The Struggle For The Soul Of The Labour Movement

Jim Macken is one of the Australian labour movement’s icons and dissidents. A former judge of the Industrial Commission of New South Wales, Jim Macken was among those union leaders who sided with the anti-communist labour operatives of the 1950s and 1960s as secretary of the Marine Motor Drivers Union and President of the NSW Branch of the Federated Clerks Union. On Tuesday 19 June, Jim Macken joined the Hon Rodney Cavalier AO, a former NSW Minister in the Wran and Unsworth governments, and Cassandra Wilkinson, author, activist and former senior adviser in the NSW Keneally Government and in a discussion of the Labor Party and its future.

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE SOUL OF THE LABOUR MOVEMENT

JIM MACKEN

To sensibly discuss this topic it is necessary to have a clear idea as to why the soul of the labour movement is in danger of damnation. It is my submission that the cause of the present malaise is to be found in the responses of the ALP and the union movement to the cultural revolution of the late 1960s and the early 1970s. There is little point, therefore, in detailing the history of the labour movement up to that time.

Let us remember that the secular changes of that time were pervasive and affected all of the structures of society. Historians like to date the convulsive changes from May 1968 as that was the month during which Paris fell to the students and De Gaulle was only able to hold France by the use of four divisions of troops and an unlikely deal with the Communist Party unions. The student riots affected every university in the Western world but, more importantly, the changes swept through every institution in society from the Boy Scouts to the Board rooms.

It is in point to recall that the media, the churches, the education system, the family laws….indeed, every institution in society was to some extent changed and most of them radically. The changes in politics are best remembered by the Whitlam years with the Family Law Act, the AG raiding the ASIO headquarters, free tertiary education and marked and draconic changes to foreign policy.  It was an anarchic time and was heady wine for all living close to the changes. Fernand Braudel points up the significance of such historic periods by reference to the fact that the underlying changes are always to the structures of society and as such cannot be avoided by any of the institutions of society.

Toynbee, the original historian of the modern world who studied this phenomenon, said that the two main responses to such changes were archaism and futurism.  Archaism is the attempt to negate the discomfort of change by harking back o the “Good old Days”: thus attempting to turn the clock back. Futurism, he says, is to pretend that nothing serious is really happening and soon all will return to normal.

Both responses, Toynbee notes, are fatally flawed and doomed to fail and accomplish the destruction of those who adopt them. The ALP managed to adopt something of each of these faulty policies while the unions adopted an archaistic response.  Both the political wing and the industrial movement adopted a “top down” and centralised policy. They both became increasingly exclusive where secular change called out for inclusiveness and a broadening of the base of the movement.

Look at the detail. Under Keating and Hawke, the ALP government floated the dollar, sold Qantas, made national productivity the centre-piece of economic policy, abolished compulsory arbitration and arranged a deal with Kelty and the ACTU to have applied the “Accord”. This was a wages policy that was applied by the Arbitration Commission to give workers a small wage increase based solely on national productivity in exchange for the working conditions won over the previous 100 years.

Almost every condition of work was taken from workers in exchange for virtually nothing. The decline of unionism had begun. To complete the alienation of the membership of the party a formalised factional system was introduced which meant the rank and file of the party were there to man polling booths at election time. Factional chiefs alone would occupy the seats of authority in parliaments and within the party.

The union response to the changes was even more suicidal. Facing a declining membership, the ACTU got the government to force union amalgamations.  The large conglomerates like the CFMEU, the AMWU and the MUA absorbed the smaller unions and thus did away with the craft basis of unionism which was its greatest strength.

Circling the wagons by reducing the number of unions meant abandoning the growing army of casuals, part time labour and vicarious employment. Union structures did now change to accommodate the new forms of labour. In many cases, casuals working a few days a week were being charged annual union fees. Not for long, of course. The union bureaucracies did not have the same rapport with the workers that once was enjoyed by union organisers who came from the ranks. The new unions were largely manned by university graduates many of whom were seeking Parliamentary careers. Membership fell from 50 per cent of the workforce to 18 per cent. The political wing suffered similarly with train wrecks in NSW and Queensland; the vote falling to 30 per cent and less.

Why go on?  Can these collapses be reversed? I believe that they can. The ALP needs to adopt a number of significant reforms. In the first place, it must become an inclusive party, welcoming all into its ranks and allowing full and free policy discussion at Branch level. Branches ought to be formed wherever there are people – shopping malls, factories, high rise buildings, hospitals and the like. Gay branches, ethnic branches, women’s branches, student branches …there should be no limit on the character of branches.

Parliamentary and political leaders ought to be elected by the rank and file of the party. Local franchise ought to be introduced to pre select candidates for parliament. A total diversity of views should be encouraged at every level. Of first important should be the universal recognition that the party is a humanist party and people are its electorate. The developers, big business and CEOs should be left for the Liberal Party.

The union reforms are more complex. In principle, the unions have to accept their obligation to cater for the social and industrial interests of all workers whether bailees, employees, butty gangers, contractors or vicarious employees or self employed whatever. The constraint of the employment contract must no longer be recognised.

Furthermore, the constraint imposed by registration under the statutes must no longer be recognised.  Workers outside the registered limits of a union will have to be catered for separately and autonomously but this is not difficult to achieve. The political aspirations of the union movement will best be achieved outside of the customary affiliation process. The disaffiliation from the ALP is more in the interests of the union movement than it is of the ALP. A separate political conference of all unions will have to be held and union political policies pressed before all political parties, including the conservative parties.

Worker collectives, by a great variety of names, will cover the whole of the urban and rural workforce. Rural towns will have their own town unions together with their craft members. I believe that in the end each conglomerate union will have its own labour hire company or cooperative. The variety of forms and structures is endless.

A revitalised labour movement is not only a possibility, I believe it is a social necessity. It will enable the labour movement to undertake the most important reform of all. I refer to the need to limit the philosophy of Managerial Economism. It is the most pernicious social and economic system the mind of man has devised. It arose out of the cultural revolution’s ending of both communism and capitalism. Capitalism was replaced by managerial economism.  Institutions replaced human shareholders and a new class of oligarchs, the managers of the institutions, took over the reins of industry to their great personal wealth and power. The first time in history that ‘things’ have exercised power over human beings. Their power being well evidenced by their use of the disgraceful designation of humans as their “human resource”.

To save our society from the excesses of economism will provide a renewed labour movement with a worthy ambition and a unifying purpose.