I can scarcely remember a time over the last few years where ‘essential workers’ haven’t been in an industrial dispute or on strike. Most recently the NSW doctor’s strikes, the nurse’s strike, the rail worker dispute, and teacher’s strikes. One would be forgiven for not realising that NSW, in fact, has a Labor government.
A persistent argument is that a cross-sector increase in wages will cause runaway inflation. Yet real data shows that the fall in real wages due to the COVID pandemic has caused a 14-year setback in wage growth. This is on top of a trend since the ‘70s of the declining labour share of income. In other words, a wage rise won’t cause runaway inflation and is not the current driver of inflation.
Amidst this, we are faced with a skills shortage — but employers refuse to raise wages to attempt to fill vacancies. Telling.
This phenomenon is not new. At the risk of sounding obvious, this is intrinsic to the neoliberal order that seeks to divide workers for the benefit of the elites.
We cannot start without mentioning the Prices & Incomes Accords. They were a series of agreements between the Australian Labor Party (ALP) — who held power in the Hawke-Keating era of government from 1983 to 1996 — and the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), where the unions agreed to restrain their wage demands for the purposes of curtailing inflation. In return, all workers would be afforded a ‘social wage’, in the form of Medicare, mandatory superannuation, and ending the wage freezes of the Fraser era.
There are differing views on whether or not the Accords were the heralds of neoliberalism in Australia or a temporary bulwark against the proliferation of neoliberal policies worldwide.
The Accords were initially supported enthusiastically by most of the trade union movement as it catapulted them to the centre of economic decision making. Additionally, while union density was on the decline since the ‘50s, the era of the Accords saw a slowdown to the rate of decline.
This is where the good news ends. Historian Frank Stillwell points out that the Accords were meant to be more than an incomes policy. They were meant to be a broad program of social and economic reform that would platform trade unions at the centre of decision making, but were subsequently ignored.
Additionally, there exists an inherent contradiction where the Accords attempted to balance the power of an organised labour movement with the capitalist interest of government and business. Where overwhelmingly, the government will capitulate to business interests, is it any surprise that the power of labour is reduced in tripartite processes?
Prior to the Accords, Australia’s industrial relations system was characterised by militant sections of industries negotiating strong increases in wages and conditions that would be generalised by industrial tribunals in award rate increases. A system where the wage gains of the militant would flow to all workers.
Compared to the present day, the Award system simply provides a ‘back stop’ to prevent enterprise agreements from undermining labour standards.
The era that brought about the most damage was the Howard Liberal Government (1996-2007) legislating WorkChoices in 2005, which significantly curtailed unfair dismissal protections, imposed greater restrictions on industrial action, and promoted individual contracts — Australian workplace agreements (AWA) — over collective bargaining.
By the time the Rudd Labor government was elected in 2007, on a successful campaign against the disastrous effects of WorkChoices, the blade of neoliberalism had already sunk too deep into the fabric of industrial relations. Despite the introduction of the National Employment Standards and the banning of AWAs, the effects of this new industrial regime festered like a wound. Notably, the Fair Work Act 2009 continued to legitimise ‘agreements’ with unrepresented workers.
To this day, Australia retains restrictions on the right to strike labelled by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) as excessive and “in breach of international labour standards.” For a strike to be ‘legal’ — otherwise referred to as protected industrial action — unions must be in a bargaining period, apply and hold a ballot to hold a strike, then provide their employer notice.
The Industrial Relations Reform Act 1993 introduced the concept of protected industrial action which was formalised by the Fair Work Act 2009. The irony of introducing the concept of ‘legal’ strike action was that employers became much more likely to sanction workers when their industrial action was illegal, suppressing the ‘right’ to strike overall.
There is far more to the story of industrial relations than we are able to cover here. Since 2022, the Albanese Labor government has introduced several industrial relations reforms such as the criminalisation of wage theft, clarifying the definition of an employee versus a contractor, and ensuring equal pay for labour hire. Much work remains to be done, and workers do not yet have an adequate right to strike.
The shame of the Accords was that the intended social and economic program of reform was quickly shelved to prioritise the incomes policy. Whether or not you subscribe to the argument that the Accords were an instrument of neoliberalism or a partial defence against it, the reality today doesn’t change.
The reforms that have been passed so far are long overdue, but we should not settle. Electoralism is neither the beginning nor the end. Only organised labour will save us. Militant unions like the Builders Labourers’ Federation (BLF) led the Green Bans and Pink Bans, and they emphasise the integral role of organised labour in standing in solidarity with the environmental and queer movement respectively. They are a reminder of what the labour movement could look like. They are a reminder of why we must fight.
