From the President: Breaking the rules can be good for the soul

The Australian trade union movement has been going through a bit of a renaissance over the past few months under the leadership of a new ACTU General Secretary, Sally McManus.

In one of her earliest media interviews, Sally said this about unions being fined for taking industrial action, often on worksites where someone had been killed: “I believe in the rule of law when the law is fair and the law is right. But when it’s unjust I don’t think there’s a problem with breaking it.”

The narrative that has developed from this statement is simple but powerful. The rise of inequality in Australia is inexorably linked to the diminution of union power and workers’ rights.

The effect of this simple truth has been far-reaching, more than you might have imagined. Very quickly, all around the nation, trade unionists started listening intently to what our national union leadership had to say. People have become enthused by the thought of turning back the industrial relations clock to a time when fundamental human rights, such as the right to withdraw labour – the right to strike, were proudly used by millions of Australian union members to advance working conditions and salaries in ways that left other nations to look on in wonder.

At the national level, a unique social compact was embodied in our legal system more than 100 years ago, creating a system in which workers had power in the workplace through the collective: their trade union. Changes to that system, slow and gradual as they were, culminated in the enterprise bargaining system in the 1990s and the replacement of the Industrial Relations Commission with Fair Work in the aftermath of the 2007 Rudd landslide precipitated by the WorkChoices debacle.

Federally, we no longer enjoy even the most basic rights in any but the most constrained circumstances. The industrial relations system of conciliation and arbitration that established important principles such as the Harvester Judgement, creating the concept of a living wage sufficient to support a family, has been rendered impotent.

The national system now works solely for the bosses who have prospered while the bulk of the community slips from a comfortable standard of living to dangerous levels of income and conditions that risk life and happiness as never before. The system is not broken, the system is working exactly as it was designed, or so it would appear. A simple truthful statement to the media has awakened us, as if from a slumber, to the realisation that we have been unwitting parties to our own waning.

Record low wages growth, expanding safety issues in the workplace – including the increasing incidence of worker deaths, rampant flouting of the existing laws relating to wages, conditions and entitlements by employers, and an apparent inability or unwillingness of the system to do much to prevent any of it, all represent our new workplace reality.

Excitingly, unlike previous tales of woe, this narrative then took an unexpected turn. From the lamentation of the issues facing us emerged a new drive to change things for the better, for ourselves and our descendants. An ACTU leader has raised a banner of hope that by once again uniting in the strength so recently forgotten, we can and should bring about change that will deliver higher wages, safer workplaces and just circumstances of employment where the rights and entitlements of workers are respected under the rule of law and enforced. It has quite simply become a rallying cry.

The Queensland Labor government, working with the state union movement, has restored some balance to industrial relations in our state system, but changes transferring most workers into federal jurisdiction means that more can and should be done.

In a very candid conversation with Sally recently, she revealed that her original comment was completely unscripted and not premeditated. My reply to Sally was that it was as if she had given permission for the trade union movement, members and leaders alike, to take back our heritage, to assert the rights of the many not the few – something we had all been waiting for. When the time comes, it must see teachers take our place alongside all unionists. The Australian Education Union, our national union, is the second largest union in the country and we will be required to provide leadership, to show courage and to break the odd rule.

One woman’s words have begun to shake our system to the very core, and much more good will come of it I am certain.

Kevin Bates                                                                                                                       President

Queensland Teachers' Journal, Vol 122 No 6, 25 August 2017, p7