Australian Trade Union Movement Research Articles

Film for a purpose: a pictorial introduction

ABSTRACT Created for the Uses of Cinema conference (SSAAANZ, Monash University, November 2018), the video Film for a Purpose (13 minutes, 2018) offers a précis of my research with the ARC Discovery project ‘Utilitarian film in Australia 1945-1980'. The video essay ironically deploys certain tropes of the sponsored film - the green screen, the authoritative presenter, the wallto-wall narration, the literal illustration, etc. - in its exposition of the studies cited. An overview of the National Archives of Australia (NAA) where moving image collections of Australian government agencies are collected then drills down to films from the CSIRO (Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation) Film Unit. Uses of Cinema then turns to films of the Australian labour movement through the lens of Tom Zubrycki's controversial documentary film history of the Australian trade union movement, Amongst Equals (1986-1991). Each case study brings to light certain problems pertinent to the broader category: the ‘utilitarian film', in the Australian context. Finally a fourth research paper, completed after 2018, examines the surveillance image and its uses in political propaganda and investigative documentary. This ‘pictorial introduction' lightly annotates a selection of freeze frames from the film, explicating aspects of their ‘screen design’ and treatment.

Zubrycki’s point: Amongst Equals, utilitarian film in the Australian labour movement

ABSTRACTA film history project on the Australian trade union movement commissioned in the late 1980s for Australia’s bicentennial year, 1988, came to grief over differing views of the labour movement’s past and contention around the rights and ethics of the filmmaker when a work is commissioned or sponsored. In the political context of the late 1980s there had been a decade of collaboration between trade unions and artists, but in this case filmmaker Tom Zubrycki was caught in a web of intrigue and complex agendas as he sought to complete this sponsored film. Zubrycki challenged the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) for the right to finish and distribute Amongst Equals, but without success. The struggle to resolve the Amongst Equals dispute continued for years and flared into a heated public debate. This case study illustrates dilemmas facing the artist, historian or filmmaker making sponsored work. A feature-length version of the unfinished film, not seen since 1991with inter-titles identifying scenes that the ACTU wanted revised or deleted was screened by Melbourne Cinematheque in October 2018, marking 30 years since the Australian bicentennial.

Application of fiduciary principles to public office

With this edition, we are pleased to announce that the Editorial Board of Trusts & Trustees has been joined by the Honourable Dyson Heydon AC QC, a former Justice of the High Court of Australia and a past contributor to this Journal. His article ‘Modern Fiduciary Liability: The Sick Man of Equity’1 dealt with the consequences of departure from the principles of equity in determining liability of persons in fiduciary situations. As the article’s abstract stated: Some think that fiduciary liability has shrunk, is shrinking and should be shrunk further. In particular, it has been said that traditional equitable duties of skill and care are not fiduciary, and, indeed, are not even equitable. It has also been said that no positive duty can be fiduciary. The article contends that these trends conflict with established authority, are unsound in principle, and have undesirable effects in practice. The case studies examined have revealed widespread misconduct that has taken place in every polity in Australia except for the Northern Territory. There is little that is controversial about the underlying facts. Almost all of the underlying facts have been established by admissions to the Commission, incontrovertible documents, decisions of courts and tribunals or well-corroborated testimony. There has been much perjury. Nor is it only union officials who have been involved. Of course what has been described is not universal. It may not even be typical. But you can look at any area of Australia. You can look at any unionised industry. You can look at any type of industrial union. You can select any period of time. You can take any rank of officeholder, from Secretaries down to very junior employees. You can search for any type of misbehaviour. You will find rich examples over the last 23 years in the Australian trade union movement. These aberrations cannot be regarded as isolated. They are not the work of a few rogue unions, or a few rogue officials. The misconduct exhibits great variety. It is widespread. It is deep-seated. Nor can the list be regarded as complete. It would be utterly naïve to think that what has been uncovered is anything other than the small tip of an enormous iceberg. It is inherently very hard to identify most types of misconduct by union officials. So far as it is typified by hard core corruption, there is no ‘victim’ to complain, and the parties to the corruption have a strong incentive to keep it secret. Whistleblowers are unlikely to be found for various reasons including a well-founded fear of reprisals. … But it is clear that in many parts of the world constituted by Australian trade union officials, there is room for louts, thugs, bullies, thieves, perjurers, those who threaten violence, errant fiduciaries and organisers of boycotts.

