The wolf's teeth
Unions in a Contrary World: the Future of the Australian Trade Union Movement
By David Peetz
Cambridge University Press, 1998
243pp., $34.95 (pb)
Review by Jonathan Singer
Unions in a Contrary World is an academic yet readable book of interest to all those concerned with rebuilding the union movement in Australia. It presents a well-substantiated and sophisticated argument about why the 40% decline in union membership since 1982 took place and how it can be turned around.
Peetz's sophistication, however, is like the wolf's teeth of fairytale fame: all the better for social democracy to eat up a new generation of union activists. He provides justifications for the ACTU leadership's strategies in the past — especially the ALP-ACTU Prices and Incomes Accord, which aligned the union movement with the 1983-96 Labor government's restraint on wage demands and industrial action supposedly in return for improvements in the "social wage" and a say in policy formation — and for the future — the "organising model" that emphasises recruitment, delegate training and workplace activity.
Peetz notes that surveys of workers between 1990 and 1996 found that 40%-50% said they wanted to join unions and this did not fall during that period.
He shows that union density (membership as a proportion of the work force) in jobs in which union membership was not compulsory or was prohibited by the employer remained at 25% from 1976 to 1995. Yet, overall union density, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, fell from 51% in 1976 to 49.5% in 1982, then to 40.5% in 1990 and 30.3% in 1997.
Peetz attributes this fall primarily to the rapid decline of compulsory unionism, driven by a change from the mid-1980s in employer attitudes to "closed shops" which resulted in changes to state and federal industrial laws in the 1990s. Employees' desire to join unions is less likely to translate into actual membership and union membership is less than the number of workers willing to join unions. Employers are able to prevent unions reaching the many workers who want to join.
Peetz finds that structural changes in the labour market, such as changes in industry employment in the 1980s, casualisation in the 1990s and public sector's falling share of employment in public sector also had an impact on unionisation. However, this could only account for a minority of the reduction of union membership, and can not explain the trend's acceleration in the 1990s.
The responses of the unions to these changes, Peetz argues, were inadequate and consolidated the decline.
The Accord, however, did not contribute to the decline but ameliorated it, according to Peetz. He writes that surveys suggested union members overwhelmingly supported the Accord and apparent problems like wage reductions and the centralisation of wage bargaining in the 1980s had no effect on unionisation.
Moreover, the Accord, when compared with the experience in New Zealand, bought time for the unions to prepare for the push by employers to de-collectivise their relations with employees through individual contracts and softened its impact. Peetz asserts that the ACTU's and ALP's support for enterprise bargaining in the 1990s was a response to employer pressures that "would have shifted the focus of wage bargaining to the enterprise or workplace level anyway, often without union involvement ... [which] would probably have been the worst of possible outcomes for unions".
Unions worked against themselves, Peetz says, through competition for coverage of existing union members, inactivity at the workplace and poor union organisation. Peetz is critical of the 20 "super-union" amalgamation process, which did not reduce the number of unions in workplaces nor end union leaderships' efforts to compete for coverage.
Surveys, Peetz reports, suggest that union members want unions to cooperate in improving their employers' efficiency, although not to the extent of abandoning members' interests. He argues that unions should take note of this attitude because employers may otherwise look for gains to be made by employing non-union labour.
Peetz notes that "an effective delegate presence increasingly resembles a prerequisite for securing the continuing membership of a union in the workplace".
Having identified the key role of delegates, Peetz fails to ask what type of union activity encourages workers to step forward to become union delegates.
The reason most commonly stated by workers for belonging to a union in surveys is to benefit from the union's protection, advice and representation. Only a small percentage offer ideological reasons.
However, union delegates — as voluntary union activists — are generally more conscious supporters of trade unionism the general membership, and understand themselves to be representatives of their fellow workers against their employers. Peetz provide information that supports this.
Employees in workplaces where wage bargaining took place were much more satisfied with their delegates than those delegates only bargained around non-wage matters. Employees want more, rather than less, combativeness from their delegates.
The Accord's particular effect was to reduce union combativeness. Industrial action, as measured by days of work lost in disputes, declined dramatically. Fights against job losses virtually ceased. Delegates were drawn into "tripartite committees" that restructured workplaces and were even required to choose which workers would lose their jobs.
Notably, while Peetz reports 30% of unionised workplaces surveyed in 1995 had no union delegate (down from 34% five years earlier), he gives no pre-Accord figures. Yet much left-wing criticism of the Accord has been concerned with how it wound down the previous workplace activism and damaged delegate structures.
Peetz concentrates on the consciousness required for membership — a desire to defend workers' immediate interests, arising more or less directly from the workers' experiences. Generally, such consciousness does not change much, except with radical changes in the balance of class forces.
That has not happened in Australia in the 1980s and 1990s. That's why workers' propensity to join unions has not changed. But Peetz then presumes all consciousness among workers has been static: the class struggle is not an issue for him. Incredibly, he has not used the word "class" once in this book.
This is why Peetz can present enterprise bargaining as a forward move for unions — a position that is increasingly rejected among union militants. In his view, only individual contracts de-collectivise workers' relationship with employers. However, the experience of enterprise bargaining is that it has destroyed solidarity between workers as employers secure smaller and more disjointed bargaining units.
In the metalworkers' union, where the Accord, award restructuring and enterprise bargaining found their chief proponents, the tide is now running in the opposite direction.
Peetz seems to have a problem with solidarity. He quotes favourably from another author who counterposes unionists' "historically nurtured habits of solidarity" to those "more inclined to look forward than back".
Yet workers' solidarity is a key to reversing the decline of unionism in Australia. Every significant upsurge of unionism has involved strike waves combined with workers putting forward their solutions to social and political crises.
The 1998 waterfront dispute gave a hint of the role that such solidarity can play again. But Peetz's book suggests little if anything that would encourage its development.