I’ve been arguing for a while that, after a long defensive struggle, the left/labour movement needs to start thinking about how to respond to the opportunities created by the intellectual collapse of the right and the economic failure of market liberalism. In a lot of areas, such as those of the welfare state, and community services, the defensive struggle was reasonably successful, and the question now is how best to move forward.
That’s not true of worker and union rights, where the left has lost much ground over the past few decades: drastic declines in union membership, a declining wage share, and the expansion of managerial power and managerialist ideology. On May Day, the traditional day of celebration of the trade union movement it’s natural to focus on the question of how best to push back against these forces, and where we should be going. I don’t have a lot of answers, but I’ll throw in a few points (not all that well worked out) and open up for discussion.
Among the recent successes of the worldwide labor movement, the ACTU’s “Your Rights at Work” campaign was one of the most notable, not so much for its concrete achievements (which included a significant contribution to the defeat of the Howard government, and the partial repeal of its anti-worker laws) but for the way it turned the debate around. It was entirely successful in posing a rights-based argument that workers do not (or should not) have to trade away their human rights for a job. The government’s “WorkChoices” rhetoric proved utterly unappealing to most Australians. And, while the Rudd government has disappointed in many respects, it not only scrapped the worst of WorkChoices (following some backdowns under pressure by Howard), but pushed forward with initiatives like parental leave[1].
It seems to me that this is the right way to go. The old-style politics of class (with the working class represented by male manual workers, gathered in large, naturally solidaristic workplaces) is no longer relevant to the great majority of Australian workers. That doesn’t mean that class has ceased to matter, but it does mean that workers experience class and power relationships more in terms of individual experience than as collective interactions between classes. So, in particular, unions need to be seen more as mutual aid associations that protect their individual members against exploitation and unfair treatment than as vehicles for the mobilisation of the working class. The kinds of legal changes sought to reverse the generally anti-union trend of past decades needs to reflect this orientation.
We also need to go beyond national perspectives in responding to a globalised economy. Big business has been globalised for decades, and labour has been slow to respond, but the Internet has evened things up to some extent. Organizations like LabourStart do a great job, but we need a lot more.
More May Day thoughts from Mark Bahnisch.
fn1. Opposition leader Tony Abbott’s opportunistic attempt to outbid the government will make it difficult for any future Liberal government to reverse this advance.
John Quiggin 
Alice,
Enron made their money rent-seeking around government regulation and through corporate welfare. To grease the wheels, Enron has given vast sums of campaign cash to both Republicans and Democrats.
Enron were based initially in the natural gas trading industry, so they regarded emissions trading as their new river of gold. They were all for controls of greenhouse gas emissions. Many energy companies benefit from the regulation of greenhouse gases because it makes coal much more expensive relative to their own product such as oil and especially natural gas. The U.S. energy business, including oil and electricity, has been thoroughly politicised and is regulated to the hilt from fuels to be used to prices to be charged. Enron was also a keen investor in solar and wind power. Enron was a leading company in air emissions credit and allowance trading since its establishment in the mid-1970s. Presumably all these good works qualified Enron as an ethical investment!?
Ken Lay was even a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists. A political capitalist, Lay was also on the ground floor helping to found various business groups for sustainable development as well as sponsoring Earth Day events in Texas, California, and Oregon. Enron received a climate-protection award from the EPA and a corporate-conscience award from the Council on Economic Priorities.
The role model for green entrepreneurs, it seems was Ken Lay when he was on top. You and he could have even ended up mates but for his fall from grace.
@Jim Rose
Oh please Jim – spare us the same tired arugment that Enron failed because governments regulated. Enron failed because governments deregulated excessively and threw all caution to the wind. You can call it government failure of regulation if you like but the failure was too little regulation, not too much and no-one is buying that line. We have heard it all before. Another slippery denial of the failures of the right.
Your freedom ship is going down Jim.
Alice,
What in particular did governments deregulate that allowed Enron to rise and fall?
If there was deregulation, how did all those executives end up in prison? They must have broken laws in place at the time of their offending. They choose to violate existing laws and were caught and punished.
Can you name any deregulation that contributed to the Enron scandal?
@Jim Rose
Electricity Jim Rose.
