The Accord and working-class consciousness: the politics of workers under the Hawke and Keating ...

381 Pages·2011·1.84 MB·English

by  Jonathan Strauss

ResearchOnline@JCU

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Strauss, Jonathan (2011) The Accord and working-class
consciousness: the politics of workers under the Hawke
and Keating governments, 1983-1996. PhD thesis, James
Cook University.

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The Accord and Working-Class Consciousness
The Politics of Workers under the
Hawke and Keating Governments, 1983-1996

Thesis submitted by
Jonathan STRAUSS BA(Hons) Monash
in May 2011

for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
in the School of Arts & Social Sciences
James Cook University

Acknowledgements
My principal supervisor in the School of Arts and Social Sciences at James Cook
University, Dr Doug Hunt, has been generous in his understanding of the ambitions for,
demanding what intellectual rigour might have been achieved in and guiding the
production of this thesis. Dr Jan Wegner, my associate supervisor, has also made
herself available to assist whenever needed. The thesis also gained greatly from its
earlier supervision by Dr Steve Reglar and Dr Anthony Ashbolt, when I was first
enrolled in the Arts Faculty at the University of Wollongong.
Important support for the thesis’ research has been provided by librarians, in
particular Bronwen Forster and others at JCU in Cairns, and archivists at the Noel
Butlin Archives, the University of Melbourne Archives, the Mitchell Library and the
Battye Library. Neville Spencer provided copies of hard-to-obtain issues missing from
my own collection for the newspaper survey. Kylie Anderson, a fellow postgraduate
student, made valuable suggestions about statistical approaches and Dr Yvette
Everingham also provided statistical assistance.
Jennifer Strauss provided extensive editorial comments on an early draft of each
chapter. A number of people, including Tim Anderson, Sandra Cockfield, Ray Markey,
John Percy and Sam Wainwright, offered valuable comments in informal discussions
and other support. Correspondents and interviewees, whose names appear in the
reference list, responded to the questions put to them with gusto.
Finally, I appreciate both the sacrifices made by and patience of my partner Carla
and my son Kell, who has only ever known me as a PhD candidate, and their
occasional expressions of some impatience, which spurred me to bring the thesis to a
conclusion.
iii
Abstract
This thesis aims to develop the understanding of workers’ class political
consciousness. In particular, the thesis addresses the ways and why workers unmade
and remade the working class and, more specifically, their class political
consciousness under the ALP federal governments from 1983 to 1996.
The literature about the period largely fails to view the politics of workers as subject
to workers’ agency. To approach the problem thus posed, the thesis’ inquiries range
across workers’ activity in unions, social movements and the formation of new political
parties.
The thesis considers that the working class is formed as workers respond to their
experience using elements of their consciousness. Moreover, a relatively small core of
activists, who organise collective actions and generate social learning among workers,
initiates workers’ class struggle.
The operation of the core for organising collective action among workers outside
the political mainstream is the thesis’ focus. The thesis’ research primarily involves
qualitative analysis of documents and reports of events. Quantitive research includes a
newspaper survey of protest events and new analyses of raw survey data.
The thesis proposes a model of class analysis that recognises that, in the long
Labor decade, a political trend that represented an alliance of some better-off workers
with capital would inevitably exist, while the creation of an antagonistic and hegemonic
working-class politics was uncertain. Because this model is controversial, the thesis
first elaborates its theory about the better-off workers, or “labour aristocracy”. The
theory is then validated in a new analysis of the Australian working class’ political
history. This establishes that the ALP expresses opportunist politics among workers
and that workers’ militancy rose in the 1970s.
With regard to the period, the thesis first shows that union workplace organisation
declined. It relates a series of agreements between the government and the ACTU that
aimed to boost labour productivity, the Accord, to a reduced prevalence of the factors
that motivated workers to be a delegate.
Second, the thesis discusses three elements of opposition within the unions to the
Accord. Shop committees questioned the approach adopted only when themselves
under threat. Wage militancy remained largely confined to tactics that confronted
employers. Among the union left, the opposition to the Accord as a social contract
lacked the political perspective and organisation to unite.
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Third, the thesis suggests some social movements flourished. These might have
provided opportunities for building the core for organising collective action among
workers, but in each radicalisation was isolated or slow and partial.
Finally, the thesis considers the falling intensity of ALP identification. Some workers
engaged with new party projects. When the Greens formation as a national party came
however, divisions and failures had exhausted much of the impetus for a new party.
Thus, in the long Labor decade, there were new, principally electoral, mobilisations
of workers. Meanwhile, in existing forms of workers’ mobilisation, many who would
have comprised the core for organising collective action were instead alienated from it.
The core for organising collective action declined. Also, among the core, those who
might have practiced antagonistic and hegemonic workers’ politics were relatively
inexperienced in that and usually did not agree with it. Many were workers who had
been relatively privileged, but no longer were.
The thesis concludes that the new party projects of the long Labor decade were a
movement of workers towards a party that expressed their concerns, while the ALP has
been and is a “bourgeois labour party”. Thus, social justice policy is important for the
successes of the Greens, while the ALP exerts a pro-capitalist influence among
workers. A more fundamental conclusion is that the core for organising collective action
among workers is the material form of workers’ class political consciousness, whose
strength depends on whether or not workers’ political parties and social movements
constructively interact.
The thesis provides a better understanding of the ALP and the new parties in terms
of class. The thesis also grounds the notion that “class happens”. Although the core for
organising collective action among workers is usually a small grouping of workers, it is
a key to the formation of the working class.
The thesis shows that much of politics of workers is about how will class happen. If
that is ignored, changes in the structure of party politics will surprise the political
analyst.
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Contents
List of Figures vii
List of Tables viii
Abbreviations ix
Note on Names of Unions x
Prologue 1
1 The Accord Misread 7
2 Workers’ Class Political Consciousness 29
3 What Is the Labour Aristocracy? 59
4 The Labour Aristocracy in Australian History 77
5 Union Workplace Organisation Declines 104
6 Shop Committee Struggles 137
7 Wage Militancy Suppressed by the Accord 150
8 Opposition to the Accord as a Social Contract 175
9 Social Movement Mobilisation and Demobilisation 204
10 The Electoral Reaction against Neo-liberalism 230
11 New Party Efforts in the 1980s 251
12 The Formation of the Greens 275
Conclusion 297
References 302
Appendices 351

