Worth Fighting for: Inside the Your Rights at Work Campaign

Worth Fighting For

Kathie Muir is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Science, University of Adelaide. She has a long-standing interest in the way in which politicians are portrayed in the media and the ways in which social movements campaign to promote their causes. She has published articles in the fields of media and gender studies, politics and labour history. Kathie has previously worked in the arts and cultural sectors and with the labour movement as an artist and in administrative roles. She lives by the beach in Adelaide and loves her dogs.

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inside the

yourrightsatwork

campaign

kathiemuir UNSW PRESS

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A UNSW Press book Published by University of New South Wales Press Ltd University of New South Wales Sydney NSW 2052 AUSTRALIA www.unswpress.com.au © Kathie Muir 2008 First published 2008 This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Author: Muir, Kathie. Title: Worth fighting for: inside the ‘your rights at work’ campaign/Kathie Muir. ISBN:  978 1 921410 77 2 (pbk.) Notes: Includes index. Subjects:  Australia. Workplace Relations Act Amendment (Work Choices) Act 2005.                  Australian Council of Trade Unions.                  Industrial relations – Australia – 21st century.                  Labor laws and legislation – Australia – 21st century.                  Political campaigns – Australia – Psychological aspects.                  Emotions – Political aspects. Dewey Number: 331.0994 Design Josephine Pajor-Markus Printer Ligare This book is printed on paper using fibre supplied from plantation or sustainably managed forests.

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contents

Preface and acknowledgments Abbreviations Prologue

vii xii 1

1

The context of the challenge to the unions

6

2

The rise of media-driven politics

31

3

Meeting the communication challenge

53

4

Mobilising to win

90

5

Winning them over one by one

117

6

Campaigning on the other side: selling Work Choices

142

7

Staying on message despite the differences

163

8

Doing politics differently

183

Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index

208 210 231 234

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FOR Marcie Muir b. 5 March 1919 d. 17 November 2007 who modelled a life built around reading and writing and who loved me so well. and Georgia Psarros b. 25 May 2005 may she grow up to work in a world that protects workers’ rights and respects their dignity.

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preface and acknowledgments

Standing in Elder Park in Adelaide on 15 November 2005 watching the ACTU’s Sky Channel broadcast, I knew that the ‘Your Rights at Work’ campaign was significant. Most striking were the sophisticated visuals and the finely calibrated pitch of the broadcast – the ways it wove traditional labour culture together with a forward-looking appeal to all working Australians. I decided then to follow the campaign and write about it, whatever the outcome. The daughter of a bookseller (small businessman) and an independent writer/researcher whose passion was Australian children’s books, I was never an obvious recruit to the trade union movement. My interest developed through my involvement in community-based arts and cultural projects, working for a time as the Arts Officer for the United Trades and Labor Council of South Australia (now SA Unions). In 1983 I was commissioned to make a textile banner for the SA branch of the Food Preservers’ Union. Working with the ‘Foodies’ was an eye-opening experience. I visited a number of worksites to take photographs and talk to members as part of my research. One of the sites was in the SA Riverland where the FPU had worked, in conjunction with the local Economic Development Committee, the Council, growers and community representatives to save the Berri cannery, the largest employer in the region. This experience helped me understand the ways unions could work to improve the broader lives of their membership as well as supporting their claims for fair wages and conditions at work. vii

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Worth Fighting For

It is also clear from this glimpse into my personal history that I do not come from an industrial relations background. My academic expertise lies in media and cultural studies with a focus on political campaigning. My interest in the labour movement in Australia and internationally has focused on trade union cultural activities, the representation of unions by the mainstream media, union self-representations and campaigns, together with a longstanding interest in improving the representation of women in unions. These perspectives have shaped this book. My position is that of both ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’. My understanding of, and previous employment within the labour movement equipped me to analyse the campaign and its significance from a position allied to the movement. However, as I hold no position within any union or union body (other than ordinary membership of the NTEU) I was not privy to internal decision making. My position can perhaps best be described by the academic term (from feminist scholarship) ‘standpoint research’ or alternatively through the journalistic category ‘engaged journalism’. I brought to the project a deep interest in and knowledge of the field of social movement campaigning and sympathy for many of the principles of unionism, such as collective bargaining; however, my analysis of the campaign was based on a critical political communications perspective that assessed it on its merits. A book like this owes much to numerous people and organisations. I cannot name everyone individually even though I deeply appreciate the assistance provided. I would like to acknowledge the assistance and support of some specific organisations and people without whom this book could not possibly have been completed. My employer, the University of Adelaide, funded the project through a small university research grant and through the provision of study leave in the second semester of 2007, enabling me to go on the road to research the campaign. My colleagues viii

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Preface and acknowledgments

in the Discipline of Gender, Work and Social Inquiry were supportive of the research from its inception and engaged in many long discussions over aspects of the campaign and the research process. Most particularly I would like to acknowledge the support and friendship of Margie Ripper (who also selflessly took over my administrative duties when I took additional leave), along with Chilla Bulbeck and Kay Schaffer, who have been great research companions and mentors. Margaret Allen, Susan Oakley, Anna Szorenyi and Sandra Lyne, together with GWSI’s lively postgraduate students, have likewise engaged with the issues and the research. Roz Averis and Pam Papadelos deserve particular mentions here, as does Sarah Hoggard in our office. Other University of Adelaide colleagues who have taken a keen interest in the work are Chris Beasley, Carol Johnson, Greg McCarthy and (former colleague) Barbara Pocock. The Mineworkers Trust generously provided a grant towards the costs involved with travel and interviews with unionists and campaign volunteers. Without this assistance I would never have been able to gain a national perspective. I am very grateful that the Trust values independent academic research. I would particularly like to thank the Trust directors and Tony Maher, the General President of the CFMEU Mining and Energy Division, for his encouragement. Without the cooperation of key officials from the ACTU the project would have been severely limited. Sharan Burrow, Chris Walton, George Wright and Jessica Stanley were especially liberal with time, their trust and in finding key pieces of information for me in the final stages of the research. Ian Wilson and Michelle Ryan also assisted. Greg Combet has talked with me on several previous occasions about the ACTU’s approach to campaigning. SA Unions was an enormous support. Janet Giles, a dear friend, had endless conversations with me and helped me tease out details of the campaign even though she had huge demands on her own time. Jane Clarke, Kate Coleman, Tim Palmer and John Short ix

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Worth Fighting For

warmly committed to the project, not only wanting the campaign to be recorded but also inviting critical analysis. Yasmin Pettman and Helen Evans, administrative staff at SA Unions, solved problems and found answers for me. Richard Wormald from Kingston helped with photos and both the Kingston and Makin community committees shared stories, allowed me to hang out with them during activities and to sit in on meetings. John Robertson at Unions NSW generously invited me to participate in one of the bus trips and made plenty of time available to talk to me. Daniel Walton and Daniel Kildea made it happen. Adam Kerslake helped me understand the scope of the NSW campaign. Daniel W., Mary Yaager and Matt Thistlewaite introduced me to the marvellous Lindsay and Macquarie community campaign teams. Kelly Laing found me photos and answers to last minute questions. In Lindsay and Macquarie Linda E., Jo J., Denise H. and Roger H. gave me lifts and fed me. In Queensland Sharron Caddie and Wendy Turner were enthusiastic informants, taking time to help me understand the Queensland scene. Many other union officials and activists agreed to be interviewed and provided me with valuable insights into their unions, their community and the campaign from their perspective. From EMC, Peter Lewis and Tony Douglas helped me understand their role in the campaign. Rod Cameron and Michael Bachelard separately provided insights into public opinion polling, media reporting and campaigning strategies and I thank them for their time. Close friends Anne and David Skinner provided congenial hospitality whenever I was in Sydney and stimulating discussions about the campaign and politics in general. Anne used her professional expertise to track down obscure pieces of information and regularly sent me useful resources. Rose Barratt and Frank Cufone likewise gave me a home away from home and the pleasures of friendship. Cath Keneally provided invaluable editorial assistance in the final hectic stages of manuscript preparation and her cheerful 

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Preface and acknowledgments

support was hugely appreciated. Gabbie Zizzo, Sam Franzway, Mel Kinsman, Ann Berger and Mary Ann Psarros all provided research assistance at various stages. At UNSW Press Phillipa McGuiness was enthusiastic from the moment I first contacted her. Chantal Gibbs answered endless queries and Anne Savage did a fine job of copy-editing. In my personal life my family and friends helped me in practical ways, including relinquishing claims for attention at moments when they had need of it, and giving me moral support and encouragement at moments when the going got tough. They, too, engaged in more conversations about the campaign and the election than they probably would have chosen to. Cath Cantlon, Sandra Dunn, Jude Elton, Suzanne Franzway, Helen Giles, Tom Giles, Michelle Hogan, Catherine Murphy and Jason and Georgia Psarros, I love you all. Rory Muir was an affectionate and wise counsel, providing keen critical advice and support. Clio and Ody kept me company at the computer and provided lots of fun. My biggest debt is to my partner Anthony Psarros, who keeps on loving me throughout big projects despite the fact that it means less time together and a more stressful life for him. I thank him from the bottom of my heart. Finally, a special thank you to everyone I interviewed – your stories enriched the book immeasurably. I am only sorry I haven’t been able to fit everything in. Any errors and inconsistencies are, of course, my own responsibility.

xi

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abbreviations

ABC ABCC ACA ACCI ACTU AEU AFL-CIO AIG AIRC ALP AMIEU AMMA AMWU AIG ANF ASU AWA AWU BCA BCWR CBA CEPU CFMEU

Australian Broadcasting Corporation Australian Building and Construction Commission Australian Constructors Association Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Australian Council of Trade Unions Australian Education Union American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations Australian Industry Group Australian Industrial Relations Commission Australian Labor Party Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union Australian Mines and Minerals Association Australian Manufacturing Workers Union Australian Industry Group Australian Nursing Federation Australian Services Union Australian Workplace Agreement Australian Workers Union Business Council of Australia Business Coalition for Workplace Reform Commonwealth Bank of Australia Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union of Australia Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union

xii

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Abbreviations

CPSU EAP EMC ETU FSU GST HSU IEU LHMU MBA MEAA MUA NBAF NRA NTEU NSWNA OEA QCU RBTU SDA TCFUA TWU UNSW UWA VTHC ‘YRaW’

Community and Public Sector Union Employer Assistance Program Essential Media Communications Electrical Trades Union (a division of CEPU) Finance Sector Union Goods and Services Tax Health Services Union Independent Education Union of Australia Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union Master Builders Association Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance Maritime Union of Australia National Business Action Fund National Retailers Association National Tertiary Education Union New South Wales Nurses’ Association Office of the Employment Advocate Queensland Council of Unions Rail, Tram and Bus Union Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia Transport Workers Union Unions New South Wales Unions Western Australia Victorian Trades Hall Council ‘Your Rights at Work’

xiii

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prologue

13 November 2006: How good will this feel? On screen, what looks like the ABC Election Tally Room, although the faces are unfamiliar. The well-known theme music plays and the title Australia Decides appears. Host ‘Kerry’ announces that the polls have just closed in Western Australia and says he thinks they might be in a position to call the result. He turns to ‘Patrick Summers’, the Liberal ‘politician’ beside him. Kerry: ‘Patrick Summers, with a 5.4% swing away from the Government on a national basis – you’re gone, aren’t you?’ Summers demurs, saying they need to wait for the WA figures. ‘Wendy’, the election analyst interjects, exclaiming, ‘Kerry, there aren’t enough seats in WA to save the Government!’ It transpires that marginal seats in Tasmania, NSW, Queensland, Victoria and all three in SA have been won by the ALP. ‘Wayne Humphries’, the Labor politician on the panel (wearing an orange ‘Your Rights at Work’ badge prominently on his lapel) says: ‘This is a wonderful victory. This is a wonderful night for Australian workers and their families. The union campaign, which ran in conjunction with our campaign and our focus on IR – the union campaign was fantastic. It was about integrity, honesty and above all the capacity to engage directly with ordinary Australians. And tonight



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Worth Fighting For

the people of Australia have shown how important these rights are to them.’ Host ‘Kerry’ crosses live to SA Unions Secretary, Janet Giles, in Makin (one of the three marginal SA electorates), with a very excited crowd standing behind her, all wearing ‘Your Rights at Work’ regalia and brandishing signs with slogans such as ‘It was the unions wot won it’. ‘Kerry’ asks Giles: ‘Can you claim some of the credit for tonight’s win?’ Giles replies: ‘Well, we claim all the credit for tonight’s win.’ She goes on to explain that a grassroots campaign has run for two years, ‘not based on party politics but on unions and community people working for a fairer country. We were determined to win this campaign and we’ve done it.’ The crowd goes wild in the background. A title appears on the screen. ‘How good will this feel?’ it asks. ‘What are you going to do to make this happen?’ A series of suggested activities then floats across the screen with a funky version of ‘And the Union Makes Us Strong’ playing in the background: ‘Do something to make it happen. We must do something to make it happen. Can we do it? Yes, we can.’1

Instilling hope Was this Tally Room scene a dream, or someone’s cocky boast over a beer? No, this was a cheeky seven and half minute motivational video made in mid-2006 by actor and director Jonathan Mill for SA Unions to use in training campaign activists.2 It was received with great delight everywhere it was screened. Mill, a member of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, says he made it: 

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Prologue

[because] MEAA is quite a small union and we knew that to be effective in the ‘YRaW’ campaign we had to bring our own special skills to the campaign rather than mass numbers. We all looked at what we could do to help, my expertise is in film production, and so I wrote what we dreamt Election night would be like and thanks to the passion of other actors and film technicians we made it come true.3

Helping people move from anger to hope and then to action is the basis for much community organising. It lay at the core of the Australian union movement’s campaign to overturn the Work Choices legislation, and overturn the government which introduced it, the conservative John Howard-led Coalition government. How good will this feel? was one short DVD amidst a whole array of imaginative approaches that characterised the union campaign known as ‘Your Rights at Work: worth fighting for’. It exemplified the energy, passion and media savvy of many of the initiatives, along with the palpable commitment of people working together towards this common goal. Worth Fighting For charts the progress of the campaign, the obstacles it faced, the newfound determination of the union movement to work together and in close cooperation with communities, and the campaign’s creative use of both new and traditional media. In large part it is the story of the passionate opposition of ordinary people to the unfairness of Work Choices and their belief that they could make a difference through becoming involved with ‘Your Rights at Work’. It is based on interviews with some 60 campaigners from different parts of the country – union leaders, organisers, members and community volunteers. There is no one story of this campaign, for it had many distinctively local flavours depending on the regions and the industries involved. People in safe seats might have wondered what it was 

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Worth Fighting For

all about, because major activity was concentrated in marginal electorates. Worth Fighting For presents one account of this remarkable effort and aims to capture the exceptional vitality of a campaign that made history.

Making sense of the campaign Chapter 1 sets out the context to the union campaign against Work Choices and associated legislation. It provides a brief overview of the industrial relations policies of the Howard government from its election in 1996, and of union responses to two key events, the Workplace Relations Amendment Bill in 1996, and the Waterfront Dispute in 1998, as they influenced the implementation of subsequent campaigns. It also outlines the declining levels of union membership experienced in Australia from the mid-1980s. Chapter 2 discusses the increasing dominance of media in the way politics is practised in Australia and internationally, in particular its influence on leadership choices and the persona and styles adopted by political leaders, together with its influence on policy decisions. The increasing role of alternative media is also discussed. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 cover the various elements of the ACTU’s ‘Your Rights at Work’ campaign. Chapter 3 focuses on the media and communications aspects, particularly the use of paid advertising, large national events and new information and communication technologies. Chapter 4 examines the particular techniques adopted to mobilise workers, union members and regional communities, such as the national Days and Weeks of Action, and the bus trips and car convoys through regional areas. Chapter 5 considers the ‘Your Rights at Work’ campaign in the 24 marginal seats around the nation in which the ACTU placed full-time community organisers. In this chapter we meet 

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Prologue

some of the ordinary community members who became stalwart campaigners, and find out what made them become so deeply involved. The controversy over the government’s use of taxpayer funds to pay for the ‘public information’ campaign to sell Work Choices to the resistant electorate is discussed in chapter 6, as is the second, almost as expensive, advertising campaign in 2007 to promote the Fairness Test. The techniques used by the business community in their attempts to swing public support behind the changes to industrial relations and to influence ALP policy are analysed, among them the contentious Business Coalition for Workplace Reform television advertisements. In chapter 7, the possible costs of various choices made in relation to the themes of the television advertisements are canvassed. One of the lively debates throughout the duration of the campaign concerned the value of mass rallies in the twentyfirst century; some differences of opinion are teased out to better understand the issues. The limited attention given to the building industry laws in the overall debate in comparison to Work Choices is briefly examined. The final chapter looks at how the campaign began to talk differently to certain groups in the community about workers’ rights and a fairer society. It includes some of the key lessons from the campaign for the union movement and others, and concludes with some of the campaigners’ hopes for the future.



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1 The context of the challenge to the unions

This Government has been the best friend that the workers of Australia have ever had.1 … with the favourable election outcome in the Senate, we are now in a position to drive the industrial relations reform process further in ways consistent with liberal philosophy.2

John Howard

John Howard: the workers’ friend? John Howard is well known for his career-long commitment to curtailing the operations of trade unions in Australia and deregulating the labour market. His public utterances on this topic abound. Curiously, industrial relations were barely mentioned in the lead-up to the 2004 election. By 7.30 (EST) on election night, victory was called for the Coalition. As the evening wore on, the collapse in the Australian Democrat vote and the size of the swing to the Coalition had commentators predicting that the Coalition would either hold a majority in the Senate in its own right for the first time since 1981, or that the balance of power would be held by the conservative Christian Family First Party. 