Alice,
Thanks for breaking ranks by introducing evidence. I assume the Californian electricity crisis would be your weapon of choice? The worst of the crisis occurred during the winter of 2000–2001, when demand was low and plenty of capacity should have been available.
Utilities were precluded from entering into longer-term agreements that would have allowed them to hedge their energy purchases and mitigate day-to-day price swings due to transient supply disruptions and demand spikes. Regulatory suppression of competing forms of supply is not deregulation.
In 2000, wholesale prices were deregulated, but retail prices were regulated for the incumbents as part of a deal allowing them to recover the cost of assets that would be written-off stranded as a result of greater competition. Price controls to keep prices up are not deregulation.
Energy deregulation policy froze or capped the existing price of energy that the energy distributors could charge. This is regulation, not deregulation.
By keeping the consumer price of electricity artificially low, the California government discouraged citizens from practicing conservation. Energy price regulation forced suppliers to ration their electricity supply rather than expand production. When the electricity demand in California rose, utilities had no financial incentive to expand production, as long term prices were capped.
The major flaw of the deregulation scheme was that it was incomplete. The middleman utility distributors continued to be regulated and forced to charge fixed prices, and continued to have limited choice in electricity providers.
As I said, Enron made their way up through rent seeking around regulation and government supplied monopolies. In this case, a captive market supplied by federal and state power regulators.
Energy price caps and regulatory suppression of competition and long-term contracts lined the pockets of America’s premier green entrepreneur, Earth day sponsor, and member of numerous sustainable business groups – your mate, but not mine – Enron.
I have a comment on John’s point about unions. If I may make one observation about the union movement in the past 20 years, it is that (with a few notable exceptions) they have failed to cope with the changing nature of work. They have tended to regard most trades and non-professional occupations as the needy workers, and to see all professionals as the potential exploiter-managers, and so not needing protection. As a result unions are badly under-represented in the growing numbers of people with degrees, particularly professional degrees like mine (engineering).
Professional organisations like Engineers Australia do NOT deal with industrial relations, leaving members with little protection when the job market is weak. The same is true of accountants, IT professionals, non-tenured academics, and even law graduates, where law firms can often exploit juniors because of valid fears of job insecurity. Even amoung the many thousands actually studying management, most will rise no higher than middle-level positions. In fact, senior execcutive positions seem to have far more to do with connections than qualifications.
So what is the point of this? The point is, if unions want to be seen as champions of the oppressed, they might be better off working to help graduate lawyers and accountants looking for a job, than train drivers and wharfies who are already making $100K +. This failure has led to both a loss of many thousands of potential members, and a loss of credibility. I would regard myself as a progressive thinking person, but when I watched the Melbourne docks dispute, I saw two wealthy sides both fighting for their own priveleges, not any underlying principle. Why should I support either?
@Socrates
If you believe wharfies made $100+, then you do not have sufficient prescence of mind to sensibly ask;
“Why should I support either”?
You are not a progressive thinking person. You are the problem.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to fight the “1990 NZ election” and don’t have to fight any NZ elections. As an Australian I can just look across the Tasman and laugh, if not occasionally feel sorry for NZ’s loss of freedoms, and loss of relativities, relative to us. By the way what was the significance of that election? Both sides of politics were implementing the same policies. NZers where given with the same sort of choice provided by a one party state.
Socrates the union APESMA represents the interests of professionals and managers and has done so successfully for decades. It recognised the move towards individualisation of the employment relationship back in the early 1990s and responded accordingly. It offers members assistance in education and career development, amongst other things. See http://www.apesma.asn.au/index.asp.
Jim
An annoying component of your ‘argument’ construction is your practice of heavily sprinkling in non sequiturs.
“Ken Lay was even a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists.” And he had two eyes, two legs, two arms and was married? Just as relevant?
Oh I get it, now. Not a non sequitur at all.
As a climate change denier, identifying this about Mr Lay is to put one’s finger on his real crimes. Not fraud and losing the life savings of so many. The real crime is his not being a climate change denier.
Good to see a sense of perspective!
Freelander,
You mentioned Iceland, not me. I added information to correct your errors.
