Huh.
I picked up a copy of Labor Review recently. No.47 (2009) to be exact. It’s edited by Chris Gaffney and published by a mob called the ‘Victorian Labor College’.
The Labor Review is a rather odd little zine, with 50 or so pages of essays (all of which, bar one, originally having been published elsewhere) and featuring a 56-page ‘Advertising Supplement’ “solicited from organisations and businesses on the understanding that no special considerations other than those normally accepted in respect of commercial dealings with [sic] be given to any advertiser”. The reader is also asked to note that the “Victorian Trades Hall Council is not associated” with the Review, it being the sole responsibility of the College. Finally, there is a list of unions on the contents page, each of which presumably supports either the Review, the College, or both. What’s slightly odd about this list of ten is that a number have ceased to exist as independent unions, or have amalgamated into other forms.
- The ‘Clothing Trades Union‘ (aka the ‘Clothing & Allied Trades Union of Australia’) joined with the ‘Amalgamated Footwear & Textile Workers’ Union of Australia’ to form the ‘Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia‘ (TCFUA) in 1992.
The ‘Electrical Trades Union‘ is the Electrical Trades’ Union (ETU).
The ‘Federated Liquor Trades‘ [Union] is presumably a reference to the ‘Federated Liquor & Allied Industries Employees Union of Australia’ (1958–1992); it amalgamated with the ‘Miscellaneous Workers’ Union’ to form the ‘Australian Liquor Hospitality & Miscellaneous Workers’ Union‘ (LHMU).
The ‘Food Preservers’ Union of Australia’ (1929–1992) amalgamated with the ‘Confectionery Workers’ Union’ to become the Food Preservers’ Division of the ‘Confectionery Workers’ & Food Preservers Union of Australia’ (CW&FPU). In 1994, the CW&FPU amalgamated with the ‘Automotive Metals and Engineering Union’ to form the Automotive Food Metals and Engineering Union; from 1995 it has been known as the Food and Confectionery Division of the ‘Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union‘ (AMWU).
The ‘Furnishing Trade Union‘ — aka the ‘Federated Furnishing Trade Society of Australasia’ — was open for business until 1993, when it amalgamated with the ‘Federated Brick Tile & Pottery Industrial Union of Australia’ and the ‘Operative Painters’ & Decorators’ Union of Australia’ into the ‘Construction Forestry Mining & Energy Union‘ (CFMEU).
The ‘Meat Workers’ Union‘ is presumably a reference to the ‘Australasian Meat Industry Employees’ Union‘ (AMIEU).
The [Amalgamated] ‘Metal Workers’ Union‘ eventually found its way — via the ‘Metals and Engineering Workers’ Union’ (1991), the ‘Automotive Metals & Engineering Union’ (1993), and the ‘Automotive Food Metals & Engineering Union’ (1994) — to the AMWU.
The ‘Public Transport Union‘ is otherwise known as the ‘Australian Rail Tram & Bus Industry Union‘ (RTBU; established 1993).
The ‘Tramway Workers’ Union‘ may be a reference to the ‘Australian Motor Omnibus and Tramway Employee Association’ (ATMOEA). In 1993, the ATMOEA merged with the ‘Australian Federated Union of Locomotive Enginemen’, the ‘National Union of Rail Workers’ and the ‘Australian Railways Union’ to form the RTBU.
the ‘Vehicle Builders’ Union‘ is presumably a reference to the ‘Vehicle Builders Employees Federation of Australia’, born in 1938 and dying in 1993, when the VBEF amalgamated with the ‘Metals and Engineering Workers’ Union’ to form the ‘Automotive Metals and Engineering Union’ (AMEU). In 1994, following an amalgamation with the ‘Confectionery Workers’ & Food Preservers’ Union of Australia’, the AMEU became known as the ‘Automotive Food Metals and Engineering Union’ (AFMEU); in 1995 the AFMEU amalgamated with the ‘Printing and Kindred Industries Union’ to become the ‘Automotive Food Metals Engineering Printing and Kindred Industries Union’ — otherwise known as the AMWU.
See also : Australian Trade Union Archives.
So: the VLC was established in 1917:
…’for the purpose of Independent Working Class Education’, the Victorian Labor College was based on the British model. Its socialist purpose was personified in founding members like W.P. Earsman and Guido Baracchi, who taught classes on industrial strategy and Marxist economics. With the support of trade unions and the Victorian Trades Hall Council, it added public speaking, labour history and politics to the syllabus and maintained a bookstall at its Trades Hall headquarters. Sustained by indefatigable supporters like the Brodneys and, later, Ted Tripp, it conducted a viable program of classes until the late 1970s when educational, political and labour market changes diminished its earlier relevance. It was revived in the mid-1980s, publishes its Labor Review in a new format and conducts a weekly program on community radio.