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The context of the challenge to the unions

At election-night parties all over the country on 9 October 2004 trade unionists, assorted ‘progressives’ and ALP supporters swung between disbelief and cold horror at the vision of what the Coalition might do with unfettered power. Glued glumly to the television set at a party in Semaphore, I shrugged off invitations to lighten up and drown my alarm. No, it wouldn’t just be more of the same, this might be Armageddon. A fellow gloomy soul and I listed all the issues and the groups we felt would be persecuted now that the Coalition would be free to settle old scores. Even worse was the imagined prospect of two more terms of the smug, triumphalist smirks of Alexander Downer and Peter Costello. Another six years of the Coalition in power would so completely transform the country that there’d be no repairing the welfare and social justice safety nets. Individualism would prevail, dissent would be punished as well as mocked. In all, as Don Watson has written, control of both houses would amount to the ‘final victory in the culture wars’.3 At the time, the acquaintance who tried to get me to lighten up scoffed at our fears, thinking us panic merchants. When I saw him at a birthday celebration a year later he admitted that I had been right about the changes that an unfettered Coalition would wreak upon the nation. Similar exchanges took place all over the country. While those in Coalition circles were ecstatic that at last they would have the power to implement their agendas, and employer groups were rejoicing, for others the future looked very bleak. In Sydney’s Sussex Street on Monday 11 October 2004, people arrived to work at Unions NSW very downcast. Mary Yaager, still reeling in shock, was astounded and full of admiration when her boss, John Robertson (Secretary of Unions NSW), pulled the staff together and outlined his plan for a major campaign across New South Wales against the industrial relations changes the Coalition would attempt to impose. ‘He had this all worked out … my head was spinning.’ While stunned by the scale of the 

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Worth Fighting For

loss, Robertson and fellow union leaders such as Janet Giles at SA Unions, and Greg Combet and Sharan Burrow at the ACTU, were determined not to let the Government gain the momentum or frame the debate. At the first ACTU Executive meeting after the election, the impact of the Coalition victory was faced and the need for a major public campaign agreed on. By the end of the following meeting in December the Executive had committed to raising a $3.85 per member levy (including GST) on affiliates to fund the effort. The workplace and community campaigns were approved, as was the commissioning of focus group research to frame the public communication campaign. The need for discipline and unity was agreed by all. Over the following months the details were finessed from time to time in light of ongoing research and professional advice. Since 1996 the battle over the Coalition government’s industrial relations legislation had required convincing the Democrats and independent Senators, who held the balance of power, that the legislation was extreme, that it unfairly disadvantaged vulnerable workers and that it was against the interests of society. Over that time, some important union and workers’ rights had been lost, but some of the Government’s more extreme legislation had been amended or refused passage. In October 2004, experienced union leaders could predict much of what was to come. They knew their adversary and they had learned important lessons about their own strengths and capacities over the previous eight years – but the union movement was not in peak form for a lengthy, major crusade. This book is about the Australian union movement’s response to the Howard government’s use of its absolute majority to force through anti-worker, anti-union legislation, legislation which had not formed part of stated Coalition policies before the election. To better understand the context for the campaign and its achievements, it helps to briefly examine the state of the union 

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The context of the challenge to the unions

movement in 2004, the key developments in industrial relations during the first three terms of the Howard government, and to outline the Work Choices legislation.

The state of the unions in Australia: 1996–2004 Why union membership went downhill in 1996–2004

At the time John Howard and the Coalition parties defeated Paul Keating and the Australian Labor Party at the March 1996 election, 2 194 300 Australians were trade union members, a density of 31 per cent. Membership was highest among permanent employees (37%) and lowest among casuals (13%). It was higher for men (34%) than women (28%). It had fallen from 46 per cent of the workforce in 1986, when there were 2 593 900 union members, 50 per cent of male workers and 39 per cent of female. Declining union membership density was common across most industrialised economies (with the exception of some Scandinavian countries). Various reasons have been put forward to account for the fall in Australia, including the decline of the manufacturing sector, which traditionally had high membership rates. The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates that around 30 per cent of the decline was the direct result of the changing nature and distribution of employment.4 The increasing proportion of parttime and casual jobs, which are harder to organise, was another significant factor. Another reason was that throughout the 1980s and up until the mid-1990s Australia’s union leadership was heavily taken up with the process of structural adjustment (union amalgamations) and strategic unionism, leading them to place lower emphasis on recruiting and organising members.5 This internal focus, together with what industrial relations academics Barbara Pocock and Pat Wright termed the ‘demobilising effect’ of the Accord, reduced 

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the activist consciousness and arguably the power of trade unions and their members.6 The move towards enterprise bargaining meant unions were less visible in the process of securing wage rises, while the effect of the Accord on containing wage rises led to apathy and disaffection among union members.7 Other factors such as society’s increasing emphasis on individualism, the increased use of labour hire and other contracting-out arrangements, new human resource management techniques (including the introduction of performance pay) and the move towards individual contracts all worked to break down affinity with collective identities and allegiances to unionism. Despite their falling membership density, trade unions remain the largest and best-organised group advocating for the specific interests of particular sectors in the community. Most membership-based organisations suffered similar declines in numbers over the same period, reflecting the greater emphasis on individualism in contemporary Australia and the increasing demands on people’s time. Organised religion, for example, has experienced a marked decline in church attendance. In the 2006 census, 64 per cent Australians identified as Christian, while weekly church attendance in 2001 was only 8.8 per cent.8 While the two sectors are not directly comparable, the common trend points to disengagement with various forms of civic and community participation. This may reflect overly full lives, a lower value placed on collectivity, or what Hugh Mackay has called ‘disengagement’ or withdrawal into a ‘societal trance’.9 And yet, if unions are truly no longer representative or effective advocates for the interests of a significant group of the population, it is hard to explain why they should continue to be the focus of attacks from conservative politicians, think-tanks and employer groups. Australian unions were operating from a relatively low membership base at the time John Howard led the Coalition to victory in 1996. Many of those who voted for the Coalition were union members, former Labor supporters who decided to change 10

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The context of the challenge to the unions

their vote over the issue of interest rates, or because they believed the ALP government had become arrogant and it was time for a change. These voters were dubbed the ‘Howard battlers’. Andrew Leigh, economist and social scientist, in a study averaging the results of eleven federal elections, has calculated that on average 63 per cent of unionists vote for the ALP, but that the proportion who did so in 1996 was the second lowest for any of the years in the study, slightly under 60 per cent.10 The Liberal and National parties made clear before the 1996 election that in government they would take a hard line in relation to unions. Among other measures, they vowed to remove any form of direct government funding of trade unions or unionrelated activities. This would reduce unions’ staff and infrastructure and, critically, the resources they would be able to mobilise in future election campaigns in support of the ALP. Union organising against John Hewson and the ‘Fightback’ policy had been vital to the unexpected win by Keating and the ALP in 1993, and the conservatives were determined to prevent a repeat.11 Once in power they made a number of political and legislative moves against unions, briefly summarised below together with the union responses.

1996: the first wave of industrial relations legislation In August 1996, the Government introduced a bill providing for comprehensive changes to the way industrial relations were managed and to the operations of trade unions. Key aspects included the introduction of Australian Workplace Agreements, restrictions on unions’ right of entry to worksites, the stripping back of awards so that they could deal with only eighteen core areas, reduced powers for the Industrial Relations Commission and new unfair dismissal laws. The unions campaigned successfully against some of the worst 11

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aspects of the legislation, convincing the Australian Democrats, who held the balance of power in the Senate, to insist on various amendments, increasing the ‘allowable matters’ in awards to twenty, and rejecting the unfair dismissal legislation. However, the unions lost more than they gained, and the Workplace Rela� tions Act (1996) was passed by the Senate in November 1996. AWAs were introduced, secondary boycotts banned, preference clauses for unionists were outlawed and the role of trade unions constrained, whereas managerial prerogative and discretion were expanded. The union movement campaigned through traditional means such as rallies, including the mass rally in Canberra that became a fiasco (see chapter 2). In a move towards community unionism, unions formed alliances with other groups which experienced budget cuts or attacks from the government, or whose constituencies would be badly affected by the changes. This cooperation with peak welfare, church and Indigenous groups to support each other’s campaigns developed further across the terms of the Howard government and now has a semi-formal relationship. The first year of the Coalition government proved the perceived threat to unions and their members was not exaggerated, and the unions had to review their policy and organisational strategies in light of the twin challenges of a hostile government and falling membership. Key ministers, including Prime Minister John Howard, Treasurer Peter Costello and Workplace Relations Minister Peter Reith, were on record as holding strongly anti-union views. Key right-wing think-tanks, such as the H.R. Nicholls Society, and business lobby groups were influential in shaping the industrial relations agenda. In 1997 the Government commenced a campaign to discredit waterside workers through concerted criticism of crane rates and productivity on the wharves. It was clear that in the not-too distant future these workers and their union were marked for the first attack.

12

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The context of the challenge to the unions

1998: The Waterfront Dispute

The predicted challenge came in the form of the Waterfront Dispute of 1998 (the union response to which is discussed in greater detail in chapter 2). The combined employer and government attack on an individual trade union and its members was unprecedented in Australian history, and many of the murkier details of the extent of government involvement have never come to light.12 The Waterfront Dispute set new lows for the treatment of employees by an employer, as Patrick Stevedores restructured its operations in such as way that workers were employed by a shelf company with no assets. The workers were then dismissed en masse by posses of security guards accompanied by guard dogs. That an attack on the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) was in the wind had been well signalled, however, and the union movement had exercised great restraint in order to provide the government and the company no grounds for legal action. The unions combined a community campaign together with legal challenges to eventually overturn the sackings. Nonetheless, Patricks achieved many of the desired objectives, with increased managerial control and a reduced workforce. As journalists Helen Trinca and Anne Davies conclude in their book on the dispute, the outcome was mixed for all parties, with the Federal Government’s reputation the biggest loser.13

1999: the second wave of industrial relations legislation In 1999, the government restated its commitment to industrial relations law reforms, introducing further amendments to the 1996 Workplace Relations Act, including secret ballots before strikes and changes to unfair dismissal legislation.14 The Industrial Relations Commission’s powers were again to be reduced, while Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) were to be made easier to make and register. The Senate, in which the Austral13

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ian Democrats and independent Brian Harradine still held the balance of power, rejected the majority of these proposals. In 2001, the Government established the Cole Royal Commission into the Building and Construction Industry, but discouraged the Commission from hearing evidence about corrupt or illegal practices by employers in the industry. As well as resisting such challenges (albeit with limited success) through traditional legal, industrial and political strategies as well as the new approaches of alliance-building, and mounting a ‘smart election campaign’ in nine marginal seats in the lead-up to the 2001 federal election, the ACTU launched a ‘reasonable working hours test case’ in recognition that Australia had the second longest hours of work in the OECD and the fastest-growing hours. The industrial and political campaigns for improved work and family balance throughout 2001–2008 indicate the degree to which the organisation has grown in reflecting the needs and concerns of its diverse membership, its commitment to work/life balance and the day-to-day lived realities of ‘working families’ also evident in the pursuit of improved maternity leave rights. A 2001 ACTU election leaflet entitled Howard’s Legacy for Working Families reveals that the term which became pivotal in the 2007 election campaign had been in use for many years. These campaigns have been partially responsible for refocusing the union movement away from the traditional ‘aristocracy of muscle’ toward a more complex, more sophisticated approach.15 By 1999, the rallies held against the second wave of government industrial relations reforms commonly featured workers already experiencing the worst effects of the 1996 changes telling their stories. The use of delegates and workers to front the public and the media in this way became a hallmark of future campaigns. Other strategies adopted at this time included the organising model of unionism, most prominent in the United States.16 The Services Employees International Union (USA) had very successfully used this approach, which was studied with 14

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great interest by a series of Australian union visitors. The ACTU policy documents Unions@work (1999) and Next Steps for Austral� ian Unions (2004) drew heavily on the organising approach and reflected some of the lessons of community unionism.17

Industrial relations legislation and union membership: 2000–2004 In 2003 the Government introduced the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Bill, arising out of the findings of the Cole Royal Commission. The Bill was passed by the House of Representatives but deferred by the Senate, which voted to establish its own enquiry into the industry. The Democrats, who had held the balance of power in the Senate since 1981, either on their own or in conjunction with independent senators, had consistently held firm against the removal of all unfair dismissal protection and some other industrial relations legislation. The Government complained that the ALP and the Democrats were unreasonably impeding their legislative agenda and the nation’s progress. Most frequently they complained that the ‘Fair Dismissal Bill’ which, in the words of then Workplace Relations Minister Tony Abbott, had become ‘something of a political icon’, had been rejected by the ALP and the Senate more than 40 times.18 (Australian Parliamentary Library research shows this was not the case, and that whereas numerous bills in other areas had been rejected or had lapsed, the Small Business Exemption Bill had been rejected only eight times.19) In total, five pieces of workplace relations legislation were rejected twice and thus became potential double dissolution triggers – although calling such an election would have risked minor parties winning even more seats, as the quota for a Senate seat would be lower. Trade union membership overall continued to decline, despite limited growth in 2001 and 2002. By August 2004, just before the 9 October election, just 22.7 per cent of all employees were 15

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trade union members. Many of the earlier factors behind declining membership were still in operation, and the impact of individual contracts and AWAs exacerbated the trend. Government attacks on unions as irrelevant, unnecessary and out of date also contributed, while anti-unionism was particularly pronounced in some sections of the press, News Limited papers and the Austral� ian in particular being the most vehement. Some Government ministers, most notably Tony Abbot during his term as Workplace Relations Minister, publicly tried to convince employers to ‘take on’ the union movement.20 Such attacks were seen by some as the equivalent of the influence of industry restructuring on declining membership.21 There was also a feeling that young people in professional, para-professional or even service sector jobs could negotiate for themselves, a belief that the Government tried hard to promote through its publicity for the Work Choices legislation. Union–ALP relations came under attack between 2001 and 2004. Some senior ALP figures believed that the unions’ 60 per cent representation on decision-making bodies was too great and needed to be reviewed, and former ACTU President, Simon Crean, oversaw its reduction to 50 per cent at state and national conferences during his short term as leader. In December 2003, Mark Latham, who had been a critic of the union movement, was elected ALP leader. The unions largely supported Kim Beazley, whom they believed had a better rapport with the electorate and a better grasp of industrial relations. In the lead-up to the 2004 election the media was fascinated with Latham’s unorthodox political style, but most opinion polls showed the Coalition would be returned. The final result was a thumping Coalition victory, with the ALP losing five seats in the House of Representatives and the Coalition gaining five.

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Summary of government–union relations 1996–2004 The years from 1996 to 2004 provide many examples of employer and government antagonism toward trade unions. The actions of Patrick Stevedores stand out, but there were also moves by employers as diverse as BHP and the Commonwealth Bank to force workers into individual contracts and AWAs against their will, moves which unions argued constituted ‘illegal inducement’ to leave a union.22 Tactics such as award-stripping, contractingout and labour hire were more widely adopted.23 Other damaging events included the spate of business collapses in which employees were abandoned with no provision for payout of their entitlements or redundancy pay. The most notorious of these was the collapse in January 2000 of Hunter Valley firm National Textiles, run by the Prime Minister’s brother, Stan Howard, owing workers around $11 billion in entitlements.24 Other major corporate collapses included Ansett Airlines, which owed its workers an estimated $800 million in entitlements, and One.Tel, which owed its workers $17 million in entitlements but at the same time paid its directors $7 million in performance bonuses.25 The CPSU managed to secure the benefits of more than 1000 One.Tel workers, but the Ansett workers were not so fortunate. The ACTU-led fight to force James Hardie to pay compensation to the victims of lung diseases caused by exposure to its asbestos products intensified during this period, and brought Greg Combet once again to national attention. As industrial relations analyst Bradon Ellem has argued, the ‘hostility of the Commonwealth Government and many employers to unionism’ throughout the Coalition’s lengthy term in office led unions to explore new means of building and consolidating power – adopting the organising model; building coalitions and joint campaigns with community and welfare groups and representing the union movement as a campaigner for social justice; and the adoption of twenty-first century information technology 17

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and mediatised campaigning strategies.26 These approaches become very marked in the response to the Coalition’s Work Choices legislation in the wake of the 2004 election.

Work Choices and associated legislation Having achieved an absolute majority in both houses of Parliament for the first time in 23 years, Government and employers felt able to give free rein to their ambitions to cripple the Australian union movement. But they had to wait to implement their goals until the new Senate was sworn in on 1 July 2004. Said Howard: [W]e’re not going to allow this to go to our head, we’re not going to start proposing things that are disruptive, we certainly will press ahead very strongly with things that we’ve believed in for a long time particularly in the area of industrial relations.27

Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews first outlined the scope of the new laws in February 2005, in a speech to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia. The extent of the laws became clearer on 26 May, when the Prime Minister released more information following Cabinet approval.28 First, deal with the building workers!

