5

Work Place Unionism Malcolm Rimmer

Introduction

Little is known about Australian shop floor union organisation. This arises partly because of the failure of the formal institutions that dominate industrial relations to give positive guidance on the role of shop stewards and shop committees. For example, although union rule books sometimes make provision for work place rep­resentatives, beyond offering us a wide variety of names by which they can be known they tell us little about their actual work. Union administrative duties are usually specified including such matters as recruiting new members, collecting subscriptions, and keeping membership records, but even the most detailed rule books make scant reference to the steward's role in bargaining. Although a common requirement exists that stewards report grievances, breaches of award and stoppages of work to the union secretary, such rules are very general, and cannot, in practice, be observed literally.

The work of shop committees is equally difficult to establish from formal union rules and policy decisions. A few unions allow for shop committees in their rules without providing any extra functions beyond those set out for individual shop stewards. Since many shop committees are multi-union bodies they cannot be guided in this way. Nominally such committees are governed instead by the ACTU and its state branches. For this purpose the ACTU issued Shop Committee Charters in 1961 and 1980, con­taining model constitutions for shop committees. The ACTU has also issued policy directives on their functions, but since both these and the charters are very general, the actual work of these committees has remained undefined.

If the union movement has not formally established the role of shop stewards and shop committees, the principal institutions for job regulation have done little better. The arbitration Acts are virtually bereft of any direct reference to work place represen­tatives although some sections of these statutes dealing with the general rights of union members are especially relevant to work­shop delegates. The awards of industrial tribunals sometimes give

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B. Ford et al. (eds.), Australian Unions© Bill Ford & David Plowman 1989

special rights to shop stewards but do little to specify what matters they may concern themselves with. Finally, the decisions of arbitrators have not gone far towards creating a body of case law that establishes 'positive' functions for workshop representatives (Foenander 1965). The voluminous published output of the formal Australian institutions gives slight indication that shop stewards exist, or that, if they do, they perform a significant role.

The most publicised aspect of this failure to incorporate work­shop institutions into the formal industrial relations system has been the absence of work place 'grievance' or 'disputes' pro­cedures. For example, writing in 1952, an American observer commented that, in Australia:

The success of the unions in achieving their early goals through the arbitration courts and the Labor party [has] caused union leaders to concentrate their abilities and interests on court procedures and on political ties and to neglect the development of shop level methods for handling grievances, disputes and problems arising there (Kuhn 1952, p. 24).

This argument has been qualified by critics who point to the existence of informal channels for dispute resolution (Hutson 1967, pp. 277-8), while its contemporary relevance can be called into question following the recent growth of formal procedures (Gordon 1963, pp. 160-5; Plowman 1982). But there are three other aspects of Australian industrial relations that also seem to suggest that the work place does occupy a significant position in job regulation.

First, the post-war growth of over-award pay can be taken to suggest that shop stewards and shop committees have a nego­tiating role. There are problems with this argument. The major studies of over-award pay do not tell us whether it evolved in response to union pressure or as a voluntary device employed by managers to retain labour. Nor do these studies distinguish between the involvement of full-time union officials and of shop stewards in this kind of bargaining. Cases have been cited in the metal trades where shop committees have formulated claims and negotiated with management, leaving only formal signature of the agreement to the full-time officers. Other instances have been described where union officers have played a greater role because shop stewards were inexperienced, multi-plant agreements were preferred by management, or because plant bargaining was co­ordinated as a part of union strategy. No large scale evidence exists, however, on the character of over-award bargaining. In general, it is likely that shop steward bargaining is considerably more circumscribed than over-award pay.

Organisation and Practice 123

Second, shop organisation can be associated with the job con­trol practices that are widespread in Australian industry. As early as the 1950s it was observed that restrictions upon manning, output, demarcation, new methods, new machines and managerial innovation in general, originated at the work place (Cruise 1957). More recently it has been stated that shop stewards negotiated on retrenchments, redundancy and employment policy, notably during the depressed economic conditions of 1975-6 and in 1982-3 (Derber 1977). Here again, however, evidence is very scarce, and it is difficult to determine the extent to which man­agerial prerogative remains intact as a means of regulating work practices, or indeed the extent to which countervailing power is exercised by work groups rather than official work place union representatives. The actual involvement of shop stewards and shop committees in the control of work practices is not known.

Third, certain features of the Australian strike pattern indicate the importance of the work place. Most Australian strikes are short stoppages, involve relatively few strikers, arise over local issues, and are settled outside arbitration (Frenkel 1980). Some evidence has also been interpreted to suggest that a growing number of strikes in the late 1960s and early 1970s could be associated with wage bargaining. All these features may be as­sociated with work place bargaining, and with shop stewards. However, since Australian strike statistics do not distinguish between 'official' and 'unofficial' stoppages, the precise responsi­bility of shop stewards for local strike action remains obscure. Survey evidence of Western Australian shop stewards shows a substantial, but uneven, willingness among shop stewards to call unauthorised stoppages (Dufty 1980).

