Nowhere to go: unions and the ALP

After 120 years, the relationship between unions and the Australian Labor Party(ALP) has stalled. It cannot go back to the social democratic heyday of theAccord, nor forward to a new world where unions remain important but sharetheir ownership of the ALP with other interest groups, notably those that underpin the Greens. There is no need for unions and the ALP to sever the linksaltogether, but the exclusivity of the relationship is not sustainable.Whats the problem? In a nutshell, union affiliation with the ALP no longerdelivers the benefits to either side that it once did. Unions no longer get the samedegree of policy payoff by being in the ALP, and the ALPs reliance on unionfinancial support is much less than it was; down from about 80 per cent a fewdecades ago to about 15 per cent now.Controversy about the unions-ALP relationship is hardly new. In his 1963 book,Labors Role in Modern Society, ALP federal leader Arthur Calwell noted that since the ALPs narrow defeat at the 1961 federal election his party had receiveda lot of advice from new friends including that the party should sever, or at least loosen, our links with the trade union movement so that it could overcome theclaimed electoral negatives of its working class image. Calwell rejected that advice forcefully. But times have changed, and Calwells vision of modernity isdust.Union membership lingers at historic lows. Whats more, union membership isincreasingly concentrated in middle-class, university-educated workforces,notably teachers and nurses. These unions are not affiliated with the ALP, andtheir members do not want a close relationship with the ALP. The new ACTUpresident, Ged Kearney, a career nurse, reflects these views when she advocatesa more independent relationship with the ALP Government. Many union officialsface the reality that their members are likely to vote against them if they are toocosy with ALP Governments, particularly at state level. This scepticism is anAccord legacy, but it is also a reflection of the changing face of unionism in thiscountry.

2Calwell could not envisage a world in which unions might act independently. Inthe same book, he argued that a union movement that chose to end itsrelationship with the ALP and opted instead to bargain between Labor and theconservative parties on a level footing would destroy itself. Yet, this is theposition that unions find themselves increasingly adopting today. The prospect of a long-term conservative government in NSW leaves the unions representingstate employees with little choice.The 1916 conscription debate brought sectarianism to the fore in Australianpolitics. Labor added the Irish Catholic vote to its union constituency. For manyyears the NSW ALP had a (predominantly) catholic Right faction in deadlycombat with a (predominantly) Left faction. But the days are long gone whentwo working class boys from inner Sydney, Premier Cahill and ArchbishopGilroy, could sit down and decide the future of the NSW ALP. The new LiberalPremier of NSW, Barry OFarrell, is of Irish descent, and proudly so. The current ALP prime minister and her predecessor are protestants, the current Oppositionleader is a catholic.Where to from here?When the Accord collapsed in the early nineties, so did the prospect of socialdemocracy. Under intense political pressure, and weakened by declining uniondensities, the Australian union movement turned from Sweden to the USA forinspiration. Australian unions cherry-picked campaign ideas from their UScounterparts, while eschewing the pressure group model that characterizes therelationship between American unions and the Democrat party. The culminationof this approach was the ACTUs Your Rights at Work campaign (YR@W) against the Howard Governments anti-union Work Choices legislation, which helpedreturn the ALP to national Government.Since the euphoria of the 2007 election victory, however, the relationship hasnot been able to go forward. Union policy influence in the Rudd and Gillardgovernments has been minimal, especially outside industrial relations. Unionistsoften struggle to get a serious role in policy discussion, and they are frequentlyspoken of, and treated like, any other interest group. There are no Keatings andno Keltys this time around.

3The debate about union links with the ALP dates back to the earliest days of thepartys history and is linked to broader debates about the degree of control theparty organisation should exert over caucus, and the extent to which the ALP isto be understood as a party established by unions to promote policies supportedby the union movement or is a broader socialist, progressive or centre-left party.At first, to fight the 1891 NSW election, the NSW Labor Council established LaborElectoral Leagues in each electorate open to anyone who shared the new partysvalues and was willing to pay the 5

annual membership fee. The local leagues(now called branches) pre-selected their own candidates. At the 1891 electionthe new party won 35 in the Legislative Assembly, an outstanding result. Thenew parliamentary party soon split on a protectionist issue. Led by Joseph Cook,17 MPs supported the free trade cause and opposed a measure to implement new customs duties. In 1895, the partys central executive, effectively the NSWLabor Council, sought to expel the free trade dissidents. Nevertheless, a handfulof local leagues continued to endorse the dissidents including Cook in hisconstituency of Hartley, near Lithgow. In response, the central executiverequired local pre-selections to be approved by itself and in return for thisreduction in their autonomy gave the local leagues the right to send delegates toState Conference, and to submit policy motions for its consideration.This basic model, which encapsulates the formal links between unions and theALP, was followed by other states and has remained in place ever since. In 2003,then federal ALP leader, Simon Crean, a former president of the ACTU, followingthe recommendations of the Hawke-Wran review, secured agreement to aconsistent 50:50 split between branch and union delegates at state conferences.The logic of a 50:50 split was to give effect of the notion of a partnershipbetween unions and the ALP branches, and diminish any electoral negativitysurrounding union control of the party, or undue influence over it. It damagedCreans leadership.The frozen nature of affiliation patterns means that the ALP has a relationshipwith some unions, but not a formal, ongoing relationship with the ACTU. It ishalfway house, it excludes many unionists and it excludes many other non-uniongroups.