The first major legislation dealt with the building industry. The Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act, passed by Parliament in October, directly targeted the CFMEU through the establishment of the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC). The Commission was provided with substantial powers, greater than those held by the previous Building Industry Taskforce, and an operational budget of over $100 million. The legislation outlawed most industrial action, including union meetings. Violations carried fines of up to $28 600 for individuals and $110 000 for unions. 18

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Under the Act, building workers, union officials and employers could be imprisoned for up to six months for refusing to answer Commission questions about activities, for attending meetings or for refusing to produce documents demanded by the Commission’s agents. The right to silence for people working in the building industry had been removed. Furthermore, those appearing before the Commission were prohibited from speaking to others about the questions they were asked, their answers or their experiences before the Commission, draconian provisions that bore noticeable similarities to terrorism suppression laws. The Act worked together with the separate Independent Contractors Act to end the extension of site conditions to independent contractors, a development which the unions believed would weaken union coverage and erode conditions in the industry. The establishment of the ABCC was vigorously opposed by the union movement, the Greens and, initially, sections of the ALP. The Cole Royal Commission had failed either to establish significant criminal conduct by union officials (most of the findings of unlawful conduct related to minor technical breaches of the Workplace Relations Act) or to mount successful prosecutions for serious criminal conduct despite its huge resources (it had a budget of $60 million).29 Despite these failures, the Commission consistently demonised the CFMEU – indeed, its terms of reference had all but precluded investigation of employer corruption or negligence in relation to the serious matter of workplace deaths – and the public image of building unions had been tarnished under the onslaught of attacks. The establishment of the ABCC itself, while actively opposed by the trade union movement, was not likely to arouse much protest from the general public. The full extent of the Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Act became apparent in November 2005. The Bill was introduced to the House of Representatives on 2 November; debate was guillotined on 10 November, when the Bill was passed and then introduced into the Senate. The Senate agreed to hold 19

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an inquiry into the impact of the legislation through the Employment, Workplace Relations and Education Committee. Only five days were allowed for submissions to be made, with another five days for hearings, the Committee being scheduled to report to the Senate on 22 November, the time frame demonstrating that the inquiry was but a token gesture.30 Despite the short notice, over 4500 submissions were received – but the Committee published only 173 on their website. The ACTU encouraged people to send individual submissions through a form on their Rights at Work website, a move partially responsible for the number of responses generated. A number of academics, calling themselves the Group of 150 Australian Industrial Relations, Labour Market and Legal Academics (hereafter Group of 150), made a substantial submission which, as they noted, was unusual, as they had hitherto not been in agreement over numerous issues of labour market reform.31 State and Territory industrial relations ministers made submissions, as did the ACTU and individual unions, employer groups and numerous others.

Why did people object so strongly to Work Choices? Unions, industrial relations academics, state governments and others had numerous objections to the legislation, some of them technicalities, others major issues that were more easily communicated. A full discussion of these objections is beyond the scope of this chapter.32 The following section provides a basic summary of the major problems identified with the legislation. Power in the labour market

One of the most fundamental objections to the Bill was that it shifted the balance of power in Australian workplaces to a very marked degree. The principles upon which labour law is based, 20

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internationally and in Australia, recognise that employers and employees have different degrees of access to power in the labour market. As the submission of the Group of 150 argued: [L]abour law is designed to protect workers from unfair exploitation and to ensure that labour market competition occurs above a platform of basic rights. This platform includes the practical right to organise collectively, and to bargain collectively.33

This overturning of the fundamental principles of labour law and previous approaches to industrial relations legislation in Australia was the most radical, and arguably the most dangerous aspect of the legislation.34 The ACTU insisted that Work Choices breached the International Labour Organization conventions on Freedom of Association and the Right to Organize, to which Australia was a signatory. As protagonists in the refugee debates also discovered, the Government did not seem to care deeply about conforming to international standards. The removal of rights to organise and to bargain collectively were among the most challenging aspects of the Work Choices laws to campaign against, for the dry technical and legalistic aspects of the changes were not likely to inspire the general public to take a stand. Furthermore, because unions as institutions have over the years been accused by employer groups and governments alike of holding too much power and abusing it, limitations to their power would also be a risky point with which to spearhead the campaign. The degree to which the role of unions and the issue of the industrial relations laws’ constraint of union activity on behalf of their members should be raised in the public campaign was actively debated; some decisions were contested, and certainly they were not all without cost (this is taken up again in chapter 7).

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Removal of unfair dismissal

The ACTU and others homed in on the removal of unfair dismissal protection from all workers employed in enterprises with less than 100 employees, arguing that 99 per cent of Australia’s private sector employers were small businesses, and predicting that this change would have a huge impact, with 3 761 000 workers losing protection.35 Unfair dismissal legislation would also not apply if an employer (be they small or large) could demonstrate genuine operational reasons for dismissing someone. In practice, this reason became widely used after the Full Bench of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission found that a firm’s need to reduce costs must be accepted as a genuine operational reason. The Full Bench’s decision legitimised the tactic of sacking employees and advertising their positions at a lower rate of pay. Cases in which the worker or union alleged there had been a misuse of employer power, that coercion had been applied to force them to sign an AWA, or that they had been unlawfully dismissed could be taken to the Federal Court at great expense (up to $30 000) if the individual wished to pursue the matter. Driving down wages and conditions

A key argument by the opponents of Work Choices was that the legislation would drive down wages and conditions, especially for lower skilled, vulnerable and casual workers. An extremely contentious aspect of the legislation was the abolition of the twenty basic minimum conditions of the previous industrial relations legislation and their replacement with a minimal rump of five conditions, two of which did not apply to casual employees. The five new protected conditions were – a maximum number of 38 ordinary working hours in a week, though these could be averaged over a 12-month period; a minimum hourly rate of pay (at that time $12.75 per hour, with a 20 per cent casual loading); ten days sick/personal leave and two days compassionate leave; four weeks annual leave (two of which could be cashed out); and 22

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a right to 12 months unpaid parental leave. Under previous laws collective and individual agreements, and AWAs, had to pass the No Disadvantage Test. This test compared the proposed agreement to a relevant award and ensured that the employees covered by the new agreement would, overall, not be disadvantaged. The Work Choices legislation abolished the No Disadvantage Test. Work Choices also narrowly prescribed the content of agreements and awards. Certain key rights previously enshrined in many awards were now expressly prohibited. Trade union training leave was prohibited, as was bargaining for the inclusion of unfair dismissal protection; asking to have unions involved in a disputes-settling procedure was likewise prohibited, as was requesting the inclusion of a commitment against contractingout. Merely asking to include such prohibited content could make a union liable to a $33 000 fine or individual workers liable to a $5000 fine.36 Work Choices gave employers the right to refuse to bargain collectively with their workforce, even when that was the clear preference of the majority or all of their employees. Employers could insist upon imposing AWAs upon all new workers and moving existing workers onto AWAs at the expiry of any current agreement or when conditions changed, such as a worker applying for a different job in the organisation, or even a promotion. Restricted capacity to organise

The Work Choices laws also significantly restricted unions’ rights and capacities to organise. They would no longer have access to non-member records to check for non-compliance. They were required to notify employers before they entered a work site and employers could control where they went on the site. They were also required to notify employers of any alleged breaches before they entered a site. Critically, secret ballots (usually postal) had to be held before workers took industrial action and even then, 23

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if a majority approved the action, up to seven days notice had to be given. Employers, by contrast, could lock workers out indefinitely with only three days notice. Employers were prohibited from paying any employees who engaged in industrial action. Even a 30-minute stop-work meeting required employers to debit employees a minimum of four hours pay. In one of the most notorious examples that arose after the introduction of the legislation, workers at Heinemann Electric in Victoria who put overtime bans in place but were still working normal hours, performing the full range of their duties, were not paid for 40 hours work. In South Australia, Radio Rentals technicians who took part in a four-hour stop-work meeting and refused to sign AWAs, preferring a collective agreement, were locked out by the company for a month. The move to a national system

The Government argued that Work Choices applied to all ‘constitutional corporations’; that it would result in a single national system with initially a few sole traders, incorporated associations, state government bodies and local government exempted and remaining under state systems. The Government intended that all workers would, in time, be covered by the single national system and indicated it would not hesitate to use incentives such as access to essential funding conditional upon compliance, as it did with the universities, to achieve its ends. Each state, and several union groups, mounted a High Court challenge to the constitutional validity of the laws, but the High Court, in a five-to-two majority decision, found the use of the Corporations power to be valid. The shift of industrial relations from the area of conciliation and arbitration to the Corporations power enabled the Government to set terms and conditions of employment, the essential foundation for the suite of changes it was pursuing.37

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Reduced powers of the AIRC

Under the new regime, the powers of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission were greatly reduced; while the Commission could assist in facilitating dispute resolution, it no longer had the power to arbitrate disputes or to make orders in relation to them.38 It would no longer be able create new awards, or hear test cases about industrial standards. The power to set minimum wages was to be transferred to the new Australian Fair Pay Commission. The AFPC did not have to consider fairness in wage determinations and was under no obligation even to hold hearings before making its determination. The process of making AWAs was speeded up, for Work Choices removed the obligation on employers to explain the terms of the proposed Agreement to employees, requiring them only to provide a basic information statement. The Act only required that employees have ‘access to the Agreement for seven days before it is submitted for approval’, which limited their opportunity to fully investigate the terms of the agreement.39 The term of an AWA was extended to five years. Increasing inequality

Unions, academics, welfare and religious groups objected strenuously to the new laws on the grounds that they would increase labour market inequality and most adversely impact on those at the lower end of the market, the workers who were dependent on awards to maintain wages and conditions who would suffer over time as awards expired and were replaced by AWAs, or as they changed jobs and their protected industrial conditions shrank. Not only were lower wages a matter of concern; so too were the span of working hours, shift-work patterns, intensification of work, loadings for unsociable hours, the ability to balance work and family, and to object to conditions without fear of discrimination.40 Opponents of the legislation also strongly argued that even 25

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though some employers would maintain existing award conditions and treat workers fairly in the first couple of years after Work Choices was implemented, this would unravel over time. The pressure of market forces would lead even good employers to reduce wages and conditions to the same level as those offered by their competitors. Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen expressed these concerns this way: Vulnerable workers, or those who have less bargaining power need to be protected from unintended effects of the reforms. It seems at this point that the proposals shift the differential of power in favour of employers, who can have a propensity to mistreat workers in the interests of the business.41

2007: the Government blinks The impact on those at the lower end of the labour market was widely publicised by unions through a series of case studies and regular exposés of the levels to which some employers would stoop in taking advantage of the laws. Early in the campaign the plight of a small group of women workers in rural Victoria was revealed by the Australian Workers Union. In Mildura, a place where there are few alternative opportunities for full-time work, Merbein Mushroom Investments offered its employees AWAs that would cut their pay by around $150 per week, or about 25 per cent, through replacing their hourly rate with piece rates. Some of the women had worked for the company as mushroom pickers for eight years, but were still employed as casuals. Six who refused to sign the AWA were sacked. The AWU’s National Secretary Bill Shorten emphasised the family obligations of these women and how their families would suffer under this agreement: ‘Nearly all these women have children to support. They are hard-working mothers in a difficult industry’. The unions used this example to 26

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highlight the fact that AWAs did not promote choice and were not ‘friendly’ to families, despite the Government’s claims. (The Government’s promotion of Work Choices and the Fairness Test is discussed in chapter 6.42) Another case that attracted public concern was the treatment of young workers at Chili’s restaurant in Wollongong, NSW. Chili’s forced their young and low-paid staff to pay the restaurant the money lost when a customer left without paying. Staff were also expected to make up their own float at the beginning of the evening. Alice McCarthy was expected to cover a $130 bill when her nightly wage was $26.88. Staff were also expected to wait at the restaurant for up to an hour to start work if it was not busy.43 In addition to exploiting young workers through underpayment and shifting to them the responsibility of patrons who refused to pay, Chili’s was accused of lack of care for staff welfare. Another Chili’s worker, Tenika Setter, burnt her eye on steam from the espresso machine at the start of her shift and her manager insisted she stay and work, not ‘let the team down’. Her mother, horrified by her daughter’s weeping eye when she collected her at the end of her shift, rushed her off to casualty for treatment. She told union leaders that when Tenika had come home complaining about conditions, she and her husband thought they were doing the right thing by telling her ‘the world of work is hard, you’ve got to get used to discipline and cope with some things you don’t enjoy’. They believed they were ‘helping support her to grow up and become a part of the mature adult workforce’. Suddenly they realised that their daughter had not been exaggerating, that very unscrupulous practices were being followed – and that whether or not it was legal, it was not moral. Tenika’s story was widely used as evidence that the industrial relations laws had gone too far and the community needed to demand change.44 On 4 May 2007, in the face of a continual stream of similar stories and poor opinion polls, the Prime Minister announced the introduction of a ‘Fairness Test’ for employees earning under 27

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$75 000 per year whose protected award conditions were removed or changed in an AWA. The Fairness Test would be administered by the new Workplace Authority, which would be formed through a reconfiguration of the Office of Employment Advocate (OEA). A new Office of the Workplace Ombudsman would also be established. The Senate Estimates hearings for May revealed that $4.1 million was spent in a single week (21–27 May) on advertising the new safety net, despite the Bill not yet being passed. The Workplace Relations Amendment (A Stronger Safety Net) Bill was passed by the Senate on 20 June 2007.45 The main features of the Bill included the application of a Fairness Test to ensure that employees were ‘fairly compensated’ for the loss of protected award conditions – including rest breaks, incentive-based payments and bonuses, annual leave loadings, overtime and shift-work loadings and penalty rates.46 It was envisaged that in most cases ‘fair compensation’ for the removal of such conditions would mean a higher rate of pay. Non-monetary compensation, such as provision of a car park, private use of a motor vehicle or computer, childcare or meals could also be considered. Redundancy pay was not categorised as a ‘protected condition’ which, considering the number of enterprises which had collapsed in the previous decade, could leave employees in very vulnerable positions. Employees need not be consulted about the value they placed on any particular benefit nor on the compensation provided. The scheme would require employers to submit agreements for vetting by the Workplace Authority. A year earlier, during a Senate Estimates Committee hearing on 29 May 2006, the OEA had revealed that in the first month of their operation 16 per cent of all AWAs filed expressly excluded all protected award conditions, and 100 per cent of them removed at least one protected condition. Later in the year, the media reported leaked OEA internal analysis of over 5000 AWAs which had found that 45 per cent removed all protected award conditions.47 These statistics, together with academic discussion of 28

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the impact of AWAs at the lowest end of the labour market and the ACTU’s campaign, necessitated the creation of the Fairness Test.48 The Government had to be seen to be responsive. There was significant criticism of the Fairness Test, not least because it did not apply to an estimated 300 000 workers registered under Work Choices up until May 2007. In addition, certain groups (such as unemployed, disabled and young people) were not protected because of their particular employment circumstances or lack of opportunities.49 Employers in ‘difficult economic circumstances’ could be granted an exemption from compensation. Employers in regional areas could seek an exemption based on their location. In practice, the implementation of the Fairness Test proved extremely cumbersome. The haste with which it was passed into law left employers in confusion and the Government with insufficient people trained to assess the flood of AWAs. A substantial backlog built up in record time. By 31 October 2007 only 36 per cent of the 183 000 agreements lodged since the test took effect had been finalised.50 Media reports that the Government was relying on unskilled casual employees, including ‘backpackers’, with only six days’ training to assess the Agreements, led to further criticism and hostility.51 The implementation of the Fairness Test and the establishment of new offices to manage it were said by the Government to require an expensive and comprehensive ‘public information’ (advertising) campaign (this is discussed in chapter 6). The renewed debate this provoked on the relative fairness or unfairness of Work Choices may have been counter-productive, reminding people how much they objected to the legislation and distrusted the Government. It certainly brought to light many more examples of AWAs leaving workers substantially worse off, cementing in the public’s mind the idea that ‘bad bosses’ would take advantage of employees now they legally could.

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Instances in which employees were being exploited under the new legislation were, naturally, of great interest to the media and to the general public. The introduction of the Fairness Test extended this frame of reporting, with unions ensuring that fresh examples were regularly provided to the media. The public relations contest over the competing representations of the effects of Work Choices was one of the dominant political struggles of the fourth Howard term. To fully appreciate the significance of this contest, the next chapter discusses the increasing influence of the media on the ways in which politics is plotted and practised in Australia as well as internationally.