The growth of over-award pay, the application of job control, and several features of the Australian strike pattern, are all consistent with the existence of a significant volume of work place bargaining between shop stewards and managers. Con­sequently the absence of formal work place disputes procedures may not indicate a vacuum at the shop floor, so much as a defect in the character of plant bargaining which can be plausibly blamed for the high incidence of work place stoppages. The possibility of a connection between work place organisation and the well do­cumented phenomena of over-awards, job control and work place strikes, however, does not in itself amount to direct evidence that an important shop steward system exists in Australia. Several recent authors have asserted the opposite (Taylor 1979; Clegg 1976). Direct evidence is necessary if a satisfactory picture is to be drawn of the extent of workshop organisation, and of the role it performs. The next three sections offer some evidence on the development of shop steward and shop committee organisation since the First World War that may partially fill this need.

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The Development of Workshop Organisation 1917-45

Since the turn of the century Australian unions have depended on the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and on compulsory arbitration to improve their members' conditions and so have seen little need for shop stewards. However, workshop delegates were known to exist in the metal trades early in the century. For example, the 1903 Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Working and Administration of the Government Docks and Workshops at Cockatoo Island reported that ' ... owing to the zeal of the Union delegates, the work at the dock is interfered with to an extent which is subversive of discipline, and not favourable to economy of working'. Following this, we know almost nothing about the subsequent history of shop stewards and shop committees before 1917.

Towards the end of the First World War shop stewards and shop committees became prominent in a few industries. A number of meatworks - particularly in Queensland - and a smaller number of shipyards were known to have such committees. In addition shop stewards flourished among skilled engineers in Melbourne and Sydney.

The drive to build job organisation had been fed by a world­wide surge of enthusiasm for either revolutionary workers' councils of the sort popularised in Russia in 1917, or for works councils or 'Whitley committees' to enable workers to participate in man­agement. Although some Australians saw shop committees as a solution to such diverse evils as capitalist exploitation, piecework, low productivity and work place strikes, several experiments were stillborn, while some radical plans were abandoned after the collapse of the One Big Union movement.

More important, after 1919 those shop stewards and committees that did exist also lost ground. The shipyard committees dissolved following the termination of the Commonwealth government's emergency shipbuilding program in early 1921. The Queensland meatworks committees appear to have been broken when union preference was removed from the award after the 1919 Townsville meatworkers' strike. The Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU) shop stewards were heavily victimised in the post-war depression, and found less work when over-award bargaining broke down in the 'arbitration conscious' environment of the early 1920s. By 1922 little remained of the first attempts to build workshop organisation.

Between 1926 and 1929 a gradual recovery took place but this time in a number of government workshops rather than private industry. In 1926 the then left-wing dominated NSW Labor Council issued a draft constitution for shop committees, intending to use them as a form of shop floor 'industrial unionism'. In that

Organisation and Practice 125

year shop committees were formed at three large NSW govern­ment railway workshops, and another committee was established at the Garden Island naval dockyard in Sydney. The following year the railway committees united to form a Council of Railway Shop Committees, and vigilance committees were introduced to the Victorian railway workshops to resist the introduction of piecework. Committees were also known to exist at the railway workshops at Islington (South Australia) and Ipswich (Queensland) around this time. In 1929 committees were formed for construction workers on the north and south ends of the incomplete Sydney Harbour Bridge.

All these committees were formed in the relatively safe enclaves of government workshops where employer resistance was likely to be less intense and where public service procedures gave some protection to known leaders. They also enjoyed a strong labour market position in the boom years of 1926-7. In spite of this, these committees appear to have languished through lack of business or because they failed to win shop floor support. The Victorian committees were never properly established. By 1928 the NSW Council of Railway Shop Committees had stopped meeting and the committee at the massive Eveleigh workshops had ceased to function.

Between 1929 and 1932 the vitality of the NSW railway com­mittees was temporarily restored during the life of the Lang Labor government. Lang's election victory coincided with the onset of a calamitous depression. The Central Council of Railway Shop Committees (CCRSC) was promptly re-formed and a large network of satellite committees evolved in the depots and work­shops spread throughout NSW. Initially intended to extract such promised benefits as the 44 hour week and compulsory unionism, by 1930 these committees were on the defensive trying to protect railwaymen against wage cuts, redundancies, work sharing, and other economy measures adopted by an insolvent railway ad­ministration. Although the CCRSC gained full recognition and had ready access to the Railway Commissioners and the Minister for Railways throughout 1930 and 1931, there were signs that the CCRSC was becoming defunct by the time Lang was dismissed in May 1932. The Lang government was unable to sustain a big deficit upon railway accounts and the CCRSC was largely un­successful in resisting cost cuts made at the expense of the railway­men. CCRSC meetings became infrequent, attendance dropped and mass meetings were no longer called at the workshops. Once again workshop organisation retreated in the face of hostile economic conditions, although not, in this instance, because of overt management opposition.

The next phase - from 1932 to 1941 - was a period of

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remarkable expansion and growing communist influence. In 1928 the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) had formed a front organisation called the Militant Minority Movement (MMM) to work inside the union movement. This body was brought to life in 1931 by the new CPA leadership that had risen to activate the Comintern attack upon 'social fascist' labour leaders. A 'united front from below' was sought to bypass social democratic insti­tutions and unions and to conduct the class struggle at the point of production. Shop committees assumed a prominent role in this policy. The MMM set about permeating existing bodies such as the CCRSC and forming new committees.

