Decades of disillusion: Reappraising the ALP-ACTU accord 1983-1996

Australian Journal of Politics and History

Volumn 53, Issue 4, 2007, Pages 552-568

  Dow, Geoff ^a   Lafferty, George ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND   (Australia)

^b VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OF WELLINGTON   (New Zealand)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 36549065703     PISSN: 00049522     EISSN: 14678497     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8497.2007.00474.x     Document Type: Article

References (63)

1. See, for example, Harry C. Katz, Wonduck Lee and Joohee Lee, eds, The New Structure of Labor Relations: Tripartism and Decentralization (Ithaca, 2004).
2. While there is historical controversy over the meaning and effects of social democracy, we take it to be an approach to politics which emphasises the optimistic "possibilities of politics" rather than the more proscriptive or fatalistic conceptions derivable respectively from orthodox liberalism and orthodox Marxism. Social democratic theory tends to accept Marxism's analysis of the dynamics and crisis tendencies in capitalism while sharing with the more conservative Weberian conception of politics an optimistic view of state capacities, even during times of globalisation.
3. Peter Beilharz, Transforming Labor: Labour Tradition and the Labor Decade in Australia (Melbourne, 1994).
4. Walter Korpi, The Democratic Class Struggle (London, 1983).
5. See also Geoff Dow and George Lafferty, "From class analysis to class politics: a critique of sociological interpretations of class", Australian & New Zealand Journal of Sociology, Vol. 26, 1 (1990), pp. 3-35.
6. For an elaborated discussion see Geoff Dow, "Societal responsibility for unemployment and its cure" in Geoff Dow and Rachel Parker, eds, Business, Work and Community: Into the New Millennium (Melbourne, 2001), pp. 157-183;
7. also see Frank Stilwell, Political Economy: the Contest of Economic Ideas (Melbourne, 2nd edition, 2006), pp. 242-244.
8. See, for example, Gilles Dostaler, Keynes and his Battles (Cheltenham, 2007), ch. 7.
9. ACTU/TDC, Australia Reconstructed: Mission to Western Europe - Report (Canberra, 1987), ch. 5.
10. Notably, of course, monetary policy. On the general phenomenon of "hollowing out", see David Marquand, Decline of the Public: the Hollowing-out of Citizenship (London, 2004).
11. For example: Tom Bramble, "Globalisation, unions and the demise of the labourist project", Journal of Australian Political Economy, No. 38 (1996), pp. 31-62;
12. Terry Flew, "The limits to political unionism", Journal of Australian Political Economy, 1989, no. 24, pp. 77-99;
13. Rick Kuhn, "The limits of social democratic economic policy in Australia", Capital & Class, No. 51 (1993), pp. 17-52;
14. Herb Thompson, "Australia Reconstructed: socialism deconstructed", Journal of Australian Political Economy, No. 23 (1988), pp. 87-96.
15. Peter Beilharz, Transforming Labor, see fn3.
16. Dick Bryan, "National economic strategies and international finance", Journal of Australian Political Economy, No. 39 (1997), pp. 72-79.
17. Mark Beeson, "Organised labour in an era of global transformation: Australia Reconstructed revisited", Journal of Australian Political Economy, No. 39 (1997), pp. 55-71.
18. Peter Kriesler and Joseph Halevi, "Australia deconstructed", Journal of Australian Political Economy, (1997), no. 39, pp. 107-121.
19. Boris Frankel, When the Boat Comes in: Transforming Australia in the Age of Globalisation (Sydney, 2001).
20. Frank Stilwell, "Poor show: economic disparities and the working poor in Australia", Overland, No. 170 (2003), pp. 83-87.
21. Peter Ewer, Ian Hampson, Chris Lloyd, John Rainford, Stephen Rix and Meg Smith, Politics and the Accord (Sydney, 1991).
22. Stephen Bell, Ungoverning the Economy: the Political Economy of Australian Public Policy (Melbourne, 1997).
23. Meghnad Desai, Marx's Revenge: the Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism (London, 2002), p. 303.
24. See Geoff Dow, "Labour's mission and the capacities of politics: in defence of Australia Reconstructed', Journal of Australian Political Economy, No. 39 (1997), pp. 122-140.