You seem to use the word libertarian as a universal smear – so encompassing that it covers both Hong Kong and a Scandinavian welfare state! some people used to denounce everyone of the left as communists, or their fellow-travellers. Libertarians, libertarians everywhere, is very derivative of the reds-under-the-bed smear.
If Iceland is ruled is ruled by libertarians, as you claim, how many seats do they have in the Althing, now and in the recent past? Name names! How many seats do the social democrats have in the Althing? Is there regular rotation of power to and from the social democrats? Is there proportional representation resulting in multiparty left-right coalition governments?
Iceland
Impact on Iceland 2005
“In 1991, Oddsson became Prime Minister and instigated an ambitious (and successful) programme of reform, liberalisation, deregulation, privatisation, stabilisation and tax reduction.”
Impact on Iceland 2008?
By the way, where did I claim HK was libertarian? You are not a careful reader but then you show no care at all in extracting information from reality. I suppose that is the nature of being deluded. You have attributed many opinions to me and others on this blog which are found nowhere in their words. And sadly I think this is defect is not attributable to heavy habitual drug use.
Freelander,
1991!
What where Bob Hawke and Paul Keating up to in 1991? Are their reforms to blame for the 2008 crisis in Australia? If only you had gone back to 22 November 1990. Maggie Thatcher was British PM up to then. You could have blamed her for the financial crisis in the UK in 2008. Bush 41 was in office in 1992. Is he too to blame for the 2008 financial crisis?
Who is Davíð Oddsson?
His conservative Independence party never got more than about 40 per cent of the vote so initially as PM, he was in coalition from 1991 with the social democratic party. So the left wing party in Iceland is libertarian too?
In 1995, the coalition partner for the Independence party became the Progressive Party, which is an agrarian, liberal and centrist party in Iceland. Oddsson’s successor in 2004 was from the progressive party. His successor was from the independence party.
The libertarian rulers of Iceland encompass the right, centre and left of Icelandic politics.
I was right, you really are still fighting the 1990 election – the Australian 1990 election.
Freelander,
If you wish!
Hong Kong is not a place libertarians might find to their liking. Correct? Do you have any evidence of their disdain for the place? What would be to their distaste? Is Hong Kong a secret welfare state with a double secret GST? Classical liberals such Friedman and others speak well of Hong Kong as an ideal in many webbed essays.
Clearly, a Scandinavian welfare state can be a libertarian hell-hole, as least to you. But that could make admirers of Scandinavian welfare states like Sweden such as John Quiggin into libertarians! There better be some last minute redrafting of his book.
What is more troubling is although Iceland is ranked 18th in the index of economic freedom, Denmark is ranked ninth. Sweden is one place after Iceland. Are Sweden and Denmark also libertarian hell-holes of a Scandinavian welfare state? Denmark was ahead of NZ in the index of economic freedom in 2006, so which was the libertarian hell-hole?
The Nordic countries’ success is that they compensate for their high tax burden by performing exceptionally well in other areas of the index of economic freedom. In the 2010 Index of Economic Freedom, Sweden and Denmark beat the United States in seven out of ten categories. They regulate lightly, have broad-based flat tax structures and tax income from capital lightly so they do not upset the goose that lays the golden egg.
The Left is very keen on importing Scandinavian levels of taxation, but you never hear them talking about Sweden’s light levels of business regulation, or Denmark’s liberalised labour market. Company tax rates are lower in the Scandinavian countries that in Australia or NZ, as far as I can tell.
You are totally delusional! Friedman and friends claimed Iceland as their handy work just before it blew up. They were soo happy with their latest poster child. Just the same way once upon a time they were so happy with then poster child New Zealand. Of course, when their handy work doesn’t work and it never does, its Deny, Deny, Deny, Disown, Disown, Disown. They seemed to think Iceland was their handy work as recently as 2005.
You just make it all up as you go along. You have a script and you just keep to it, regardless of what the person you are talking to says. That would explain why what you say bears so little resemblance to coherent responses to what they say.
So very sad.
As for index of economic freedom… That is as less of an index than the Miss World contest yields an index. That is simply the beauty contest of what we like at the moment. Of course, by 2006 NZ being the obvious mess that it is, had lost its looks as far as those judges were concerned.