The major communist successes were in the railways. The CCRSC enjoyed an influx of new blood in 1933 and set about constructing a programme to obtain reduced working hours, longer annual and long service leave, sick leave, weekly pay, and other improvements in working conditions. Communists were also active in the shop committees formed in power stations at White Bay and Ultimo in 1931. Early in 1935 MMM members employed in the Victorian railways formed a body called the Combined Railway Organising Committee (CROC) to spread shop committee organisation, and by the end of 1937 most of the large Victorian railway workshops were affiliated with this body. In spite of the important stimulus from the MMM, these bodies acquired or retained a mixed political character. This suited communist policy after the rise of European fascism induced Co min tern to push such dependent organisations as the CPA back towards co-operation with social democratic or labourist organisations.

The railway shop committees were the most important insti­tutions of their kind in the states of NSW, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia, and the combine committees (i.e. area committees) in the two more populous states were especially powerful. They negotiated with railway management, published their own newspapers, lobbied state politicians upon railway matters and encouraged the spread of shop committees to other industries. The division of functions between the combine com­mittees and the affiliated committees deserves attention. In general, the former performed a 'pressure group' function, using publicity, marches, political influence and other protest tactics. They undertook little direct negotiation. This was the chief activity, however, of the local shop committees which bargained mainly over physical working conditions.

After the railways, the next most important shop committees formed at this time were associated with metalworkers. Committees were established at the three major shipyards of Garden Island (1926), Cockatoo Island (1932) and Williamstown (1937). Com-

Organisation and Practice 127

mittees in government shipyards were concerned mainly with conditions of employment such as 'furlough' and job security or tenure. Their private counterparts found it easier to negotiate on pay, and in 1938 the Sydney private dockyards became the scene of a dispute about over-award pay that led to the de-registration of the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU).

Also important were the foundry shop committees formed under the aegis of the Foundry Workers Joint Management Committee - a body established in June 1935 by the joint execu­tives of the Moulders and Ironworkers unions. By August enough committees had been formed to warrant a mass meeting which then drew up a programme of action concerning non-unionists, the proportion of junior to adult workers, safety and physical working conditions, employer speed-up tactics and delegate victimisation. The organisations formed at this time successfully withstood a six week lockout in March and April 1937 affecting 48 foundries in the Sydney district. The lockout turned into a union offensive and was settled by the concession of wage in­creases and overtime limits by the employers. The foundry committees were apparently confined to NSW at this time, though they later spread to other states. They were the most important shop committees in private industry and differed from their public sector counterparts in their heavy involvement in disputes over wages and victimisation. Foundry shop committees also tended to become involved in lengthy strikes which were almost unknown among the protest conscious railwaymen.

Most other shop or job committees formed in the 1930s were short lived. The struggle between the CPA and the Australian Workers Union (A WU) led the former to demand 'station com­mittees' among shearers in 1931, but this attracted no response. The 'bush workers committees' formed among NSW cotton pickers (1934) and among Queensland sugar workers (1935) were more successful as strike committees but left no permanent or­ganisation. Similar temporary bodies were formed by striking unemployed 'relief' workers in Victoria in 1935. Perhaps the only other durable products of the communist enthusiasm for shop committees in the 1930s were those formed by Broken Hill miners in 1935.

In August 1935 the CPA abolished the MMM - the front organisation that had done most to stimulate job organisation -and shifted its attention to official union organisation where communists were becoming more influential. Although the CPA continued to support shop committees, it paid little attention to securing further growth.

In the late 1930s and the first two years of the Second World War, the shop committee movement consolidated in the railways,

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power stations, shipyards, foundries, a few engineering works, and the Broken Hill mines. There is little evidence of very much growth at this time. However, in 1941, changes in the global military situation created a new environment in Australian industry that enabled further expansion to take place. The Japanese assault on Pearl Harbour in December 1941 gave priority to the Common­wealth government's munitions production programme. Urgent production needs, manpower shortages and controls on official union bargaining ensued, permitting shop stewards to develop a greater bargaining role. Also workshop organisation was popu­larised when the Commonwealth government introduced 'joint production committees' in its munitions works in 1943. These committees differed from the older shop committees in that they contained management representatives, and these in turn differed from a new breed of shop stewards committees, formed at this time under the influence of the AEU, Boilermakers and Sheet Metal Workers unions, which had begun to issue constitutions and rules for committees involving their own stewards. The en­thusiasm for job organisation was such that in rare instances examples of all three kinds of committee could be found in the same work place.

The considerable impact of the CPA was not to prove incom­patible with these new influences. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in July 1941 the CPA was quite prepared to use workshop committees to foster wartime production growth. Indeed, by the end of the war the CPA commitment to sup­pressing strikes and boosting production had opened a split between some communist union officials and several shop com­mittees (Gollan 1972).

When the war ended in 1945 workshop organisation had reached a peak. Shop stewards and shop committees flourished in both the older strongholds of railway workshops, shipyards and foun­dries, and in newer centres including munition works, aircraft plants, vehicle assembly factories, and many other branches of the inflated metal trades. Job organisation was much less com­prehensive in other industries but power workers committees were spreading in Victoria and NSW and committees existed in chemicals, mining, meat, and some Queensland sugar mills. Job delegates had gained a foothold among waterside workers and steelworkers.

