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Covers for Hawke "Social Contract" Means Wage Restraint!

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Covers for Hawke NUMBER THIRTEEN OCTOBER 1974 TEN CENTS A CTU Conference: "~left wing" covers for Hawke "Social contract" means wage restraint! The Special ACTU Conference held in Sydney on companies) voted for the ACTU executive motion Carmichael put up a token resistance to the 23-24 September was called to discuss the state presented by Hawke. new Cameron deal on the first day, when he claim­ of the economy in the light of the Budget brought ed that he "could not accept" that the workers' "current share of the cake" should remain fixed down by the Labor government the week before. As part of the effort to woo the trade unions, Though the Conference had no decision-making and called for affirming the "right" to fight for Labor Minister Clyde Cameron had produced a new a bigger slice. But Carmichael in practice re­ powers, it was Hawke's and Whitlam's plan to use indexation proposal, a two-tier plan in which it to give union members the impression that the fuses to use that right, as indicated by his sup­ ACTU was doing something about the economic wages up to the average wage would be adjusted port for the sellout $9 Metal Trades settlement. crisis and at the same time to legitimise a quarterly by a direct percentage applicatiori of And conspicuously absent from any of his remarks "so'cial cohtract" with the government, laying the the consumer price index movement, and by a flat was any mention of the CPA's "autumn offensive". amount for wages above the average. This plan groundwork for a voluntary or state-imposed wage One of Carmichael's proposals was to maintain freeze. would mean wage cuts for anyone with an above average wage, but nevertheless it was generally import quotas to protect Australian jobs, en­ accepted favourably. In the ACTU executive res­ larging workers' share of the cake at the expense olution indexation is linked with annual adjust­ not of the employers but of workers overseas. ments for naCional productivity changes and The reliance on such protectionist measures was "changes in work value". This is no more than a another powerful undercurrent at the Conference. pfoductivity deal. The opposition to it has come Behind the support for higher tariffs by many mainly from the white collar unions who are jeal­ delegates was an appeal to national chauvinist ous of their relativities and want percentage ad­ fears of threats to Australian jobs by foreign justments extended to above-average incomes. workers, echoing the capitalists in the tariff­ protected industries now suffering layoffs. This The key concession that 'the union bureaucrats must be fought by international working-class or­ demanded was not an adequate indexation scheme (automatic monthly adjustments based on the high­ ganisation and the demand for the expropriation of the capitalists in these industries, rather than est wage in the industry) but further reforms in accepting layoffs or protecting their profits. the taxation structure, and in particular a tax­ ation indexation scheme. And rather than calling A subject of more open contention was the pro­ for elected price committees made up of workers, posals to "mov'e toward" limited nationalisations, L=.",..hous~+.ves a~d;t}1E!,~p.E.~,es~ed middle classes there raised by Carmichael and Stalinist BWIU Federal '-' Wp.-re va1rOfi!f'~~'"'t~ ~s!treng'tft~Yr1hg of secretary Pat Clancy in the' first session. Their Prices Justification Tribunal or a mirage of timid proposals concerned only a few unnamed impotent government "price controls". "key" multinationals and (in Carmichael's case) Once more this price control demand merely Australian corporations, saying nothing about. served as a cover for the introduction of an in­ compensation or workers' control. All the same, comes policy. Just prior to the Conference and Hawke and Fitzgibbon of the Waterside Workers in a reversal of his previous position, Hawke Federation launched an attack. Fitzgibbon said stated that "Since the Budget it has become in­ that nationalisation is "crap", and he and Hawke creasingly evident that the Government needs both stressed that (i& their view) there were powers over prices and incomes" (Australian, 23 "Constitutional barriers" to nationalisation. September 1974). Hawke's clearly expressed sup­ Yet they are now ready to campaign for a refer­ port for state wage control might have perhaps endum to give the bourgeois state power to freeze The Federal Budget was universally regarded as elicited some murmur from the "lefts". But no, wages; it is not the Constitution which worries a calculated concession to the union bureaucracy all the avowed opponents of wage restraint voted them, but the survival of the capitalist system, in exchange for the "social contract", but the for Hawke's resolution which states in part that and in particular of the Whitlam government. The trade was not to the advantage of workers. Not reformist nationalisations of Clancy/Carmichael, only are the social welfare reforms stressed by "Should it appear to Government in consul­ explicitly modelled on