Between immediacy and imagination: the place of the educator and organiser in union renewal

Can the current education programme of the Australian trade union movement contribute to reviving union growth and union culture, develop new activists and leaders, and encourage and facilitate the organisational change needed to re-orient unions to develop broader alliances? Twenty-five Australian trade union leaders were asked to describe the educational activities of their unions and to assess the education provided by the Australian Council of Trade Unions' (ACTU) national Education and Campaign Centre (ECC). Analysis of their responses reveals a number of structural, organisational and pedagogical challenges for delivering a national union education programme. It also raises questions of how education can support a union movement trying to convince new layers of workers that unionism can be a dynamic, forward-looking, social movement. The article outlines the existing course framework as a means of understanding the scope of current educational provision. Drawing on interviewee observations and Newman's concept of three contracts in union education, it considers the roles of educator and of organiser, and how an understanding of these roles is currently expressed by union leaders. We conclude with some questions about ways that the union movement might consider the relationship between education and union renewal.

Pat Giles as critical actor within the trade union movement of the 1970s

Synopsis International feminist scholars of the politics of representation have repeatedly sought to identify the conditions under which women-friendly policy reforms are most likely to be achieved (RNGS, 2006. RNGS Homepage. http://libarts.wsu.edu/polisci/rngs/ .). In spite of the ongoing popularity of the notion that women-friendly policy changes occur most readily when a critical mass of women representatives (commonly held to be 30%) is assembled in a legislative forum, evidence suggests a need to re-think the assumed link between numbers of women and the enacting of positive change for women. This article responds in part to the call for research focussing on critical actors and their role in pursuing policy change favourable to women. The focus of the article is on the work of Australian feminist activist Patricia Jessie Giles in the Australian trade union movement from 1974 until her election as a Senator to the Australian Parliament in 1981. The article considers Pat Giles as one of several critical actors within the Australian trade union movement during the 1970s who were strategically working to ensure that unions came to understand the needs of women workers, and who simultaneously were working towards internal reform of the trade union movement itself.

The Structural Events Approach — A `Better' Way to Understand Long-term Change in Trade Union Structure: The Australian Story (1986—96)

Traditional studies of long-term change in trade union structure have predominantly focused on aggregate trends in union merger activity in constructing explanations of change. Using the Australian trade union movement as an example, this article argues that our understanding of the long-term change in the external structure of trade unions would be better served by a structural events approach (Waddington, 1995) that examines the incidence of union formations, dissolutions, and breakaways, in addition to that of union mergers. In doing so, this article presents new data on structural change in the Australian trade union movement between 1986 and 1996, and explains the additional contribution made by union dissolutions and union formations to the reductionist effects of the merger wave that dominated these years.

Trade unions, the Australian Labor Party and the Trade–Labour Rights Debate

This paper examines the Australian trade union movement's campaign to convince the Australian Labor Party (ALP) to support the inclusion of core labour standards in international trade agreements. Despite historical affiliations, the Australian union movement has been unsuccessful in its attempts to influence the ALP. In contrast, the US union movement has convinced both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party to accept that core labour standards should be a part of the trade negotiating agenda. The reasons for the US unions' success on this issue are examined within the context of the changing relationship between the respective union movements and their traditional parliamentary allies. The need for Australian unions to examine and reassess their strategies by drawing lessons from the US experience, including the possibility of a changed relationship with the ALP, is discussed.

Unions in a Contrary World: The Future of the Australian Trade Union Movement

Australia once had extremely high levels of trade union participation, yet since the 1970s the number of union members has been falling dramatically. This book gives the clearest picture yet of why people do or do not belong to unions and, in a sophisticated way, examines the reasons for union decline. Uniquely, it considers both the macro and micro levels, looking at the structure of the economy and the labour market, the relations between unions and employees, the ideological dispositions people have towards unionism, the role of the state and the political and industrial strategies of unions. The author highlights the importance of structural and strategic changes in determining the direction of union membership. This book makes a major contribution to our understanding of union decline, and its implications, and presents a range of strategies for reversing this downturn.

