Fighting against the odds - 2005 AWU National Conference

AWU National Secretary Bill Shorten delivered the following address at the opening of the AWU's 2005 National Conference at Broadbeach, Queensland on February 7, 2005

Welcome delegates and guests. I think I am speaking for all you when I say that we have come here in order that we may pause for a moment in which to invigorate our beliefs, and to revive our boldness and nourish our values. I'd like to thank all the AWU officials and officers here in particular because today is a proud day for me. I am proud to be here together with you again after another two years with the AWU. I think that we are right to be proud of our work since our last conference in 2003. Just consider a few of our achievements:

• higher pay rises for tens of thousands of our members

• the 25% loading for thousands more casual workers

• better safety on some of the toughest jobs in Australia

• more delegate and safety rep training than ever before

• employer superannuation contributions above 9% and up to 15%

• better hours and longer paid maternity leave for working parents

• representation and justice for those who are unfairly sacked

• higher insurance pay for the seriously injured

• and everything else we've accomplished for our members and other workers.

All our Branches from across the country are contributing to these efforts. Our National Conference this week reminds us how much stronger we are by sticking together - How much our success depends upon our unity.

Whether it's our WA Branch opening a new office in Kalgoorlie, or forcing a new safety regime on BHP Billiton's mines after their scandalous record of deaths and serious safety breaches. Or new organising campaigns in growth areas like our Newcastle Branch's push into industries from hairdressing to airline maintenance. Or our Queensland Branch establishing real career paths and opportunities for public sector workers who've never before had access to training. Or our Tasmanian Branch consistently chipping away at extreme and unsafe hours of work in the mining industry. Our Greater New South Wales Branch setting new standards of organisation and representation in civil construction. Our Tobacco Branch, locking in conditions with another strong EBA. Or our South Australian Branch standing up for the jobs and entitlements of Ion workers after mismanagement plunged yet another strong export business into insolvency. Or our TAPS Branch securing $600,000 in outstanding entitlements for redundant AGTS workers. Or our Whyalla Branch - making sure steelworkers didn't have to pay the price for the company's shutdowns over problems with the furnace re-line. Our Port Kembla Branch standing up to the US-style anti-union tactics of BlueScope Steel. Or our Victorian Branch resisting attempts by one of the biggest energy companies in the world - Esso - to force family-killing rosters onto its contract workers in Bass Strait.

You all know your achievements, you know the value of our work, and you know what a fight it is to deliver against the odds. We will no doubt have plenty of opportunities to celebrate our accomplishments in the next few days, and I look forward to talking with you then.

I would also like to extend a very warm welcome to all our international guests here - too many to name each and every one of you. I think it's a very positive sign for the future that we have so many of our fellow unionists here - the United Steelworkers of America from North America, the Danish Metalworkers Union officials, Michael Leahy from Community in the UK, our Global Unions guests from the International Metalworkers Union and the International Union of Foodworkers, and our many union leaders from China - welcome to you all. It is in the spirit of international unionism that later today we will be signing the first stage of a new alliance with the 600,000-strong United Steelworkers of America. We're very privileged to have the USWA's Leo Gerard with us today. When you consider the companies that we have in common - BlueScope, BHP Billiton, Alcoa, Pilkington and Exxon for starters - I'm sure we'll be able to assist each other and that by working together in campaigning or organising, bargaining and exchanges, both of our unions will be the stronger.

One of the best demonstrations of our increasing global consciousness has been the response of Australians to the Tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia. We've heard a bit about the generosity of the business community, but the contribution of unions and union members has been extraordinary. Our operators at Shell's oil refinery at Geelong have donated an incredible

$100,000 on their own. Our union has donated $25,000 and offered our services in providing skilled volunteers for the rebuilding task ahead. As of last
Thursday, Union Aid Abroad had received more than $540,000 in donations from trade unions and individual members and workers.

Now looking ahead I would like to talk about the challenges we face. And I would like to put forward a few propositions about the attack we are under from the federal government.

The first fundamental principal that too many people do not understand is that the legislative and political attacks we face from the conservatives and their business allies, are in no way necessary for the kind of prosperous society we aspire to. In fact, a strong contrary case exists that the Government's changes may well harm productivity by discouraging investment in training and participation in work - two issues that are going to become more and more important to our future economy with an aging workforce with family responsibilities. The obvious and overwhelming evidence for this proposition is our economic experience of the last decade - unprecedented periods of economic and labour productivity growth and falling unemployment coinciding with an expansion of collective bargaining and annual national wage cases. This growth has come in the face of the gloomy warnings to the contrary of the major employer groups who are now demanding draconian anti-worker laws.

The second proposition is that the government's changes - in their restrictions on basic worker freedoms - are positively undesirable for any democracy of empowered citizens. Our commitment to civil liberties and human rights demands otherwise.

