Newsletter No. 25
AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2004
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Can a Latham ALP government deliver a shorter work week? Australian Labor Party governments over twenty years, at state and federal level, have made many think it doesn’t matter who you vote for, a Liberal government gets in. Australia’s experience reflects that of many constituencies in Europe, the United Kingdom and North America — where traditionally pro-labour governments have let the market rule, by adopting liberal economic policies, such as smaller government (including privatisation & balanced budgets) and citing a need for ‘flexibility’ and ‘competitivity’ to restructure economic and industrial relations. While these policies have often brought growth, they have inevitably increased inequality and insecurity for many working people. In Australia, till a year ago, the reactionary Howard Liberal-National government was set to win a fourth term despite its rotten policies, because of its ability to manipulate political processes and because the Labor opposition was not able to sell itself as a viable alternative. This changed when Mark Latham, a ‘renegade’ from the NSW Australian Labor Party right, assumed leadership of the Federal Labor Parliamentary Party. Latham is a fresh face (a reformed ‘bovver boy’) whose emphasis on family, health and education plays well to swinging voters. He is also seen as quite conservative and on the right of the party. He is, however, in the ALP mainstream, as established by the 1983-96 Hawke/Keating governments. It adopts liberal economic policies (let the markets make capitals compete), and pays welfare out of economic efficiency and productivity ‘dividends’. The ALP’s economic priority is an ‘open and competitive Australian economy, supported by high levels of public investment in education, training and research’ Latham also claims the ALP is ‘pro-market but not necessarily pro-business’ and states, ‘good economic policy puts people first, matching competence and efficiency with compassion and care’ (‘Latham policy turns to the right’ Laura Tingle, Australian Financial Review 11.03). The generalisations Labor enunciates give it room to manoeuvre so it can balance demands of competing constituencies — primarily a need to govern, at least for the enlightened, long term, general interests of capital, while staking out a claim for labour’s involvement in creating this future and sharing in its benefits. How its general aims pan out in actual implementation of policy will be determined by the force the competing interests bring to bear on the party in government. What is vital here is the nexus between the ALP in government and the trade union movement, as the most consistently organised expression of labour’s interests. The issue is whether, or to what extent, the ALP can ‘encourage capitals to compete’, while also strengthening labour’s ability to take collective action. These are two contradictory aims: capitals, in competing with each other, aim to maximise profits and market share, so generally increase the rate of exploitation of labour. This process does not primarily spread wealth but accumulates wealth and power at one end and misery and deprivation at the other. Labour, by acting collectively, tends to redirect and redistribute wealth and power, so it is shared more broadly and invested in areas of general public need. The ALP’s selling point is that as a party of government it can promise to reward labour and a broad constituency, while also delivering results to capital — the big end of town — by ‘managing’ organised labour so its demands do not get out of control. It claims that as a ‘national’ party it rules for ‘all’ interests and can strike the ‘optimal’ balance between competing interests. Business, the beneficiaries of the destruction of labour’s rights and bargaining power under a reactionary pro-business government, are already warning ALP about its industrial policies, accusing it of ‘winding back reforms’. These policies, however, do not so much set specific objectives, as establish frameworks that will strengthen labour — its rights to bargain collectively, steps to enhance job security, especially for casuals, mechanisms to limit and resolve disputes and consideration of work-family balances in the workplace. While the ALP aims to abolish individual agreements, it will retain enterprise bargaining, to achieve ‘flexibility with fairness’ (http://www.alp.org.au/). The Australian Council of Trade Unions, in turn, has been very careful not to set demands that press the ALP too hard in government. Many unions are affiliated to the ALP and many union leaders and officers are ALP members. Generalised frameworks also give them the maximum power to negotiate, without committing them to, or revealing, any specific planned outcomes. ACTU policy on working hours is a case in point — it argued before the Australian Industrial Relations Court in 2002, for a 48-hour flexi-week, which the AIRC rejected because it set no upper limit on weekly work hours! At its 2003 Congress, the ACTU added a 60-hour weekly limit, and pressed by some unions, providers to let individual unions campaign for a 35 hour week and to protect the right of workers to refuse overtime. However, it has no policy calling on ALP governments to legislate for shorter hours, although the ALP governs in all states, and has prospects of holding government nationally! This ALP identity of interest across government and union makes it vital for those forces within the labour and progressive movements, but largely outside the ALP, to be able to press the ALP, by mobilising workers’ interests independently of, and in opposition to the ALP’s need to counterpose workers’ interests with those of capital, if it is to govern. Only in this way will the ‘centre’ of opportunity for reform shift towards labour. At the moment, the main political forces that can do this are the Greens and Socialist Alliance — which both support a 35-hour week. The Greens increasingly collect a protest vote as well as advocate progressive policy alternatives, and are starting to cut into the ALP vote. The Socialist Alliance’s vote is so far miniscule, but it can concentrate its forces to mobilise on specific issues, so they enter the political mainstream. Within the union movement, both these organisations and independent unionists are forming rank and file groupings that, to varying degrees, undercut ALP control and advance more militant, inspiring agendas for unionists. As a rule, they increase density of union membership, and assert union power, where they gain office. This movement in Australia reflects regroupments occurring in U.K. and Europe. An alliance of Greens, Communists, the unemployed and unions gained the 35-hour week for French workers in 2000; in Britain a socialist alliance is growing electorally and making gains in unions, whose members are voting in leaders independent of the British Labour Party. In Norway the Socialist Left Party, whose platform includes a 6-hour day, is now the third party, a viable alternative to Norway’s Labour Party. In 2001 the ALP thought it was on a sure thing, and did not want to raise controversial issues, such as a shorter work week. Then, it had nothing to lose. Now it is time, to raise a shorter work week, as a concrete step towards full employment, gender equity and work-life balance; to inspire the mass of the electorate, to maximise the vote round the issue and to serve notice that the ALP has to act! |