By Sue Boland
The current discussion about labour productivity is not new. Ever since trade unions began organising last century to restrict the ability of capitalists to exploit workers, capitalists have been trying to persuade (or force) workers to give up rights that have been won.
The current debate about productivity goes back to 1986, when the ACTU agreed to a new version of the Prices and Incomes Accord with the ALP federal government.
In 1986 a two-tier system of pay rises for workers was introduced. The first-tier wage increase was a flat increase for all workers. The second-tier rise was negotiated industry-by-industry in return for unions agreeing to increased productivity (i.e. trading off working conditions).
This was the first time that the Australian trade union movement had agreed to abandon the concept of comparative wage justice (that benefits won by better organised Â鶹´«Ã½ of workers should flow to less organised Â鶹´«Ã½), and the idea that workers had a right to be compensated for cost of living increases.
The result of this new system was that workers in some industries traded off basic working conditions to gain the second-tier wage increase, while workers in other industries got no wage increase because they had no working conditions to trade.
The scene was set for subsequent wage agreements where the underlying assumption was that workers had no automatic right to improvements in wages and working conditions. The trade-offs were sold to workers as the only way that workers could maintain their jobs.
Never enough
Since 1986, many workers have given up penalty rates, worked longer hours, ceased to have predictable working hours, lost jobs, increased the speed of work, had restrictions placed on union organisation, been more prepared to work with dangerous equipment and worked extra time without pay.
But no trade-off was ever enough. The bosses always wanted unions to give more. The only exceptions were in industries where workers fought for wage increases with no trade-offs. However, these successes were never generalised across an entire industry, or across the working class as a whole.
Time and again, steel industry workers agreed to job cuts, in the interest of saving the remaining jobs, but that strategy failed. BHP rewarded steelworkers by announcing the closure of the steel plant in Newcastle, not because it wasn't making a profit, but because it wasn't making what the owners of BHP considered to be a big enough profit.
This was despite the government giving massive handouts to BHP. These handouts could have been used to turn the steel plant into a public utility — the only possible guarantee of job security.
Despite the increased corporate wealth as a result of increased labour productivity, workers never gained. Workers ended up with a worse standard of living, more dangerous working conditions and less job security.
The introduction of 12-hour shifts in industries with a 24-hour rotating roster, for example, has magnified the negative impact of shiftwork on workers' health. Such long shifts mean that workers are less alert towards the end of their shift, leading to more accidents.
The loss of thousands of jobs has resulted in a more intense pace of work and increased stress amongst workers, particularly in industries where there is no union organisation. In many workplaces, the stress problems experienced by workers could be solved easily by employing more staff or removing ruthless managers.
Reduced staffing levels have led to an increase in many health problems such as repetition strain injury (RSI), as the work process becomes faster and more intense.
The abolition of some supposedly "superfluous" jobs such as train guards by the Victorian government has led to a spate of accidents in which passengers are caught in train doors and dragged along the platform. It is impossible for a train driver to see that all passengers are clear of the doors at crowded platforms.
Flexible work practices simply mean that employers expect employees to be available at their beck and call. The lack of standard working hours means that workers can't plan their lives outside of work. Unions fought for standard working hours to ensure that workers had adequate time for rest and for leisure.
Under the new industrial relations law, employers don't have to guarantee a minimum or maximum number of work hours, making budgeting impossible because the unpredictability of work means an unpredictable income.
The removal of penalty rates in many industries gives employers no incentive to organise production in such a way as to make shiftwork unnecessary. Employers expect individual workers to bear the burden of shiftwork without compensation.
Employers' demands for increased productivity amount to just four points:
- intensify the working day by abolishing as many jobs as possible;
- extend the working day with no penalty rates;
- maximum flexibility of working times and work hours;
- barriers to prevent any serious union organisation that might limit the amount of exploitation.
Increased exploitation
If employers were serious about increasing labour productivity, as opposed to simply increasing production, they would invest in new technology and train a more skilled work force. A real increase in labour productivity means that more can be produced without any increase of labour time or labour intensity.
In contrast, most increased productivity in Australia has actually been increased production through intimidating workers into working extra time with no extra pay and forcing workers to work faster — that is, extending and intensifying the working day.
While Australian workers became more productive over the last decade, the ease with which employers could increase production by convincing workers to give up working conditions acted as a disincentive to investing in new machinery.
When the employers and the government call for increased productivity, they make demands only on workers, never on themselves. The company bosses on $500,000-$2 million per year are never asked to account for their time. What do they do to warrant an income which gives them as much in a week as workers take home in a whole year?
For their $500,000-$2 million, they don't have to work antisocial midnight shifts, suffer permanent hearing loss or RSI as a result of poor working conditions or suffer job insecurity — they don't even have to produce anything. All they do is plan how to cut costs in order to increase profits.
Employers want to treat workers as extensions of machines. They believe in the unfettered right of employers to control workers' access to jobs, speed of work, length of work time, hours of work and equipment they work with. They don't believe that workers should have any control over the productive process.
When workers are well organised in a union, they are asserting their fundamental right to have some control over the production process. Since they are the ones doing the producing and the ones affected by the production process, they are the ones who should control the process.
What is the point of increased productivity?
Employers aren't interested in sharing the benefits of increased productivity with workers. Their appetite for increased productivity is insatiable. No improvement is ever considered enough.
What's the point of an endless drive to increase productivity if the benefits don't go to the producers, that is, the workers? If society has accumulated wealth as a result of labour becoming more productive, then it is quite reasonable for that wealth to be distributed to workers in the form of a shorter working week with no cut in pay.
If wealth from increased productivity is not used to improve life for all people, but only to increase profits for the employing class, then workers have no interest in participating in any kind of pursuit of increased productivity.