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Australia (Donald Sutherland) |
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1. General Discussion
We worked through the reports from Korea, the Philippines and India.
We summarised our discussion:
The common experiences across our study circles:
The differences:
The main points of our discussion in greater detail:
Ownership
See our session 1 report.
We briefly discussed the role in Australia of the Business Council of Australia – this is like a Central Committee for Australian and ‘foreign’ multinationals operating across Australia. They coordinate the push for pro corporate policies from government and often provide staff to government to write and implement these policies.
What is the experience of this in your countries?
Technology, work organisation, management style
Industrial Relations and Labor Practices - Korean MNC’s:
We do not have any participants who are employed by Korean MNC’s. The facilitator has agreed to search for some information and introduce it into the program, and also to pass it onto the library and, of course, direct to our Korean study circle.
Our member from Nestle’ Blacktown summarised their experience of Nestle industrial relations: there are 4 plants in Australia, located in different states and suburbs usually a long distance from each other. At some of these there have been serious industrial disputes, one of them in particular. Management have tried to establish competition between the workers from the different plants. They were succeeding for a while but after one of the disputes the shop stewards started comunicating with each other, supported by their union officials. There is now a National Framework Agreement and also a National Committee of union representatives.
Technology
New technology has been a big part of the experience at Nestle’ and Tip Top: however, there have not been big slabs of technology – rather it is introduced gradually and eats away at job security and work loads.
There was significant discussion about the ‘proliferation of labor – management ‘ councils:
In Australia these have a variety of names but it is quite common that they known as "Consultative Committees". These were a prominent part of the union agenda in the mid to late 80’s.
At that time they were created by strong union committees in work places who wanted to have say in decisions about the running and the future of the operation.
There has been mixed experience with aspect of unionism – positive and negative.
Tip Top / Weston experienced the negative: the committee was misused to force negotiations without union involvement. Eventually the workers voted to withdraw from the consultative committee and returned to union based bargaining.
Nestle Blacktown experienced the positive: but, what makes it positive is that the union reps meet separately and deals with all industrial issues around workers rights and entitlements, and in the union meetings prepares a common union position for the consultative committee.
Work force
We noted that union density in Korea has fallen to less than 11%. As a result we shared information about the Korean labour movement. Particularly, the group was interested in the strategy of opposition to the IMF imposed reforms. We did not have time for deeper discussion.
We shared Korea’s point about "Wrecking relationship between workers and inactive workplace":
"True casuals" are workers who are short term and occasional – these workers are not regarded badly by the permanent workers. There are also "seasonal casuals".
Nestle’ draw their casuals and temporary labour from people who have been associated with nestle before (they get first preference for work) and also from a labour hire firm – Skilled Engineering. But the union has an agreement with Skilled so there is some union control over the hire of casuals.
Nevertheless there is a division between the permanent workers and the casuals. This is usually because true casuals are less experienced and this ends up generating more hard work for the permanents.
Most true casuals are after permanent work – despite the myths which are spread that they don’t want permanent work.
"They have casual employment but permanent obligations", said one of our participants.
We shared the point made by our Filipino comrades in their report – "reduction in the work force … cost-cutting schemes … including forced early retirement." It is quite common in Australia for management to impose harsh restructuring agendas – constant work place change which puts more stress on the work force - and then force the early retirement by offering relatively generous early retirement to selected parts of the work force who they want to get rid of. Many workers, including tired union activists take this opportunity, hoping that they will get enough money to pay for their house or car and then get another job. Those who are left behind are then under a lot of pressure to work even harder, and if the union is a bit weaker, it is harder again to resist effectively.
We noted the common trends described in the reports from ourselves, Korea and the Philippines about the use of sub – contracting systems. We call it ‘pyramid sub-contracting’. This is tpical of the experience of our circle members in the construction industry and also, one of our organisers who is responsible for members in the ‘cleaning’ or ‘janitor’ occupations / industry. Legal protection for such workers certainly is inadequate in Australia. However, our union movement is still learning how to effectively organise these workers so that they can stand together, especially in a hostile anti-union environment.