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2 The rise of media-driven politics 1

A decade ago journalist Ray Martin said that whenever A Current Affair ran a political story, they could count the television sets being switched off in houses all over the country.2 Despite this, and with audiences for serious news reporting in decline, the media are more important than ever in how people make up their minds about political issues.3 The challenge for politicians, and for organisations advocating particular policies, is to make those issues appeal to both the public and the media – to win hearts and minds they have to market themselves as different in some way, to package their views to appeal to media audiences. Australian political leaders appear on talk shows and breakfast television, on youth-oriented shows such as Rove Live and The Glasshouse in an attempt to get their message across to general audiences. Programs like Australian Story regularly feature profiles of political leaders intended to give viewers the feeling they know something about the private person and their families. Similarly, features in women’s magazines and weekend newspaper supplements are important in building a credible and attractive political persona.4 Political success – for individual leaders, parties, political or social movement organisations – is increasingly tied to a 31

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prominent media profile and successful media management. People once formed their political views and allegiances from personal experience, class, family or community bonds. Political and social ideas were debated through Town Hall meetings, speakers’ corner exchanges, religious congregations, workplace meetings and through publications. Ideas, ideology and policy were more central historically in building political views and affiliations with specific parties than they are today. Once formed, those allegiances were likely to be maintained for life. In more mobile, post-industrial societies like ours, geographic, community, occupational, familial and social bonds are more fragmented and more ephemeral, political and social values more changeable. With heavy demands on their time and competing interests, many people have a low engagement with party politics, seeing themselves as swinging voters to be courted anew at each election. The basis for their decision making, as pollster Rod Cameron baldly told the ALP many years ago, is self-interest.5 Cameron reportedly explained that swinging voters saw politics as ‘dull, boring and largely irrelevant to their lifestyle’. Politicians were ‘held in low regard’. Swinging voters maintained a very low ‘interest in political philosophy, ideology’. They had a ‘far greater involvement and interest in matters concerning their personal and their family’s financial well-being, and their day-to-day interests [sport, family concerns, leisure, recreation]’ than they showed towards politics or ‘even simple questions of ideology and Government’.6 The ongoing challenge, then, is to connect politics to the concerns of daily life. The media, in its widest variety of forms (not only information media), has become our preferred way of finding out about the world. When it comes to politics, the media has shifted from being one of several possible channels of communication about issues to actually constructing politics, as well as circulating political views.7 Policies are assessed by governments in terms of how they’ll ‘play’ in the media. Bad news is released, wherever 32

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possible, on a day where the media is focused on other things. In the most notorious example of this, British government advisor Jo Moore was forced to resign after sending out an email on 11 September 2001, the day of the twin tower bombings in New York, that ‘today would be a good day to “bury” bad news’. Media not only influences policy development but also the presentational style of politicians. They cultivate their personal image, in response to what market research is telling them, in ways that will appeal to particular groups, and use various forms of media from YouTube to the photo-opportunity to circulate that image. News media has, of course, been important to politics for a long time, but the hugely expanded range of media forms and the instantaneous nature of new communication technology mean that it has become ever more critical to the campaigning process. ‘Mediated politics’ and ‘mediatised politics’ (as used in this book) are terms recently coined to describe the phenomenon.8 Women and young people are the audiences least likely to watch or read traditional or ‘hard’ news.9 In their efforts to compete for these audiences, news and current affairs producers are introducing more entertainment values and tabloid style to their reporting of politics. Politicians and their media advisers, along with organisations active in advancing their cause, have to present themselves and their issues in ways that suit these tabloid and entertainment forms. Individual politicians are now marketed as ‘personalities’, with their personal histories, self-presentation and performance styles more important than their policies. Media coverage is oxygen to their careers and their causes. All political parties and most organisations – from churches to trade unions, from employers to welfare, Indigenous, environmental and humanitarian groups – are acutely aware of the need to package their message in ways that attract media attention and suit the short time allotted in most media formats. They train their spokespeople to perform well on camera and in interviews. They develop publicity material that people can 33

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find online and increasingly frame their arguments in response to market research. Australian politics reflect these developments as clearly as do similar democracies such as Britain, Canada and New Zealand, and many of the European nations, particularly France and Italy. Mediatisation is a growing influence on political campaigning in Latin America and Asia.10 Sally Young, an expert on the history of political advertising in Australia, dates the change from the ALP’s 1972 campaign.11 This campaign included a catchy slogan – ‘It’s time’ – that was extensively market tested and resonated widely with the prevailing mood in the electorate. With heavy emphasis on television advertising, and guided by market research and advice from advertising professionals, the campaign carefully constructed an image of Gough Whitlam as a man of the people. That campaign might look simple from today’s perspective, but it was revolutionary at the time; the use of the media has grown in sophistication ever since. The ALP, together with the Liberal and National and to a lesser extent some of the minor parties, has adopted tactics widely used by US political campaign managers. Party officials have closely observed US and British elections. In turn, Australian political campaigners have been engaged overseas. Lynton Crosby ran the successful campaign by Conservative candidate Boris Johnston to oust London’s independent Lord Mayor, Ken Livingstone, in early 2008, and the less successful campaign of the British Conservative Party at the last national election in 2005. Mark Textor was the adviser for Conservative Party leader Michael Howard in the same campaign. When a series of ads that seemed to be using ‘dog whistle’ or wedge politics around immigration and race relations sparked intense controversy, parallels were drawn with Crosby’s campaign for the Coalition in the wake of the Tampa incident in 2001. Political campaigns are increasingly influenced by approaches that work in other places. In an interconnected world, new ideas, policies and 34

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advertising are simultaneously available for consumption, imitation and critique in Washington, London, Toronto, Wellington, Rome and Melbourne.

Mediatised politics and non-party organisations Not only established political parties have recognised the importance of strong media campaigns. Social and political movements internationally, particularly those with a high percentage of younger people in their constituencies, build their campaigns through high-profile media events, celebrity endorsements and dynamic websites. Greenpeace and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) are two of the best known of these movements; think also of the mass protests of the anti-globalisation activists such as occurred in Seattle in 1999.12 The move toward mediatisation poses both challenges and opportunities for trade unions. Unions have traditionally been reported negatively by the mass media, as disruptors, as unreasonable, a threat to peace and prosperity.13 Unions have rarely had the means to conduct extensive paid advertising campaigns to communicate their views in the mass media without interference, relying instead on allied media and direct communication with members. Some Australian and international unions have recently become adept at using alternative media to mobilise membership and, to a lesser extent, community support, but the mainstream media remains important for reaching nonmembers.14 The use of alternative media in the ‘YRaW’ campaign is discussed in chapter 3. The challenge faced by Australian unions in 2005–07 was more significant than previous challenges. Unions had to determine how best to reach not only union members but all working Australians in the low- to middle-income brackets who would be negatively affected by the Work Choices legislation. The ACTU’s 35

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specific target was people in these categories who had voted for the Coalition in 2004 and probably in some of the three preceding federal elections. They had to be convinced to change their vote at the next election, due in late 2007, if the legislation was to be overturned. It was not sufficient to increase trade union membership or to mount protests, for without a change in government the laws could not be abolished. Unions and politicised union members could be relied upon to mount a vigorous and vocal oppositional campaign, but it was essential to reach the swinging voters, the so-called ‘Howard battlers’, many of whom had voted for the Coalition over concern about interest rates, or the preservation of their newly acquired ‘prosperity’.15 The campaign had to be framed in ways that spoke to this group directly about the problems, risks and threats the legislation posed to their way of life. Recognising the scale of the task and the need to make sophisticated media techniques a core part of their strategy, in early 2005 ACTU affiliates voted for a campaign that would be the most expensive and sophisticated ever run by a non-party political group in Australia. Recent events in the country’s labour history and media reporting of them were critical in convincing affiliates of the need to make the leap to mediatised campaigning. Extensive television advertising was a central component of the plan. Funds would be raised through an annual levy on affiliates (of $3.85 per member in 2005 and $5.50 thereafter, inclusive of GST) and through public appeals for donations. The strategic development of the campaign and its messaging would be informed by thorough market research, including polling and focus groups.

International union campaigning: Australian adaptations The ACTU’s responses to the Work Choices laws, in particular the decision to mount extended, resource-intensive media 36

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and community activities, were influenced by three factors: the global mediatisation of politics, which made the logic of mass media advertising irresistible; developments in international union practice; and two key Australian disputes during the term of the Howard government. In May 2004, a delegation of Australian unionists travelled to the United States to study the work of the peak union body, the AFL-CIO, and three affiliates, the Services Employees International Union (SEIU), the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) and the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE). The Australians wanted to observe how these unions were achieving membership growth in an environment very hostile to unionisation. The results were published as the Next Steps: For Australian Unions report, which included comprehensive recommendations for Australian union action.16 Many of the recommendations focused on membership recruitment, organising and internal union management, but the need for effective campaigning was also stressed. Improving the quality and effectiveness of their campaigns has been a consistent concern for Australian unions for over a decade, although never their highest priority. The Unions@work report of 1999 had stressed the critical importance of building campaign capacity; improving media and communications message development; making better use of market research; improving the marketing of unions themselves and union values; forming alliances with other community groups along the lines of the Canadian and US ‘community unionism’ approach, and using members and delegates as spokespeople wherever possible. Improved communication and campaign capacity was also one of the key aims of both the 2003 Future Strategies policy and the Next Steps report.17 The Next Steps study tour observed the lead-up to the 2004 presidential election and participants were impressed by the AFL-CIO’s approach to political campaigning. In the United 37

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States, voting is voluntary; unions have long been actively involved in encouraging members to register to vote and to actually get out and vote. They place particular attention on getting people to register and vote in marginal electorates. Their efforts are not restricted to union members; they have also built relationships with communities through church, ethnic, welfare and local groups, working to encourage non-unionists to vote.18 US unions put a lot of effort into finding out what issues are important to their members and these communities, developing information leaflets outlining the major parties’ policies on these issues and framing messages that respond to the concerns people have raised. In earlier campaigns they focused heavily on television advertising, but in recent years have put more emphasis and resources toward on-the-ground campaigning. Their market research, polling, focus group and message development work, which they had made a budget priority, was a long way in advance of anything Australian unions had previously attempted. US unions spent close to $23 million on advertising in the lead-up to the 2000 presidential election, during which they promoted their ‘Working Families Agenda’, and an estimated $80 million on community-based activities.19 The delegation agreed that Australian unions needed to get more involved in political campaigning and encourage their members to participate. To do so could build their political influence, enabling them to successfully advocate policy positions on behalf of their members. The Australian unionists particularly admired the way their US counterparts had taken the key element of recruitment campaigns, ‘like-to-like’ organising, and implemented this in their political organising campaigns. In this approach, workers recruit their co-workers; as far as possible young workers recruit other young workers, Hispanic or Asian workers organise those of similar backgrounds, women organise other women and so on.20 The US unions were using member organisers to discuss political issues one-to-one with other 38

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members and people in their communities. They found that the more personal the contact, the more successful their campaign. In the 2000 presidential election it was estimated that US unions employed ‘more than 1000 trained field coordinators’ to run voter education and get-out-and-vote activities.21 The Next Steps report recommended that Australian unions become more involved in, and commit more resources to, political campaigning. If they were able to demonstrate the influence and active engagement of their members, then union concerns would become more relevant politically. Unions were charged with the job of identifying members who might be interested in researching members’ attitudes to political issues.22 At the time of preparing the report the delegation could not have realised how critical this approach would become within a mere matter of months. The Howard government’s achievement of a Senate majority meant the union movement needed to draw on every lesson they had learnt from the previous decade. Their commitment to a new, more direct political engagement was timely; it would have been a huge leap to expect affiliates to so radically transform their thinking about campaigning had this groundwork not already been laid.

Media–union relations in the 1990s: two examples Before the ‘Your Rights at Work’ campaign was launched, unions had been reluctant to spend large amounts of members’ funds on advertising. Even in the midst of the Waterfront Dispute in 1998, only one television advertisement was made. It featured the much-admired Hazel Hawke (wife of former Prime Minister and former ACTU President Bob Hawke) in a direct address to the audience, asking how ‘un-Australian’ activities, such as workers being evicted from their lawful place of employment by masked guards with snarling dogs at their side, could occur, let 39

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alone be supported by government. The simple 30-second ad had low production values and ran across only three nights. To move from a one-off ad over three nights to a $30 million television advertising campaign ($8 million in the first year alone) would seem incredible were it not viewed in the context of the overwhelming mediatisation of politics, and recognising that on this occasion it was critical that the broader public be informed about the Work Choices legislation. The unions also hoped that the advertising and high-profile campaign actions would see a boost in membership, or at least offset any fall resulting from the new laws’ restrictions on unions as bargaining agents. Lessons learnt from recent campaigns in Australia included not only the importance of a sophisticated and professional media campaign, but also the paramount importance of discipline, necessary in relation to staying ‘on message’ – a skill heavily stressed by media management professionals – and in sticking to agreed actions, policy, behaviour and inter-union dispute resolution. As the ACTU’s Union Update No. 2, early in 2005, reminded affiliates: ‘Every time a union official is in the media it adds or subtracts from our campaign objectives and core messages. We need discipline and solidarity.’23 1996: the Cavalcade to Canberra and ‘blood on the marble floors’24

The costs of undisciplined, unstrategic, militant action were acutely brought home in 1996 during the large community protests against the Howard government’s first wave of industrial relations reforms, the Workplace Relations and Other Legislation Amendment Bill. The ACTU anticipated 30 000–40 000 people would travel as a ‘Cavalcade to Canberra’ for one of the largest protests ever seen in the national capital. The focus of the day was to be a peaceful rally on the lawns in front of Parliament House, with union leaders joined by speakers from other groups, protesting that the government was acting in an ‘un-Australian’ 40

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manner. The emerging strategy of community unionism, building coalitions and alliances with church, Indigenous, welfare and student groups, was apparent in the plan. In the event, a few hundred protesters, among them unionists, Indigenous activists and students, were prevented from following their pre-arranged route to join their comrades on the lawns and, frustrated, rushed up to Parliament House instead.25 A number attempted to gain access to the main hall through the gift shop, causing significant property damage, and injuries were sustained by police and demonstrators. It was a public relations disaster for the union movement, whose leaders remained in ignorance of events up the hill until too late. Seventy-nine reports on the Canberra ‘riot’ were published in twelve national daily newspapers the following day. Headlines included: ‘Nation’s day of shame’, ‘Day of disgrace’, ‘Un-Australian’ and ‘PM condemns riot bloodshed’.26 News reports that exaggerated the violence and damage built a terrifying picture of mob rule. Estimates of the damage ranged from tens of thousands to many hundreds of thousands. Several papers featured photos of a couple of ‘feral’ members of the CFMEU on their front pages. These images were used to stand for all trade unionists and placed the blame for the trouble squarely with the unions as enemies of the state.27 Police and government accounts of the day’s events held militant unionists and left-wing groups responsible, people, they claimed, who had come prepared to cause trouble. The reports all concentrated on the scale of the damage, the degree of outrage felt by Parliament House staff and the public, and the outrage expressed on their behalf by political leaders. The issues at the focus of the protest were lost from view, and opposition to the Bill discredited. The Prime Minister made the most of the opportunity to attack the unions, arguing that ACTU President Jennie George and Secretary Bill Kelty should take responsibility. The story remained in the news for days and it took a 41

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long time for the ACTU to regain public trust and credibility. Representing trade unions as selfish trouble-makers was common in the 1960s and 1970s, when strikes were more often used as a means of protest and dispute resolution.28 Many older members of the community are familiar with this portrayal, which remains a favourite of newspaper cartoonists, along with the image of unions belonging to the era of dinosaurs and other extinct curiosities. Although the withdrawal of labour is still one key means of industrial protest, days lost to strikes have greatly decreased in Australia, whereas days lost to employers’ lockouts are rising, now accounting for more than half the working days lost to long disputes.29 Trade unions are far more diverse in their leadership, their membership and their industrial and campaigning tactics than they were in the 1970s, a diversity not reflected in the hackneyed stereotypes still wheeled out in newspaper reporting.30 The Canberra experience was seared into the collective union consciousness as a painful example of how the self-indulgence of a few could derail the collective efforts of many. Interviewed in 2001, ACTU Secretary Greg Combet said that after what happened in Canberra he ‘was not going to have the ACTU involved in something we don’t control’. He claimed he was willing to wear criticism arising from such decisions, but that any alliances the ACTU formed had to be with groups that were accountable and understood discipline. ‘The damage of that stuff can be exploited so much. We’re trying very consciously to project [a clear message] to the community about what unions are on about.’31 The coverage of the Cavalcade to Canberra fiasco was also a useful reminder of the working processes of pack journalism. Once a sensational story is up and running it is all but impossible to stem, or to remind people of the underlying issues that triggered the events.32 The experience was taken to heart in the management of the 1998 Waterfront Dispute.

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1998: the Waterfront Dispute: turning public images around

In April 1998, Patrick Stevedores (Patrick’s) sacked their entire Australian stevedoring workforce, sending balaclava-wearing security staff with guard dogs onto the docks at midnight to evict the men at the end of their shift. The management’s aim was to replace the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) members with contract labour-hire staff already trained in Dubai. This scheme had the support of the Australian Government, which had guaranteed the funds for payouts in advance of the action.33 Rumours of an attempt to smash the union had been circulating for months and the union had been preparing as far as it could. But it had no idea what form the attack would take, or the degree to which the Government would support it. Well aware of how easily anger could get out of hand, especially in the face of such intense provocation as was offered to MUA members by Patrick’s, security staff and contract labour, the MUA officials and ACTU constantly stressed the need for disciplined behaviour if the public were to be kept on side. It was widely believed that Patrick’s and the Government expected a violent eruption in response to the mass sacking of the workforce but, despite the outrage of workers and their families, discipline held. The union banned alcohol and violence from the community pickets at the very beginning of the dispute. The rules were enforced – a member who threw a rock and injured a contract worker was expelled.34 Throughout 1997, the Government had been demonising wharfies in Parliament and in the media as uncompetitive, lazy and overpaid. While complaints had been made in the past about pilfering and corruption on the wharves, the manner in which Patrick’s conducted its sackings, in the dead of night, using security guards and snarling dogs, outraged the community. Furthermore, the Government appeared to be conspiring with a private company to deny workers their legitimate rights and entitlements. This was certainly what the union argued, and 43

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many opinion leaders and members of the public had growing sympathy with that view. The union relied on community pickets, peaceful ‘community assemblies’ at the docks, to express their outrage at Patrick’s actions and to deter contractors from crossing the picket line. When Victorian Judge Barry Beach granted an injunction banning any person from the picket line, effectively ruling the community assemblies illegal, the issue became a highprofile civil liberties matter.35 Community groups spoke out in support of the waterside workers. Wharfies and seafarers historically have had strong and deep relationships with the workingclass communities in which they were based, but this time other groups came forward in support, including the churches and migrant and Indigenous groups which had received political or financial support from the MUA. Even some farming communities donated food to the pickets. At the start of the dispute, headlines around the country predicted ‘all-out war’ and blamed the MUA, with one headline reading ‘How the wharfies lost the lot’. The Melbourne Herald Sun printed the news on a black front page, a design device usually reserved for national tragedy. As the dispute went on, however, the media became interested in the deeper issues at stake. By the time the Federal Court found the workers had been sacked illegally and ordered their reinstatement, community feeling had swung behind the union. Even newspapers usually perceived as anti-union and conservative, such as the Melbourne Herald Sun, shifted their stance, eventually displaying (limited) sympathy.36 The way in which John Coombs of the MUA and Greg Combet, then ACTU Assistant Secretary in charge of the ACTU’s case, managed the media and their members won widespread respect. The Waterfront Dispute used little in the way of media gimmicks to draw attention to the wharfies’ case, although the community pickets included entertainment, satire and community art projects. The importance of strategic message manage44

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ment and discipline had been clearly understood by Coombs and Combet from the moment in October 1997 when they found out about the Dubai scheme, where the replacement stevedoring workforce was being trained. The MUA and ACTU jointly commissioned polling on community attitudes to both the wharfies and more general issues to do with work to assist their message development. Media management of the dispute was largely handled by the ACTU’s media officer Claire Curran, Combet and Coombs, with Essential Media Communications (EMC) handling the public opinion research. As the dispute progressed, members of the journalists’ section of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance offered basic media training to other union officials. The key focus was managing daily crises, and the budget was tiny compared to that of the later ‘YRaW’ campaign, all available funds being needed for the legal costs and sustenance funds for members who went without pay for weeks. In 2001 Greg Combet said he had ‘learnt a lot of lessons from the MUA dispute, and how we approached the media strategy. [As a result], we’ve put a lot more resources and staff into media and communication work at the ACTU since Sharon and I took the leadership’.37 The MUA displayed considerable foresight in recognising the value of the virtual media in providing an independent and autonomous voice, creating a sophisticated website featuring some of the union’s history. During the dispute the website became a vital means of getting their side of the story told. Its news digest was updated daily, sometimes more frequently as events broke. The site included accounts from eyewitnesses, picketers, family members of the locked-out wharfies, veterans of previous struggles, legal advice and solidarity messages from all over the world, and became a valuable resource for journalists hungry for new angles on the events and human interest accounts. It was also widely used by community groups, winning the LabourStart website-of-the-week award in February 199838, and has been credited as being highly influential in the public relations struggle.39 45

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The virtual media campaign was assisted by a tireless web activist based in Melbourne who ran a site known as Takver’s Soapbox, on which ‘War on the Wharfies’ included his photographs of the picket lines and reportage of actions along with contributions by other activists. Highlights of both sites have been preserved on the web for historical interest.40 Their value in communicating the union’s account of events, posing questions that the mainstream media would not cover, was widely recognised, and paved the way for the resources devoted to the ‘Your Rights at Work’ website.

