The ruling class rates our unions
By Jonathan Singer
What makes a good union? According to the Australian, the Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers (APESMA) and the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees' Association (SDA) have got what it takes.
On June 5, the Australian published the results of its "search for the nation's best unions". Rupert Murdoch's flagship identified the 20 "most interesting, most influential and best unions" using 10 criteria: membership and recruitment, services, finances, influence, social responsibility, democratic processes, communication with members, stability, how they cope with change and strategic outlook. Two panels of "senior industrial relations figures", including former union officials, bosses' association leaders and politicians, then determined seven "outstanding" unions and their ranking.
The Australian ranked APESMA first and the SDA third. The Australian Nursing Federation was ranked second. The National Union of Workers, the Finance Sector Union, the Independent Education Union and the National Tertiary Education Industry Union (NTEU) were ranked fourth to seventh respectively. Unions such as the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) and the Australian Workers Union (AWU) were among the 20 unions.
Michael Batchelard, one of the Australian's journalists who compiled the rankings, wrote in the June 11 Workers Online, the web journal of the NSW Labor Council: "So why did we do it? It seemed to us that pitting unions against each other and ranking them on these criteria was immensely useful. We found out what unions actually do when they are not fighting it out on a picket line or in a court or tribunal ... When was the last time that happened in the mainstream media?"
A union is tested in its confrontations with employers and the government. To ignore this part of its activity is like assessing an army by its barracks and parade ground drills while ignoring what happens on the battlefield. However, how a union operates from day to day, preparing for fights, and even avoiding unnecessary ones, is a vital part of its work.
'Good corporate citizens'
Unfortunately, the Australian has not made public the questions it asked the unions. Nor has it explained how the answers were interpreted. The report on which its articles were based remains private.
However, hints about the process are given in the Australian articles, in Batchelard's article in Workers Online and in an interview with Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) national secretary Wendy Caird in the same Workers Online.
"The questions asked were very much based on the Australian's values ... Just one example was a question about whether the union is a 'good corporate citizen'", said Caird.
Batchelard wrote: "The SDA, with the cooperation of the main retail chains, has adopted some innovative recruitment techniques. For example, the union organises with retailers to pay the salaries of delegates for the time they spend recruiting. The SDA has also dealt with the revolution in shopping hours, including the introduction of 24-hour supermarket trading."
But why do the retail chains cooperate? There is little evidence to suggest it is a result of the industrial strength of the SDA. Could it be because the SDA helps employers, even against its own members' interests?
The SDA opposed the legal extension of shopping hours because it was against its members' interests, but has agreed to extensions of standard hours of work and penalty rate cuts for non-standard hours of work, removing the practical restraints on longer opening hours. The result for SDA members is described by SDA national secretary Joe de Bruyn, quoted by Australian columnist Shelley Gare on June 19: the retailer David Jones, in the first half of 1998, "redeployed their permanents so more of them work Saturdays and Sundays. That reduced the hours for casuals, which means the casuals aren't happy ... nor are the permanents." David Jones is, though.
Batchelard said the outstanding unions were "excellent in their efforts in recruitment, service provision and outlook". Other criteria seem therefore to have had a lower priority. Lack of union democracy — in the APESMA, for example, which is headed by an appointed executive director, not an elected secretary — did not bring unions down in the rankings.
The criteria's abstractness — the common outlook of the outstanding unions is "their leaders' belief that in today's industrial climate, more of the same is simply not good enough" — allows good ratings for unions moving in different directions. APESMA is reinforcing its stance as a "service organisation" by giving support to members in signing individual contracts, while the NTEU, formed from organisations that were once professional associations, campaigns through collective action for collective agreements.
The Australian's survey favours unions that are "rolling with the punches". A June 7 Australian editorial argued that the key to unions' success lies in "the recognition that unions can no longer rely on the delivery of regular wage rises or the 'need' for collective bargaining to retain members" and their acceptance of an environment of enterprise bargaining and individual contracts, and promotion of professional development".
Back to the future
These are the characteristics of the earlier forms of the labour movement — mutual benefit societies and workers' educational associations — that have been largely superseded by trade unions.
A significant contributor to the decline of unions' membership and influence during the 1980s and 1990s is their failure to rely on their members' involvement and collective action to defend past gains or win new ones.
Responses by union leaders to the Australian survey veer away from discussion of the substantive issues raised, even when they hint at these. In a letter to the June 9 Australian, AMWU national secretary Doug Cameron said the Australian's experts did "not appreciate the difference between a union and a professional association", but he limits himself to defending his own union.
Caird and Cameron focussed their criticism on the Australian's method. Caird told Workers Online: "We didn't like the idea of creating an artificial contest between unions. Generally, we work cooperatively ... it doesn't make sense to compare organisations which have quite different jobs to do ... What [the Australian] was lacking was any critical investigation into the real circumstances of unions today."
Caird's real aim was to stop any criticism of union leaders, especially herself. She notes, "There's plenty of publicity about our membership decline ... in the federal public sector, we've lost 100,000 jobs in three years, and that accounts proportionately for most of our membership loss". But she says nothing about the failure of the union officials to lead a fight against these job losses, even when union members showed a willingness to campaign, such as against the closure of the Commonwealth Employment Service or the recent 5000 job cut in Centrelink.
Caird and Cameron's main argument is that unions should be judged by their members. But union leaders and activists are constantly judging unions independently of membership support. Many applaud the history of the NSW Builders Labourers' Federation under Jack Mundey's leadership, for example, but condemn the Norm Gallagher-led Victorian BLF branch, yet both had the support of their members.
Members' assessments of their unions can be a guide to the value of the union — particularly when there is a trend among members to join or leave a union. However, members can also have limited or overblown expectations of their union. They can ask less or more of a union than it's possible to deliver.
So, when Caird stated that, "unlike corporate Australia, trade union members elect their leadership and we're happy to place the final judgment of our performance in the hands of our members", she only told half the story. The leadership must educate the membership, too. A membership may be happy with a leadership which fails to teach members to demand what is possible and then hides this by claiming to be <>69>giving the members what they want<>70>.
Union members and other supporters of the labour movement need to discuss and judge the experiences of all unions <>97> the successes and failures of different approaches and activities, and the varying contexts in which they are carried out.<>><>41559MS>n<>255D>