Leigh Hubbard: ALP needs 'a complete re-stuffing'

[MELBOURNE — On May 11, the Socialist Alliance sponsored a trade union
seminar, discussing, among other things, unions and political representation.
This question of relating to political parties, and specifically the ALP,
has been an increasing focus of discussion among Victorian unionists, particularly
since Electrical Trades Union Victorian secretary Dean Mighell announced
his resignation from the ALP, and the Victorian branch of the Australian
Manufacturing Workers Union stopped its affiliation to the ALP for six
months.

[After a plenary of speakers from the political parties, union representatives
addressed the forum. Victorian Trades Hall Council secretary Leigh Hubbard
spoke first, followed by Australian Manufacturing Workers Union national
council member Chris Spindler and the Construction, Forestry, Mining and
Energy Union's Gareth Stephenson, who is a member of the construction division's
committee of management. In the interests of furthering the discussion,
Green Left Weekly re-prints below abridged versions of the three
unionists' speeches to the forum.]

There is a real dissatisfaction among unions and individuals with the
ALP. That's been made clear by Dean Mighell's resignation from the ALP
in Victoria and, more recently, by the Australian Manufacturing Workers
Union making noises about its affiliation.

I'm not sure that that kind of questioning and dissatisfaction will
lead anywhere, unless there is a political process happening in the unions
themselves or there is some alternative outside the ALP. Just because there
is dissatisfaction doesn't necessarily mean things are going to change.

I've been cynical about whether the ALP will reform itself. It has a
number of reviews on at the moment. There's the review of the party structure
about how to improve the party's vote, how to make it more attractive to
members and non-members and how to better link to unions — both affiliated
and non-affiliated.

But it is not a matter of how the ALP improves its organisation. It's
about how the party changes its values — or reasserts more traditional
values — to a progressive social agenda. When you hear party leaders say
that the way to look after low-income earners is give them access to share
schemes or tax credits, you have to wonder if there's been any reflection
on that at all.

What's happening in the ALP partly reflects the demise of politics within
the union movement. During the last 25 years, the left has generally declined,
and so have left parties. So there's also been a decline in political education
and political consciousness within the trade union movement. Not all of
it — it's patchy — but by and large there has been that decline.

For example, the 38-hour work week didn't come through the beneficence
of the Labor Party, or the Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) or even
the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU). It came because in Victoria
you had 40 or 50 union officials who were members of the Communist Party
of Australia.

The CPA caucus decided to pursue a 35-hour week. Those officials went
back to their unions — metal trades unions — and called on the left unions
generally. Between 1977 and 1980 they actually ran a campaign. They got
their members to take off one day a month unpaid. And they did that for
12 to 16 months.

Eventually the ACTU was forced to take up a case which became the 38-hour
test case, which by 1982 was in the IRC, set the standard and became the
award. Militant left unions had a party which gave them the infrastructure
to form policy.

Since the 1980s there's been none of that — there is no alternate left
voice within the union movement around which people coalesce or caucus.
We've suffered from the demise of both the Communist Party and the National
Civic Council.

One of the questions — and I've got no immediate answer — is: how do
you resurrect that debate around ideology? You can talk about rules and
how you relate to members all you like, if you're not also talking about
ideology and content then its just like selling Avon door to door.

I would also say that about the ACTU approach on recruitment. It's all
very well to say we'll recruit 200,000 new members but unless your politicising
and engaging with the activists in that group you're really going nowhere.

The other issue which is very large is the changing composition of the
workforce. The growth areas of trade unionism are semi-professional and
professional areas. I won't deny the importance and the strength of the
traditional blue collar manufacturing, construction and mining industries.
But as a proportion of the trade union movement they are declining very
rapidly, while the growth unions are in the finance sector and among teachers
and health workers.

Most of these unions are not affiliated to a political party. If you
look at all the major campaigns in this state over the last couple of years
— run by teachers, police officers, nurses or whoever — they've been very
successful campaigns run by unions that are absolutely dedicated to the
issues and their members and that don't give a stuff, in terms of running
them, which political party is in office.

One of the lessons from this is, I suppose, that if you're not bound
within a political party structure you're more likely to say, “Well I don't
care who is in government, I'm going to pursue the campaign”. There is
a real issue for unions inside the ALP structure about criticising the
party, or running campaigns in an independent way.

The ALP no longer represents politically a huge and growing proportion
of the Victorian Trades Hall Council. Around a third to 40% of the 360,000
workers covered by the VTHC are in the non-affiliated union milieu, which
is the growth area.

By and large unions in the ALP are trying to direct or hold influence
on the direction of the ALP. That's very difficult.

But I don't think there is any contradiction for a militant industrial
union being affiliated to the ALP and simply seeing it as a site of struggle.
If a union simply says: “We'll turn up to policy meetings, we'll turn up
to state conference, we'll battle away — we're still going to speak out
on issues and we're still going to run on campaigns, we're still going
to criticise governments — ALP or otherwise” — I don't see a contradiction
in that.

Unions have a responsibility to their members to use every forum they
can, every opportunity they can to advance the interests of their members.

I can understand unions which say they'd be better joining any other
party than the Labor Party because it has to look over its shoulder. At
the moment the ALP is not looking over its shoulder worried about some
left or centre-left force. It's looking to see where the Liberals are.

So there is an argument that unions leaving the ALP and joining something
else — whether it's the Greens or the Socialist Alliance or whatever —
could be a useful thing.

I think the debate at the moment is a useful thing. Hopefully it will
force the ALP to reassess where it's going.

I don't think that there will be a big walkout of unions from the ALP.
Because most people — even in the left unions — have their power and opportunities
to advance themselves very much tied up with being a part of the factional
system. It's a big ask of those officials to challenge that status quo
by walking away from it.

Many unionists will take a critical view privately, but when it comes
to the crunch of speaking out about the ALP or leaving the party, I think
you'd be silly to expect them to turn around and actually do it.

But I think individuals will, many of those I know have. As Lindsay
Tanner told the ALP's internal review, the ALP doesn't just need a coat
of paint, it needs complete re-stuffing. I think that's absolutely true.
But what Lindsay's re-stuffing might mean and what others of us might mean
might be completely different things.

From Green Left Weekly, June 5, 2002.

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From GLW issue 495