Unions to strike: ACTU plots ‘aerial war’ over insecure work
Australia’s peak union body will launch an “aerial war” against fractured workplaces devoid of security in a bid to recapture the sentiment of the Your Rights At Work campaign that helped propel Kevin Rudd to the Lodge.
In an exclusive extended interview with Crikey this week, Australian Council of Trade Unions president Ged Kearney warned a barrage of TV ads and viral videos would tap into reservoirs of dissent among an anxious Australian populace hampered by the contingent nature of the modern workforce.
And the strong likelihood of an Abbott government won’t disrupt the broader strategy — whatever happens on September 14, a $2 levy charged to the country’s 2 million union members will be spent defending workers if the industrial relations landscape changes under the Coalition.
“We will certainly have TV commercials, there’s no doubt about that. The aerial war, the media war will be very much around those issues. It certainly won’t say, ‘vote for any party’, it will say ‘here are the issues for working people, here are the things that are important to the ACTU because they’re our members, you make your choice based on that,” Kearney told Crikey.
“The main area of focus is going to be the election, we can’t avoid it … but what we have said all along is that we want to run a long-term campaign about things we’re really concerned about, especially insecure work and insecure incomes. And the election campaign will be a subset of that.”
Kearney says the ACTU is currently running numerous focus groups to ready the best lines in the lead-up to the blitz. Although yet to engage a guru in the mould of Your Rights at Work supremo Richard Keddie (Asher’s uncle, who works closely with spinners EMC), the tender will be issued soon.
The power of Keddie’s “Tracy” ad — that famously cut through during the 2007 campaign — arguably came from her dodgy boss’ ability to dictate employment conditions over the phone. Since then, unions argue conditions have worsened with job insecurity now experienced by 40% of the Australian population.
Kearney says last year’s landmark independent Howe inquiry into insecure work will be a constant ACTU reference point, feeding into other initiatives to “protect the weekend”, balance work and family and fight public service cuts by Liberal state governments. A special campaign unit will be charged with rolling out the assault.
There is growing evidence this year’s poll could end up being fought on industrial relations issues. The business lobby has ratcheted up calls for reform of the Fair Work Act via the pages of The Australian Financial Review and union figures believe this week’s announcements from Bill Shorten on leave flexibility — an issue the ACTU has been campaigning relentlessly on for years — dovetails nicely with Tony Abbott’s lack of appeal among women given most of the sticking points surround the birth of a child.
Kearney says Australian society has changed fundamentally since the 1950s and that the industrial relations architecture needs to reflect modern realities.
“We’re not the Harvester family, which is what the act is written for … the one breadwinner out there with the wife, the two kids at home. We know that nearly 50% of the workforce is female, we know that incomes are coming from two sources in the family and that’s crucial for people to survive. You overlay on top of that the fact that people are in insecure work and when people have income insecurity they worry about how they’re going to afford their mortgages.”
“The workforce has changed so much and our legislation just hasn’t kept up.”
Kearney reserves special opprobrium for Julie Bishop’s response to the flexibility announcement: “I was astounded that Julie Bishop was just saying ‘no’. I mean, really. And there she was saying, you know, ‘workforces need to be flexible to support women but we’re not going to make them any more flexible … the only way you get flexibility is if you give up your job and go and get a casual job’.
“The Coalition is stuck in the dark ages on this stuff. The workforce has changed so much and our legislation just hasn’t kept up. It’s good that the Labor government has recognised that.”
At Old Parliament House next month, the ACTU will sit down with community groups at its National Community Summit. Kearney hopes it will forge a new “social compact” to kick organised labour forward.
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Categories: Federal
Only 40%? I would have thought that job security was pretty much a thing of the past. But this campaign should help the other 60% to have another look at their own interests. Do they really want us to take the American route with its armies of working poor and where having a job does not necessarily mean you can afford a place to live? Would getting rid of the ‘Carbon Tax’ and having fewer boat arrivals be worth it? Is what bit corporations want necessarily in their interest? Would it really be in their interests to have even less bargaining power in the workplace than now?
by Steve777 on Feb 15, 2013 at 1:44 pm
Interesting article, thankyou. I can not believe that anyone that can belong to a union does not! Talk about acting against you own and society at large’s interests! I was a member of NSW Nurses for twenty years.. FIRST EVER Thankyou Jenny Haines 1970? RPAH had a stop work meeting and was “out” over one hour while Hospital administration were forced to discharge over 200 patients as we had that number of “camp stretchers” in the middle of the wards (then Nightingale Wards, patients along the wall both sides and nurses station in between) and on verandah’s.
RPAH did not have staff to covers the allocated beds to the wards let alone the extra’s. We had totally untrained assistants consisting of students from?? university holidays at that time. This was not a stopwork for the Nurses but for the rights of the patients. We were the patients advocates and our first duty of care was and ? still is to the patients in our care.
We were told by admin that we could not do this as we were a profession. Their own record of service states Industry .
Go unions go.
I have been in a small business for 20yrs now and I like my very small workforce to belong to a union and have been known to pay the small subs to protect their rights should I be doing the wrong thing by them.
by GF50 on Feb 15, 2013 at 2:30 pm
Aerial war? Whoa! Easy with the violent rhetoric there. Next thing you know they’ll be handing out maps with crosshairs.
by Patriot on Feb 15, 2013 at 7:46 pm
We begged the ACTU to keep the “your rights at work” campaign going after the 2007 election, and more importantly keep the armies of volunteers available for use. Did they listen, no. Why? Because the unions leadership is so divorced from life at the coal face, they actually think they know better. Dickheads!
by michael crook on Feb 15, 2013 at 8:58 pm
Whatever field of battle is taken, take no prisoners. The employer’s “unions”; the Australian Business Council et al; have had no compulsion to limit their attacks on workers and their right a fair wage and conditions. Australia has returned to the same point prior to the introduction of Work Choices, the possibility of a LNP government being elected in and big buisness pulling the strings in th e background as to what changes they want implemented.
by MJPC on Feb 18, 2013 at 7:49 am