Unions in a Contrary World: The Future of the Australian Trade Union Movement

Unions in a Contrary World: The Future of the Australian Trade Union Movement

Lessons for the Australian Trade Union Movement from the Industrial Relations Policy Experiences of Britain and New Zealand

Abstract This paper draws on the industrial relations experiences of Britain and New Zealand in periods when economic rationalism held the ascendancy in their national policy agendas. In so doing, it looks at the impact of deregulatory provisions contained in laws directed at controlling the organisation and activities of trade unions. The paper finds that legislative reforms aimed at controlling the behaviour of trade unions are less effective in industrial relations environments characterised by a history of voluntarism and strong trade union presence in the workplace; and conversely, that reforming legislation aimed at achieving these ends is likely to be more effective in environments marked by a history of strong state support for compulsory arbitration and where trade unions are organisationally weak in the workplace. In view of the ‘Second Wave’ industrial relations legislation currently being considered by the Howard Government, the implication of these findings for Australian trade unions suggests that they must improve existing levels of workplace organisation if they are to avoid the fate of their New Zealand counterparts.

Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:Tigers in Trouble: Financial Governance, Liberalisation and Crises in East Asia, edited by K.S. JomoSoutheast Asia's Economic Crisis: Origins, Lessons and the Way Out, edited by H.W. Amdt and Hall HillThe Keynesian Revolution and its Economic Consequences. Selected Essays, by Peter ClariceJohn Maynard Keynes. Keynesianism into the Twenty‐First Century, edited by Soumitra SharmaMaking Rural Australia: An Economic History of Technical and Institutional Creativity, 1788–1860, by Geoff RabyCentral Banking in Theory and Practice, by Alan S. BlinderThe Macroeconomics of Self‐Fulfilling Prophecies, by Roger RA. Farmer, second editionUnions in a Contrary World: The Future of the Australian Trade Union Movement, by David PeetzArt and the Market. Roger Fry on Commerce in Art. Selected Writings, edited and with an Interpretation, by Craufurd D. GoodwinUnit Roots, Cointegration, and Structural Change, by G.S. Maddala and I.M. Kim

Accord VII: Collective Bargaining In a Labourist Framework

Abstract The Accord of 1983 gave substance to Australian labourism as a partnership in government between the Australian Council of Trade Unions and the Hawke Labor Government to deliver real wage maintenance ‘over time’ for all workers through a system of centralised wage-fixing and full wage indexation. Accord VII, on the other hand, offers a decentralised system of enterprise bargaining that delivers variable wage outcomes across and within industries. The paper finds limited coherence between the outcomes of Accord VII and corporatism in the Panitch/Winkler mode of labour subordination and the greater association with the Crouch concept of bargained corporatism because it delivers some positive benefits to labour. The paper concludes that the political linkage between the ACTU and the ALP places Accord VII more in the context of traditional Australian labourism predicated on union support for wage restraint in return for select benefits to a ‘labour aristocracy’, continuation of the safety-net and a protective Labor government. In 1990 I described the Accord as ‘an alliance or partnership in government between the Australian trade union movement and the Australian Labor Party’ in the ‘labourist tradition’, a strategy to achieve their economic, electoral and social objectives through Labor in government (Singleton 1990). The several configurations of the Accord since 1983 have seen the original agreement transformed from centralised wage indexation to the current Accord VII two-tier system of decentralised enterprise-based productivity bargaining, supported by a safety net based on maintenance of the award system and increases for those unable to secure a result through enterprise bargaining. The original Accord sought equitable outcomes from centralised wage-fixing. Accord VII, while claiming the advancement of equity is central to its wages policy, is premised on equal access but variable outcomes across and within industries. The paper will examine the capacity of Australian workers to achieve wage increases under Accord VII and analyse whether the outcomes give credence to a corporatist critique of this latest version of the Accord as the tool of capital to induce wage restraint from labour or alternatively, whether the two-tier system embodied in Accord VII upholds the labourist underpinnings of the original Accord that sought to manage the capitalist state to the advantage of working people through Labor in government (Singleton 1990, Chapter 11).

The Australian Domestic Pilots’ Dispute of 1989 and Its Implications: An Interpretation

The 1989 domestic pilots' dispute in Australia provided a stark demonstration of the underlying conflict and tensions of the neo-corporatist Prices and Incomes Accord. The pilots proposed a wage increase outside of the Accord guidelines but of comparable tnagnitude with the wagge increases received by senior executives within the airline sector and senior public servants. A protracted campaign saw the government and employers, with the tacit support of the ACIU, use a range of extreme measures against the Australian Federation of Air Pilots. Eventually, industrial peace was returned to the domestic airline sector. However, the costs, financial and emotional, of the dispute were considerable. The government restored industrial "order" but left considerable disquiet and division within the Australian trade union movement. The dispute established many important precedents for the business sector and the opposition Liberal/National Parties coalition in their push for labour market de-regulation in Australia.

