Radical one day, ACTU president the next

Following are excerpts from a speech outlining the "personal viewpoint" of the soon to be confirmed national president of the ACTU, Jennie George, presented to the Teachers Federation in 1982. This speech, titled "Why the draft ACTU-ALP 'Social Agreement' is not the answer", says more than a dozen articles could about the power of the ALP's method of cooption and the current sorry state of the trade union bureaucracy in Australia. George begins her speech by describing the basic nature of the Accord. "Like all agreements", she says, "this one too is based on 'trade-offs'. Put simply, on the one hand the unions will moderate their wage demands and give up their rights to fight for wage increases and in return the ALP will take steps to control prices and non-wage incomes, offer some tax concessions and improvements in the social wage ...
"There is no doubt that the ALP will sell the package electorally on the basis that it has a credible anti-inflation policy through agreement reached with the union movement about wage restraint ... However, trade unions must evaluate the agreement in terms of its effects on their members."
Going on to pose the question,"What's wrong with the draft agreement?", George says: "In a nutshell, the agreement is far too one sided. All the specific concessions are on the part of the workers, without their being given specific commitments that their wages will automatically increase in line with the CPI, nor that prices and profits will be controlled by legislative means."
She continues: "It seems to me that the agreement is based on a fundamentally incorrect assumption — which is that salary increases need to be restrained or moderated before economic growth can occur ...
"We saw, however, that unemployment continued to steadily increase even when all public servants suffered a decline in their real wage levels under the indexation package. There can be no simple equation that: Wage cuts = economic growth and jobs."
George then cites the evidence. "From our [Teachers Federation] own experience, wage restraint under indexation resulted in declining living standards for our members at the same time as unemployment in the teaching service grew. The losses suffered by a fall in our real wage levels led us to support the union push to break through the guidelines."
She asks: "Why should the union movement accept a package without guarantees ... of full and automatic quarterly wage indexation? ... The indirect means proposed to control prices and non-wage incomes will, I think, prove ineffectual ... Already any semblance of an effective capital gains tax has been abandoned by the ALP."
George then condemns the Accord on the further grounds that it "lacks any specific reference to an expansion of the public sector ... Of even greater concern is the suggestion that unions will consult with the government on the amount of their wage claims", a proposal she labels "cooptive".
Highlighting the fundamental contradictions in an ACTU-ALP Accord, George quotes at length from a paper by John Wanna and Bruce McFarlane (University of Adelaide) on the draft Accord, saying: "The maintenance and improvement of living standards is the basis of trade union action, while the maintenance of an employment-creating capitalist economy is for the most part the raison d'etre of the Labor Party. These two objectives are not one and the same ...
"The history of social agreements/contracts in terms of economic recession has been a sorry one for the labour movement. They have not worked in the interests of unionists, as the British experience highlights quite clearly."
George then argues: "Ultimately the issue is not whether the economy can afford social reforms or guarantee everybody a decent standard of living. The test is whether the ALP will commit itself to the difficult task of ensuring a more equitable distribution of income, wealth and economic power within this country once it is in power ..."
She concludes by saying: "I believe [the agreement] is too one sided, and that workers will end up yet again carrying the burden of the economic crisis. For this reason I believe the [Teachers] Federation should reject the proposed draft Social Agreement ...
"Ultimately we [must] redirect the focus away from the interests of profit to a system which is concerned with real human needs."
It is a pity that George didn't take her own analysis, ideas and ideals as seriously as her career path. The price of her opportunism, and that of all her high-powered mates in the ACTU, is being paid for out of the rapidly emptying pockets of the working people in this country.