another rank and file rebellion in 1988.
During the dispute, the Grey Collar group had attracted 60 public servants to a rank and file conference, which presented the revolutionaries with an opportunity to explain what they were trying to do. Rick Kuhn summed up their perspective:
The central purpose of a rank and file organisation is to change what are accepted as “reasonable” policies and actions … by offering a pole of attraction on the left: a pole in terms of the ideas put forward and also an organisational focus … By building the groups, through recruiting militants, the opportunities for greater contact with other workers grow -- it becomes easier to discuss politics with more of them and to involve them in action … It is through such action that consciousness changes, opening the way, not only to militant trade union consciousness but also revolutionary class consciousness.
This was a reasonable summary of how rank and file organising can contribute to the building of a revolutionary movement; unfortunately it didn’t take adequate account of the revolutionaries’ own small numbers. But even a sizeable revolutionary party would have found it hard going at the end of the eighties, because although workers were militant, they were no longer very interested in radical politics. And as the second half of 1981 was to show, even the militancy concealed a certain fatigue among the rank and file.
From indexation to collective bargaining
1981 was a year of turning points. Halfway through it the indexation system collapsed, then in December the first elements of an alternative system appeared.
In April the Arbitration Commission had reviewed the wage guidelines and accepted a government submission to close the “work-value” loophole. This defied industrial reality, for union bargaining power was too great, a fact that was soon demonstrated when Telecom technicians and tradesmen won pay rises of up to $23 outside the system. A flow-on scramble ensued. “To hell with indexation,” said the Transport Workers’ Harry Quinn. “That’s gone out the window.” By late July 50,000 truck drivers were on strike, while postal workers and Telecom clerks were also pursuing industrial campaigns. As a consequence of his much-vaunted resources boom, Fraser had lost control of wage fixing. He was forced to stitch up a special deal to resolve the first Telecom dispute (after an agonised 13 hour cabinet meeting) and he was about to openly ditch the guidelines. A last try at sabre-rattling drew the story out a bit.
Industrial Relations minister Wal Fife told the ACTU on 22 June that the government intended to use the CEEP Act against the Telecom clerks, and to deregister the TWU. Cliff Dolan was aghast. Using CEEP in Social Security was one thing, but in Telecom the unions had greater muscle, while deregistration moves would only enrage the TWU. “It will be like a red rag to a bull,” Dolan warned. At the time a major dock strike was also looming due to threatened stand-downs. Frantic to restore industrial peace, Dolan rang both Fraser and Justice Moore and arranged a crisis meeting, then dodged union transport bans by travelling to Canberra in a RAAF plane.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Moore said he would see whether the dock strike could be deferred (and this is what happened). With one problem having been addressed, Dolan next advised the government to back down on CEEP and on deregistration of the TWU. Fraser, by now aware of his weak position -- and also keen to resolve the crisis so he could attend Charles and Di’s royal wedding -- agreed on the spot, after which some haggling occurred over a new anomalies loophole for the wage guidelines. The Prime Minister and the ACTU President emerged from the meeting as the best of mates, with Fraser suggesting a new era of peaceful collaboration was at hand.
This interlude, however, was extremely short-lived. The Arbitration Commission, which had begun questioning the viability of wage indexation as early as 1979, now decided that since “the commitment of the participants to the system is not strong enough … the time has come for us to abandon the indexation system.” The Fraser government now ditched its interventionist wages policy. For the next year or so Canberra looked to the market to set wages, hoping vainly that the big gains made by the strongest unions would not flow through to the weaker ones once the centralised framework was scrapped. This retreat was camouflaged as conforming to the Liberals’ professed free-market philosophy, but few were fooled.
With indexation gone, the wage push proceeded through collective bargaining and culminated in the December 1981 metal trades agreement. The metal unions and employers had negotiated a $41 rise in two instalments and a 38 hour week. The federal government went through the motions of opposing this, then tried to limit the flow-ons, with minimal success. Within days the building industry had announced a deal involving $31.30 and 38 hours, and after ratifying the metals deal the Commission set a “going rate” of $20 to $30 in four decisions. Average weekly earnings, which had risen by 13.5 percent in 1980-81, leapt by another 16 percent in 1981-82.
At the time many saw these settlements as signalling an even stormier wage offensive for 1982, however the metal trades agreement had another side, as the Sydney Morning Herald pointed out:
The agreement is regarded as the most significant advance for employers in industrial relations for 30 years. It is tied to a pledge -- which the unions have said they will do their best to honour -- that there will be no additional wages or conditions claims for 12 months.
Any problems would be dealt with through a disputes procedure, with the Arbitration Commission as a last resort. Automatic quarterly cost-of-living adjustments, which the unions had originally seen as essential compensation for the no-claims provision, were quietly dropped. Reportedly the no-claims arrangement had been “drawn up and offered by the unions themselves in response to suggestions by the employers”. There was no serious resistance from the ranks to this sacrifice of the unions’ freedom of action. Building unions announced within days that they had something similar in train for their industry.
These agreements turned union officials into industrial police, so that by April 1982 Bert Evans, spokesman for the metal employers, was gloating:
There have been occasions where employees on the job have sought to raise the question of wages but very properly, without exception, the metal unions have been quick to point out to the members that they voted on the agreement and are bound to honour it.
Thus management and the union officialdom had negotiated their own formula for industrial peace, so that if Fraser had lost his grip on industrial relations, the vacuum did not last long.
On the contrary, both sides of the industrial divide had tired of strife. If the bosses were forced to recognise that the unions could not be crushed, trade unionists drew remarkably few optimistic conclusions from their victories in 1979-81. Even the militants were feeling bruised from years of confrontation. While the decline in militancy during 1975-78 had concealed the underlying strength of unions, the runaway union offensive of 1979-81 had also concealed serious weaknesses. The metal unions’ enthusiasm for compromise partly reflected the decline of manufacturing under Fraser, but there was a conciliatory mood among virtually all the union officials by the end of 1981.
Despite the temporary opportunities afforded by the resources boom, they had by now thoroughly grasped the fact that Australian capitalism could not grant continuing wage rises and restore profitability at the same time, and they were not in the business of uprooting the system. As we have seen, insurgent groupings among the rank and file were seldom strong enough to challenge them, and organisation on the job had continued to deteriorate during the “wage push”. Consequently it did not take much of a turnaround in the economy to pull the rug out from under the militancy of the time. In late 1981 and early 1982 unemployment had stopped falling and begun to creep upwards, a development which had a rapid sobering effect on workers.
The Metal Workers’ next initiative reinforced the trend. In February 1982 the union issued a call for union action to win lower taxes, interest rates and health charges, along with higher pensions and better social welfare. John Halfpenny even threatened industrial action. But the new “social wage” campaign was not what it seemed. As the Melbourne Age reported, it was really designed to lay the basis for a “social contract” arrangement when Labor won government:
The AMWU would be the first union to agree … that in return for positive government action in areas such as taxation and health payments … the unions would moderate wage claims. The unions and the ALP refuse to call such an agreement a social contract -- but that is what it amounts to.
The exhaustion of both sides in the class struggle was opening the way for a new era of class collaboration. And the pace quickened in the course of 1982, as a new recession took its toll on both the remaining pockets of industrial militancy and the electoral prospects of the Fraser government.