The participants from Nestle and Tip Top / George Weston reported that they had made wage increases through enterprise bargaining. However, our new participant from Toshiba Software described the poor wages of software developers who were doing quite important and sophisticated work over long hours which were well in excess of the standard working week. In Australia, the standard working week established in the early 80’s, is supposed to be 38 hours. But this standard is now under threat. In Toshiba workers are expected to work much longer without the usual penalty rates – extra pay for work in excess of the standard week. This has led to a dispute at Toshiba where software workers are winning improvements through collective bargaining.
In general in Australia, there is a wage differential on average of about 10% between union and non-union workers. This is a generalisation. Now, union density has fallen to 28%. So, significant parts of the working class are finding it hard to keep their wages up with prices.
Putting official and unofficial unemployment together, we now have unemployment running around 16%.
2. Union activity
We discussed the daily activity of the union reps in dealing with these changes.
At Nestle’ Blacktown: union representatives are involved in daily deciion – making about the operation of the plant. As well as the basic grievance handling and union communication which is part of being a shop steward. There is also the Joint union – management committee, which works well – it has been a positive experience at Blacktown.
At Toshiba: the main effort has been in getting people into the union and pursuing some demands about working hours and the non payment of over time. There is still no industry award – that is no set of legal minimum standards - for the industry, which is the usual practice in Australia. The workers are pushing to move from individual contracts to a collective union agreement. There is only one work place which is organised so far.
At Tip Top / Weston: most of the time is spent being available to listen to member’s grievances and problems and, if appropriate, sorting the problems out with management.
3. Causes of the Changes
Our participants from the food industry are very familiar with the problem of competition arising from the reduction and removal of trade barriers.
We noted also that we have a very hostile, anti-union government. We discussed briefly the most recent announcement of the Minister for Workplace Relations, Peter Reith, in which he was proposing for ‘debate’ that voluntary work and ‘work for the dole’ should be expanded, that the minimum wage should be lowered even further, and a number of other measures. These are all in the name of more ‘labour market flexibility’ which apparently will help more people get jobs. In effect having a 16% unemployment rate and increasing it is the most powerful weapon against workers – it encourages competition among workers to get jobs, and separates unemployed workers from workers in jobs.
The labour law has also been changed to make illegal most strikes and to restrict union access to conciliation and arbitration processes which have been a part of or system for about a 100 years.
(Facilitator’s additional comment: The important point about the government’s method is that they promote these changes, and get majority consent through majority confusion for them, as measures to protect "freedom of association", by which they mean the ‘freedom’ not to join a union, not to be part of the collective.)
4. Questions from our friends in the Philippines and Korea
We would like to respond to some of these questions later in the program when we get on to union strategy and tactics.
5. What is Globalisation?
We discussed and clarified some of the key ideas in the reading material.
Then we discussed the key ideas in the "neo liberal agenda", especially the extent to which they were relevant to Australia:
The market rules
There is a clear trend towards this in Australia, driven by the Labor in the late 80’s and early 90’s and, with even more commitment by the new Liberal government. But, there is also resistance – not just from unions but from other parts of the work force and also from within the Labor Party since it lost office. There is a lot of suspicion in the general population – for example, there was strong opposition to the selling off to the private sector of electricity generation and supply in the state of New South Wales.
Privatisation
Emphatically yes – there have been significant privatisations and more are proposed. But, there is resistance.
We discussed why and decided that in many of these public agencies the technology and the market had developed so that private companies could make a clear profit and quickly. Also, this is aligned with the ideological commitment to profit making and private gain.
We discussed how far privatisation can go: "What is there which cannot be privatised?"
Deregulation
We thought that the handout did not deal with this very well. Our opinion is that
Cuts in government spending
Once again we can say that there has been a consistent pattern of
Competition
An emphatic ‘yes’!
Outward Orientation
Once again, ‘yes’.
In our discussion we arrived at some questions from our participants from Nestle’ and Warner-Lambert. See the next section.
Trade Liberalisation
Yes, but again there has been significant resistance. For example, the vehicle industry unions successfully prevented a reduction in tariffs in a campaign against the government in 1997.
Flexibility
Yes, but we ran out of time to talk this through in greater detail.
6. Our questions
… to help us learn about the experience of workers and unions in other countries:
7. Our next session is:
Thursday March 11th, 5.00 – 8.00 pm at the LHMU, 8th floor, 187 Thomas St., Haymarket.
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