By Geoff Payne
NEWCASTLE — In the early 1980s, during the push for the 35-hour week, workers did not rely on Labor politicians winning office in the hope they would meet workers' demands. Instead, mass meetings of workers endorsed an activist-based campaign to win shorter hours. Hundreds of thousands of leaflets, pamphlets, badges and stickers were circulated in workplaces.
At the BHP steelworks in Newcastle, the fitters and boilermakers of the Amalgamated Metal Workers Union (AMWU) simply worked shorter hours. They took two afternoons off a month to reduce their working week to 38 hours. Some factories, such at the Union Carbide chemical plant in Melbourne, were occupied by workers for weeks.
The widespread support for the campaign meant that neither the bosses nor the Liberal government (John Howard was treasurer at the time) could stop the movement for shorter hours. In 1982, the metal trades bosses caved in and agreed to a 38-hour week, and a resulting increase in workers' hourly pay.
This victory soon flowed to other industries and a new term entered the Australian vocabulary — the rostered day off.
While the 1982-1983 recession soon took away many of the gains workers had won, the 38-hour week was a significant victory. In the steelworks, even the right-wing ironworkers' union officials, who had run dead on the campaign, admitted that the 38-hour week had saved jobs.
One slogan used to win the campaign was "Give us the 35-hour week and give a kid a job".
With youth unemployment rates reaching 50% in many areas, now is a good time to again raise this idea and kick-start a campaign for the shorter working week.
The 35-hour week represents 35 good ways to give a kid a job. The capitalists and their political allies will reply, however, that the economy can't "afford" shorter hours. They said this about the 38-hour week. Workers were told the same thing during the big struggles in the late 1940s and 1950s for a 44-hour week, and again for the 40-hour week.
As one boilermaker once told me: "When inflation was high, the bosses said they couldn't afford shorter hours. When it was low, they said shorter hours would fuel inflation, and if there was no inflation they said you shouldn't rock the boat."
Australians never used to tolerate high levels of unemployment. In 1961, when the jobless rate reached 2%, voters nearly threw Bob Menzies' Liberal government out of office. Now, when official figures show an unemployment rate of 8.1%, the media congratulates John Howard.
The mainstream parties refuse to offer real solutions to unemployment. The Liberals' "solution" to youth unemployment is work for the dole. As for the ALP, it didn't oppose the introduction of work for the dole, and it will probably continue the scheme.
In any case, Labor has refused to promise to repeal the Liberals' policies which have cut tens of thousands of young people from unemployment benefits. How can we believe the ALP's promise to reduce unemployment to 5%, when it denies young people the right to the dole?
The anti-racist protests organised by Resistance show that young people are not fooled by the racist, anti-working class arguments that unemployment is caused by migrants, Aborigines, sole mothers or illiterates.
Socialists argue that a real attack on the national scourge of unemployment must involve a national campaign to win a 35-hour week, with no loss in pay. This campaign could involve those workers who formally have a 35- or 38-week but have lost it through compulsory overtime.
There have been enormous technological advances since the last generalised reduction in working hours. It is about time that the benefits of this are shared throughout the community and not just used as an excuse to lay off workers.
Griffith University researchers recently reported that Australian manufacturing workers are among the lowest paid in the world's leading industrial economies; only the UK and South Korea have "lower labour costs".
At the Asia-Pacific Solidarity Conference in Sydney last Easter, I spoke to a Korean workers' leader. He told me that, like Australian bosses, Korean bosses tell their employees they must compete with workers in other countries and, of course, they couldn't possibly afford to agree to shorter hours.
[Geoff Payne, a rigger at the BHP steelworks and member of the Australian Workers Union, is the Democratic Socialists' candidate for the seat of Newcastle.]