vi
List of figures
Figure 5.1 Union density and industrial militancy, 1982-1995 118
compared with 1955-68
Figure 9.1 Social movement mobilisation, actions per year, by 211
issue, 1983-95
Figure 9.2 Social movement mobilisation, attendances per year, 212
by issue, 1983-95
Figure 9.3 Social movement mobilisation, attendances, by issue, 212
1983-95
Figure 9.4 Social movement mobilisation, attendances per year, 214
capital cities, 1983-1995
Figure 10.1 ALP identification among workers 235

vii
List of tables
Table 2.1 Criteria available for exclusion of respondents from 54
‘worker’ group in surveys
Table 5.1a Workplace membership saturation and strong 109
organisation of the union with most members in
workplaces with union delegates, 1990 AWIRS
delegate responses
Table 5.1b Workplace membership saturation and strong 110
organisation of the union with most members in
workplaces with union delegates, 1995 AWIRS
delegate responses
Table 5.2a Estimated number of delegates at workplaces of 112
twenty or more employees with delegates, 1990
AWIRS
Table 5.2b Estimated number of delegates at workplaces of 113
twenty or more employees with delegates, 1995
AWIRS
Table 5.3 Union density and industrial militancy, 1979-95 117
Table 7.1 Versions of the Accord, wage fixing principles and 151
wage pressure, 1983-1995
Table 10.1 Labour aristocracy criteria in social science surveys 234
Table 10.2 Participation in election campaign activities by ALP 238
identifiers
Table 10.3 Party identification (support: 1986 CSA) of union and 240
social movement worker participants
Table 10.4a Democrats support from workers 243
Table 10.4b NDP and Greens support from workers 247
Table 10.5 Democrats and left votes by electorate (mean) 249

viii
Abbreviations
ACF Australian Conservation Foundation
ACOA Administrative and Clerical Officers Association
ACTU Australian Council of Trade Unions
ACU Association for Communist Unity
AFAP Australian Federation of Airline Pilots
AGWG Australian Greens Working Group
ALP Australian Labor Party
AMWU Amalgamated Metal Workers Union (see Note below)
BLF Builders’ Labourers Federation (see Note below)
BWIU Building Workers Industrial Union (see Note below)
CFMEU Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (see Note below)
CPA Communist Party of Australia
DSP Democratic Socialist Party
FEDFA Federated Engine Drivers and Firemens Association
FCA Federated Confectioners Association
FPU Food Preservers Union
GA Green Alliance [NSW]
GEM Green Electoral Movement
MF Miners Federation (see Note below)
NDP Nuclear Disarmament Party
PND People for Nuclear Disarmament [Victoria]1
QGN Queensland Green Network
RA Rainbow Alliance
SPA Socialist Party of Australia
SWP Socialist Workers Party
TLC Trades and Labour Council [WA]
TWS Tasmanian Wilderness Society, later The Wilderness Society

1 The People for Nuclear Disarmament organisations in each city or state operated independently. In this
thesis only the name of the Melbourne-based organisation will be abbreviated.
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