The ATU Congress of 1993

Abstract

The biennial congress opened in Sydney's Darling Harbour Convention Centre on Monday, 30 August, with the representatives of just 72 unions in attendance.1 The total number of unions affiliated to the ACTU, according to a list in an executive report, was no more than 80.2 In 1987, almost twice as many unions, 142 out of a grand total of 161 affiliates, had sent delegates to congress; and as late as 1991, the corresponding figure had been 105, out of 126 affiliates.3 This startling decline testified to the continuing successes of the extraordinarily ambitious union reorganisation campaign initiated at the 1989 congress, which was once again (as in 1991)to provide a major source of tension at congress. The emphasis this time, however, was not on union amalgamation the less fraught of the campaign's two legs but on the 'rationalisation' of union structures, especially in relation to industrial and occupational coverage. Associated with this was a radical alteration in the structure of the ACTU's executive organs and an intense concern with the means of recruiting and retaining members. There was, compared with its predecessor of 1991, a more confident and less defensive air about the 1993 congress.5 No struggle for the Labour prime ministership muddied the waters this time, and the Labour government's election win against all the odds, less than six months earlier, had given great heart to union leaders. On the other hand, the Budget speech delivered two weeks before by the federal Treasurer, John Dawkins, and recent legislative proposals from the Minister for Industrial Relations, Laurie Brereton, ensured that relations with the Keating government provided a second major source of tension at congress. There were a number of striking departures in the arrangements and conduct of the congress. Aboriginal affairs and speakers were accorded a peculiar prominence in the International Year of the World's Indigenous Peoples. For the first time in the ACTU's history, congress broke up into 'syndicates' for the better part of three sessions. For the first time for many years, no representative of an overseas trade union body spoke at congress: on the other hand, delegates were addressed by far more outside speakers than ever before. For the first time, a Minister was seriously heckled by delegates. But the most strikingly novel feature of the congress for this observer was the total absence of counted votes (even in 1991 there were three elections),6 a fact which testified to the persisting consensus that has come to characterise the internal politics of the ACTU.