Although it is impossible to estimate the number of shop stewards and shop committees, or the number of workers they represented, impressions would suggest that the scale of organisa­tion was still small. However workshop representatives exercised a disproportionate influence since they were strategically placed in the vital transport, power, and metal-manufacturing sectors in

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the major cities of south-eastern Australia. Workshop organisation was a major factor in the large strikes that were to ensue between 1945 and 1950. Strikes by power workers and steelworkers (1945), Victorian railwaymen (1946 and 1950), Queensland railwaymen (1948), and Victorian metal workers (1947) dominated the post­war industrial scene. Although not led by shop committees these disputes entailed their active support.

Further Developments 1945-80

From 1932 to 1945 the record of Australian workshop organisation was one of almost continous growth. After 1945 the direction of change is rather more difficult to determine. First, expansion into private industry throughout this period makes it more difficult to determine the extend of job organisation since private sector delegates and committees have left fewer records of their activities than their public sector counterparts. Second, conflicting forces were at work - some encouraging job organisation, and others obstructing it. The resultant trend is not self-evident.

Between 1945 and 1974 economic conditions were suitable for the extension of workshop organisation. Low unemployment has been connected with the group of shop floor power in Britain (McCarthy 1967) and may be given a similar explanatory role in Australia. In general it could be maintained that the long post­war boom was compatible with growing shop floor power. However the general shortage of labour since the war is not indicative of employment trends in every industry. Variations in the employ­ment records of different industries have had a good deal to do with the aggregate strength of workshop organisation.

Two industry sub-groups that experienced a serious decline -railway and marine engineering - were established shop com­mittee strongholds. The railway shop committees were to suffer especially from falling railway business, tight financial constraints and successful competition from private industry. These combined to induce workshop closures and falling employment. The number of workshops affiliated with the combine committees fell in the 1950s and 1960s while the survivors became less active. In the 1960s and 1970s both public and private dockyards were closed, including Mort's Dock and Engineering Company, the Newcastle State Dockyard and the BHP Whyalla shipyards. Employment fell at the remaining yards such as Cockatoo Island and Garden Island in Sydney and Williamstown in Melbourne. Again the number of shop committees fell while the survivors were weakened.

While trends in these two industries contributed to the debit side of the ledger, much of the compensating employment growth after the war did nothing to restore the balance. In particular,

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union workshop organisation did not develop in the buoyant area of white collar employment in industries such as finance and property, commerce, community and business services and public administration.

Other growth industries did develop stronger job organisation. Between 1950 and 1970 employment in manufacturing grew by 43 per cent with the metal trades expanding by over 60 per cent. This latter sector provided a particularly healthy environment for job organisation. Shop committees were formed in the larger plants in vehicle assembly, electrical engineering, white-goods and general engineering. Shop steward organisation was also widespread in the smaller workshops that continued to typify the metal trades. In the 1950s area committees also evolved to cover multi-plant companies such as Wormald's and ACI, or industry sub-groups such as vehicle assembly in Adelaide, and railway rolling stock construction in Sydney. Also in manufacturing, employees in continuous process plants in chemicals and oil re­fining became more willing to use their strategic bargaining position, and strong workshop organisation was founded on this basis.

Developments in transport appear very uneven. In bus, tram and aircraft maintenance the influence of metal-working unions was such that shop committees developed. A Combined Council of Aircraft Shop Stewards was formed in Sydney in 1952, and a Central Council of Transport Shop Committees was created a little earlier to link bus and tram depots. While these committees have lapsed, a strong delegate system still exists in these work­shops. In other parts of transport, excluding the waterfront, delegate systems are not so influential.

In gas, electricity and water power the most prominent job organisation has been among electricity supply workers. The small inner city power stations were gradually replaced by large modern plant sited on the nearby coalfields surrounding Newcastle, Lithgow and Wollongong in NSW and the Latrobe Valley in Victoria. In both states job delegate organisations evolved. In NSW the power workers combine committee formed in 1945, took the name of the Electricity Commission Combined Union Delegates Organisation (ECCUDO) in 1956. This organisation included both old and new power stations. In 1973 it conducted 'occupations' of several power stations in support of a claim for a 35-hour week, causing widespread blackouts. This campaign was con­ducted in defiance of Labor Council authority. The claim was shelved following an Industrial Commission hearing and amend­ments to the NSW Industrial Arbitration Act to prevent employers reducing hours of work. ECCUDO has since lost momentum, although delegate organisation remains strong in the power stations.

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In Victoria, SECV maintenance workers have also built a strong shop steward system which attracted considerable attention in 1977 when a strike took place on claims formulated by the stewards and processed outside the routine channels involving the Victorian Trades Hall Council (Benson and Goff 1979).

It is conceivable that the geographic isolation of power station workers has contributed to their conflict with Labor Council officials and their insistence on independent organisation. If this is the case, then a similar explanation may be advanced for the existence of militant delegate organisations in remote projects such as Western Australian iron mining, port construction in Queensland, or the construction of the South Australia-NSW gas pipeline. In such employment situations workers have often proved reluctant to accept the authority of union officials from distant cities, who may have little close knowledge of local con­ditions, and who often appear too concerned with the formal proprieties of dispute settlement (Casey 1973). Delegates become the focus for union activity and then exercise considerable strategic power over managers who are often under extreme pressure to sustain production quotas or meet deadlines.

