By Paul Oboohov
SYDNEY — Metalworkers' delegates gathered at two meetings on November 24 as part of a national response by the Metal Trades Federation of Unions (MTFU) to delays by the Metal Trades Industry Association (MTIA) in settling the issue of national skills standards. These standards are associated with the relatively new structure of 14 occupational classifications in the industry.
After four and a half years of negotiations, the MTIA has declared it views the standards as "advisory" only, allowing each boss a free hand in setting classifications, destroying portability and recognition of skills.
The MTFU is threatening to go back to the "bad old days" of strict demarcations between skills, no consultative committees and no multi-skilling, where a "fitter is a fitter is a fitter" for life.
Delegates interviewed at the Auburn meeting said that metal bosses did not want to see their low skilled process line workers rising into higher paid classifications. As well, some workers were doing the work of higher classifications without being paid the higher rate.
One delegate said that multi-skilling had led to deskilling rather than the union-intended higher skills. It was creating a type of worker who knew small amounts of many skills, rather than having comprehensive knowledge of them.
Delegates also said that Accord processes, having demoralised workers and undermined shop floor organisation, had led to widespread disaffection with enterprise bargaining because conditions were being sold off for small wage rises.
This disaffection made itself felt in the meeting as delegate after delegate asked the leadership when enterprise bargaining as a wage system was to end, what other avenues for wage rises were being pursued, when there would be a system paying for skills and shifts in inflation. A delegate said that he was being harassed by his rank and file on such questions.
Doug Cameron, national secretary of the MTFU and part of the national leadership of the Automotive, Metals and Engineering Union (AMEU, or "Metalworkers") said that enterprise bargaining was here to stay; the only question was its shape.
He claimed that future pay systems will have a larger emphasis on economic adjustments for inflation, and less on productivity. However, he tried to defend enterprise bargaining as an extension of the old over-award campaigns in individual workplaces, and said that the current system is not going to give way to the old national wage case approach.
Negotiations under enterprise bargaining were frustrating, but the unions had been forced into it, Cameron said. The metal industry unions had generally held their ground in the recession, unlike other industries, and MTFU policy was opposed to wages and conditions cuts and links to productivity. He said that wage increases had to be pursued in a "responsible" way, so as to save jobs.
The Auburn meeting voted unanimously for a list of recommendations that called on shop stewards and delegates to call meetings in individual workplaces to demand that bosses repudiate the MTIA stand on national classification standards, on pain of going back to old demarcated classification structures.
The resolution also noted MTFU success in gaining wage increases through enterprise bargaining, although "calling" on officials to "provide every assistance" to those who had not shared in that "success". The agreements reached are to expire by March 1995. Productivity links are rejected.
The resolution endorsed the $8 per week increase that the Industrial Relations Commission has held out. The resolution stated that this would require increased emphasis on achieving enterprise agreements. It finished by noting the federal government's changes to industrial law and called on the MTFU to "maximise benefits to workers" in the new regime. The resolution mentioned mass meetings scheduled for February 1994 to consider progress on the issue of classifications.
The discontent on enterprise bargaining expressed in the Auburn meeting is symptomatic of the mood in the work force. Another indication is the strong vote for anti-enterprise bargaining candidates in the Public Sector Union ACT branch elections [see page 7].
Working people are increasingly aware they are being sold a pup. Their wages and conditions have been put on the chopping block by the Labor Party and its union sympathisers.
It is no good for people like Doug Cameron to say that the unions were "forced" into enterprise bargaining, because they weren't. Unions have the power to reject such systems, as evidenced by the union break-out from the Fraser wage freeze of 1982.
The discontent is all the more remarkable in the metal industry, because the metal unions have by and large held their ground in the recession. The leadership is dealing with is a work force that knows its strength and wonders why it is not being used effectively in cross-industry campaigns.
Part of the answer was given by one delegate, who said that after a campaign in his workplace, the leash was snapped short by a deal done at a higher level. The delegate was left to feel the heat of the rank and file. He asked who in their right mind would be a delegate in such circumstances.
Industry-wide campaigns will become all the more necessary as the new Brereton industrial relations regime institutionalises enterprise bargaining on the US model. That model was introduced in the 1950s in the US precisely to destroy the power of the unions.
Perhaps, with enterprise bargaining having operated for a while, the MTIA is "trying it on" to test whether the MTFU have been weakened by it. It does no good for the MTFU to play into their hands by responding in an enterprise bargaining fashion.