CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY EMBARGOED UNTIL DELIVERY
SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER
OPENING OF THE FIRST NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF
OFFICIALS OF TEE AUSTRALIAN WORKERS' UNION
SURFERS PARADISE 14 JULY 1989
Errol Hodder,
Friends. The Australian Workers' Union holds a very special place -in
the history of trade unionism and the history of the
Australian Labor Party.
More than a century ago, forty shearers joined together in
the pursuit of better wages and working conditions and
formed the Amalgamated Shearers' Union, the forerunner of
the AWU. For more than a century your union has played a
vital role in improving, through the processes of
consultation and conciliation, the wages and working
conditions of your members.
In 1891, when members of the shearers, unions were faced
with the imminent collapse of their great strike, the
historic decision was made to pursue their just cause
through the ballot box.
And so, with the active support of working men and women
throughout Australia, was founded one of the world's first
labour parties the Australian Labor Party.
It is as leader of that Party, as leader of a proudly Labor
Government, and as a committed trade unionist, that I feel
honoured to open the first national conference of officials
of the Australian Workers' Union.
What the Amalgamated Shearers, Union set out to achieve in
1886 was the goal, through effective organisation, of better
and more secure living standards and working conditions for
members. That remains the primary challenge of the modern
trade union movement.
But it is a proof of the complexity of the modern economy,
of the magnitude of the challenges facing Australia and, not
least, of the maturity and capacity of the Australian trade
union movement, that we meet today to discuss issues of
broader, of national, significance.
My friends,
we meet at a time when union/ government co-operation is at a
level unsurpassed in Australian history.
Over the last six years, the Accord years, the Australian
labour movement has shown what can be achieved when
governments and trade unions work together. It is with a
sense of pride that I assert that together, we have produced
economic achievements of fundamental and lasting importance,
not only to trade union members, but to all Australians.
Nowhere is this better illustrated than in our record of job
creation. New figures yesterday from the Bureau of
Statistics confirmed the massive growth in jobs in the
Australian economy. Nearly 1.5 million jobs have been
created in the Australian economy since we took office a
rate of employment growth over twice the OECD average and
over four times that of the previous Government.
This unprecedented employment growth has slashed the
unemployment rate from double digit levels down to
6 per cent the lowest it has been for seven and a half
years. Inflation has fallen from 11 per cent to around 7 per cent.
Economic growth has averaged around 4 1/ 4 per cent a year
over the past six years.
These achievements have been the direct result of the trade
union movement's willingness to accept real wage restraint.
It was a watershed decision taken by unionists in 1983.
They could legitimately have pursued a strategy of increased
wages for themselves but chose instead, through wage
restraint, to expand dramatically the number of jobs in
Australia and the overall competitiveness of the economy.
At the same time, as an integral part of the Accord, real
wage restraint was accompanied by Government commitment to
lifting the social wage.
As a result of that commitment, this Government has a social
justice record second to none.
There have been major increases in Government assistance for
low income families, real increases in pensions and
benefits, reforms to the education system and the
restoration and improvement of universal health coverage.
Through all these means we have significantly eased the
burden of restraint on those who are most in need in our
community.
I recall the words of Bill Kelty at the 1987 ACTU Congress
when he said that the benefits offered the less well off
through the Government's Family Assistance Package
represented gains in living standards that would have taken
years to achieve by traditional industrial means.
Underpinning all this, we have reformed the taxation system.
We have progressively cut the levels of-income tax, and we
have ended the capital gains and fringe benefits rorts
whereby the ordinary taxpayer assumed an unnecessarily large
burden of the tax bill and whereby tax payment by the well
off was more a matter of choice than obligation.
Not least of the achievements of the Accord was the wage/ tax
negotiations in the lead up to the April Statement which
delivered a $ 5.7 billion package of tax cuts and family
assistance, while achieving continued restraint in the
growth of labour costs for Australian industry.
As Paul Keating said at the time, that was a result that
only a Labor Government could have delivered, working
through the processes of the Accord.
Last week the first of these tax cuts flowed into the pay
packets of Australian workers.
Even before these tax cuts, previous tax reforms, increased
family assistance and our massive increase in jobs had
lifted per capita real disposable income by more than
since 1982-83.
My friends,
We stand today on the threshold of further improvements in
the remuneration and job satisfaction of Australian workers
improvements being progressively negotiated through the
historic processes of award restructuring.
Through award restructuring, we are achieving productivity
improvements that go to the essential question of
Australia's economic competitiveness and, therefore, of our
future prosperity. And we are doing so with consensus and
cooperation across the parties, ensuring that decisions made
are the right ones and the gains made are permanent ones.
