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| Council of Trade Union Leaders 1987 |
Before the introduction of the National
Government’s infamous Employment Contracts Act in 1991, over half a million
working New Zealanders were members of a Trade Union, accounting for 43% of all
wage and salary earners. Whilst the total number of people in work has
substantially increased in the last twenty-five years, Trade Union membership
continues its decline. Today there are approximately 350,000 Union members, but
this accounts for only 16% of the workforce.
What has happened to our once proud, once
respected Trade Unions? Once a political and social force to be reckoned with,
our Unions are now sadly languishing in the margins, without power and without
influence.
It would be easy to blame successive
governments, Labour and National, for this ignominious demise. The Labour
governments of the 1980’s betrayed their own working class constituency, and
the National governments that followed sought to drive the final nails into the
coffin of organised labour. The Employment Contracts Act of 1991, which put an
end to compulsory Unionism and abolished the National Awards system, was
perhaps the most devastating blow, but to understand fully the emasculation of
our Unions, we have to scroll further back, back to the 1980’s and to the
tactics of the Unions themselves.
Faced with successive neo-liberal,
anti-union Labour governments in the mid 1980’s, the leaders of New Zealand’s
Federation of Labour and other principal Unions made the decision to form The
New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, believing that a single unified force was
the most effective way of exerting political and social influence.
The ‘CTU’ was touted as the modern,
pragmatic face of Trade Unionism. There was to be no more talk of ‘antiquated’
socialism, of capital versus labour, or the inherent greed of the capitalist
plutocracy. Industrial action was to become anathema; strikes, militancy, and
any form of industrial action, considered anachronistic. Instead, the CTU’s
leaders sought a sycophantic ‘mutually rewarding’ partnership with government.
The CTU attempted to become a kind of power broker between the government and
its Union affiliates, promising workplace reforms and productivity increases in
exchange for job security and higher living standards for its members. It was a
fantasy of breathtaking naiveté. The miserable failure of this pipe dream only
succeeded in alienating the New Zealand working class. Many workers believed
the CTU was betraying core Trade Union principles, and that their ‘cap in hand’
approach to the government amounted to an admission of impotence.
‘Strategies for Change’
Having helped re-elect Labour in 1987 by
agreeing to limit industrial action and forgo the annual wage round, the
country’s Union leaders unveiled their vision of the future for New Zealand’s
workers. The CTU’s ‘Strategies for Change’ was released in the wake of the
government’s 1987 Employment Relations Act, legislation bitterly opposed by
traditional Trade Unionists, but tacitly supported by the CTU. The act wiped
out compulsory arbitration and the right of Unions to opt for second tier
bargaining. The act also decreed that individual Trade Unions would be illegal
entities unless their membership amounted to at least 1,000 financial members.
This had a devastating effect on two thirds of the country’s Unions. Small,
independent Unions disappeared overnight, their culture and identities consumed
by larger, more institutionalised organisations. The emasculation of organised
labour had begun.
Despite whatever promises were made behind
the scenes, the Labour government did not enter into any formal relationship
with the CTU. The CTU’s so-called ‘Compact’ with the government did not
materialise. Wages and living standards continued to fall dramatically, and many
thousands lost their jobs as a result of the government’s attacks on workers
through its ‘restructuring’ and privatisation of the state sector. The economic
and social well being of the working class was devastated and the CTU’s tactics
were an unmitigated disaster.
The National government of 1991 wasted no
time in finishing the job the previous government had started; the complete
deregulation of the labour market. The CTU were hardly in a position to
protest. The National government’s abolition of the National Awards was after
all, in line with the CTU’s ‘Strategies for Change,’ which advocated a radical
shift from occupational based Unions to industry-based collectives. The CTU was
hoisted on its own petard and sent packing. Many Unions became bankrupt and
many disappeared altogether, including the once influential Clerical Workers
Union.
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| Anti ECA poster 1991 |
1991 was a watershed year for New Zealand
workers. Some Trade Unionists and activists called for a national strike to
protest against National’s Employment Contracts Bill, but without any real,
credible leadership, opposition was reduced to a small number of ineffective
street marches. The most undemocratic, misanthropic bill in New Zealand’s
modern political history was consequently passed into law.
Beyond ’91: The middle class revolution
Compulsory membership of Trade Unions had
been a boon to the Unions; a substantial guaranteed income being collected on a
weekly basis. Like many Unions at the time, the Distribution and General
Workers Union, of which I was an executive member in 1991, had become
complacent, taking its income for granted and spending it unwisely on inflated
salaries for its exulted officials. Senior management officers of the Union
were paid three to four times as much as the average income of their members.