@Freelander
I suggest Freelander its a case iof ignore…I honestly think Friedman and friends have a view that “their version of reality is as good as real” – facts dont matter, truth doesnt matter, they excel at twisting and lying – hey if I was mistaken I could mistake JR for Louis Cypher!
Friedman had been dead for a couple of years before Iceland “blew up”. Did he make the claim via a ouija board?
Did you attend the séance?
Not only do libertarians create their own ‘facts’, they like to create their own ‘statistics’ as well (economic ‘freedom’ index, ha ha), which of course, they can then use in what they like to call ‘research’. Far more real research comes out of a public relations firm than ever comes out of a right wing think tank.
Freelander,
What did Friedman say and when did he say it?
Friedman visited Iceland during the autumn of 1984, met with important Icelanders and gave a lecture on the Tyranny of the Status Quo. He also made some interview remarks in 1995 about their system of government between 932 and 1200 or so.
Do you have anything more recent than his comments and lectures from the 1980s!
Magic.
@Andrew Reynolds
Friedman died in 2006. The year 2005 was before 2006. If you didn’t know that you should have asked an adult.
@Jim Rose
Jim Rose – the Californian state should have walked straight into Enron with the police, handcuffed Lay and cronies, slapped a “this is now nationalised. get lost sign on the door – recruited the staff – you either take public wages or leave as well”. Problem solved. No half party deregulation and no license to print money given to oligarchs either – and I wouldnt have to have the now hair split nitpicking discussions with you. Peopl’es energy prices wouldnt be so high now (when they are also out of a job and out of the house in the US).
You and your slippery ideas can go freeze in some degraded unmaintained substation JR
So – 2005 was “…just before it blew up..” was it? Perhaps next time you have a chat with Milton on the ouija board you can discuss whether “just before” is 3 years or not.
Oh and by the way the investigation of Goldman has turned into a criminal investigation. Its a good place to start but dont forget the rest of them. Its high time some of these bastards end up staring out at the “truly free” through the bars in their windows.
JR if you think market freedom means the freedom for some to cheat lie and steal (like Enron, like Goldman but there are now hordes of unethical theiving practices out there thanks to the mad right)…you are really mixed up.
@Andrew Reynolds
“Just before” are your words. But I recognise that you fellows like to debate yourselves. Perhaps because you have nothing sensible to say in reply to anyone else.
To refresh your memory:
“Iceland
Impact on Iceland 2005
“In 1991, Oddsson became Prime Minister and instigated an ambitious (and successful) programme of reform, liberalisation, deregulation, privatisation, stabilisation and tax reduction.”
Impact on Iceland 2008?”
Anyway, 2005 is as good as ‘just before’ especially given that Iceland narrowly escaped ‘blowing up’ in 2006, only surviving to blow up with the rest. That it came close to blowing up all by itself in 2006 kind of disposes of any idea that they can blame the GFC for their woes.
So exactly how long would you like the fuse so that the libertarians can disown their words when the ugliness of their poster child is obvious for all to see? One year, fifteen minutes.
In 2005 the libertarians were laying claim to a process of creating the ideal society which they identify as beginning in 1991, yet a couple of years later it is all nothing to do with them. Very funny.
Even Bart Simpson doesn’t try to get away with such whoppers!
@Freelander
Perhaps you should check your own comment, Freelander. “Just before” were in fact … ta daaaaaa – your words. Remind me – who’s “whopper” was that one?
LOL.
the whopper is that a couple of years later is ‘it is all nothing to do with them’.
Perhaps you should take your comprehension classes more seriously naughty little boy. just before is a prefectly adequate description. You would have recognised that also in the above if you paid more attention in your comprehension classes. Bart is a better student, oh master of the imagined mistakes of others!
In 2005 the libertarians were laying claim to a process of creating the ideal society which they identify as beginning in 1991, yet a couple of years later it is all nothing to do with them. Very funny.
Even Bart Simpson doesn’t try to get away with such whoppers!
Where have I heard that one before? Oops – three comments ago. Quoting yourself is a very insincere form of flattery.
I can comprehend that.
@Andrew Reynolds
Your acknowledgement of your errors and your profound apologies accepted. Don’t beat yourself up so much over it. Everyone makes mistakes!
