Industrial Workers of the World

The Alternative Liberal Party (aka "you labour we party!") supposedly faces extinction.

see http://slackbastard.anarchobase.com/

http://www.theage.com.au/national/factionhit-alp-faces-extinction-20090125-7pgl.html http://www.theage.com.au/national/labor-leaders-back-party-stability-deal-20090126-7q0f.html

But can we believe the good news? Once proud to claim to represent the interest of white Australian workers, the contemporary ALP — a largely middle class institution — now claims to represent the interests of ‘working families’; a mantra repeated endlessly during the last Federal election campaign by KRudd & Co.

Despite a declining membership, however, the ALP still retains a stranglehold over the trades union movement, and the labour movement more generally. (See : Union Control of the ALP, Presentations given on 26 March 2008 by [former] trade union leader and Senator Elect for NSW, Doug Cameron, and former union official [and Communist] Mark Aarons.) The ALP, in turn, is dominated by the right.

Aside from a plummeting membership (a dilemma also faced by the Tories and their country counterparts the Nationals), the average age of an ALP member is now around 50. Yoof, in other words, find little of appeal in the ALP. Or at least, yoof in general: the party still manages to recruit ambitious young apparatchiks, principally students, Darren Ray being perhaps the example par excellence of this tendency. Despite its hostility to socialism — formally abandoned some years ago — the Australian Labor Party “maintains formal links with fraternal parties overseas through ongoing membership of the Socialist International. This supplements the close, bilateral ties the ALP maintains with counterparts around the world”. There’s also the Fabian Society, but nobody really pays them much attention. This may be because they have next to no influence.

See also : ARE FACTIONS KILLING THE LABOR PARTY?, Senator Robert Ray, Address to The Fabian Society Sydney, 20 September 2006 (”Thirty years ago I was doing research on the First International – an international socialist organisation formed by Marx and Engels [sic] to unify the working class movement. It quickly became the battleground between the Marxists and the Anarchists, who were to have their showdown at the Hague Conference of 1872.

While not yet a nation, Australia was nevertheless represented at this Congress by a Ballarat miner whose task was to argue for an extra shilling a day for Australian miners. As the colossal ideological firestorm engulfed the Hague Conference, as Karl Marx and Michael Bakunin fought it out, the Australian delegate was reported to have intervened on only one occasion, and that was to say “Monsieur le President, I do not understand what is happening”.)

Union Power and the New Mandarins

The decline in the labour movement has proven to be the wave upon which a number of its representatives have surfed into state power. This decline is evidenced in the declining number of industrial disputes (the result of an exercise of industrial power by the unions) and the even steeper decline in union membership. Australian Social Trends, 1996, Industrial Relations: Industrial disputes: “In the period 1969-83, the number of industrial disputes recorded annually fluctuated considerably but was consistently higher than the number of disputes in the period 1983-94. Since 1984, there has been a steady downward trend in the number of industrial disputes. While this is part of a world-wide trend, the decline in Australia has been much greater than in other parts of the world. In 1994, there were 560 industrial disputes — the lowest number since 1940.” Prices and incomes policy 1983-96

The Statement of Accord between the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) was endorsed in February 1983/4. Shortly after the ALP won the federal election the Accord became government policy. In September 1983 the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission agreed to establish a centralised wage fixing system based on productivity and price movements as outlined in the Statement of Accord.

The ACTU agreed to exercise restraint in wage claims in exchange for social programs. During the first three years of the Accord wages were indexed, but at the end of 1985-86 the government and the ACTU agreed to partially index wages. Subsequently, indexation was abandoned and wage adjustments were significantly below the inflation rate. In 1987 the Industrial Relations Commission recommended a two tier system. The first tier was an automatic flat increase for everyone.

The second tier was related to identifiable improvement in productivity. In the following years the two tier system remained with increasing flexibility occurring. For example in 1991 the first wage increase was replaced by a tax cut. The Accord was abandoned in March 1996 following the change of government. Note that the number of disputes is one indicator of industrial unrest; the number of participants, and longevity of the dispute, are others.

Some of the key disputes which the ALP effectively neutralised towards the beginning of its last period of Federal rule include the Australian Pilots’ dispute of 1989 and, prior to that, the successful de-construction of the Victorian Builders’ Labourers’ Federation. On the BLF, see Liz Ross, Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win! Builders Labourers Fight Deregistration 1981-1994, Vulgar Books, 2004.

Finally, John Stone of the HR Nicholls Society tips his hat to the Drover’s Dog: By way of illustration, I remind you of the airline pilots’ dispute in August-September, 1989. In that dispute, we saw a Prime Minister actively facilitating:

o Use of ‘the troops’ (RAAF) to help defeat the walkout by a key body of airline employees;

o The bringing of common law actions for breach of contract against individual pilots to the same end;

o Use of Sections 45D and 45E of the Trade Practices Act for the same purpose;

o The import of foreign pilots to take the place of Australian pilots who had withdrawn their labour;

o The import of charter aircraft (and associated foreign crews) to supply services being withheld by the Australian pilots; and even

o The provision of some kind of financial assistance designed to assist a major employer (Ansett Airlines) and thus help ‘keep it in the field’ until the Australian Federation of Air Pilots had been crushed.

Mr Hawke’s zeal in all these matters thus went even further than our own. The H.R. Nicholls Society had never argued that a body of employees should not have the right to be represented by a union (or Association) of their own free choosing—a basic right which Mr Hawke and Sir Peter [Abeles] were determined to deny to the pilots.