AMWU review proposes major changes as membership falls
An unfamiliar scene played out recently at Brisbane’s port. On 15 February, in the middle of the night, six train cars, each 25 metres long and wrapped completely in plastic, were unloaded from the hull of a ship. The carriages will be used on the South East Queensland Rail Network.
In the past, Queensland’s passenger trains have been manufactured by a joint enterprise between Bombardier and Downer Rail at a facility in Maryborough, north of Brisbane.
The new trains are manufactured by Bombardier in Savli, India. To produce these locally and to the government’s deadline, Downer Rail would have needed to double its workshop capacity and rapidly expand its workforce, hiring more than 1,000 workers for the project’s duration.
There is a generational divide between those who have actively participated in industrial campaigning and the democratic functioning of their union and those who have little awareness of trade unions at all.
Manufacturing the trains in India ensures that Bombardier can sidestep a unionised workforce that would demand entitlements on termination of the project.
The decision is a slap in the face to those workers left at workshop in Maryborough. It is a facility in which electric trains have been produced for almost 40 years. It is yet another blow to the union that covers those workers, the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union.
Growth and retreat
The AMWU can trace its origins to 1852, when the Amalgamated Society of Engineers first met on board the immigrant vessel Frances Walker in Sydney Harbour. The union has a long history of fighting industrially for the pay and conditions of metalworkers, campaigning for social justice and advancing the interests of the entire working class.
It was once considered the most powerful left wing union in the country. Under the centralised award and arbitration system that characterised Australian industrial relations until the early 1990s, the metal trades awards set the pace on wages and conditions. Then, the AMWU was at the forefront of important industrial battles – campaigns that were led from the floor – including for a 35-hour week.
For more than 130 years, the AMWU enjoyed uninterrupted growth. Others looked to it as a model for recruitment, training, organisation and leadership. By the 1990s, it had a membership of 200,000. It was then one of the largest organisations in Australia.
Like most unions in Australia, the AMWU has been in steady decline for 30 years. In the 1980s, the Prices and Incomes Accords between the ALP, big business and the unions neutered industrial militancy; wage rises were limited by arbitration courts on the promise of social gains that never transpired. The introduction of enterprise bargaining in 1992 further fractured workers’ industrial power by limiting activity to individual shops and workplaces.
Award rates have stagnated since then, and national campaigns to improve working conditions or wage rates are only a memory. AMWU membership has dropped to around 80,000.
There is now a critical generational divide between those who have actively participated in industrial campaigning and the democratic functioning of their union and those who have little awareness of trade unions at all.
Manufacturing in Australia
The demise of train manufacturing is not unique. According to ABS figures, an average 1,900 manufacturing jobs were lost every month between 2007 and 2013. In 1966, manufacturing accounted for 26 percent of the Australian workforce. By 2013, it was 8 percent.
The job losses have been widespread. By 2017, all car manufacturing in Australia will have ceased. In 2013, both Downer Rail and UGL stopped manufacturing diesel-electric freight locomotives. It is unlikely that electric passenger trains will be made in Australia beyond the next decade. The last white goods manufacturer, Electrolux, is set to close its doors this year. With a glut of steel and aluminium on the world market, every steelworks and aluminium refinery has wound back production.
Shipyards are idle. There is hope that the billions of dollars promised for war machines by the current federal government will bring production back to Australia. But there’s no guarantee. The Turnbull government recently announced that two new supply ships will be built in Spain at a cost of $1 billion.
‘Times have changed’
As if we need to be told, Paul Bastion, AMWU national secretary, wrote to members in February to announce that “times have changed” and that the union is reviewing its operations and structures.
The review was undertaken at the end of 2015 by former ACTU secretary and ALP parliamentarian Greg Combet, and company director turned corporate consultant Andrew Whittaker. Their document presents the idea of a major restructure as inevitable given the difficult circumstances the union faces. The authors and backers of the review are counting on a demoralised and disinterested membership letting its recommendations through.
The review predicts that AMWU membership will fall to 45,000 by 2020. It recommends scrapping the union’s divisional structure and centralising power in a national office. It calls for state and national secretaries to have the power to hire and fire union organisers. Currently, most organisers are elected by the membership.
While the review admits that “most AMWU members now and in the future will likely never see an organiser”, it imagines that better use of the internet can compensate sufficiently. “The union needs to provide a transparent value proposition for the membership fee – and it can do this in a cost-effective manner through digital-based communications and services”, Combet and Whittaker write.
One of the most significant proposals to come out of the review is the suggestion that consideration be given to amalgamation. While no other unions are named, it is understood that the ETU, NUW and United Voice may be candidates for a merger with the AMWU.
There is no doubt that the AMWU is at a critical juncture. Unfortunately, this review looks likely to entrench further our decline, not turn it around. The review offers nothing in the way of plans to rebuild rank and file engagement or strengthen our industrial base.
It agonises over the purpose of the union in a hostile climate. It never once considers the potential for a fightback. It characterises the union as a “value proposition” that would be improved if it diversified the “services” and “products” it offers.
Not a single mention is made of the restrictions on the right to strike. Yet there is no other way out of this quagmire but to fight, even if it means relearning every lesson that has been forgotten as our union has fallen to its knees.
Our struggle on the shop floor is now – as it always has been – our main weapon. Any changes to the union have to be aimed at strengthening organisation on the ground. What is needed now is the reinvigoration of the union’s democratic structures, not their removal. The measures proposed by the review will only further alienate the rank and file, who are the only force that can play a decisive role in rebuilding the union’s strength.