In your case they seem to be more common than others may accept as normal – as that comment demonstrates.
Don’t beat yourself up so much. We here are all aware of your many problems, sorry, the many ‘challenges’ that you face. We do make plenty of allowance for you and your penchant for self-humiliation. As should be clear, everyone here has taken you under their wing, and only wish to try to help you, as monumental a task as that is.
I have accepted your profuse apologies. Please, simply move on.
Ken 9
I am quite aware of APESMA and was a member of it for some years. I found it quite useless when working conditions for engineers in the public service departments I worked for were under attack in the 1990s. I referred to professional organisations though like Engineers Australia, which do even less. Graduate engineers and scientists in Australia are paid less than graduate accountants who do a shorter, easier degree. The situation doesn’t change unless the engineer migrates into management, or is prepared to move to a mining town, which is often not an option for peopel who are married with working partners. However I didn’t wish to focus on engineers in isolation – my comment was general.
As for Chris Warren’s comment 7; we are each entitled to our own opinions. If Chris is trying to imply that wharfies don’t make $100K+ then the individuals I know are very anomalous. I presume he is not arguing about train drivers’ incomes. Even so, whether it is $80K or $100K the point is the same – some strong unions defend trades and occupations that make much more than the average wage. In these cases it would be more than the starting salary of doctors in the public health system. They shouldn”t kid themsleves that that has anything to do with wage justice.
So I see I have touched a few raw nerves but that is the point. If unions spent more time working out what wage justice was and then going from that premise, rather than always fighting to preserve a past status quo, they would have more credibility. That was why the Workchoices campaign was successful. Workchoices obviously threatened a large group, including those less well off.
Socrates, I have to agree with you. There were and still are occupational unions that abuse their position and power to claw a large wage and salary premium at the expense of the rest of us. Workchoices though, was quite selective in targeting with little success only a couple of these unions. Instead it was broadly targeted at the weakest and most disadvantaged workers’ unions who even organised have little power and provide useful social services for the wider community by protecting their members for health and safety dangers, for example. By protecting them from health and safety dangers which unfettered employers can show scant regard for, those unions saved the rest of us money. The money that is picked up by the wider community when we are called on to pay for the consequences of unsatisfactory health and safety outcomes, of which Asbestos is but one example.
@Socrates
We don’t want strange opinions. What evidence do you have for this Murdoch canard?
To many people get confused by their own misguided opinions, and this was a tactic used by Reith during the MUA dispute.
So what award, or what enterprise agreement gave 100K+ for 40hrs equivalent.
What is the evidence?
Chris
You are just creating a straw man. As labor force surveys show, many occupations routinely work over 40 hours per week. The real question is how the take home pay compares for each. Most professionals, including engineers like me, don’t get overtime any more, whereas most occupations protected by strong unions such as those I mentioned do. Comparing the take home pay of wharfies and train drivers, which in my experience DO earn more than $100k, it is higher than average for most engineers and scientists. It is extraordinarily high for what are essentially low skilled jobs with no formal qualifications required, and working conditions which are now highly mechanised and comfortable. That is lucky for them, but it isn’t justice by any definition I know.
Please don’t try to link my views to the despicable Rupert Murdoch, Peter Reith, or infer personal political motives to me in some other form of cheap ad-hominem attack. I am not a Liberal supporter, or a fan of law-of-the-jungle Howard style IR law. But I make no apology for saying that Howard wouldn’t have gotten away with as much as he did if some unions hadn’t undermined the labor movement’s credibility so badly by spending years trying to defend the indefensible.
John Quiggan started this thread and mentioned the fact of declining union membership. I suggested some obvious (to me) reasons why that was so. I started out in my working life believing unions were important and becoming a member of those that were relevant to my work. After a decade, I gave it up as a pointless waste of time and money. I see I am one of hundreds of thouands of people who formed a similar view. If the union movement can’t learn from that it is doomed.
This is not a criticism of campaigns like the anti-Workchoices one, or the hardworking union organisers who do actually fight for those who are low paid. They have my respect. But some others don’t.
Freelander
Thanks. I agree with your other points too. Unions that work for the safety of members are performing a social good which I fully support.