Such strategic power is often possessed by building workers engaged on large construction projects, and there is some evidence that a rather anarchic form of job organisation evolved in the late 1960s - especially among builders labourers - to capitalise on this power (Socialist Party of Australia 1976).

Notwithstanding the examples cited above, workshop organ­isation in the transport, electricity and water, mining, and building and construction industries is limited in extent and sporadic in activity - in contrast to the comprehensive and continuous organisation that existed in the railways.

The new centres of job organisation that have taken shape since 1945 have a number of important characteristics. First, workshop organisation has become much stronger in private industry. Impressionistically it would seem that developments in road and air transport and electricity supply have only partially compensated for the decline of the railways, while job organisation has flourished in the private metal trades and to a lesser extent in building, mining and other parts of manufacturing industry. This shift to the private sector may be connected with other changes.

One such change concerns shop committee constitutions. There has been a movement away from 'section based' committees towards 'union based' committees. The constitutions adopted by the railway shop committees in the 1930s allowed for the rep­resentation of each shop or section without reference to union membership. This had the effect of strengthening workshop loyalty at the expense of allegiance to individual unions. As formal union

132 Australian Unions

power r~covered during the Second World War the metal unions began to issue constitutions for committees intended to safeguard union influence. Each union was allowed a quota of places on the committee and representation was confined to properly appointed shop stewards. Such constitutional forms encouraged union sec­tionalism rather than inter-union solidarity.

Since 1945 unions have had a decisive influence on shop com­mittee constitutions and 'shop stewards committees' are now the most common kind. It appears that shop committee influence has suffered because of this. Delegates often reserve the right to keep 'union affairs' such as wage negotiations, job demarcation and strikes, out of the hands of the shop committee. Examples of this can be found in shipyards, construction and iron foundries. It does not follow that more power is now exercised by union officials. Rather this trend has strengthened the position of in­dividual delegates and work groups.

A second change concerns the matters that shop stewards and shop committees have sought to regulate. The growing importance of private sector workshop organisation is linked with a greater involvement in wage determination. Whereas the old railway shop committees were mainly concerned with employment con­ditions such as leave, job security or physical working conditions, their private counterparts have shown a strong interest in pay.

It has been argued elsewhere that the scope for work place bargaining is determined largely by the character of agreements or awards made outside the plant (Boraston et al. 1975). In general the arbitration system leaves little room for shop floor bargaining over pay. Awards are themselves determined away from the plant and are sufficiently detailed to leave little room for supplementation at the work place. However, it would be incorrect to conclude that this general picture can be applied in all instances. There are clearly variations in the importance of centralised wage determination procedures and local bargaining.

Award rates of pay are usually minimum rates. Employers are therefore free to pay more if they choose. This freedom is exploited more widely in the private sector than in public employment where the federal and state Public Service Boards had a restraining influence on negotiations conducted by govern­ment departments and instrumentalities. The railways suffered because local management could not negotiate over-award pay­ments in the 1950s and 1960s while the going rate for metal workers was being inflated by over-awards in private industry. Earnings were inflated by high overtime, and subsequently supplemented by an industry allowance in NSW and by service grants and the Service Incremental Payments Scheme (SIPS) in Victoria. However these payments were centrally negotiated,

Organisation and Practice 133

illustrating the failure of railway shop committees to influence pay.

There are considerable variations in the scope for plant bar­gaining in private industry. Where awards cover a small number of employers with standard technologies and employees who lack or do not exert control over strategic processes, uniform award rates are likely to go unchallenged. However where an award covers a large number of work places and there are significant variations in strategic bargaining power of the workers, company profitability, work place size or technological processes, workers are likely to develop conflicting expectations of the value of their work that cannot be reconciled with rigid observance of award rates.

While there is room for debate on different explanations of variations in over-award bargaining it is clear that inter-industry and inter-plant differences do exist. One recent survey has found a connection between variations in bargaining scope and dif­ferences in steward organisation, contrasting the Amalgamated Metal Workers and Shipwrights Union and the Building Workers Industrial Union with the Australian Bank Employees Union and the Australian Social Welfare Union. The former engage in plant or site bargaining and have active stop stewards. The latter have no local wage negotiations and no delegates at the work place (Davis 1980).

It is not known to what extent work place wage bargaining has changed over time. It is generally considered that very little over-award negotiation went on during the Second World War. However, by the 1949-50 Basic Wage Case, plant negotiations had assumed some prominence in the metal trades and were cited by the Metal Trades Employers Association (MTEA) to delay proceedings. It is likely that the tendency towards more over­award bargaining was reinforced by the combination of arbitral restraint on award wages and full employment between 1952 and 1959. Commissioner Galvin's decision in 1952 to reject an application for an increase in metal trades margins introduced a period when counter-inflationary policy dominated wage deter­mination. During this period the skilled metal-trades unions came to rely heavily on over-awards to evade wage restraint, and upon factory stoppages and evidence of 'paid rates' that were higher than the award to bolster their advocacy in arbitration.

Between 1952 and 1965 arbitration cases in the metal trades were conducted in an atmosphere conditioned by the 'established industrial fact' of shop floor pressure (Hutson 1966). In the metal trades especially, shop stewards and shop committees appear to have become closely integrated into a strategy known to the MTEA as 'plant by plant duress'. The key metalworkers' unions

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came to rely on a procedure in which wage increases were won in 'strong plants', and concessions were then generalised through a mixture of bargaining and arbitration. The decline of centralised arbitration following the Metal Trades Work Value Case in 1967 and until the adoption of wage indexation in 1975 further strengthened shop steward bargaining over pay.