Through the screens and on the ground: ‘YRaW’, a hybrid campaign The ACTU leadership, headed by Greg Combet and Sharan Burrow, was convinced that the ‘Your Rights at Work’ campaign had to be waged through the paid media, as well as utilising more traditional campaigning tactics, to win over mainstream public opinion. The challenge was to make people aware of the problems with the laws, and advertising was the best means to that end. To be effective, the ads needed to speak to people about their own concerns and vulnerabilities, eschewing the traditional rhetoric of industrial relations. Market research was the key to developing the best language for these messages. Essential Media Communications directors, Tony Douglas and Elizabeth Lukin in Melbourne, and Peter Lewis in Sydney, had a longstanding relationship with the union movement, understanding union culture and sharing political values. Importantly, they were already trusted by significant affiliates. EMC worked closely with ACTU officials to develop the media strategy and the communication component of the campaign plan adopted by the Executive. Stressing the value of professional media advice, Tony Maher (CFMEU Mining and Energy General President and member of the ACTU Executive) said: 46

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Imagine if we ran a campaign about standards and entitlements. What a joke that would be … It’s only that we got some professional advice, based on good quality focus group research and opinion polls that we’ve been prepared to spend the money to do it professionally.41

Maher and other leaders pointed out that gaining expert advice was made possible by the initial political decision to commit to a major campaign. Advertising would be necessary to change the terms of the debate and to get the message over to non-unionists and to swinging voter members. On its own, however, it would not be sufficient to win the campaign. The ACTU explored the full range of industrial, political, civil disobedience, communication and legal strategies they might pursue to defeat the proposed legislation. Several strategies were adopted and became a key part of the overall campaign, although not all were branded under the ‘YRaW’ banner. Some aspects were run by other groups, while State Labor governments ran information campaigns of their own, gathered evidence of the laws’ ill effects, and mounted challenges in the High Court to the applicability of the laws at the state level. Advertising was widely agreed to be important in getting out the information about the laws and setting up the terms of the debate, but not the sole solution. Television advertising was very expensive and would be met by a levy on affiliates. Those who had doubts about the value of advertisements were worried that advertising did not build union power or capacity, and that the expenditure required meant that contributing unions would have to cut back internal campaigns, organising or industrial budgets, and planned commitments for the future. Others saw advertising as a passive or weak response, preferring the time-honoured approaches of running industrial action (such as stop-works and mass protests). These debates are discussed in chapter 7.

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Trade unions and the labour movement

Unionists are used to taking an active response to challenges, as an expression of power or resistance closely tied to their sense of identity as unionists. Without the active involvement of members the ‘movement nature’ of unionism is lost. The policies of the Accord era (1983–96) have been criticised on these grounds, some maintaining that the union movement is still paying a price for the disengagement the Accord produced. With current organising practices reliant on building active membership, responses to the Government’s industrial policies had to engage the membership on both the individual and collective levels. For some unions this meant mass mobilisations, for action of this sort was essential to their members’ satisfaction with responses to a crisis. Unions with different internal cultures preferred to work through worksites and communities to raise awareness of the laws. A few unions believed that the best solution was to throw all their support into the election contest, campaigning for an ALP victory as their first priority. Over and above these diverse approaches to the campaign, most agreed that some large public protests, well managed and on message, had a critical symbolic role to play. Sky Channel enabled people to come together all over the country in real and virtual unity. (The Sky Channel ‘Days of Action’ broadcasts are discussed in chapters 3 and 4. The place of rallies in twenty-first century campaigning is discussed in chapter 7.) It was essential that personal engagement went further than just turning out for rallies or meetings and going home feeling one had ‘done one’s bit’. Every time union leaders addressed a community meeting they asked people to do something. Unions NSW Secretary John Robertson likened the situation to a war – to win the war ‘you have to take yourself outside your comfort zone and you’ve got to do stuff you would never have contemplated in your life, because if you don’t you’re going to lose’. The campaign had to harness members’ commitment to supporting their union and the movement in general, their anger 48

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at their own loss of rights and conditions, and their political value as individuals prepared to speak out. Union members and other opponents of Work Choices had to take ownership of the campaign, and had to feel that change was possible. The Next Steps report had recommended that unions become more actively involved in on-the-ground political campaigning; the time to prove the value of this approach had arrived. People could become involved through activism at their workplace or through community campaign committees in marginal seats, through contributing to the online forum and becoming part of the email network. The ACTU and individual unions offered a range of suggestions for possible action in support of the campaign, many available through the website. People became most deeply involved via the community campaign committees and activist networks, and personal promotion of the arguments against Work Choices was at least as valuable as hours of primetime advertising. The decision to wage so much of the ‘YRaW’ campaign through the paid media was unprecedented in Australian labour history: if started early enough, its proponents claimed it would enable the unions to frame the discussion on their terms. The experience of the Waterfront Dispute, when the Government made the running at the start, was still fresh. Greg Combet was determined that the ACTU would not wait for the details of the laws but would attack the principles. (The advertising is discussed in detail in chapter 3.) The early launch of advertising generated considerable media debate and built public recognition of the issue, extended by scheduling the advertising to precede the National Days and Weeks of Action by some weeks, allowing unions to circulate their own accounts of the changes and their impact on ordinary working people, families, and part-time and casual workers who were already doing it hard. The Government’s motivation for introducing the laws was positioned as ruthlessly driven by 49

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ideology. The Government’s credibility never recovered from this early attack, as we shall see. ‘YRaW’: a multi-platform campaign

The ‘YRaW’ campaign drew upon features of three phases of political campaigning, ‘traditional’, ‘modern’ and ‘advanced’.42 It also drew on web-based campaigning techniques used by social movement organisations such as Greenpeace, and online campaign groups such as MoveOn in the United States and GetUp! in Australia. Many of these groups, however, were working with an audience more politically and technologically sophisticated than the participants in the ‘YRaW’ campaign. While some ‘YRaW’ campaigners were experienced trade unionists with strong grasp of political and industrial history, others were engaging for the first time, moved by anger about their own situation or the principle of introducing such radical change without a mandate. The ACTU drew upon some existing models for online action, adapting them for their audience, and also devised their own. They combined new and free media, paid advertising, legal challenges and political lobbying with community unionism. ‘YRaW’ was a hybrid model combining elements as diverse as large-scale broadcast addresses to the electorate through paid television ads and one-to-one conversations in workplaces and local communities. The campaign worked as a kind of single-issue advocacy campaign but also functioned, particularly in the latter stages, as an election campaign, even though it was not formally campaigning for the ALP. While reflecting its connection to the traditional labour movement, ‘YRaW’ also had some of the characteristics of a contemporary social movement or single-issue advocacy campaign, including distinctive and pervasive visual branding, a wide range of merchandise, and a unique website. Sometimes supporters of such causes affiliate themselves temporarily, perhaps for the duration of a high-profile campaign, without necessarily forming 50

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To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book

a long-term relationship with the movement. ‘YRaW’ certainly mobilised support outside the traditional union activists. It seems extraordinary to think of unions having become ‘trendy’, but Sydney journalist Malcolm Farr wrote disparagingly, ‘[I]t is politically cool to be heatedly opposed to the Government’s workplace laws’. He argued they had become ‘a trendy cause taken up by people who might recently have been weeping over David Hicks and polar bears’.43 The campaign’s high-profile branding, distinctive website, regular personalised email communications to supporters, potential for active involvement in the workplace or local committees, plus the marginal seats campaign, built the movement. It offered the satisfaction of collective action, solidarity and emotional connections to a campaign that promised to ‘make history’, a goal that could be achieved within a defined period. Advertising could not capture that optimistic involvement and idealism – in fact, some criticised it for circulating images of victims rather than the possibility of change through working together. Strategies 51

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such as the media campaign attracted much debate and attention, but the power of other, less high-profile strategies was less recognised by outsiders. The ‘YRaW’ campaign combined recent developments in political communications and marketing suitable to the Australian scene with techniques and insights from community unionism and social movement campaigning, giving the campaign its particular resilience. The strategic framing and political marketing of the ‘YRaW’ messages were critical to building momentum, building awareness of the issue and reaching people not otherwise connected to unions or politics. (The ways the campaign messages resonated with participants is explored in chapters 5 and 8.) The Internet campaign attracted new participants, giving activists another platform for debating issues and publicising local actions, and building the profile of the campaign as contemporary and forward-looking, appealing to a younger demographic. The community campaign worked to consolidate these messages by demonstrating that thousands of ordinary people were sufficiently concerned to make it a part of their lives and daily conversations many months, even years, before the election was due. The ‘YRaW’ campaign combined the best advice from mediatised politics with the culture of movement politics. The next three chapters discuss the extraordinary success of the ACTU’s advertising campaign and their ‘under the radar’ political grassroots campaign.

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3 Meeting the communication challenge

On 16 March 2005, the ACTU announced a major national campaign ‘to protect and promote the interests of Australian working families against the Federal Government’s plans to radically change Australia’s workplace laws’.1 From the very beginning, the unions identified the crucial importance of communication in ensuring ‘union members and the public are informed about proposed changes to IR laws and what it might mean for them’.2 This chapter explains how the media campaign was developed, breaking new ground by using paid advertising, free and alternative media.

Building community understanding The communication challenge was to convince the public that the Work Choices industrial relations legislation would be harmful now and far into the future; to find ways of expressing the views of unions and union members that non-unionists could identify with; and to defend existing industrial rights and conditions as a community standard. It resulted in the most extensive (and expensive) media campaign ever mounted by a social or political movement in Australia, which will influence the ways other groups and political parties promote their concerns in the future. 53

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The strategy adopted at the ACTU Executive meeting in March 2005 included a ‘comprehensive media campaign to build community understanding of the impact of the changes, and to maximise pressure on the Howard government’.3 This was the first time a union campaign developed a comprehensive media campaign with expensive television advertising as a core component. The communication strategy would be ‘based on extensive research of community attitudes’ in line with the recommendations put forward in the ACTU’s Next Steps report.4 Several messages were identified for unions to include in their publicity and their communications with members, including the argument that the laws represented an attack on Australian values. ‘Australian workers and their families want to live in a country where people are treated decently and fairly. We do not want an American-style underclass in this country, where people are paid as little as $5.15 per hour.’5 The effort to achieve a fair system and to keep it fair was another. ‘For over 100 years, Australia has had a system that has kept our workplaces decent, safe and fair. It has made sure that working families are not left behind.’6 The ACTU advised affiliates that it was critical to draw the links between how people are treated at work and the impact on families and communities. They recommended that wherever possible community representatives and ordinary members should be utilised as spokespersons for community and media events, rather than union officials. It was very important to build a ‘broad coalition of community groups, churches, academics, politicians and some employers to speak against the changes’, thereby placing the public firmly in the foreground as intimately concerned with the laws.7

Managing the campaign The union movement is complex. Unions run their affairs in different ways depending on their history, internal culture, 54

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political perspectives and rules. Some are quite hierarchical and are run from the national office, in others state branches are largely autonomous and may have very different political positions and ways of operating. The ACTU is a peak council to which unions affiliate to pursue mutual interests. Historically, the ACTU has limited power over its affiliates. Its management is split between the governing Executive, made up of elected union representatives (often national leaders) and elected full-time officials, who at the time of the ‘YRaW’ campaign were President Sharan Burrow, Secretary Greg Combet, and Assistant Secretaries Chris Walton and Richard Marles.8 The management of the campaign was effected through a Campaign Committee established by the Executive. Specific aspects were the responsibility of particular officials, with Greg Combet and Sharan Burrow overseeing. The Committee included about twenty members and met four times a year. Too unwieldy to manage the day-to-day decisions, its role was advisory, leaving decisions about implementing the media and communications strategy to a small working group of Greg Combet, George Wright (Communications and Policy Coordinator) and Tony Douglas, from Essential Media Communications (EMC). Other senior ACTU officials were involved from time to time, providing feedback and input into the scripts for major events such as the national Days of Action broadcasts. National union and state Labor Council officials provided valuable feedback on local responses to campaign events and emerging issues. Individual unions collected the stories of members exploited by the laws; these became case studies in the publicity material. Other officials took responsibility for separate elements of the campaign, Chris Walton managing the political operation, including the community campaign in marginal seats. ‘YRaW’ public activities would eventually include the advertising and information campaign aimed at the general public, large-scale public events, legal, industrial and political 55

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actions, some backed by commissioned research, with a parallel campaign run in workplaces and communities. The unions were determined to mobilise the maximum possible opposition to the changes. Framing the campaign through polling and research

One of the distinctive features of ‘YRaW’ planning was the extent to which the ACTU undertook polling among the target audiences to ‘test the waters’. Unions NSW has undertaken annual polling on four key questions for many years, while individual unions have from time to time undertaken market research to test attitudes to issues relevant to their members. This time, however, unions repeatedly polled their own memberships, and the electorate more generally, to most effectively shape their messaging. Polling revealed that in many marginal seats the potential for shifting union members’ votes would be sufficient to see the seat change hands. Some unions found to their chagrin that up to 60 per cent of their members had voted for the Coalition at the last election. The research provided insights into the key issues of concern to the electorate and the kind of language voters used to describe their concerns. The initial 2005 research to test campaign strategy and key advertising ideas took place with a series of focus groups in four states, involving a mix of general voters and AMWU members. Subsequently, focus groups were convened to test advertising and responses to particular issues as the campaign progressed. The target demographic for the greater part of the research was those earning less than $60 000 p.a. with some responsibility for dependents. The first activity was a poll to test the level of awareness of the laws and their likely impact, to provide a benchmark. The AMWU and ACTU subsequently ran tracking polls to chart shifts in knowledge and opinion against this benchmark. The tracking polls all went in the same direction – up. Early in 2006, the ACTU, through EMC and AusPoll, ran a 56

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very large poll in 25 Liberal-held marginal seats. Tony Douglas from EMC and George Wright described this poll as ‘groundbreaking’. Its purpose was to determine what issues were on the national agenda and how they interrelated; the impact they had on voter choice, and the language that could be used to defuse issues or move them up the agenda. The poll aimed to understand the political environment in which the unions were campaigning. It was far more comprehensive than anything undertaken previously and, according to Douglas, provided more detailed information than nearly all previous party-initiated polls, at least on the Labor side. The development of the research framework, the interpretation of results and the shaping of campaigning messaging were critical. EMC and the ACTU were assisted in this by Vic Fingerhut, a strategic communications specialist who had worked for the peak US union body, the AFL-CIO, and the US Democratic Party.

