Livin’ the Dream?

He’s on the chain, he’s on the chain
Shoulder to shoulder on the chain
Did his grandfather’s ghost softly shudder,
Will the victories and losses fade in history,
Who pays the price, who’ll make the gain,
When his livelihood comes up for sale?
On the Chain by Jumping Fences

‘Hard Labour’ – a review

This is a review of Hard Labour: wage theft in the age of inequality by Ben Schneiders, an investigative journalist at the Age in Melbourne, published by Scribe.

“Wages are the price of labor-power, not labor.” – Karl Marx

As someone from an earlier generation of union activism, I find this book to be a good summary of the decline of the union movement and, in part, the reasons for it. Schneiders’ account of inequality under neo-liberalism is extensive. He looks at both the darkside and the good side of the union movement in Australia while advocating for workers to join a union where they can. For example, he exposes the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA) for its complicity in widespread wage theft in the services sector while, at the same time, highlighting the good work done by the Retail and Fast Food Workers Union (RAFFWU). Just looking at the name of the SDA suggests that it is a bosses union, however Schneiders gets in behind the deals struck by the ALP’s Joe de Bruyn (SDA) and the big supermarket chains and fast food outlets.

To do this the author developed contacts from rank-and-file workers like Duncan Hart from Socialist Alternative, Penny Vickers, Michael Johnstone, lawyer Siobhan Kelly, Stacey Clohesy, who worked for McDonald’s, and Josh Cullinan, from the Retail and Fast Food Workers Union (RAFFWU). He spoke also to representatives from the National Union of Workers, now called the United Workers Union, which specialises in coverage of people in the farming (usually covered by the Australian Workers Union (AWU) and cleaning sectors. He gets close to migrant workers in the south-east of Melbourne on visas that take away their basic work rights in Australia.

Much of the inequality described in the book is quantified by showing how much lower than the minimum award wage workers in the services sector are often paid. It should be noted that ‘the awards’ spoken of are not some high watermark of wages justice. They are the base from which Entreprise Bargaining Agreements are negotiated.

The author highlights the importance of the arbitration system in Australia starting with the 1911 Harvester judgement and describes common union strategies based on an arbitration system currently embodied in the Fair Work Commission. Perhaps it is a sign of how far backwards we have gone that the author does not entertain confronting the arbitration system as a means of attaining wage justice for workers. He does mention that the Retail and Fast Food Workers Union is not registered under the Fair Work Act but not what it and other unions could do to defy the arbitration system and confront the boss directly.

The loss of overtime and penalty rates can be challenged by workers refusing to work on weekends and public holidays. How can many employers function without labour at these crucial times in the current capitalist economy? It is difficult to categorise such action as a strike and difficult to impose penalties on the unions and their organisers. The loss to workers is reduced because they only lose their penalty rates by refusing to work overtime and on weekends. Once again this may be a platform for further industrial action. – After the Waterfront published by the LeftPress collective

Wages and conditions protected by arbitration are a bare minimum, with the minimum wage currently set at about $21 per hour. One of the strongest claims in the book is that 750,000 workers are paid below minimum because of restrictive visas. Schneiders provides evidence that about 100,000 workers are employed daily in Australia despite having no legal residency status in the country. This pool of workers are exploited mercilessly, often paid less than $10 an hour in the farming sector. Australia is no stranger to exploitation in the sector.

The Australian Workers Union (AWU) was built in the 1890s as a result of the exploitation of shearers by Queensland pastoralists. It is a wonder that the author did not reveal the role played by former AWU and Labor party boss, Bill Shorten, in an exploitative arrangement with companies in the services sector. Shorten, then State Secretary of the Victorian AWU, cut a deal with CleanEvent boss and mate, Craig Lovett, the 1998 Victorian Entrepreneur of the Year, that cost workers two million dollars per year by cutting their hourly rate down to $18 per hour and depriving them of overtime. But that was probably a bit before Ben Schneiders time. Shorten also signed agreements that cut wages and conditions for workers during the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

There is an interesting story in “Hard Labour” about Duncan Hart, the trolley operator cum PhD history student, who took on both Coles and the Catholic union, Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association (SDA). SDA assisted HR in Coles to steal the wages of workers. This conflict between rank and file workers pitted against a right-wing union and big business led to the formation of the Retail and Fast Food Workers Union (RAFFWU) which had about 3,300 members* in comparison with SDA which has over 200,000 members. The SDA also has a lot of money.

In the chapter titled Duncan versus Goliath the author was drawn into a debate with Joe De Bruyn (SDA and National Civic Council) about marriage equality. Curious, in a book about industrial struggles over wages. Both De Bruyn and , a grouper from way back, and Schneiders both have Dutch catholic backgrounds but have very different points of view on social issues like marriage equality and the rights of women.