From 1975 to 1981 work place wage bargaining was virtually prohibited by the wage indexation principles. For most of this period unions adhered to these principles. The metal unions themselves did little to disturb this system after their established strategy failed in an abortive series of rolling strikes conducted in 1975. Informally, indexation was widely applied to over-award payments in 1977-8, but excepting this, shop floor bargaining appeared to be curbed. This was especially true of the period from 1975 to 1978 when high unemployment, and structural change introduced by the 1973 tariff cut, combined to undermine the labour market position of shop floor unionists in the metal trades.

During the recession in the mid 1970s, shop committee leaders who had become excluded from wage negotiations occasionally turned their attention to such matters as factory health risks, equal employment opportunities, and the control of new tech­nology. There is not much evidence that these new problems attracted very much employee interest at the time. Where job organisation existed it appeared mainly concerned with pay and general employment security.

Throughout much of the post-war period centralised wage fixation policies have co-existed uneasily with a tendency towards decentralised bargaining in key sectors of industry. This conflict is reflected in a division within the union movement between those union leaders who depend on arbitral benevolence or the force of their own advocacy, and others who also employ shop floor sanctions. This division has a political aspect that has exercised a strong influence over post-war developments in workshop organisation.

Between 1945 and the early 1950s shop committees were caught up in the factional struggles between communists and industrial groups (Rawson 1971). Widely regarded as communist organisa­tions, shop committees attracted the animosity of right-wing union officials. In 1946 the conservative leadership of the NSW Labor Council established two official inter-union committees -the Combined Railway Unions Committee and the Broad Com­mittee - to undermine the CCRSC and the Power Station Delegates Organisation. By 1948 relations between the Labor Council and the combine committees were so embittered that the CCRSC was refused permission to send observers to meetings of the combined

Organisation and Practice 135

unions. The following year, when the CCRSC organised a protest rally to publicise its claims for three weeks annual leave it attracted a storm of criticism from several unions and from the ALP who considered that it was exceeding its proper functions. By the time communist unpopularity peaked during the 1949 coal strike, there can be little doubt that the withdrawal of official support by unions such as the NSW branch of the Australian Railways Union, Australasian Society of Engineers, Electrical Trades Union, and Vehicle Builders Union had weakened many shop committees. Factionalism also caused splits at the shop floor, best illustrated by the rank and file decision at Eveleigh to withdraw from the CCRSC. Industrial groups were active in many work places where shop committees existed, and competed for control.

By the time the split in the labor movement was formalised through the establishment of the Democratic Labor Party in 1955 it would appear that controversy had evaporated at the shop floor level. However many union officials retained reservations about shop committees. These political fears were reinforced by new developments facing the ACTU and individual unions in the 1950s.

The policy of the ACTU towards shop committees had been one of lofty disdain. In 1949 Broadby - the ACTU secretary -circulated affiliated unions informing them that it would only communicate with the proper officials of affiliated bodies. How­ever this arms length policy became difficult to maintain. Two events in 1955 illustrated separate problems for the ACTU. First, in February 1955 ironworkers at Mort's Dock in Sydney went on strike with the support of their shop committee and in defiance of subsequent requests from union officers that they return to work. Boilermakers at the dock took up collections to support the striking ironworkers. Both the Federated Ironworkers Association and the Boilermakers Society were then fined by the Common­wealth Arbitration Court. Penal sanctions had made little impact before this case. However, at the ACTU Congress the following September the ACTU assumed responsibility for a test case to appeal against the Court's exercise of judicial powers. While the ACTU was now at the forefront of what was to be a 14-year struggle against penal sanctions it is clear that the public defence of the right to strike concealed some ambivalence about the propriety of particular stoppages. The ACTU was especially con­cerned that workshop leaders should not act in a way that could cause their union to be penalised. The 1955 ACTU Congress resolved:

Because of the legal responsibilities that flow from legal registration of unions ... we recognise that developments must proceed along the lines

136 Australian Unions

of greater Federal control of Trade Unions ... There must be greater recognition by the trade unionist that he must accept direction and abide by properly constituted decisions by his union or executive (Hagan 1981, p. 260).

A second dispute in 1955 involved shop committees at Garden Island and Williamstown Naval Dockyards. These campaigned for wage ftow-ons from recent increases to the Metal Trades Award. The dispute lasted eight weeks and was allegedly com­plicated by the 'quarterdeck psychology' of Navy management. Albert Monk (the ACTU President) intervened to negotiate a settlement and the ACTU retained negotiating responsibilities for the dockyards. This bargaining role was to expand in the next few years. The 1957 ACTU Congress resolved to give the executive responsibility for handling composite claims worked out with the relevant unions. By 1961 the ACTU was conducting negotiations in the pulp and paper industry, the oil industry, several aluminium companies, ICIANZ, TAA, the Common­wealth Handling Equipment Pool, the Department of Works, Department of Supply and the Department of the Navy. Shop committees existed in a number of these industries and govern­ment departments, and they could no longer be dismissed as a remote problem to be handled by individual unions. They directly complicated ACTU negotiations.