Getting the message right: ‘framing’ To appreciate the sophistication of the messaging in the ACTU campaign, it helps to understand the concept of ‘framing’. George Lakoff, in his popular and very useful book Don’t Think of an Elephant!, explains that ‘frames are the mental structures that shape the way we see the world’.9 Framing is the art of using language and ideas together to best express your viewpoint and to promote it to others, and is central to political campaigning and advertising. Between 2005 and 2007 people involved in the ‘YRaW’ campaign found themselves spending a lot of time (often for the first time) thinking about the way they framed their concerns. Some of the most influential findings of the early research concerned framing for discussion of the likely laws. Focus groups tested three different ways of talking about them. One concerned the changes to the industrial relations system, which went over 57

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many people’s heads and proved too technical for a general audience; another approach was built around the question of fairness, the approach many – in the movement – assumed would work best. However, it turned out that fairness is a subjective concept. A number of people in the focus groups, especially lower-paid women with family responsibilities, thought the existing system was unfair, that they had never experienced fairness. It was clear that although people felt strongly about fairness, and wanted to experience fair treatment, there was insufficient consensus about what fairness meant to base a campaign around the term. It lacked impact. The third approach was to frame the discussion of the laws around the issue of rights at work. This won strong recognition. People were not always certain about what specific rights they had, but they believed they did have rights and objected to losing them. Rights were not seen as subjective, but as objective and concrete. Rights were what Australians used to possess and were now being threatened; this produced strong opposition. Framing discussion around rights was the most powerful approach, and the easiest for audiences to relate to. The frame of rights also evoked positive associations with the traditional role of unions in supporting and protecting working people from abuses of their rights. It linked easily into discussions about the kind of Australia people wanted to live in, the qualities of the nation that they cared about and wanted to see preserved in the future. People wanted an Australia where working people had rights, where they were respected and where there were no extreme power differentials at work or in wider society. Despite fairness being unworkable as the main hook, people both in the focus groups and more generally remained very committed to the idea of the ‘fair go’ as an expression of the kind of country Australia has traditionally been and should remain. This was reflected in numerous comments on the ACTU website. The campaign thus settled on nationalism and the concepts of 58

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the ‘fair go’ and ‘Australian values’ as the context for its discussion of rights, because that is how people expressed how they felt about these issues. It is also the way the union movement has historically campaigned. Polling established early on that framing questions was vital to setting up a political understanding of issues. The most notable example of this was the variation in the question so often asked in mainstream polling, ‘Who is better at managing the economy?’, which almost invariably produced answers favouring the Coalition. When the question was rephrased as, ‘Who is better to manage the economy in the interests of working families?’, the response swung heavily toward the ALP. It was clear that linking political and economic policy to the experiences and interests of working families would advantage both the ALP and the ACTU campaign. (The representation of ‘working families’ in the ads is discussed below, while the way the term works to include and exclude certain groups is discussed in chapter 8.) Polling undertaken in this period and previously showed that the public is not unsympathetic to unions. In 2002, NSW Labor Council polling found that only 19 per cent of respondents thought Australia would be better off without unions.10 The Australian Survey of Social Attitudes, undertaken in 2005, found that 43 per cent of non-union members interviewed thought workers would be worse off without unions; the percentage was far higher among union members. It also found that 85 per cent of ‘willing union members and unrepresented workers’ believed unions should have the same or more power, along with 44 per cent of non-members.11 This shows a marked change from the 1980s, when more than 80 per cent of survey respondents to a similar question thought unions had too much power. Some of the ACTU polling explored attitudes to unspecified union campaigns. One of the questions ran along the lines of: ‘When you hear that a union is running a campaign on some issue, do you generally think that this will be helpful or harmful 59

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to your family?’ In response to an unspecified campaign, about 60 per cent said ‘helpful’, 15 per cent said ‘harmful’ and 25 per cent were ‘unsure’. When the question was posed around campaigns on occupational health and safety, or wages and conditions, the positive response was overwhelming, rising to 75–80 per cent of respondents. This showed that there was broad support for union efforts in particular fields of activity. It would therefore be important to keep this link in the public campaigning. The changes to unfair dismissal laws were a particularly unpopular aspect of the legislation – making large numbers of people, particularly women and young people working in small businesses, feel acutely vulnerable. The Australian Survey of Social Attitudes found that 79 per cent of people argued there should be a law to protect all workers in Australian from unfair dismissal, with only 11 per cent disagreeing.12 As the laws came into force, and increasing numbers of stories circulated about people being 60

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moved onto AWAs that did away with penalty rates and leave loading, the issue of the fragility of wages and conditions once thought secure and relied upon to meet everyday commitments became more widely understood. These findings, pointing to rights as the most appropriate frame for messaging, surprised many officials, as they indicated a more political response to the laws than they had expected. However, the focus groups also demonstrated strongly individualistic responses to the issue, an insight which became influential in shaping the advertising message. One of the initial challenges was to establish, for audiences and voters, the origin of their rights at work. A surprising number of people thought that their rights and entitlements were provided either by the government or by benevolent employers, a perception that needed to shift if they were to fully grasp the threat posed by the laws. The ACTU and EMC did not want to tie the campaign to traditional representations of unionism, nor to dwell on historical narratives of struggle, but it was vital to demonstrate that the rights and entitlements people now enjoyed and relied upon had come from the struggles of previous generations of workers in concert with their unions. This message was not central to the paid advertising (although it did feature in the ‘Three generations’ ad) but was clearly spelled out in more detailed leaflets, in the scripts for the Sky Channel broadcasts and in one-to-one discussions. (Chapter 7 canvasses this choice and the possible opportunity costs of omitting this message from the advertising.) The aims of the advertising campaign, arising from the initial research, were to establish recognition that people had rights and that the new laws would take them away; to establish the need for working families to fight for these rights and the recognition that they were worth fighting for. In the final year of the campaign, the aims would be to get people to vote against the Howard government and for a party committed to restoring 61

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workers’ rights. This logic led to the campaign slogan. According to Peter Lewis (EMC), Tony Douglas (EMC director) came up with the ‘your rights at work’ catch-phrase, which usefully highlighted individual connections to the campaign, but on its own lacked sufficient impact to motivate people to take action. Lewis suggested the second half of the slogan, the call to action, ‘worth fighting for’, which came to be widely recognised. In the final year of the campaign the message was modified to ‘worth fighting and voting for’ to focus on the action the unions wanted people to take at the election. The message was so successful that it evolved in 2008 to express the ongoing struggle to achieve paid maternity leave: ‘Mums’ rights at work’. Also in 2008, ‘Your rights at work’ was harnessed to promote recruitment through the replacement of the phrase ‘worth fighting and voting for’ with ‘worth joining for’. The campaign organisers faced the difficult task of making the message relevant to people with other concerns and priorities who, in general, were neither interested in politics nor active in their unions. The campaign also needed to establish its relevance quickly, explaining the ways the laws would impact upon the everyday lives of ordinary, battling Australians, and to communicate in ways that recognised the complexities of ordinary lives, not just via the simplistic and traditional dimension of ‘worker’. As Tony Douglas explained it: ‘People have multiple self-identities. You can be a working person and a mother and a sister and a daughter and a holder of a substantial mortgage. You can have seven or eight different roles in your life.’13 The campaign advertising and other communications had to explain the impact of the new laws in ways that spoke to people in relation to these different roles and about the ways other aspects of their lives would be affected. EMC’s Tony Douglas commented: And one of those things is, how is this [change] going to impact on the kids? How is it going to impact on your role 62

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as a mother, your role as a working person who is also a mother and primary carer of your kids, which is the first ad [featuring Tracy]. So what happens when you’ve lost control of the roster? All of a sudden that difficult juggle has been made impossible because of people changing this law on you. And then you have to plead as a daughter with your mother to come and help. And that’s just impossible for a lot of people. For a lot of the people in that situation it’s their greatest fear.14

Insights into different responses Analysis of polling results revealed men and women thought about the new laws in quite different ways. In general, men were more confident that they could bargain effectively with their employers and that their value would be recognised; they did not like to admit potential weakness or vulnerability. This made the message about everyone becoming vulnerable tricky to communicate. Men in their twenties and thirties especially did not want to hear that they could be dismissed unfairly and lose their rates and conditions. Even when they agreed that the laws were a ‘bad thing’, they did not want to recognise that they might be personally vulnerable. Men in their fifties were more willing to express concern. Having been around the workplace for much longer, most had observed at least some instances of unfair treatment and could see how the new laws would exacerbate this. Devising a way of presenting the issues that men could relate to without challenging their self-belief as ‘invincible’ posed a dilemma. Blue-collar union officials I interviewed confirmed that this attitude was particularly prevalent in the mining, construction, transport and manufacturing industries. But the research also found that these men recognised that problems might arise in the treatment of younger workers or those with less bargaining power. They were worried about their children, their wives and 63

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partners and, sometimes, their mates. This offered a pathway to making ads that spoke effectively to male audiences. Women were very concerned about the laws’ impact on their own security of work, their pay and conditions, and their hours. They were anxious about the impact on younger workers, those just starting out and those in casual jobs. In focus groups, women who felt their own situations were secure could empathise with others in the group who felt vulnerable, and with stories about people who had been badly affected by the laws. George Wright observed that male participants tended to be influenced by ‘evidence’. They believed their opinions were based on fact, and that they had reached their position through logical reasoning, even if they were actually selecting facts that fitted their existing opinions. Publicly available polling by companies such as Roy Morgan and A.C. Neilsen also showed that women were most concerned about the impact of the laws. A year into the campaign, in April 2006, the Morgan telephone poll showed 10 per cent more women (57%) than men (47%) thought the laws would be a ‘bad thing for Australia’ and 59 per cent of women to 56 per cent of men disagreed with them.15 This gender difference was particularly significant, as women had favoured the Coalition strongly at the 2004 election, not having warmed to Mark Latham as ALP leader. Another significant point to emerge from ACTU research concerned the way people thought about themselves. The original group surveyed, earning between $50 000 and $80 000 p.a., thought of themselves as ‘working people’. Sometimes they expressed identity in class terms, as lower or even middle class, but this perception was not exclusive of the idea that they were working people or working families.

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The target audience: ‘working families’ The research was concentrated on voters with established families. Young voters were not initially perceived as central to the ‘YRaW’ campaign, at least not to the advertising element, although SA Unions Secretary Janet Giles, among others, argued strongly that the campaign should also directly target young people. George Wright argued that the priority needed to be a ‘very strong message for the core middle, the mainstream’. He saw the push to address various segments of the electorate as risky, potentially fragmenting the message. Over time, however, a number of ads were developed addressing young people alongside the target audience. In one, a father and daughter speak to the camera about her new AWA, which significantly erodes her conditions. Young people also featured in several of the ‘real workers, real stories’ television ads, and some of the radio ads were designed to appeal to a younger demographic and placed on programs which attracted younger audiences. These included the ‘Boys in the boardroom’ commercial, which started life as a radio ad (‘Executive bonuses’) in the satirical mockumentary style widely used in advertising to youth audiences, and in its television version so offended the business community it reportedly became one of the triggers for their own advertising campaign. (See discussion of the Business Coalition for Workplace Reform advertising in chapter 6.) In the ‘YRaW’ advertising the characters in the ‘working family’ style ads are shown in light, modern living areas. Family members prepare meals, worry over the new AWAs and do homework. They drive modern, middle-of-the range cars. They fret about taking the kids to school and footy training and picking them up from after-school care. They stress over the cost of fuel, groceries and household bills and whether they can afford to help their child with university fees. In advertising-speak they are referred to as the ‘footy dad’ and/or ‘soccer mum’. The ACTU was the first group in Australia to effectively build political 65

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advertising around working families’ experiences and concerns (see discussion of individual ads below).

The paid media advertising campaign The ACTU’s television advertising campaign was significant both for its innovative and effective ads, and for its expense, with $30 million spent between June 2005 and November 2007.16 Nearly twenty advertisements were produced, some in multiple versions. Individual affiliates including the CFMEU Construction Division, Australian Nursing Federation, Australian Education Association and the CPSU also produced television advertisements focusing on their particular issues.17 The CPSU ad, promoting the value of union membership, screened in Canberra and Darwin, cities with high public sector employment. The first ads were launched in June 2005, ten days before the inaugural national Week of Action was held. The launch attracted substantial free media coverage, boosting recognition of the ads and public interest in the campaign to come, and was timed to increase recognition of the issues and awareness of other campaign events. The ACTU was criticised by the Government and business for scaremongering, which in turn increased public interest in the ads. Minister for Workplace Relations Kevin Andrews called them ‘deceptive’, ‘misleading’, ‘dishonest and wrong’.18 Although the ads were launched well before the Government had released any details of its proposed laws, given the public statements, demands by industry and previous attempts to change industrial relations laws, it was fairly clear what the laws would be attempting to do. The pre-emptive strike allowed the ACTU to frame the debate in its own terms, to raise questions in people’s minds in advance of the laws and to build opposition in the hope that the worst aspects of the proposals might be ameliorated. The first ads focused on the themes of unfair dismissal and individual contracts reducing existing conditions. Devised by 66

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Essential Media Communications from the focus group research, the two ads linked the changes to industrial relations with people’s existing concerns about the role of work in their lives, its costs, rewards and increasing insecurity. It used to be ‘you work hard, you get ahead’19

One of these ads introduced the woman who would come to be recognised all over the country as the public face of the ‘YRaW’ campaign. ‘Tracy’ is at home, playing with her two young children, when her boss calls and asks her to come in to work. She explains she’s rostered on for the following night and can’t come because she has no one to mind her children. Her boss threatens her with the sack if she doesn’t come in. Shocked, she protests, ‘You can’t sack me!’ He explains that under the new laws he can dismiss her. Desperate, and watched closely by her apprehensive children, she rings her mother to plead for help.

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Tracy successfully swung the focus of debate over the laws from the traditional approach, concerned with the technical aspects of the changes, to their human impact on individual workers and their families. She made the issue real for many hundreds of thousands of Australians. Indeed, the ad was so strong that by the end of the campaign people believed it was real and that they’d seen Tracy’s story on a current affairs program. The actress who played Tracy says she still gets comments from people on the street wishing her luck, asking how her children are and hoping she’s found a better job.20 The Tracy advertisement pitched its message to that significant group of working women who juggle paid employment with childcare and are constantly anxious about how they will manage if something goes wrong or a child falls ill.21 Through Tracy, the ACTU addressed viewers primarily as mothers trying to deal with the unreasonableness of work and employers. The ad gave a powerful voice to the mundane nightmares of many Australian working women. It carried a powerful message that resonated across talk-back radio and suburban barbecues, well beyond its initial life and subsequent repeats. It created a sense that unions care widely about people, not just their members, and lay at the heart of the ACTU’s bid for broad community support.22 The Tracy ad resonated with working women who might not readily identify with the union movement, women who are not easily moved by union demonstrations and who do not necessarily identify with public protest – a key audience which has moved away from traditional news media.23 Public relations campaigns including advertising are essential to reaching this demographic. The message was that the government which had promised unprecedented prosperity was implementing new laws that would not only take away their job security but also this prosperity. By driving wages downwards through the loss of penalty rates and the removal of certainty, the new industrial relations laws would threaten the stability of family life. These are complex messages 68

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not easily conveyed by the usual industrial campaigning and far better suited to the symbolic richness of advertising. Fathers, too, were addressed. In an ad set on a suburban oval ‘Ross’ (the ‘footy dad’) and his son are having a few kicks after school. Ross tells viewers that his boss has changed his shifts to include Friday nights and Saturday mornings.24 Ross says he told the boss he couldn’t work Friday nights ‘cos the missus works’ and he coaches under-12s on Saturday mornings. His disgusted comment to the audience is that he ‘thought this country cared about families’.25 In another ad launched at the same time as ‘Footy dad’, ‘Sarah’, a young woman who works at a fast-food outlet, tells viewers the new AWA she has been offered cuts her pay by more than $1000 through the removal of penalty rates. She is indignant 69

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and confused. She works really hard and is still doing exactly the same job, so why is this happening to her? Sitting beside her is her father. A rumpled-looking man in his early forties, he invites the viewers to share his frustration: ‘It’s stuffed, isn’t it? She’s just a kid’. Both these ads included clips of the Prime Minister claiming his government had ‘been the best friend that the workers of Australia have ever had’. The claim was always likely to get him into trouble, but used like this it provided pointed evidence of the Coalition being out of touch with the realities of their former battler constituency. The characters of Ross and Sarah’s father were designed to remind such men that they are vulnerable too, if not directly. They picked up on the acknowledgment of the men in focus groups that, even if they might be able to maintain their conditions, their wives and children would not fare as well. Tracy, Ross and Sarah were actors playing roles developed from the stories of union members.26 The ETU ran print ads in the Football Record magazine as early as 1 July 2005, claiming that the new laws would mean ‘footy with the kids would be a thing of the past’.27 Several blue-collar unions ran similar stories in their journals, linking the scenario in the ad to the volunteer work of their members who coached footy, rugby and cricket. By combining experiences from domestic life with the campaign against Work Choices, the ACTU (and EMC) ensured the debate became part of the fabric of daily life, on morning radio and sports show talkback programs, at social events, at children’s sporting events, with families and friends. As the activists working in marginal seats found, talking about the politics of work – especially in the context of the way it impacted on family life – had become acceptable, even welcomed. (Talking about politics is discussed further in chapter 8.) Ads focusing on the struggle to balance the demands of work and family life under heartless laws ran throughout the campaign. An ad from 2006 shows a working mother supermarket shopping 70

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on the way home, her husband Paul filling the car with fuel. At home, Paul recommends she take a look at his new individual contract. In return for 1 per cent extra, he’ll be on the weekend roster and will no longer receive penalty rates. Shocked, she asks, ‘Can they do that?’ Paul replies sadly, ‘They can now.’ Shaking her head, she says, ‘So you have to work weekends, for no extra pay? It used to be “you work hard, you get ahead”.’ In a follow-up scene, the couple discuss what costs they need to cut to make ends meet. Paul says they won’t be able to help their daughter Kim with her university fees the following year. Appalled, his wife exclaims, ‘But we promised her if she worked hard, we’d help her.’ The final voice-over asks viewers: ‘What will the new IR laws cost your family?’ ‘Real people, real stories’: irate workers front the cameras