25. See, for example, Andrew J. Richards, "The crisis of union representation" in Guy van Gyes, Hans de Witte and Patrick Pasture, eds, Can Class Still Unite? The Differentiated Work Force, Class Solidarity and Trade Unions (Aldershot, 2001) pp. 1-12;
26. Jeremy Waddington, "Situating labour within the globalization debate" in Jeremy Waddington, ed., Globalization and Patterns of Labour Resistance (London, 1999), pp. 1-22.
27. Constance Sorrentino, "International unemployment rates: how comparable are they?", Monthly Labor Review, Vol. 123, 6 (2000), pp. 3-20.
28. For the period 1983-96 unemployment averaged 8.6 per cent in Australia and 7.7 per cent for the OECD; it has been above the OECD average for the 30-year period 1974-2004, 7.2 per cent compared with 6.9 per cent, reflecting therefore not the neglect of either the ALP or the Coalition in government so much as the wholesale institutional insouciance of the Australian policy élite.
29. World Development Report data on the share of total income accruing to the bottom 60 per cent of income earners for the 1980s and the 1990s, compared with the figure for the 1970s, reveals the progressive shift: 30.4 per cent for the 1970s, 33.0 per cent for the 1980s and 35.1 per cent for the 1990s.
30. See World Development Report 1985, p. 229;
31. World Development Report 1999-2000: Entering the Twenty-first Century, p. 238;
32. World Development Report 2000-2001: Attacking Poverty, p. 282, all Oxford University Press, Washington.
33. One suspects that the official labour movement in Australia has almost given up its commitment to centralised consideration of distributive and other policies, as the liberals' condemnatory attitude to "pattern bargaining" begins to inform a new generation of Labor practitioners with a pusillanimous attitude to principle and tradition.
34. OECD, Historical Statistics 1970-2000 (Paris, 2001);
35. see also Peter Lindert, Growing Public: Social Spending and Economic Growth since the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 2004).
36. Francis G. Castles, The Future of the Welfare State: Crisis Myths and Crisis Realities (Oxford, 2004), ch. 2.
37. OECD, Historical Statistics 1970-2000, p. 61.
38. See Dale Daniels, Social Security Payments for the Aged, People with Disabilities and Carers (Canberra, 2004).
39. See Geoffrey M. Hodgson, "From micro to macro: the concept of emergence and the role of institutions" in Leonardo Berlamaqui, Ana Célia Castro and Ha-Joon Chang, eds, Institutions and the Role of the State (Cheltenham, 2000), pp. 103-126.
40. See Nixon Apple, "The Historical Transformation of Class Struggle in Late Capitalist Liberal Democracies" in Stewart Clegg, Geoff Dow and Paul Boreham, eds, The State, Class and the Recession (London, 1983), pp. 72-128;
41. Winton Higgins, "Political unionism and the corporatist thesis", Economic and Industrial Democracy, Vol. 6, 3 (1985), pp. 349-381.
42. For an elaborated argument, see Geoff Dow, "The labour market and labour market reform", Journal of Australian Political Economy, No. 57 (2006), pp. 137-154.
43. The huge literature on comparative political economy since the 1980s affirms that social democratic corporatism is an effective and egalitarian regulatory regime for good and technologically-proficient economic performance (citing especially Sweden, Norway and Austria); however most studies also note the "authoritarian successes" of Japan's "corporatism without labour", indicating that that model succeeds in its own terms too. The Anglo-American mode of governance is disfavoured in these evaluations because it points to high GDP growth, low inflation and "flexibility-enhancing" reforms, all of which have been compatible with high unemployment over the past thirty years, as signs of success. The liberal polities also, of course, have a higher tolerance for inequality, manufacturing decline and loss of national control.
44. Malcolm Sawyer, "Obstacles to full employment in capitalist economies", and Eileen Appelbaum and Robert Schettkat, "Economic development in the industrialised countries and the prospects for full employment", both in Philip Arestis and Mike Marshall, eds, The Political Economy of Full Employment: Conservatism, Corporatism and Institutional Change (Aldershot, 1995), pp. 15-35 and 238-255;
45. OECD, Historical Statistics 1970-2000 (Paris, 2001).
46. OECD, Main Economic Indicators, National Accounts, May 2006 (Paris).