In 1917, there were lots and lots and lots of unions: something like four of five hundred (across Australia). In 2010, there are a lot less, although these are (in general) super duper unions, with large memberships. (The SDA, which claims to have 230,000 members, is the largest trade union affiliated to the ALP.) Relative to the working population however, union membership has been in free-fall for decades: “The past two decades have seen a dramatic decline in trade union membership rates across Australia. This decline has occurred at a time of significant change in the industrial relations environment. In 1986, 46% of employees belonged to a trade union. By 2007 the rate of membership had fallen to 19% of employees.” In terms of financial stability, however, this is not necessarily a problem, as membership is concentrated among older, male, full-time employees in key industries, whose financial contributions to superannuation funds is massive, and whose nominal representatives ensure that much union activity is dedicated to the passionless administration of these symbols of abstract, surplus value. At the same time, government pensions ensure hundreds of thousands of elderly workers without access to ‘super’ enjoy occasional kerosene baths and forgotten lives of quiet desperation and poverty before overly-late, unlamented deaths.
On a happier note, law-talking guys are girls are generally doing well. Thus, most if not all major unions are dominated by the ALP, and help to provide the party of labour/working families with an electoral base, funding, and an endless supply of bottoms to occupy seats in parliaments. Speaking of which, among the nineteen articles re-published in Labor Review No.47 is Has working class consciousness collapsed? The ’crisis of the working class subject’, Phil Hearse (International Viewpoint Online):
Class consciousness: ”The awareness of individuals in a particular social class that they share common interests and a common social situation. Class consciousness is associated with the development of a ‘class-for-itself’ where individuals within the class unite to pursue their shared interests.” ~ Online Dictionary of Social Sciences
The crisis of working class representation is a familiar theme in the left internationally, the idea that because of the shift to the right of mass social democratic and Stalinist parties, or because of their collapse, the working class lacks a political force that can defend its interests in the national political domain.
In many countries efforts have been made to create, or begin to create, broad left parties that can begin to resolve this crisis. However the idea of the ‘crisis of the working class subject’ takes the analysis one step further, saying in effect that class consciousness has declined to such a degree that the overwhelming majority of working class people have no consciousness of themselves as part of a class that has its own interests other than those of the ruling class; using Lukacs’ distinction the working class is a “class in itself” but no longer a “class for itself”. If this is correct of course then it has big implications for socialist analysis and strategy…
Heap ’em big implications, one aspect of which is not addressed in Hearse’s article but which is of relevance to his discussion, and that is (crudely) the emergence of other forms of collective identity/self-identification which are not class-based but rooted in other conceptions of self and society: in particular ethnicity, nationality, gender and sexuality; debates which are typically associated with the emergence of ‘new’ social movements in the 1960s and ’70s, the decline of industrial capitalism in the West, and so on.
Of which, more later, but in the meantime, the International Wing Chun Academy International Window Cleaning Association International Writing Centers Association International Women’s Coffee Alliance Independent Working Class Association has some thoughts: Multiculturalism & identity politics – the reactionary consequences and how they can be challenged. Note that in Australia (as presumably, elsewhere) state doctrine on multiculturalism has been the subject of leftist critique since its inception, and generally speaking on the basis of its corrosive effects upon class consciousness and solidarity.
Whatever.
See also : SDA : Australia’s Worst Union? (November 30, 2009) | Union Mergers in Australia: Top-Down Strategic Restructuring, Working Paper No.80, National Key Centre in Industrial Relations, Melbourne, April 2002 | The Changing Roles of Public Sector Unionism, Eve Anderson, Gerard Griffin and Julian Treicher, Working Paper No.83, National Key Centre in Industrial Relations, Melbourne, December 2002 | The Fall and Rise of Organising in a Blue Collar Union, Gerard Griffin and Rosetta Moors, Working Paper No.84, National Key Centre in Industrial Relations, Melbourne, December 2002.
“A dose of libertarianism would enhance our democracy” — and if my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle. (October 20, 2009) | Social *cough* democracy… (September 30, 2009) | Melbourne : ALP ~versus~ Greens (August 24, 2009) | Bump Me Into Parliament (July 2, 2009) | The ALP facing extinction? (January 31, 2009) | Michael Costa is an odd fellow (May 10, 2008) | Combet bumped into Parliament (May 5, 2007).
- The VLC sponsors Keep Left on 3CR, Fridays, 10–11am. Write: PO Box 12262, A’Beckett Street PO, Melbourne, Victoria, 8006. Email: chrisgaffney[at]optusnet[dot]com[dot]au.
