"Mate, he's smiling." With these words, one cynical old union official described how he saw industrial relations minister Laurie Brereton's position after he had been jeered, catcalled and hissed by a hostile ACTU congress.
Smiling? After such a roast? After the federal Labor caucus told him to forget his original plans to allow non-unionists to do enterprise deals? And when ACTU secretary Bill Kelty said in reply that the ACTU and the government have "a collective mandate ... to have in this country a decent award system to protect workers. And don't for one moment think that we will ever resile from that."?
But the old unionist was right. Brereton may have had a rough hour at the hands of irate delegates, but his new industrial relations legislation is on course. And despite the reaction of the congress, which backed a resolution to oppose the extension of enterprise bargaining to non-unionists, the ACTU leadership immediately began negotiations with the government on secretary Bill Kelty's compromise proposal on the issue.
This proposal would require non-unionists who want to strike enterprise deals to set up "unions" (enterprise-based bargaining units) which would then be registered with the Industrial Relations Commission in a process similar to unions.
What's more, the ACTU has already agreed that the secondary boycott provisions of the Trades Practices Act (Sections 45D and 45E) will not be repealed but transferred to the industrial legislation. No-one uttered a peep about this retreat except metalworkers' leader George Campbell, who said it was the "best achievable".
One of Brereton's main sources of support is the "unrepresentative swill" in the Senate, particularly the Democrats. As he reminded the congress: "Any proposal we put forward to the Democrats that skirts the issue of non-unionists will be redrafted by them to ensure that it does. Let's not kid ourselves, our best insurance policy is not total reliance on federal Labor governments, that can't go on forever."
For an ACTU leadership which has forgotten that working people's best "insurance policy" is their collective strength, Brereton's is a potent offer. The peak body is haunted by the thought of a repetition of Kennett's Victorian win nationally. And the best insurance policy they can envisage is what Brereton is proposing — the entrenchment in law of minimum standards that are presently expressed in awards.