those in Britain, are no government paltry, but the Budget will have vir­ tations with the trade union movement that it great threat to capitalism either, but simply tually no effect ori growing unemployment or the is confronted by a lack of appropriate powers patchwork on a grander scale than Hawke's modest erosion of wages by inflation. At the ACTU Con­ which it would wish to exercise to achieve taxation reforms and Crean's budgetary manipu­ ference, AMWU assistant federal secretary and CPA these objectives (the Government's proposals lations. As Carmichael put it in replying to national committee member Laurie Carmichael ef­ for action), 'the trade union movement will Hawke and Fitzgibbon: "nationalisation is the fectively demolished Budget pretensions of give sympathetic consideration to supporting only way to achieve stability". They are in a "egalitarian" taxation reform with a few well­ attempts by the Government to acquire those minority in the labour bureaucracy at present chosen .statistics from the Budget i,tself: the powers." because they have yet to convince the ruling share of expenditures paid for by workers ("pay­ Beneath the diplomatic phrases lies the incomes class that this measure is now necessary in order as-you-earn" taxation) has risen from 25% in the policy the ACTU so loudly opposed only a year to keep workers from going farther still. 1964 Budget to about 39% in Treasurer Crean's new ago! Whitlam, to retain control of the government, Budget, while the share of company taxation has needs workers' electoral support but also leans fallen from 16.3% in 1964 to 15.79% in the new The CPA confined itself to a few lip-service on the union bureaucracy to keep them in line. Budget! Yet Carmichael then declared his support complaints about Hawke'S resolutionjJim Baird of Conversely, Hawke and company need the ALP in for the Budget and voted for the ACTU executive the AMWU talked about a shorter working week to order to deflect militancy, whether by conjuring motion which "congratulated" the government for fight unemployment and said he was "worried" a­ the image of Tory union-bashing or by appealing its taxation initiatives. bout wage restraint. Hawke, who throughout the for protection of the ALP's electoral respect­ Conference was extremely touchy about this The Conference was dominated by a mood of con· ability, and holding out the illusory promise of phrase, preferred the more ambiguous term "wage parliamentary reforms. Thus the real meaning of trolled alarm as the officials sought to protect moderation"j but whatever the label, the content their authority with the rank and file, in the Hawke/Whitlam's "responsive cooperation" is that was the same. Tying wages to productivity is the reformist misleadership of the ALP/ACTU makes 'face of their manifest inability to do anything only a tool for speed-up. The sensitivity of about the economic situation but try to concili­ the trade unions serve not as organs of class these social-democratic traitors is however a struggle but as a policing agency for the bour­ ate the increasingly hostile bosses. It revealed good measure of the pressure they feel from the an entrenched, wily but brittle bureaucracy whose ranks, which has created a dilemma for the Labor geoisie. composition -- literally all male and all white, government only temporarily resolved by the truce Oust Hawke/Whitlam and the ACTU bureaucrats! almost all native Au~tralian, with a likely aver­ with the unions embodied in the Budget and ACTU For a Labor Party with a revolutionary age age of 50 -- underscored its almost complete Conference resolution: how to retain the favour leadership! isolation from particularly the most oppressed of the bosses without exposing itself before the For a workers government based on workers' strata of the working class it claims to rep­ working class. organisations! resent. With artful diplomacy, Hawke hammered out a consensus on a "total package deal". In fact SYA member breaks from Pabloism . 2 the whole debate at the Conference was not about whether there should or should not be a "social in this contract" or wage restraints, but about what Housewives' wage debate . 3 terms should be expected, that is, how grossly to • sellout. Everyone (bar Wilson of the VBEF who was disgruntled by Whit lam 's remarks about col­ Issue: lusion between some union officials and foreign SWAG and the "'Third Camp" ...... 4 ~-.. ' ~'''~-''''--- Metal award fake lefts run to Arbitration The $9 increase for metal workers that was "unreal" and "sectarian" (Tribune, 27 August by an amendment by Halfpenny which passed. In handed down by Mr Justice Moore on 11 September 1974). At the 23 August Garside meeting CPA the confusion when Halfpenny's amendment, which and accepted by subsequent Metal Trades Feder­ AMWU shop steward A Beaver moved an amendment called for price control measures and "full co­ ation (MTF) mass meetings was a defeat, falling later incorporated into the official resolution operation with the government", was put, the SL short even of current inflation rises, much less to accept the $9 -- to restructure taxes and to mistakenly voted'for it.
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