msolga wrote:goodfielder wrote:To some degree I think union leaders in Australia are going to have to be more pragmatic msolga. I would suggest that the overwhelming majority of union members are interested first and foremost in their industrial conditions and a long way behind comes ideology. So a sensible union leader will make sure that they look after their members interests.
Oh, I couldn't agree more, gf! If more of them did, there wouldn't be such a decline in membership, for a start. But the problem is the leadership of unions, since Kennett at state level here in Victoria & the Libs at the federal level, have become so demoralized that they can't properly perform
that function. I'm speaking of Victoria here because that's the situation I know best & I personally experienced the changes as a unionist at the time. And speaking of the union I know best, the AEU (education) in Victoria, it is now so small & has been so ineffectual in stopping the rot of teachers' working conditions that most people don't bother to join & many former members have left. So we now have a much more casualized workforce in schools & the workloads for individuals have increased significantly. The interesting thing is, it's made no difference that Kennett was voted out, the Bracks Labor government has simply continued from where the Libs left off! So we now have a demoralized education workforce, an ineffectual union & little faith that a change of government will improve things.
Why would new (& casualized) teachers bother to join the union? This is the challenge that isn't being addressed in my view: How to effectively organize casualized workers in a corporatized system? Unless these very real concerns are addressed I can't see much future for the AEU, in any case. I would LOVE them to get more pragmatic & creative about how to properly address their members very real conditions related woes!
I suspect this is very similar to what many other public sector unions are experiencing right now. Tough times!
Hmmmmm....our teachers' union in SA was pretty damned strong, and had wide coverage until very recently.
The Libs managed to get problems going by offering schools substantial financial benefits if they joined this scheme that maximised Principal power and strongly furthered goovernment agenda etc. This meant that the interests of principals and teachers diverged rapidly, and it opened up chasms between teachers who believed that any money was good, and those who believed that this was a bad move.
There was also a veeeeery long running pay dispute, where teachers felt that the union had not been able to be strong...the government played a real waiting game. I think they lost some very good people, too.
My union got spayed in the early eighties, when a rightish faction took over, who have held onto power. Ths worsened when the Libs came in, and there were mass job losses and privatisations about which the weakened union was unable to put up even a shadow of a fight. It was very galling for the left in my union, cos our federal comrades, basking in a labor government and fairly good times, used to crap all over us for not stopping the government. It is with intense shame that I admit to sneaky feelings of satisfaction when the Libs got in, and did to them what the Libs here had done to us. Mostly I was aghast, though.
Our current labor government mostly has contempt and hatred for the public service, now. This is really disappointing, and is contributing to the further erosion of the role of dispassionate and disinterested advice giving, and fails to understand that, under the previous labor government, (which chose in a frankly Machiavellian move to attempt to divert hatred of them for losing the state's money in the State Bank debacle onto the public sector which they were destroying in order to pay back the huge debt) and the subsequent Liberal government, the ability of the public sector to do its job was all but destroyed by funding cuts and the politicisation of the management (butt crawling and saying what the government wanted to hear was all that was rewarded).
So, governments have created a situation where some of the contempt is justified.
Needless to say, this is demoralizing for workers and union.
Be interesting to see if this attack on conditions and rights will revitalise the unions????
)Kerry O'Brien totally undid the the argument that workers need only forfeit their award conditions IF/when applying for a new job. He pointed out that this applied to a huge number of Australian workers, not just the unemployed applying for a job (the example JH kept using.). And that in no time (if the reforms were accepted) that everyone would be on a contract. What "choice" is it when workers MUST accept the employer's conditions or else look for a job elsewhere? Howard was really floundering in his response. Astonishing to watch. I don't think they're going to be able to argue this at all well. Do they think we're all idiots? 
