Whether trade unionism remains viable as Australia moves toward a post-industrial society in the twenty first century remains to be seen. The fast pace of technological change is conducive to individual employment arrangements and more flexible employment patterns also present the Australian union movement with substantial organising challenges.
The greatest challenge to the continued viability of Australian trade unionism stems from the voluntary nature of union membership. As was canvassed in the Social Action Australia editorial, the steep de-unionising was facilitated by union members declining to join newly amalgamated industry based unions. Whatever future industrial technological changes occur, the basic point is that Australian unions cannot remain viable unless employees choose to join and support trade unions.
The formation of industry based trade unions in Australia since the onset of the union amalgamation in the late 1980s has unfortunately been conducive to union oligarchy. This is where centralization of authority in the leadership of the union organisation has stifled rank and file empowerment to the extent that union members are alienated from their union and from industrial relations processes, such as enterprise bargaining. For better or for worse, it is probably not possible to ‘unscramble the egg’ and reverse the formation of Australian amalgamated industry unions.
However, there can be no social democracy without trade unions. Unions as collective organisations offer the opportunity to promote their members’ social and economic interests by advancing their rights within their employment relationship. Although trade unions need to be orientated toward securing improved bargaining conditions for their members, the social aspect of trade unionism take precedence in that trade unions acknowledge the intrinsic human dignity of their members.
The voluntary basis of Australian union membership and the flexible nature of employment relations, in which over a quarter of the Australian workforce are in non-standard employment, means that unions should focus on ensuring the survival of a pluralist system of industrial relations. A pluralist system of industrial relations system is one in which inherent conflict within the employment relationship between employer and employee is recognized but actual industrial conflict is avoided by being referred to independent state arbitral institutions.
The arbitral approach to union strategy pursued by Australian trade unions since the turn of the twentieth century up until the 1980s helped sustain the existence of relatively small craft-based unions. These unions effectively represented their members by utilizing the external institutional supports of the Australian arbitration system to gain bargaining outcomes which they might not otherwise have been able to achieve due a lack of industrial muscle. The personalized nature of the services which craft-based unions provided due to their relatively small size was also conducive to encouraging union rank and file support for trade unionism.
The Australian union amalgamation process has also narrowed the parameters for union democracy due to the centralization of power within the union movement. Because of the union amalgamation process the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) by the early 1990s was composed of ten ‘mega’ industry unions. While state Trades Hall Councils (i.e. state based union confederations) have still remained in place, their viability has been challenged by the economies of scale which have come from union amalgamation so that their industrial effectiveness is questionable.
The New South Wales Trades Hall Council however, is still a highly effective union confederation because it has a lateral approach to industrial policy and has therefore been prepared to challenge prevailing ACTU orthodoxy such as the wisdom of the union amalgamation policy. The ‘right wing’ (in terms of union purpose) orientation of the New South Wales Trades Hall Council is probably a legacy of many Groupers or their sympathisers in New South Wales opting to remain within the ALP at the time of the Split. The independent orientation of the New South Wales Trades Hall Council creates the scope to analyse the potential for social action to be promoted in an industrial relations context.
The social action which is now needed to ensure the survival of Australian trade unionism and social democracy is the maintenance of a pluralist industrial relations system. Despite the much vaunted economic success attributed to the previous Howard led coalition government (1996 to 2007), its political viability was always uncertain due to an underlying suspicion on the public’s part that it had a covert ideological agenda of undermining employee rights and entitlements. The previous federal coalition government squandered potential public goodwill by advancing the interests of employers at the expense of employee rights and in doing so attempted to de-institutionalize trade unions from the industrial relations system.
The effectiveness of the current Rudd-Gillard federal government’s industrial relations policies in promoting equity for Australian employees is dependent upon the integrity and reach of arbitral institutional bodies. Integrity in industrial relations terms will be measured by arbitral institutions, such as the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC), having the leverage to arbitrate in an even handed way between respective employer and employee interests.
As a result of the connection between union effectiveness and the survival of a pluralist industrial relations system, it will be important for the Rudd-Gillard federal government to ensure that union members’ rights are respected and promoted. In this context, encouraging union members to become involved in formulating and supporting employment conditions which go into their enterprise bargaining agreements (EBAs) is a tangible way in which union rank and file engagement in the industrial relations process can be facilitated.
Union rank and file engagement in securing their rights and entitlements is a vital form of social action which needs to be taken because of the effects of union amalgamation narrowing the scope for union member involvement. Not only is union rank and file activation supportive of union effectiveness but is also integral to ensuring the survival of pluralism because the collective and intrinsic rights of employees are recognised within the Australian industrial relations system.
The vital need for pluralism to be facilitated by the promotion of union rank and file involvement in the industrial relations system should serve as a caution against the new federal government bringing in prescriptive heavy handed bureaucratic arbitral institutions which dictate outcomes. This approach is to be avoided because it negates the value of union rank and file workplace activation. Recent New Zealand experience in which a Labour government’s avowedly pluralist industrial relations policies led to further de-unionising by effectively discouraging union rank and file engagement in industrial relations process should serve as a salutary warning to the Australian labour movement.
It has been contended that an objective of the union amalgamation policy was to eliminate a Grouper presence within Australian unions and the union rank and file activation which came with it. While the formation of industry based unions probably cannot be reversed, the Grouper principle of union rank and file activation is still to be extinguished. In this context, vigilance is needed to help ensure that the dynamics of a pluralist industrial relations system is maintained because social action in relation to trade unionism and pluralism is vital to ensuring the viability of Australian social democracy.