The effect of this well rewarded management structure was telling. Economically
much better off than their lowly members, Union officials moved irresistibly
towards a middle class identity. They owned their own homes in middle class
suburbs and their children went to middle class schools. They found they had
more in common socially with the bosses than with the workers who paid their
wages.
These same Union officials talked down
expectations of a fair wage increase for their members, telling them instead to
‘get real,’ and accept whatever minimal offer the employer was proposing. Any
talk of industrial action to support a wage claim was actively discouraged.
When disputes did arise between workers and management, Union officials
routinely met the bosses behind closed doors and arranged secret deals without
the knowledge of their members.
In my capacity as a delegate of another
Union in the early 2000’s, I witnessed the Union’s blatant disregard of its
members wishes. The membership had voted to strike in support of a reasonable
pay claim, but were legally unable to carry out the threat when the strike
notice was incorrectly filled out by a Union official. Everyone makes mistakes,
but when this same scenario played out for a second time two years later, I
became somewhat suspicious. On both of these occasions Union officials, in
delaying the industrial action, gained the time they needed to ‘persuade’
members to change their vote. Separate meetings of workers groups were held,
isolating the most militant activists. Union officials warned the members
against taking strike action, which they asserted, could drag on for weeks and
ultimately cost the strikers a substantial sum in lost wages. Eventually the
members settled for a pitifully small increase, much to the relief of the Union
organisers and the grateful employer. My trust in the Union to honestly
represent its members was at an end.
Low pay gets lower
Throughout all these years a two-tier wage
policy was being enacted by government policy makers in conjunction with Union
leaders. Proposed annual wage rises for workers were crucially, couched in
percentage terms rather than in dollars and cents. A ‘realistic’ figure,
whether two, three or four percent (rarely more), was established as the going rate.
A blue collar worker in a skilled job receiving $50,000 a year would, having
gained a four per cent pay rise, collect a further $2,000 per year. A worker in
the hospitality sector on $18,000 would gain only $720 per year. In order to
maintain the status quo and receive a comparable pay increase, the hospitality
worker would need a rise of over 11%. Any claim for such a percentage increase
was decried as ‘unrealistic’ by the worker’s relevant Union, and labelled as
outright greed by the media. This egregious charade has gone on unchecked ever
since. Consequently, the gap between well-paid and low paid workers grew, and
is still growing, exponentially. Lazy, corrupt Unions have been complicit in
this fraud of lower paid workers. Is it any wonder workers have turned their
backs on Union representation?
The CTU today is perhaps just as its
founders imagined; a pseudo-intellectual middle class office, run by
politically correct academics. I have, very occasionally, heard CTU secretary
Peter Conway urging the government of the day to address the inequalities in
New Zealand society and listen to the economic advice of the CTU. Just as
so-called economic experts waffle on pointlessly about positive job growth and
higher wages, so Peter, bless him,
is playing the same tune he has for the last thirty years. The trouble is,
nobody, least of all government, is listening.
As Karl Marx pointed out, the interests of
labour and capital are diametrically opposed. In the capitalist world labour is
merely another commodity to be bought and sold. Like any other commodity, its
price is dependant on supply and demand. As long as there is unemployment,
there will be a surplus of labour; thereby the price of labour will be low. In
the capitalist economy wages will only increase when there is a shortage of
labour on the market, i.e., no unemployment. Capitalists have learned the
lessons from the profit reducing high cost of labour in the 1960’s and 1970’s.
All capitalist economies now keep a proportion of the workforce unemployed to
ensure the continuing cheap cost of Labour. It really is that simple.
As the profit mad plutocrats get richer, so
will they ever seek to reduce the cost of labour. The days of wild cat strikes,
rolling stoppages, and secondary pickets may well be over for good, but if
labour is ever to take an equal share in the profits it creates for capital, it
will have to fight for it one way or another.
With the gap between the rich and the poor
increasing at an alarming rate and child poverty becoming endemic, we need
strong, determined Trade Union leadership more than ever before. The Service
Workers Union’s successful campaign for its aged care workers is one example of
the positive difference a Union can still make.
Fanciful economic and social strategies to
assist the capitalist profiteers, and the promotion of further ‘productivity,’
(as if that has ever translated into gains for workers!) will not win Unions
increased membership. Trade Unions must return to a traditional adversarial
role in order to win back their lost credibility, and Trade Unionists must
return to representing their members honestly by taking the fight to the
employers, without thought of their own personal and political interests.
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