These articles which cover some of the same ground may be of interest. The first is essentially a republication of a post> to the article “Time for the B team”. The second is essentially a leaflet I intended to hand out, but did not because of printer problems.
The first has drawn a critical response from an ETU official and another in sympathy as people can read for themselves. The essential thrust is that any scrutiny of the tactics adopted by those supposedly opposed to privatisation is harmful to that cause and that I should be focus on attacking those who are actually carrying out the privatisation.
I would suggest that I have done the latter abundantly before now. I was certainly amongst those shouting to Paul Lucas yesterday: Queensland not for sale!”
The articles are:
ETU raises white flag in fight against Queensland fire sale – Why??
On Saturday 10 April, at a Brisbane anti-privatisation forum held by Search Foundation, the Secretary of the Queensland branch of the Electrical Trades Union (ETU), an avowedly hard-line anti-privatisation union, revealed his view that the fight against the Bligh Government’s fire sale was lost.
If the unions get off their knees, privatisation can be stopped
In spite of the fact that 79% of the Queensland public oppose privatisation, 66% would support industrial action to stop the Bligh Government’s $15 billion fire sale and many union members have expressed a willingness to strike, the Queensland unions have failed to take the only action that could possibly cause the Queensland Government to change its mind.
As a (hopefully) constructive suggestion further to my coment that unions need to better understand what wage justice is, rather than keep fighting old battles whether just or not, I would recommend reading David Millers book “Principles of Social Justice”, especially chapter 4 – “Distributive Justice: What the People Think”.
@Socrates
Please do not try to play the victim, manufacturing ad-hominem attacks.
You were asked very simply for evidence, not opinion.
And all you offered was: more biased opinion, but this time using upper case.
If you want to wave $100+ then you need to provide the context of working hours, working conditions, plus evidence that you figure is real.
Which occupations routinely work over 40 hrs. You are deliberately confusing normal hours with overtime.
Again you fail to produce any evidence, and vague references to labour force surveys are meaningless.
I have no doubt that many workers can earn $100+ with overtime and penalties, but not year after year and with decent family connections.
So unless you find proper evidence and control your context, you really are just channeling Howards dogma. Whether you understand this, is another question. I suspect you do.
Chris
All the (anecdotal) evidence I know of supports my statements. I admit it is very hard to find accurate listing of what train drivers and waterside workers actually make; I have tried and struggled to find it in the past. If you have relaible average figures, by all means publish them.
I know suburban train drivers in Adelaide start at around $85K and the average is over $100K as I said. I don’t know what it is in country areas. I have seen higher figures for Qld. Wharf wages vary quite a bit from State to State; Freemantle and Brisbane aren’t too bad; Sydney and Melbourne are extortionate.
Anyway read the book, it is relevant to your work, if you are the Chris Warren of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance. It is relevant to JQs topic.
@Socrates
But presumably Socrates you draw the line at unions who fight for a decent share of profits to be redirected to labour in the form of higher wages…or am I wrong on that? What do you want – toothless unions and privatisation of public services…now that delivers a double hit to labour doesnt it? Take away the public services subsidies and take away their rights to bargain for higher wages so all the profit ends up in the hands of capital and inequality grows and the mass of employees get poorer, not richer – the middle disappears – the bottom gets angrier and the rich live on planet “lower my taxes further’ “let me be free to take my profits to a tax haven in the global economy – it will help the poor -….. somewhere??” – (read nowhere) – the profit ends up with Goldman on Wall Street and they gamble it into a financial crisis.
Thats about it. Keep channeling Howards dogma Socrates – that the poor, if pushed down hard enough, and made to be flexible and “productive” enough to give up hours and conditions long enough will be so grateful for a job, any job that…they will be cowed into submission by the private sector “individualist” work leaders in the modern neo liberal labour camps.
@Socrates
Use of wrod “strawman” noted.
“The intellectual collapse of the right?”
You pompous fool.
@munroe
Self illustrative insult above.
@Alice
I was reading socrates as making the point that if an organisation (eg union) engages in a power struggle for individual power (ie power delimeted by membership) such that the returns to the membership far exceed those experienced by the average non-member punter then such an organisation is not so differentiated from the traditional enemy scumbags that are after personal power and wealth as one might wish.