And the third proposition is that the challenges we face can be overcome by a strong and united union organisation. That will require creative, strategic and adaptable responses for changing circumstances.

None of us should underestimate the attack being planned against us. Many of us have experienced how the increasingly fragmented labour market means that the odds are already stacked against us. Our opponents are seriously determined to exploit that prevailing economic environment to legally destroy our ability to organise.

Of course, their ultimate aim is to extinguish our capacity to exercise political power. Their attack is politically motivated, they are our ideological enemies and they are opposed to our values for social reform. Our history tells us we should not be surprised. For our union, it has been forever thus. The anti-Labor, big business conservatives have been trying to stop the AWU since our first incarnation as the Amalgamated Shearers Union in 1886.

We have been facing this opposition since before Australia existed. The united position of the pastoral employers from at least 1890 onwards was to refuse to even recognise the rights of the union to represent shearers and shed-hands. Doesn't that sound familiar to us - even 115 years later? We should remember that the blind opposition of the pastoral employers to even recognising union rights continued for another 17 years. It was not until 1907 that the government forced the pastoralists association to comply with the

new Pastoral Award and recognise the union. Now, 98 years later, employers recycle the same old arguments about unions not being legitimate representatives of workers. No wonder they want to erode the Award system even further, to the point where it would be entirely voluntary and without any real judicial authority.

It's a similar story with the government's new laws for fast-tracking AWAs - that is to make it easier for AWAs to get around Award requirements. AWAs themselves are just a contemporary expression of the age-old industrialists' demand for so-called "freedom of contract", an issue at the heart of the great pastoral strikes in the early 1890s - then the biggest industrial conflicts yet seen on our continent. Against the background of that looming showdown, the pastoralists drew up a new shearing agreement in December 1890 that defined their key aim in this way:

"That an employer is to be free to employ whom he pleases, and an employee is to be free to engage, or to refuse to engage, to work as he pleases."
(Pastoralists' proposed shearing agreement 1890)

Nothing could be closer to the current propaganda from the Office of Employment Advocate about the so-called "freedom" to choose AWAs. Both leave out the important details about determining wages and conditions, as if every right depends upon the employee's so-called freedom to refuse the job. That is still the justification Howard and his ministers' use today in defending AWAs - they blithely advise unsatisfied jobseekers to go and get another job. There is no acknowledgement of the imbalance of power in the workplace

between employers and workers. It's the same old anti-union tactic of offering people a contract job and telling them to TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT. A union agreement is not an option.

The injustice of the conservatives' case for individual contracts was exposed very early on by the father of conciliation and arbitration in Australia - Henry
Bournes Higgins - still years before the foundation of the Arbitration Court that he went on to lead. In June 1900, while officiating at the opening of our union's new Victoria-Riverina Branch at St Arnaud in western Victoria (at the invitation of our pioneering organiser Edward Grayndler) Higgins extolled the workers' argument against individual contracts as being:

"simply because there could be no contract if only one man made it."

Yet still today - 105 years later - the take it or leave it approach to bludgeoning workers into submission lives on in Howard's AWAs. Let me make it perfectly clear that there will be no backing away or compromising in our total opposition to Australian Workplace Agreements, whatever some members of the media might say.

Perhaps the most publicised of the government's upcoming legislation is its removal of unfair dismissal laws from small businesses. What the Bill proposes is in effect a return to the 19th century principles of Master and Servant - that is, an absolute power over firing including the right to sack people without any recourse, regardless of the justice or merits of the case. This leap back to the future is premised on the fictional promise of job
creation. In the real world everyone knows that employment growth in small businesses is driven by increasing demand, not the degree of difficulty of sacking people. But the job-creation furphy was always just that - a trumped up excuse to hide their real motive, which was the same as their antecedents who fought to retain dictatorial powers over employees. They simply do not want unions or laws getting in the way of the employers' unfettered ability to treat workers however they like. It was part of Britain's rotten class system that working Australians were proud to be rid of, and that working Australians still reject today.

We can also expect a return to the past with a new version of the penal clauses that were associated with so much social division and industrial disputation last century. The government is likely to increase all kinds of fines and penalties for workers and union officials, not just to send us broke but to scare working people into submission. It is another outdated and class-ridden promotion of a workplace of fear and intimidation.

Our right to strike, our ability to organise in the workplace, our use of the Industrial Relations Commission to maintain decent minimum standards, are all under attack. As you know, these changes involve serious offences against internationally recognised human rights according to the International Labour Organisation. Many would be unlawful in the European Union. They offend against our democratic principle that a person's choice to engage in union activity in the workplace is the expression of a fundamental right of citizenship.