In 2006, the ACTU extended ads about workers’ experiences under the new laws into a range of ‘real people, real stories’ ads, where real workers fronted the camera to tell the nation about the problems they had. Several had not previously been union members or even ALP voters, but their experience of injustice made them angry and willing to go public. The first of these ads went to air in June 2006, in the lead-up to the national Week of Action. Featured prominently in this ad were several of the Cowra abattoir workers, who were sacked on 31 March 2006, just a few days after Work Choices took effect, and offered the chance to apply for a smaller number of the same jobs but with an approximately $200 per week cut in pay. In a rural area like Cowra there were no alternative jobs to move to, so they had no choice. Their union (AMIEU) and the ACTU drew public attention to their plight and the case provoked public outcry. Both the Prime Minister and the Workplace Relations Minister made public statements to the effect that the company should not be dismissing ‘workers in order to re-employ them on inferior terms and conditions’, with Andrews claiming there were provisions in 71

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the legislation to prevent that, although both he and the Prime Minister stopped short of claiming the company’s actions were illegal.28 ACTU Secretary Greg Combet pointed out on the other hand that it was now, under Work Choices, legal for employers to dismiss workers for ‘operational reasons’ and then offer to reemploy them on lower pay. Under significant political pressure the Cowra abattoirs re-employed the meatworkers. The Government claimed this showed their new laws ‘worked’. However, it quickly became clear that sackings for operational reasons were indeed lawful under the Act.29 The Cowra workers were joined in the first ad by workers from different sectors who had all been sacked under the new industrial relations laws in ways that would have been illegal under the previous laws. These included a local government employee sacked by text message for asking for a first-aid kit in her van, childcare, hospitality and retail workers, and two managers. Subsequent ads in the series featured distribution, manufacturing and transport workers. Two of the workers in the first of this series were young women; one was Anglo-Asian in appearance, the first use of a person of non-Anglo appearance in the campaign advertising. Several versions of these ads were made, some encouraging viewers to support the union campaign, one of the only times that the union movement was mentioned directly in the ads. This series provoked furious denunciation from the Prime Minister and several government ministers.30 The Sydney tabloid, the Daily Telegraph, ran a front-page story accusing the workers and the ACTU of lying.31 The Government claimed the Office of Workplace Services had investigated the claims made by the workers and found them to be false. This raised questions about the confidentiality of OWS, and the propriety of releasing or leaking findings to the newspaper; furthermore, most of the workers concerned said they were not spoken to by OWS. The Government criticism wilfully misrepresented the complaints in the ads. 72

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The ACTU acknowledged that some of the employers’ actions were legal, this being the crux of the complaint – that under Work Choices, natural justice and dignity were being denied to workers, with too much power being invested in employers. The Government’s strategy here was aimed at shifting media coverage from the unfairness of the laws to a dispute between the Government and the ACTU over credibility. Such a shift would confuse the public and perhaps make the media disinclined to run more stories about the repeated instances of employers sacking workers. The Government’s ploy was clearly an attempt to intimidate other workers who might be considering going public with their experiences. The ‘real people’ ads provided faces of ordinary Australians of all ages, though predominantly Anglo-Saxon, who had suffered materially and psychologically because of the laws. Here was the evidence that the Government, driven by ideological zeal, was out of touch – and not just with the battler constituency. Managers and other highly skilled workers were featured, and loyal Coalition supporters. In two of the most powerful ads, lifelong Liberal voters repudiated the party, which they claimed had betrayed ordinary voters who’d been loyal to them over years. ‘John Howard was my hero’: Liberal voters condemn the laws

Annette Harris, a 58-year-old NSW worker with adult children – known locally as ‘the wool lady’ – became the face of the Spotlight dispute. In May 2006 Spotlight, a major haberdashery chain store with branches all over Australia, introduced a new AWA which shifted many employees from permanent part time to casual. The AWA removed all Annette Harris’s penalty rates, overtime, holiday pay and other allowances. It paid her $14.30 per hour whereas her previous rate had been $14.28 per hour plus loadings. She lost entitlements worth over $90 per week. She was outraged. For her, the experience was a bitter personal betrayal, as she had previously regarded John Howard as her 73

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hero, likening him to Prince Charming or her own Don Bradman. Her story appeared in her local paper, the Coffs Coast Advocate, and she featured in an ACTU television advertisement. She was transformed from a loyal Liberal Party supporter into a powerful ‘YRaW’ advocate. The evidence that mainstream older workers were rejecting the Howard government over their unfair Work Choices legislation was of enormous value to the campaign. Annette Harris’s story attracted substantial free media coverage, and circulated through the networks of quilters, hobbyists and sewers patronising Spotlight. Many of these people (primarily women) wrote to the company expressing their disgust at the treatment of their workers; many signed petitions or joined in protests outside their local stores. Some wrote to John Howard. Online quilters’ newsletters, not usually sites of political recruitment, buzzed with anger and pledges that this was sufficient to make people change their votes.32 Victorian Andrew Cruickshank was another Liberal voter to publicly reject the Government over Work Choices. He had been employed as a planner for the variety chain Priceline when he was sacked for ‘operational reasons’. A few weeks later he saw his job advertised for $25 000 a year less. Cruickshank took the company to the AIRC but lost, because such actions were legal under Work Choices legislation. Incensed, and concerned for other workers and their families who would suffer, Cruickshank and his entire family appeared in an ad for the ACTU opposing the legislation, which aired from September 2007 in the key period building up to the election. Cruickshank had never previously voted for the ALP and did not think of himself as an activist. Had he not had this experience he would probably still have voted for the Liberals in 2007. Cruickshank’s story demonstrated that the laws could affect people at the top end of the job market as well as at the lower end.

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Ducks and boardrooms: variations on the advertising template

In March 2007, the ACTU released three advertisements in a different style. The ‘Sitting ducks’ ad featured cut-out figures crossing the screen, as in a shooting gallery, being ‘popped off ’ by aspects of the Work Choices legislation. Colourful and funky, it may well have appealed to younger viewers with sufficient understanding of the issues to get the message; not all unions felt it was successful. The TWU, for instance, found it did not work for their members.33 The ‘Sitting ducks’ image featured on one of the leaflets about the impact of the legislation distributed to letterboxes in marginal seats. Another ad released in March was known as ‘Cuts, cuts, cuts’. It featured a rolling list of conditions, benefits and entitlements that the legislation had removed. This was a simple ad that made a change from the human drama of the majority of the ads and appeared to be successful. The third of these ads drew very mixed reactions. Known as ‘The boys in the boardroom’, it had started life as a radio ad called ‘Executive bonuses’. The 2007 Australian Election Study had found 67 per cent of people thought big business had too much power compared to only 37 per cent who thought unions did, while previous studies such as the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes reached similar findings.34 The mockumentarystyle ad shows board members sitting around a table discussing a company’s financial outlook. They are told that under the new industrial relations laws they can cut labour costs by 10 per cent through scrapping penalty rates, overtime and the like. One board member asks, ‘But is that fair?’ The Chair replies, ‘That’s beside the point. It’s the law and we look after our shareholders first. OK, next item, executive bonuses.’35 Employer groups were incensed; the ad was a decisive factor in convincing several employer groups to support the anti-union pre-election advertising campaign (see chapter 6). 75

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The impact of the ACTU campaign Opinion polls showed a clear correlation between surges of public opposition to the laws and ACTU advertising or major events. Support for the ALP also rose at those times. Polls taken after the November 2005 Day of Action showed big bounces in identification of industrial relations as an election issue and in support for the ALP. Similar bounces occurred after the June Week of Action in 2005 and 2006, and after new ads were screened. George Wright analysed the poll trends for the ACTU Executive, along with their own internal polling. In May 2005, before the commencement of the advertising and Week of Action, 38 per cent of people polled were aware of the laws and 35 per cent believed they would be bad. By August, average trends showed that awareness of the laws had grown to 77 per cent and opposition to 64 per cent. By late 2005, 62 per cent believed workers were worse off on individual contracts. Polling also showed that case studies were very important to the credibility of the ACTU campaign. In addition to continuing to use case studies in their free and paid media, the unions now compiled a booklet of workers’ experiences for distribution to politicians. A Morgan Poll in November 2005 showed that 1.5 million nonunion members would like to belong to a trade union.36 The same poll showed that in addition to the 24 per cent of Australians who belonged to a union, another 12 per cent lived in a household with a union member, a reminder that unions can connect to non-members in a variety of ways. Throughout 2006 and 2007 public opposition to Work Choices remained firm. There was a period of intense political and media debate over the laws when they were introduced into Parliament, and leading up to the date they took effect in March 2006.37 In early April 2006, Morgan found that 57 per cent of people disagreed with the laws (an 8 per cent rise in disapproval from their earlier poll of October 2005), 20 per cent agreed and 23 per cent couldn’t say.38 The comments quoted by the pollster echoed the 76

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script of the Days of Action broadcast and the ACTU ads: They have turned the clock back about 100 years. They have basically emasculated all unions. It’s nice to say that workers are protected, but the news every night has examples of bosses sacking their workers. I don’t like how employees are going from permanent back to casual. There’s no guarantee of your job anymore – here today, gone tomorrow. If you don’t get along with your boss or supervisor, you can lose your job.39

Michele Levine from Morgan Research said in July 2006 that industrial relations was the ‘sleeper issue’ in relation to the election. In mid-2006, ALP support jumped to 53.5 per cent after Kim Beazley promised to ‘rip up’ the industrial relations laws. Even in the middle of the ALP leadership tension in November 2006, the Morgan Poll showed the ALP held a two-party preferred lead over the Coalition of 53 per cent to 47 per cent.40 By March 2007, 51 per cent of people thought that Work Choices would be bad for the economy and only 32 per cent thought it would be good. The economy and jobs were the two strongest arguments used by the Government to justify the laws; even these aspects were not believed by the majority of voters. The ACTU campaign, across its various platforms, was responsible for this consistent public opposition.41 Some union officials became concerned that the scenarios in the advertisements always depicted workers as victims. To serve their other purpose of motivating people to join unions, they felt that at least some of the ads needed to spell out the value of collective effort and the unions’ contribution to making things better. (This discussion is taken up further in chapter 8.) In early 2008, the ACTU launched a new advertising campaign, ‘It’s time to deliver’, reminding the ALP of what workers wanted to see from their industrial relations laws.42 77

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The virtual campaign: ‘YRaW’ on the Web In another innovation, on 1 November 2005 the ACTU established a stand-alone website as a means of promoting the ‘YRaW’ campaign and attracting new participants. The site had a distinctive home page and was linked to the ACTU home page. Most unions had a prominent link to it on their websites. Heavily promoted through the November 2005 Sky Channel broadcast and related publicity, the ‘YRaW’ website attracted over 600 000 unique visitors over the course of the campaign. The establishment of a community forum on the site allowed an interactive relationship with activists, and the development of a virtual community. The website was a central repository for media releases, information kits, graphic devices, current campaign news, archived speeches and video clips. Over 190 000 people subscribed to the site, receiving email updates and action alerts. Jessica Stanley, the Online Director, said she never sent out a notice without asking people to do something. Her aim was to channel public distaste for Work Choices into concrete action and move people from online activism to offline activism. She invited subscribers to make financial contributions online toward a full-page ad in the Australian (another first for the Australian union movement) and toward a billboard on the Tullamarine Freeway; the billboard appeal raised over $50 000 in five working days. Nearly 1500 supporters donated between $5 and $500 to fund it. Stanley invited site users to contact senators, urging them to vote against the Work Choices legislation, and in particular National Party Senator Barnaby Joyce, imploring him to cross the floor. Some 86 000 users sent that petition. Another ‘YRaW’ website campaign urged supporters to contact the CEO of confectioners Darrell Lea, who had decided to place staff on AWA individual contracts. In just a few days, more than 5000 emails were sent to the CEO. As a result of this public pressure, Stanley says, Darrell Lea stopped its AWA push. 78

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The ACTU emailed supporters to alert them to their peoplepower victory, inviting them to comment on the company’s decision. Six thousand people emailed the CEO their congratulations and best wishes. The Community Forum discussion board commenced in March 2006, growing out of an earlier ‘Your Say’ section that had never really taken off. Here the campaign against Work Choices, national politics, union strategy, suggestions for campaign activities, daily news and popular culture were all debated in lively exchanges by a large range of regular and occasional contributors. The site had occasional problems with ‘trolls’ (provocative users who don’t agree with site aims), and from time to time Liberal supporters used ‘flaming’ tactics to provoke controversy. At first this was managed satisfactorily within the self-moderating policy, whereby other users take responsibility for correcting errors and provocative posts. Initially, Stanley censored only obscene comments and one very racist post. She explained this clearly each time and there was a lively discussion over moderation policies. At one point Coalition members took to quoting contributions to the site that were critical of the ALP leadership or ALP policy in Parliament, an embarrassment which proved hard for ACTU affiliates to tolerate. After a series of inflammatory postings just before the election, the site was subjected to a time delay, which meant contributions could not appear until they had been cleared. This was resented by a number of more active contributors, who felt that it was no longer ‘their forum’, and that a conservative ACTU bureaucracy was stifling their democratic right to free speech. Others, while disappointed at losing a stimulating discussion, were more understanding, feeling that the campaign could not afford to be discredited by stupidity or subversion. The ACTU had emphasised self-discipline and risk management from the beginning, and in such a ferociously contested campaign it is perhaps a wonder that it was willing to experiment with such open discussion on the site at all. Jessica 79

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Stanley explained the role of the online campaign: ‘Your Rights at Work’ was all about people from a variety of backgrounds and political views joining together to have their say. Supporters talked to their friends, donated, shared links to our web campaigns, crafted passionate and well argued emails to MPs and CEOs, and they were the ones who cast the votes that got rid of Work Choices. Ultimately the campaign is only as strong as the sense of community and involvement enjoyed by the supporters. For our campaign for rights at work to remain strong, we’ll have to encourage supporters to share ideas and talk to each other even if they go ‘off message’ and especially if [their] ideas are better than ours! They’ll have to be able to continue to talk to the ACTU, and we’ll have to get better at talking back. The union movement traditionally do this well in workplaces and on the ground – doing it online is the next logical step.43

Site participants were invited to tell others why they would be participating in the national rallies against Work Choices – nearly 100 pages of responses were received. They were also asked to share voting intentions and reasons. Over 250 contributions were received on this topic, from brief two-line endorsements of the campaign to extended personal responses (see chapter 8 for a discussion of some of these comments). The site also contained a ‘Rights Watch’ discussion board, on which people wrote queries about their experiences at work. By election time it had received over 1500 separate postings, with many hundreds more comments made in response to the original posts. In 2007, ‘YRaW’ was voted website of the year by the International Labour website LabourStart.44 It also won the Politics Online ‘Top Ten Who are Changing the World of Internet and Politics’ award, beating international sites like DailyKos, CNN and JohnEdwards.com. 80

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‘YRaW’, MySpace and Facebook

Jessica Stanley also posted ACTU ads and news clips to YouTube, to MySpace, where ‘YRaW’ had a profile (‘99 years old, male and in a relationship’) which attracted 15 000 views, and to Facebook.45 Over 1100 separate people and groups signed up as friends to ‘YRaW’ on MySpace. Several of these were leftleaning political and labour groups, but numerous friends were individuals, predominantly young people with shared interests in social justice, unions, changing government or similar musical tastes. Bass (Tasmania) and LaTrobe (Victoria) community campaigns had MySpace sites under the ‘YRaW’ banner, and Dawson (Queensland) had an election campaign MySpace site that featured ‘YRaW’ as the backdrop. Macquarie and EdenMonaro (both New South Wales) had campaign websites. Some individual ‘YRaW’ community campaign coordinators, such as Jill Batt in Braddon (Tasmania), maintained personal MySpace sites. Young unionists’ networks in Queensland and Victoria ran MySpace sites, and groups such as the South Australian Your Rights at Night community radio show likewise had a MySpace site promoting both their radio program and the campaign. Collections of photographs from rallies and actions associated with ‘YRaW’ were uploaded to sites such as Flickr, with the Hasluck ‘YRaW’ community campaign in Western Australia having their own Flickr account. Members Equity Bank sponsored a national photographic competition for the ACTU, and unions such as the CPSU held photographic competitions for their members, placing large archives of photographs from the Days of Action on their websites. Political activists in other forums uploaded photos they had taken at rallies to their own websites. The ‘YRaW’ website invited people to make their own ad about the problems with Work Choices, along the lines of the ‘real people, real stories’ ads; several of these were brought together, along with the archive of ACTU ads, at . 81

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Reaching out to young people Although young people were not among the original key target audiences, a number of unions, state Labor Councils and the ACTU itself developed diverse strategies to reach this group and inspire them to become active in the campaign. The initial priority was getting young people to enrol to vote. The Government’s decision to close off the rolls to new enrolments at 8 pm on the day the election was called would disenfranchise young people more than any other group. Unions worked hard through workplaces, public events, in shopping centres and community campaigning, urging people to enrol, offering to check their enrolments and to enrol them on the spot. They set up enrolment booths at music events such as Big Day Out, at universities and TAFEs and at union-sponsored rock events. Innovative viral efforts to raise young people’s awareness of the problems with both the Work Choices Act itself and the abolition of the unfair dismissal laws occurred early in the campaign. In 2005 filmmaker Shane T. Howard (in his day job an organiser with the LHMU) made a 6-minute film called 36 ways to get fired thanks to John Howard, a tongue-in-cheek series of scenarios – some realistic, some absurd – all of which resulted in people being sacked. It was made in one weekend for around $300 with the support of friends, including Matthew Doran, a well-known actor from the hit series Home and Away. The film became something of a sensation, with a mention on the youth station Triple J, on the Chaser website and on numerous blog and MySpace sites. The LHMU had a link to it on their national website and it was widely downloaded.46 Later in the campaign, other filmmakers made short spoof ads and clips for YouTube, MySpace and Facebook distribution. The best known of these was the Manic Times clip, ‘What have the unions ever done for us?’ which at last count was the forty-seventh most viewed clip in the news and current affairs category, having been viewed almost 105 000 times and ‘favourited’ 281 times, a huge degree of popularity for a political 82