Privatision

Ben Schneiders needed to say more about privatisation during the period 1980 to 2020. While he acknowledges the impact of 40 years of neo-liberalism, the author did not go into much detail about the horrific effects privatisation has on the rights of workers. For example the privatisation and contracting out in the electricity industry started in Queensland during the SEQEB dispute in 1985 had a lasting effect of loss of workers rights in that state and elsewhere. The Bjelke-Petersen government sacked over 1,000 linesmen and cable jointers over a dispute about contract labour.

Privatisation in the energy sector led to the loss of many jobs and eventually to market failure in the electricity industry. Also privatisation of railways was a direct attack on the rights of workers. Queensland Premier, Anna Bligh, now head of the Australian Banking Association, sold the profitable arm of Queensland Rail to Aurizon. Government advisors swore on a stack of bibles that the private sector can run big rail transport more effectively and more efficiently than the public sector. According to the Federal Court, during the privatisation process, Queensland Rail management breached workplace agreements giving workers no say in the process.

The electrical trade union (ETU) in Queensland was not afraid to call this a sellout by Labor. as their billboard illutrates:

Courses of Action

In in the latter part of the book we learned quite a bit about the author and his view of the world. He is an advocate for unionism that takes on a different model of organising. He describes a society were many young people have no connection with unions. He sees social democracy as part of the solution to the problem of inequality. He holds up Your Rights at Work campaign that ushered in the Rudd Labor government, as being a high point of modern union organising.

Schneiders is critical of the top-down approach of the ACTU’s Change the Rules campaign that ushered in the Scott Morrison LNP government in 2019. Ben Schneiders describes that campaign, ahead of the 2019 federal election, as being about having changes to the Fair Work Act to give unions and Workers more rights. However he qualifies this by saying ‘this is where the closeness of many unions to the Labor Party’ became ‘a weakness when decisions by unions are to often seen by senior officials through the prism of electoral politics‘. But what the author didn’t discuss was the accepted practice of union officials having a career path into parliament. Union officials and organisers should always be ready to go back on the tools. You would hope that Union officials’ sole focus would be members’ interests not a compromise that suits the ALP’s electoral ambitions. So I wonder how much the perceived career path from union official to Labor politician has weakened unions?

While social democratic in outlook, the book is really pointing to the historic compromise of workers and their unions – the softening of demands by workers in order to attain sufficient acceptance in the middle class for the ALP to win election. The author looks to ways of financing and nurturing cooperatives as a way of tackling inequality. For example the Gillard government’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation ‘helping to spur growth‘.

The book reflects the younger generations’ concerned about climate change being the existential crisis of our times. His concluding chapter talks about ‘changing the world of work‘ not just being content to win the higher wages and wanting society to be more democratic. He talks about control in the workplace resting on decisions made by everyone with an interest in an organisation.

Hard Labour points to the group Cooperative Power which started up in the 1990s after the green energy company Powershop was bought out by Shell, whom he describes as the ‘multinational poster child of environment degradation‘.

The Accord

It is interesting to hear what Ben Schneiders says about the Prices and Incomes Accord, a deal cut by the Hawke-Keating government with big unions and big business in the 1980s. This is a weaker section of the book. Schneiders falls short of calling The Accord a sell-out but identified it as reducing real wages.

No mention that the Accord, as originally proposed, was intended to curb prices but failed to do so, leading to the ‘recession we-had-to-have‘. The Hawke-Keating government attacked workers and their organisations just as their predecessor Chifley did just after the war by sending the army in to starve miners back to work during the 1949 dispute.

There are is some amnesia in the ACTU still about who were the architects of neo-liberalism in Australia. It was the Labor Party. But cane we excuse the author writing his first book? He ignores the lessons of the 1985 SEQEB dispute in Queensland, the Dollar Sweets dispute at a small confectionery company on Malvern Rd in the Melbourne, the Mugingberri dispute in the Northern Territory, the Pilots dispute, and the de-registration of the Builders Labourers Federation and other attacks by the Labor government. But these were all before Ben Schneiders’ time. At no point does the author mention one of the greatest restrictions on union power, the continuing ban on secondary boycotts by both Labor and Liberal governments. Hawke had the chance in 1986 to repeal the legislation, but did nothing.

The ‘failure by the Hawke Labor government to repeal the anti-secondary boycott provisions of the Trade Practices Act were used during Hawke’s time in office to financially cripple the AMIEU (Meatworkers union). Hawke also used Air Force pilots to break the pilots’ strike.’https://wpos.wordpress.com/2007/11/04/the-industrial-relations-nightmare-courses-of-action/

AFTER THE WATERFRONT – the workers are quiet published by LeftPress.

While not revolutionary in its outlook, I recommend this book as part of a discussion of the way forward for unions in Australia. And remember for workers to defy the laws in a concerted way requires the building of workers’ political organisations.

Ian Curr
10 Jan 2023

References

Wage Slavery @ https://workersbushtelegraph.com.au/2023/01/05/wage-slavery/

After the Waterfront – The workers are quiet