Because of its involvement in the fight against penal sanctions and its budding role in negotiations the ACTU was involved in direct dealings with shop committees. No longer able to sidestep the problems of control that arose from the activities of multi­union shop committees, the ACTU responded by asserting its own authority. In 1961 Congress approved a Charter for Shop Committees which explicitly placed the ACTU and its state branches in charge of these committees, and which proceeded to deny them a role in regulating wages and conditions of employment that were dealt with in awards or agreements.

It is possible that the restraints implicit in this Charter were not immediately apparent. Unions that supported shop committee militancy accepted the Charter welcoming the recognition that it accorded these bodies. However the ACTU's hostility became more clear in 1962 when the executive condemned stoppages organised by shop committees, and in 1963 when a specific pro­hibition was placed upon area committees. No sudden volte face has followed in ACTU policy upon shop committees. However the climate that caused tension in ACTU/Shop Committee rela­tions has changed. The collapse of centralised arbitration in the late 1960s, the moratorium on penal sanctions in 1969, and the swing to the left within the ACTU following R.J. Hawke's election

Organisation and Practice 137

in 1969 all contributed towards a softer approach by the ACTU. By 1980 the situation had relaxed to the point where the ACTU could accept a Charter for Shop Committees which permitted wage bargaining in line with actual practice in parts of the metal trades.

These changes have coincided with other developments to give a stronger role to work place union representatives. It seems likely that employer policies and in particular the policy of the Metal Trades Industry Association, have become more conciliatory since the mid-1960s. Ethnic disunity at the work place may be subsiding to the point where it no longer obstructs work place solidarity. The upsurge of interest in workers' participation may have had a spin-off into support for workshop committees. Indeed numerous factors may have contributed directly or indirectly to the extension of workshop union representation and shop floor bargaining.

Survey findings lend some support to the view that the positive factors supporting job organisation have outweighed negative ones. A survey conducted in 1979-80 purported to find 71,462 job representatives throughout Australia and 14,779 positions on committees (TUTA 1979-80). If these figures are accurate, then there is one job delegate to every 40 unionists, a ratio which indicates very close organisation indeed at the work place.

Double counting and loose estimates may have inflated this figure to give an unrealistic picture of the strength of workshop organisation. Perhaps a more telling statistic is the number of full time union officers. The same survey reported 2,372 full time officials throughout Australia, or one to every 1,203 members. This is a very low figure compared with unions in Britain where workshop organisation is known to be strong. This ratio is con­sistent with close official control of union affairs at the job level. In general it would appear that unions have sufficient resources and staff to provide a full official service for their members at the job level. However there is some evidence that many poorly organised or inactive unionists do not receive this service and that those with an active shop steward or shop committee command a disproportionate amount of official attention (Callus et al. 1979). Close shop steward and official organisation may be complemen­tary rather than competitive.

Planning a New Role for the Shop floor: 1981-87

The development of work place unionism up to 1980 had been piecemeal, opportunistic, and- for the most part- circumscribed by official disapproval. Except for a brief interlude during the Second World War, it had never been encouraged to harmonise

138 Australian Unions

with central policy objectives of the union movement as a whole, of government, or of tribunals. Unionists at the work place were to be controlled, not made partners in policy. Since 1981 this approach has been reversed in a number of areas.

First, there has been a strong drive to set up grievance or disputes procedures to resolve conflict within the work place - a sensible response to the fact that most strikes arise and are confined to this level. Setting the pattern for this were a number of major agreements negotiated towards the end of 1981 following the breakdown of wage indexation. The packages settled for the huge Metal Industry Award and National Building Trades Con­struction Award provided that standard hours would be cut from 40 to 38 and pay increased in return for a 'no further claims' promise backed up by a uniform disputes procedure. Since that time there has been considerable pressure to include a disputes procedure in all awards. In 1982 the Department of Employment and Industrial Relations estimated that only 293 (26 per cent) federal awards and agreements contained such procedures. The Hancock Committee recommended in 1985 that legislation provide for all such awards to contain procedures. A further impetus was the 'two tier' wage fixing system introduced in 1987 under which parties could offer a grievance procedure as one of the 'offsets' required to justify a 4 per cent wage increase. The cumulative effect of these pressures has been sufficient to introduce disputes procedures into almost all major federal awards. Although such procedures vary widely in form, most shop stewards and delegates now have a formal right to raise grievances within the work place.

Occupational health and safety is another important area where work place representatives have found their rights extended. Prior to the 1970s control over health and safety hazards had taken the form of legislative standards enforced mainly by inspectors. Such an approach had become subject to extensive criticism, partly on the grounds that inspection by such officials was impractical and ineffective. In the early 1970s the British Robens Inquiry rec­ommended an alternative approach in which employees were to elect safety representatives and employer/employee health and safety committees were established. The 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act that followed became a model for state legislation in Australia, notably in South Australia, Tasmania (1977), Victoria (1981), and New South Wales (1983). Since 1983 the federal government too has taken steps to encourage work place rep­resentatives to become involved in such issues, although federal regulation of the area is less comprehensive than in some states. Supplementing these political initiatives have been extensive negotiations in both the private and public sectors. Action in

Organisation and Practice 139

these areas has established an extensive machinery of employee representatives and committees to handle health and safety, and comprehensive codes of standards to be implemented (Deery and Plowman 1985). However, this type of machinery is often par­ticipative in form, and in theory distinct from existing shop steward/ shop committee institutions. While in practice the two channels of representation may coalesce, they need not do so. Nor are employee representatives guaranteed effective bargaining rights under most of the statutes. Despite these drawbacks, union work place activity over health and safety issues has seen considerable growth, largely, it might be argued, in response to the deficiencies of centralised state regulation (Quinlan 1984). However, there remains considerable doubt over the quality of control that work place unionists are empowered to exercise in this area (Creighton 1986).