Award Restructuring and the Australian Trade Union Movement: A Critique

Abstract The Hawke Labor Party Government has generated some fundamental changes in the Australian political economy. One of the chief catalysts in this process have been national trade union officials. This article analyses the role of union officials in the light of changes to wage determination, particularly since the key ‘two-tier’ decision of May 1987. It argues that these changes have been to the detriment of wages and conditions for the Australian working class and that the arguments used to support the changes are neither theoretically, nor practically, sound. It concludes by briefly assessing an alternative strategy for the Australian labour movement.

Unions and new technology in Australia

The Australian trade union movement has identified new technology as a major issue for the 1980s and beyond. This article examines ACTU policy on technological change in the light of the experience of two large Australian unions.

Australian Industrial Relations and the Management of Technological Change

Technological change and the way in which it is introduced has become an important industrial question in Australia. In recent years the Australian trade union movement has become increasingly restive about the general absence of adequate standards of job protection and consultative rights. Pressures on the unrestricted rights of management to introduce new technology without trade union participation have accordingly become more intense. This paper looks at these pressures and in particular the recommendations of the Committee of Inquiry into Tech nological Change in Australia. It concludes that the development of consultative procedures to deal with the conse quences of changing technology are essential for stable industrial relations.

Industrial Relations Under A Conservative Government: A Comment

In his recent article in this Journal on changes in the laws affecting industrial relations,1 Richard Mitchell interprets the Fraser Government's industrial relations policies as aimed at serving political purposes rather than accomplishing any useful- substantive ends within the industrial relations field. While such an interpretation is naturally open to dispute, that is not the purpose of this comment. The intent here is to challenge one aspect of Mitchell's interpretation of the behaviour of the Aus tralian trade union movement in 1977. Specifically, Mitchell's assertion that in the 1977 compromise over the Industrial Relations Bureau, "... the unions apparently gained nothing whilst conceding a great deal",2 cannot be allowed to enter the historical record unchallenged.

Australian Trade Unions and Postwar Immigration: Attitudes and Responses

The reaction of the Australian trade union movement to the new phases of immigration in the post-World War II period is examined. The responses were by no means uniform in reflecting political, industrial and craft divisions amongst unions and changes in employment conditions. Attention will focus on central trade union bodies, principally the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and the Labor Council of New South Wales. Some mention will also be made of the situation in particular unions and attempts by migrant workers to organise and act independently of established unions. The con clusion is that the trade unions' attitude to migrants should be related to the concurrent industrial problems, trade union tradition and the constraints of the compulsory arbitration system.

Australian Labour and the Profintern

In common with many other countries, Australia has had, since 1920, a Communist Party, which is an obvious and continuing symbol of international reaction to the Russian Revolution of 1917. Naturally enough the formation of this Communist Party and its subsequent history has attracted a degree of attention from historians and scholars of Communist movements and Australian politics. The impact of the Profintern, on the other hand, has been completely neglected. Even at the international level no full-scale study of the Profintern and its related trade-union organisations is yet available, and though one scholar has noticed that in Australia “the history of communism in the unions is […] separate from CPA political history”, the bases of this separation have been left relatively unexplored. This article seeks to examine Moscow's links with the Australian trade-union movementviathe Profintern in the period 1920–35. It would seem that these links overshadowed the CPA as a “Communist” influence in the Australian context, at least for the first decade of the Comintern's existence. The separation of CPA history from the wider influence of Communism in the unions is discernible almost from the very start.

The Port Kembla Pig Iron Strike of 1938

of Trade Unions (A.C.T.U.), in a protest against Japan's invasion of China, called for a boycott of Japanese goods and an embargo on the export of iron to Japan. Sections of the Australian trade union movement viewed with concern the brutal excesses of the Japanese armies in China, and the possible consequences of further Japanese expansion. The Water side Workers' Federation (W.W.F.), whose co-operation was essential if an embargo were to succeed, agreed to work with the A.C.T.U. in im plementing the new policy.2 Others beside the trade union movement were apprehensive about Japan. The Government, too, regarded the Japanese threat seriously, as was shown by their reaction to Japanese plans to import iron ore from Yampi Sound in Western Australia. During 1937 the Government had