The actions of our opponents have already exposed their agenda. They won't support a better deal for working families. They oppose our increases in minimum wages. They refuse to recognise workers' rights to better safety
conditions. They fight against higher super contributions to give retired workers a decent living. They won't force failed companies to pay their redundancy debts. They won't agree to better hours for working families and their children. They've don't support adequate investment in education and training. They've done nothing about infrastructure development, innovation, and research and development or tax reform. And now they are planning to drag us further down.

Well, the challenge is not insurmountable. We can take heart from our history governments come and go, while our union is a constant. And importantly, the values of our union and our movement for more than 100 years - to bring justice and dignity to working life - are motivated by more powerful forces than those that drive the government's legal manouevours. We have the commitment of idealism of people working together for a good cause. No government can legislate against the good will of its people. And we know that laws which undermine our popular values as unionists, laws which are socially undesirable in their consequences, laws which have no economic justification - will attract the opposition of many Australians.

After June we know we will no longer be able to rely on our Labor allies and minor parties and independents in the Senate. We will be engaging more directly with our members about the issues and policies they want pursued,
including at the political level. But let me say that despite our disappointment at the last election result, the AWU is very pleased to have Kim Beazley back in the federal leadership of the ALP. All our branches supported Kim and we know he will listen to the needs of working people and their union representatives in redeveloping Labor policy.

More than ever before we should ensure that our relationships with the Labor State Governments can assist us in achieving our objectives. A case in point
is the Federal Government's plans to ban funding of major road projects unless they meet the government's provocative building code. It is clearly in the interests of the citizens of all the States and Territories not to have important infrastructure projects jeopardised by this kind of political misuse of taxpayers' funds. The States and Territories and more sensible contractors should be our natural allies in continuing industry agreements in civil construction.

Another major challenge looming before us is a possible Free Trade Agreement with China. While there were clearly some benefits as well as disadvantages with the US FTA, we remain to be convinced that any such deal with China could be in our national interest. We see the China FTA as posing a serious threat to Australian industry, jobs and employment standards.

We have already been through a period of major reform and adaption to the modern economy. We have survived by doing our best to deal with the challenges of casualisation, globalisation and deregulation. So now is no time
to deviate from our basic cause - growing our union, building union power, saving jobs, securing wages and conditions, making workplaces safe.

We are increasing the AWU's investment in growth to 20% of the union budget - that is, dedicated to organising and recruiting new members. More and more we are working on an industry level to build up recruitment in new businesses and in previously unorganised sectors of the economy. We will continue to hold more off-site, home visits, and blitz campaigns to reach new members. We will step up to train more delegates than ever before. We are increasing our communication with members with more meetings, information bulletins, letters, e-mails and websites. We will step up our corporate and strategic campaigning to create greater awareness and pressure over workplace issues at the boardroom and shareholder level.

So let's move on with our conference. I've touched on some of the key issues we'll be debating, but there's a lot of work to do. We know what it's all about. About securing Australian jobs. About winning decent wages. About locking in conditions for the long haul. About stopping the death toll in our workplaces. For all of this we know we are stronger, together.

(Here I would like to acknowledge borrowing from the concepts of the famous US Labor leader John L Lewis, President of the United Mineworkers Union)

In conclusion, at our convention, we shall tell our story, not in the quiet voice of impotent individuals, but in the booming yell of a massed multitude demanding the entitlements which Australian citizenship bestows.

The BCA, the ACCI, the editorial writers at the conservative newspapers representing industry and financial interests are performing a disservice to the Australian people in their attempts to frustrate the organisation of workers and in their rejection of collective bargaining as one of our economic institutions.

The AWU will not be diverted in our purpose to play our natural and rational role in the evolution of the economic, political and social life of Australia. Unionism assumes the employment relationship. It is based upon the wages system. We recognise fully and unreservedly the institution of private property and the right to investment profits. It is upon the expansion of collective bargaining, the growth of union membership, the impact of union experience that the institutions of Australian democracy rely.

Our members, free at work, productive partners of production, securely employed, enjoying a growing standard of living in their own homes, drive Australia's prosperity. Why does the Howard government fear the voice of the AWU and unions generally in Australian workplaces and democracy? Does the PM fear our influence will be exercised, for shorter hours, for more secure
employment, for well paid jobs, for tax relief, for a fairer distribution of our national income, for decent retirement incomes for older Australians.

We are organising our members to ensure they do have a voice in the creation of a fairer Australia. The AWU seeks peace at work. We seek co-operation and mutuality of effort. We would avoid strikes. We want our rights determined under fair laws and by the peaceful negotiation and contract that characterise Australian commercial life.

The AWU goals, at today's convention, are those we had in 1886: to organise unorganised workers; to gain acceptance of collective bargaining as an Australian institution.

ENDS