Even more equivocal are general developments in the field of industrial democracy. There exists considerable potential for union delegates to play a more extensive role than is customary in dealing with technological change, management reorganisation, new work practices, subcontracting, and the like. At a central level, the labor movement - especially the ACTU - has shown some willingness to take up this challenge. Notable here is the ACTU industrial democracy policy, developed at the 1985 con­gress, which reaffirmed the rights of shop stewards as the proper worker representatives. This policy broke some new ground in calling for shop stewards and other unionists to become more involved in matters as diverse as job design, industrial policy and equal employment opportunity (Davis 1986). However, in practice there has been little response from individual unions, a few of which continue to regard industrial democracy with suspicion. Initiative, therefore, has tended to lie with employers, a number of whom have innovated in areas such as quality control circles, just-in-time systems, productivity improvement groups, suggestion schemes, and so on (Frenkel 1986). The transformation of work place industrial relations that can follow such schemes often has little to do with work place unionism, which may be by­passed and weakened. On the other hand, instances have been documented - for example in Victorian railways and in New South Wales water and sewerage - where union work place initiatives have set much of the agenda for industrial democracy plans (Alford 1986, Callus 1986). However, the most common prime movers are employers whose preference is often to avoid formal union involvement in employee participation schemes. Federal and state ALP governments, despite their interest in the field, have done little to alter this emphasis, even where their own employees are concerned.

140 Australian Unions

Perhaps the most important impetus towards greater union work place activity falls under the general heading of industry restructuring. During the first four years of the ALP/ ACTU Accord, action in this area was generally pitched at a central level, involving the development of such bodies as the Steel Industry Advisory Council and the Australian Manufacturing Council (and its subsidiary groups) and the functioning of the Industries Assistance Commission. Despite a heavy union input into plans for industry restructuring, there was no formal require­ment for this to stem from or involve shop floor representatives directly. The major change here took place in 1987 following the introduction of the two tier wage system. Second tier negotiations took industry restructuring to the work place by putting work practices and related issues on the bargaining table (Ewer et al. 1987). Because a substantial wage increase was at stake, there was a large inducement for unions to participate in second tier negotiations. In most instances, their involvement was necessarily at the work place level and required the participation of shop stewards and delegates. While the scope of second tier bargaining varied widely, the requirement for 'offsets' generally meant that work place unionists had to make concessions on such matters as forms of payment, shift arrangements, manning, work breaks, job classifications, and other work place issues. Causes of man­agement inefficiency too found their way onto the agenda. The range of issues and the extent of negotiations opened up work place activity on an unprecedented scale. Spanning many of the matters tentatively raised earlier under the heading of industrial democracy, and while injecting a vitality into negotiation not found since the early 1970s, the two tier system took industrial relations to the shop floor. It remains to be seen whether bar­gaining activity will be sustained at this level.

There have been other initiatives which have raised the profile of shop floor unionists since 1980. Among these are developments in equal employment opportunity, greater protection against unfair dismissal, and the growth of superannuation schemes. However the main forces for change may be generally sum­marised as growing sophistication in management approaches to the work place, greater union receptivity to new policies, and an increasing loss of faith in the efficacy of centralism. Under­pinning much of this have been huge structural strains in the economy; the decline of manufacturing, a crisis in public sector funding and employment, the fall of commodity prices and export income, company takeovers and growing industrial concentra­tion, labour displacement through technological change, and the growth in marginal forms of employment such as contract or casual labour. Some of these developments are aspects of a

Organisation and Practice 141

general economic malaise. All of them raise significant issues for employers and employees at the work place. The capacity of centralised methods - state regulation and a uniform arbitral approach - to handle these problems has become increasingly suspect. It is for this reason that shop floor representatives have been increasingly drawn into policy rather than kept at arms length from it.

The prospect is for a brand of work place unionism quite different from the past. Its concerns are more likely to be indus­trial than political; its methods will depend more upon participation and negotiation than upon mobilising protest through newspapers, protest marches and pamphlets; activity may be more sustained than the sporadic release of steam that typified shop committees in the past; the range of work place concerns will probably be wider, to encompass health and safety, training and skills for­mation, and other 'staples' of state regulation or management prerogative; and the sophistication of shop floor negotiators is likely to increase, both through training and through experience with this expanded bargaining agenda.

However, an important area of uncertainty is likely to remain. This concerns the choice between a form of work place industrial relations that rejects or embraces unionism. This duality is evident in the past, when shop committees were seen as either company unions or revolutionary workers' councils. It is shown in the common distinction between 'employee participation' and 'indus­trial democracy' (ACTU/TDC 1987). And it is likely to emerge too in different responses to the problems of structural change as some employers proceed in partnership with unionism and others seek to impose their decisions. The future of work place unionism hinges on the attitude of employers in making this choice.

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