47. This, despite the huge popularity of discursive accounts of state failure, a crisis of Keynesianism and notional attempts to "reform" previous state achievements. See Bob Jessop, "Bringing governance into capitalist regulation" in idem and Ngai-Ling Sum, Beyond the Regulation Approach: Putting Capitalist Economies in their Place (Cheltenham, 2006), pp. 247-270.
48. World Bank, World Development Report 2001-2002: Institutions for Markets (Washington, 2002), p. 194;
49. for a more nuanced account, though arriving at the same conclusions, see Peter Saunders, The Ends and Means of Welfare: Coping with Economic and Social Change in Australia (Cambridge, 2002), ch. 7.
50. th edition, 1978 [1875]), pp. 14-17.
51. Michal Kalecki, "Political aspects of full employment", The Political Quarterly, Vol. 14, 4 (2000), pp. 322-331.
52. Michael Pusey and Nick Turnbull, "Have Australians embraced economic reform?" in Shaun Wilson et al., eds, Australian Social Attitudes: the First Report (Sydney, 2005), pp. 161-181.
53. These divisions largely reflect the distinction between "corporatist" and "pluralist" forms of political organisation; see Alan Cawson, Corporatism and Political Theory (Oxford, 1986);
54. the classical formulation was provided in 1974 by Phillipe Schmitter, "Still the century of corporatism?" in Phillipe C. Schmitter and Gerhard Lehmbruch, eds, Trends Towards Corporatist Intermediation (London, 1979), p. 13.
55. In May 2007, opinion pollster Rod Cameron warned that the ALP would need to sever links to its industrial progenitors to succeed electorally; Paul Kelly wrote that Labor's "economic credibility" depended on just that course ("Rudd must beat unions: Labor guru", Australian, 12 May 2007).
56. "Work Choices laws criticised by Liberals", Age, 14 June 2006.
57. Bishop Kevin Manning, "Call for justice must be clear", Catholic Outlook (Sydney, June 2006). Even Cardinal George Pell criticised the legislation ("Pell opposes Work Choices", Age, 19 June 2006);
58. Protestant figures and the Salvation Army also quickly confirmed the conservative disquiet.
59. "At the time being, the condition of the working classes is the pressing question of the hour, and nothing can be of higher interest to all classes of the State than that it should be rightly and reasonably settled." Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum: Encyclical on Capital and Labour (Rome, 1891). Subsequent encyclicals in 1931 and 1961 reiterated the case against the principle of a labour market.
60. A New Zealand example provides grounds for optimism in this regard, particularly given that New Zealand unions have had to deal with a decentralised industrial relations environment since the establishment of the Employment Contracts Act 1991 (albeit somewhat moderated by the more recent legislation of the Employment Relations Act 2000). The Unite union (self-designated as the "Union for Everyone"), whose main constituency comprises younger, low-pay and casualised workers in areas such as fast-food and retailing, has gained spectacular increases in membership numbers in recent years (Industrial Relations Centre, Victoria University of Wellington, survey of union membership, 2005). It has also conducted several successful and imaginative campaigns, including its "SuperSizeMyPay.com" initiative and the world's first Starbucks strike. There is now a Unite union in Australia, taking its inspiration from the New Zealand example
61. (see Graham Matthews, "Rebel union formed", Green Left Weekly, 7 June 2006). The new, Melbourne-based union also focuses on organising the mainly young workers employed in fast food and retailing. Such developments, based on low membership costs, minimal bureaucracy and substantial volunteer contributions, are clearly indicators of a long-term base for unionism, in an area where more traditional unions have had difficulty recruiting and retaining membership.
62. The level of under-employment recorded by the ABS effectively doubles the unemployment rate, yielding an underutilisation rate of over 10 per cent in 2006 (Year Book Australia 2007, p. 177);
63. while the number of job vacancies quadrupled between 1990 and 2006 (from 40,000 to 160,000), it was still only one-third of the number looking for work and one-sixth of the number under-employed (pp. 175-178, pp. 187-188).