Through the Accord, wage fixing in Australia has progressed
from a rigid system that merely followed price movements, to
a system that is a catalyst to labour market reform and
productivity improvement.
What is significant and what is completely different from
the Liberals' proposals to abandon the system of centralised
wage fixing is that the flexibility of this process is
going hand in hand with an institutional structure that
protects the industrially weak while still producing a
responsible aggregate wages outcome.
Award restructuring provides an unprecedented opportunity
for workplace reform reform which is essential if
Australia is to enter the 21st century with an
internationally competitive economy and if we are to protect
our living standards for future generations.
At its simplest, award restructuring leads to two main
gains: the first is the removal of obsolete job
classifications and the broadbanding of-jobs under an
appropriate single classification; the second is the
establishment of skill-based career paths.
Already in some key industries, the parties have reached
agreement on award restructuring proposals. The Industrial
Relations Commission has approved new work structures for
Telecom and the domestic airlines, and is considering a new
structure for Qantas engineers. Negotiations are well
advanced in the metal and steel industries.
The increases in productivity flowing from award
restructuring will in some cases be immediate, and in other
cases take longer. But in all cases they will be enduring.
And in all cases they are being achieved, not through
confrontationist tactics in which everyone is the loser, but
through sensible and constructive negotiations in which
everyone, in the industry and in the economy more generally,
is the winner.
My friends,
When the founders of your union resolved to advance their
goals through political as well as industrial means, one of
their main aims was to secure legislative reform.
Soon after coming to office, my Government established the
Hancock Review into Australia's Industrial Relations Law and
Systems. Keith Hancock's brief was a wide one: to advise
us on how to modernise the law governing industrial
relations.
The outcome of that Review and of the extensive
consultations that followed, was the Industrial Relations
Act 1988 the most far reaching revision of Australia's
federal industrial relations system ever undertaken.
The Industrial Relations Act has provided a more effective
framework for preventing and settling industrial disputes.
It places special emphasis on settling disputes at the
workplace level, and provides scope for greater flexibility
in working arrangements and remuneration.
Of particular importance for you, the Act substantially
clears the way towards union amalgamations.
Indeed an amalgamation between two big unions, such as the
AWU and the Federated Ironworkers', with all the benefits
that entails, would have been almost impossible before this
Act. Under the new Act, as long as the Industrial Relations
Commission rules that a " community of interest" exists, a
simple majority of votes cast in favour will approve the
amalgamation. Let me take this opportunity to commend you for your
initiative and vision in working towards this amalgamation
and to offer you my best wishes for its success. It is a
move which is clearly in the interests of all relevant
unionists and is therefore firmly in the mainstream of your
long tradition of service to Australian working men and
women. My friends,
I have spoken today about some of the new challenges facing
the AWU and the trade union movement generally.
The basic challenge of course has not changed since your
union was founded. It remains the challenge of effective
organisation so as to secure better living standards for
your members. But the way that challenge is now pursued has
been revolutionised.
From sectional organisations concerned solely with the
interests of union members, trade unions now have
responsibilities extending to the well being of all
Australians. Trade unionists once sought political representation,
through the political wing of the labour movement; now they
are vital partners with the Labor Party in government.
From once seeking an equitable sharing of prosperity, trade
unionists are now also intimately involved in, and committed
to, creating the framework within which further prosperity
is generated.
Only the ideologically obsessed fanatics of the Right see
this as a threat to good economic management.
Regrettably, such fanatics hold increasing sway within the
mainstream conservative parties.
Their blinkered dogma, their overwhelming preference for
confrontation over consultation, their refusal to accept the
legitimate and constructive role of the trade union movement
in resolving issues across the spectrum of theAustralian
economy indeed their determination to break up the system
of centralised wage fixing, to weaken union structures and
to banish trade unions from effective participation in
decision making all these pose grave threats to the
achievements I have outlined today.
And what an irony it is that one of the first struggles this
union fought in the 1880s and 1890s is still, in modern
clothes, very much on the agenda today.
The conservatives then talked about " freedom of contract"
a pretty phrase that concealed an ugly intention to give an
employer the right to exclude the union from wage
negotiations with their employees.
Things haven't changed much. There are still those who wish
very earnestly to push unionism aside, and so to exploit
those individual employees too weak to defend themselves.
So I wish you well in this Conference, secure in the
knowledge that your discussions today, covering issues such
as amalgamation and award restructuring, will be in the best
traditions of Australian unionism by which I mean that
they will benefit not only your immediate members but,
ultimately, all Australians.