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item.47 Charles Firth, formerly of The Chaser, was the instigator of Manic Times. Another widely viewed Manic Times offering was the ‘Liberal scare tactics’ clip, made in response to the Liberals’ election ads and the earlier Business Coalition for Workplace Reform’s advertisement. Several Labor Councils sponsored rock concerts to raise awareness among young people about ‘YRaW’. Queensland sponsored ‘Rock the Vote’ in 2006, which attracted an audience of over 5000, Unions ACT sponsored ‘Jammin’ for Justice’ in October 2006, and the Victorian Trades Hall Council put on a series of musical events in late 2006 under the banner of ‘Rock for Your Rights at Work’, including rock, hip hop, indy and blues shows. In several regional marginal seats, including Mackay (Queensland) and Dobell (New South Wales), ‘Battle of the Bands’ concerts were sponsored by local ‘YRaW’ committees. The biggest of these events was ‘Rockin’ for Rights’ in April 2007, held at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG). The concert was preceded by a rally at Hyde Park, followed by a march to the SCG.48 It was promoted as a family-friendly event, Unions NSW having decided, along with other state Labor Councils, not to organise another mass rally in 2007, but to focus on smaller family-friendly and light-hearted events. Unions NSW estimated that 40 000 people attended the march and participated in the rally, with 30 000 attending the concert at the SCG.49 Press estimates varied from 10 000 (Australian), to 15 000 (The Age) to 40 000 (Daily Telegraph). Regional ‘YRaW’ committees made a particular effort to get to Sydney for ‘Rockin’ for Rights’. The Macquarie group chartered a special express train to carry supporters from Bathurst, Lithgow and the Blue Mountains, picking up Lindsay activists from Penrith on the way into the city. Supporters from the Central Coast and the South Coast also made special trips to attend. Macquarie and Lindsay supporters marched together behind large banners identifying their groups, drawing attention 83

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to their electorates, which they were determined would change hands. The ACTU and EMC worked out ways of increasing the public relations value of the rallies. Simple production decisions ensured they presented a contemporary and diverse picture of unionists – as younger, more ethnically diverse, female, belonging to more pink- and white-collar occupations – than the stereotypes of the past suggested. This more accurate picture of twenty-first century unionists resonated better with the key target audience of swinging voters. Simultaneous national Days and Weeks of Action were another way of increasing the rallies’ impact. The success of Unions NSW’s state-wide Sky Channel broadcast of their mass meeting on 1 July 2005 convinced others that using this technique greatly increased the value and impact of the traditional 84

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mass rally. The broadcasts combined pre-recorded interviews and testimonies, historical footage and scenes of contemporary disputes, with the live speeches and performances. In effect, the Sky Channel broadcasts of the November 2005 and 2006 national protests combined the appeal of the tightly scripted, personalised, highly visual media event with the traditional excitement and elation of the large rally.

Sky Channel and the Days of Action The Days and Weeks of Action built momentum for the campaign and demonstrated its mass popular support. Through careful staging, these events also framed the issues and redefined the image of the Australian union movement, in conjunction with the advertising campaign. As Sharan Burrow put it in a speech on the first Day of Action in 2005: Today we are standing up for the values that shape the way we care about each other. The way we care about time for our families and care about a nation that balances prosperity with our great way of life. In every corner of Australia people are standing together to oppose the Government’s Industrial Relations laws and the attack that they represent on our living standards and our community and family life.50

In mid-2005, the first national Week of Action took place, with most Labor Councils holding large rallies in the capital cities. In New South Wales, the rally at Sydney Town Hall was broadcast through Sky Channel to 200 regional venues where simultaneous satellite meetings were taking place. The NSW Teachers Federation had pioneered the use of Sky Channel to link regional delegates’ meetings to the city and the NSW Nurses Association and Unions NSW had also used the technology successfully. The 1 July Sydney broadcast featured appearances by workers from a range of industries expressing their anxieties about the 85

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new legislation, its impact on their industry and on their personal lives. Hosted by Unions NSW Secretary John Robertson, who explained the threat posed by the legislation and the kinds of action members could take to oppose it, the event was structured like a regular mass meeting. It commenced with a request for everyone to turn to a person adjacent to them who they did not already know and introduce themselves, a tactic commonly used in community groups and educational contexts. National officials who observed the NSW regional rallies were impressed with the way Sky Channel worked to bring people together, communicating process and result rather than just intention, to convey a clear, unified message and at the same time to engage workers across the state with the campaign. The CFMEU’s Mining and Energy Division sponsored the live hookup of the 15 November Day of Action broadcast to almost 300 venues around the country, contributing $250 000 towards the 86

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broadcast and funding some of the local meetings. In 2006 the Division jointly sponsored the November Day of Action broadcast with the MUA. The workers’ testimonies were combined with speeches from ACTU officials, comments from welfare and church leaders, politicians, celebrities and popular culture figures such as John Clarke and Brian Dawe, William McInnes, Tim Brunero and Chris Hayward. Comedians Tim Ferguson (2005) and Corrine Grant and Dave Hughes (2006) compered the two events, adding to their appeal for younger workers and the media. Singers Deborah Conway, Casey Donovan (Australian Idol winner in 2004) and Jimmy Barnes made guest appearances to sing the national anthem and classics of working-class solidarity such as Barnes’ ‘Working Class Man’.51 The inclusion of both Australia’s official and popular (‘Waltzing Matilda’) anthems, together with prominent use of the flag, left people in no doubt that a battle over the nature of national identity had been engaged. The broadcast featured images of the contemporary Australian workforce, with a strong emphasis on the caring professions (nurses, child-care and aged-care workers, and teachers). Machinists, crane drivers, telephonists, kitchenhands and a priest were included, along with scenes of picket lines and historical and contemporary industrial protests. Rally participants and viewers were invited to identify with the people on screen as a working community, rather than with the specific institution of unionism; the terms ‘unionist’ and even ‘worker’ were actively downplayed, ‘working Australians’ or ‘Australian working families’ being preferred by almost all speakers. The pitch for viewers’ hearts and minds involved a careful repositioning of the ideas and identities of unions and unionists away from the traditional imagery in an attempt to carry the campaign message to all working Australians, not just union members. Those attending the rallies were reminded that these laws had not been part of the Coalition’s 2004 election policy: ‘I didn’t vote for an attack on my rights at work’.52 87

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People were exhorted to reject the laws as un-Australian, as striking at fairness, equity and respect for ordinary working people, as representing the loss of intrinsic values that lie at the heart of the Australian way of life and a betrayal of national pride in ‘our’ country and values. Bob Hawke’s message in the 2005 broadcast made this very clear: [I]t is a fight to preserve what is at the very heart of what we have always liked to believe is the very essence of the Australian character … this is the nation of the fair go. This is a fight which you cannot lose, which you must not lose. We must win it if Australia is to remain the country we think it is.

The nationally broadcast Days of Action, as well as being mass demonstrations had a strong mobilising element. The ACTU sought to invite those watching and listening to the broadcast to recognise themselves as caring, committed individuals prepared to take additional actions toward political change and in defence of a particular set of Australian values, with Greg Combet inviting ‘Australians to join a movement for change – not just a movement to achieve rights at work, but a movement for fairness and justice, a movement for democratic rights’.53 Well-scripted, visually appealing, tightly-produced presentations successfully combined popular interest and political messaging. The footage was widely re-broadcast on free-to-air television news, which allowed key national union figures, exploited workers and celebrities to project their messages directly into the living rooms of Australian families. The Days succeeded particularly in regional areas (see chapter 4). They worked less well in Western Australia, due to time differences and the sense that people were watching an event that had been and gone, whereas most other states and regional areas had the satisfaction of feeling for the first time that they were participating in a truly national event. The 2005 broadcast was a spectacular success, particularly in Melbourne, where the city was choked with demonstrators, but the message 88

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of the 2006 broadcast was somewhat overshadowed by speculation that ALP leader Kim Beazley was faltering and would be challenged for the party leadership by Kevin Rudd. The lower than expected attendance at the Melbourne ‘Fill the G’ in 2006 rally also detracted from this broadcast’s success (see chapter 7). The communication strategies underpinning the ‘YRaW’ campaign were the aspects which received most public and media attention. They were the most visible elements and many credited them with the campaign’s success. However, as the following chapters show, the efforts applied to mobilising workplaces, regional and local communities were equally important. Certainly these grassroots efforts will be most critical in rebuilding the active base of the union movement.

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4 Mobilising to win

The ‘YRaW’ campaign had the short-term aim of overturning industrial relations legislation through a change of government at the 2007 election. Its long-term goals included promoting awareness of union values and building a deeper, wider and lasting movement for change and greater social justice among both union members and their communities. In seeking to build awareness about the unfairness of the Work Choices laws it urged people to take up identities as activists in the community as well as in the workplace. Union leaders believed there was a deeply felt need for change, and that ‘YRaW’ could be the catalyst.

Inviting Australians to ‘join a movement for change’ Speaking via Sky Channel on the 2005 Day of Action, ACTU Secretary Greg Combet invited people to mobilise both in opposition to Work Choices and, more broadly, to see themselves as part of a new movement for a better country. We must invite Australians to join a movement for change – not just a movement to achieve rights at work, but a movement for fairness and justice, a movement for democratic rights. We must build a broad coalition of people

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committed to a better future. Be part of it. Contribute in practical ways …1

‘Mobilising for change’ means making people active; encouraging and assisting them to identify a problem that they experience in common with others and to take action together in an effort to fix it. In making sense of their situation they have to believe it is possible to change it, and through mobilising recognise themselves as part of a common group, a collective. They take up a position, or identity, which is both an individual protest or ‘oppositional identity’ and, at the same time, a shared or collective identity as part of a movement, in this way coming to see themselves as members of a group – ‘we’ – opposed to another group – ‘them’ – who hold different values or seek different goals. Theories of mobilisation lie at the heart of social and political movements for change.2 In labour education the process is sometimes referred to a little differently, as an ‘anger, hope, action’ framework, in which people move through the often debilitating response of anger at injustice into a hope that the cause of the anger can be overcome, then into taking strategic action to achieve that goal. Those with a commitment to long-term improvement in the lives of working people argue that mobilising must include strategies to build people’s capacities and achieve lasting change. This chapter and the next outline some of the ways the Australian union movement sought to mobilise supporters and invited them to take up the role of activists for change. They include comments from some of the people who responded to this invitation, revealing what that experience was like for them. Workplace campaigning: mobilising the membership

The unions were well aware that a substantial portion of their membership had voted for the Coalition in recent years. Academic analysts and political commentators referred to this group of low91

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to middle-income earners, who had swung away from the ALP to the Coalition in 1996 and subsequent elections, as the Howard battlers.3 Political scientist Carol Johnson termed this abandonment of the ALP ‘the revenge of the mainstream’, referring to widespread dislike of Paul Keating’s perceived affinity with and support for minority groups.4 Neo-liberal commentators and Coalition supporters interpreted it as ordinary people’s rejection of elites – apparently blind to their own status. The ACTU campaign placed a high priority on individual unions holding discussions about politics with their particular membership, recognising that in many marginal seats more union members who had voted for the Coalition in 2004 could be identified than votes needed to swing those seats back to the ALP. More than 240 000 union members resided in marginal seats across the country, making them the most critical group to reach if the Howard government were to be defeated. Talking politics had been identified as a key strategy in the Next Steps report of 2004, which stressed the need to discuss issues and the respective policies of political parties with union members rather than instructing them how to vote, and highlighted the effectiveness of the one-to-one approach.5 The ACTU commissioned intensive research in marginal seats, through focus groups and telephone polling of union members and low-income earners generally, to determine what messages would be most successful in moving their votes. Individual unions telephone-polled members in marginal seats up to four times during 2007. The initial call was to establish their feelings and concerns in general, their views about the Government and their priorities when it came to deciding which party to vote for. Particular attention was directed to undecided voters and those leaning toward the Coalition. The intention was that all unions would undertake three follow-up calls to undecided members, with a follow-up personal visit to those still undecided in the weeks immediately before the election. Not all unions managed 92

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to achieve this degree of saturation, but the process was useful in establishing knowledge about their membership. Complaints about nuisance calls have made some organisations hesitant about ringing people at home, but union organisers and leaders were amazed at how receptive their members were to direct contact. Most were happy to take a call, opening the door to more intensive personal contact about a range of issues in the future. People who at first had been guarded about their voting intentions were, by the second or third phone call, saying openly that they ‘hated the bastard’ (that is, John Howard), were definitely voting against the Coalition and didn’t need to be rung again. Home visits were particularly warmly received in regional towns and outer areas. Sharron Caddie (QCU) spoke of going with a group of Brisbane unionists to Gladstone (in the electorate of Flynn) one weekend to help with doorknocking, and being astounded at being invited in for a cup of tea and a chat, even by Howard supporters. Such experiences built the union profile in a positive way at the same time as providing insights into members’ concerns. The trends emerging from the calls were tracked to finesse campaign strategy and messaging. Such a resource-intensive approach could not be implemented for every election, however, for it must inevitably deny resources to other union priorities. Polling was assisted by the Magenta Linus computer program, which allowed unions to merge publicly available electoral roll and voting data with their membership records, thus enabling identification of those not on the electoral roll, or incorrectly enrolled, who they could then offer to keep. The ACTU produced the ‘Political Strategy Manual: 6 Steps’ which outlined political strategy, a notional time frame, a template for the phone polling process, an estimate of the resources required, and some sample scripts for callers to use.6 The manual emphasised ensuring that members were correctly enrolled, so that their votes would count. It also stressed the importance of identifying potential activists 93

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who might support community campaigns in the targeted seats, and the critical importance of workplace campaigning. Workplaces located within marginal seats, or which employed a high proportion of union members from marginal seats, were to be given precedence. Unions were asked to develop plans for their workplace campaigns and to contact retired members who might be willing to take on activist roles. When copies of the manual fell into the hands of journalists and, subsequently, politicians, excerpts were published in the press. The Government expressed outrage, several Ministers presenting fictitious scenarios of union heavies arriving at people’s front doors and offering violence against non-ALP-voting householders. The Government referred the manual to the Australian Electoral Commission, claiming it breached regulations (it did not). The leak was embarrassing and productive of internal ACTU recriminations, but what startled the Government and its supporters was the extent of ACTU organising and the degree to which it appeared affiliates were implementing the plan. Sharan Burrow reacted calmly in the face of media questioning, asking ‘What could be more natural than unions contacting their own members?’ In the event, some unions lacked the resources to implement the full plan and others were less well organised or preoccupied managing unrelated, time-consuming disputes, so that phone polling and ‘YRaW’ issues fell down their list of priorities. In most states, however, political coordinators and Labor Council secretaries kept track of their affiliates’ progress, prompting those who were falling behind to meet their polling targets. The unions learned much about their membership, discovering, for instance, the extent to which members had voted for the Coalition at the 2004 election – as high as 60 per cent among nurses and finance sector workers in some states, and in some areas of transport up to 40 per cent. Clearly, industrial issues needed to be linked with basic ‘kitchen-table economics’ to increase their 94

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immediate relevance to people’s voting decisions. Some unions, such as the Commonwealth and Public Sector Union (CPSU) and the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union (LHMU), did their calling in-house, using organisers and activists for intensive evening sessions alongside existing union call-centre staff. Others used the services of commercial call-centres. Some large unions offered to run the polling through their call-centres for those unions which did not have the facilities, but most, protective of their membership information, declined these offers. Many unions found it useful to link the ‘YRaW’ campaign and opposition to Work Choices to sectoral, industry or issue-based campaigns being run nationally or in particular states, among them unions covering teachers, nurses, construction workers, manufacturing workers, transport, cleaning and hospitality workers. Health and safety issues, problems with independent contracting legislation, hours of work, rosters and pay rates were among the most common links. In industries covered by state legislation, many workers did not immediately realise the relevance of Work Choices to their situation and felt they were ‘doing OK’. Unions with coverage in these areas had to work hard to explain that the laws would be rolled out on a national basis if the Coalition won another term. Other challenging areas included the highly paid resources industry, although unions such as the Mining and Energy Division of the CFMEU, which covered the coal industry, found their members on the whole had sufficient political awareness to be concerned about the impact of the laws on others, particularly their own family members. As the CFMEU’s Steve Pierce in Mackay explained: In mining communities it’s always been the kids and particularly the young girls that cop a hammering. There was always traditionally work for us [blokes] out there but it was the girls that either had to pack up and leave town or

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end up a counter hopper. And a lot of the members’ children are actually being stitched up by some of the AWA bullshit that’s going on, so we can relate to that. People knew horror stories … one of our members, his sister was tied up in all the … nonsense with Spotlight [see chapter 3]. So he had first-hand knowledge and it was really good because for the second rally she was actually in town visiting him, so she was able to give a bit of a spiel on how they got stitched up.7

Other unions in the resources industry, particularly in Western Australia, where AWAs had been in place for some time and the labour shortage was delivering high wages, found this message harder to get across. QPSU ‘Workplace Heroes’ campaign

In addition to using telephone polling to contact their membership, many unions used their networks of workplace delegates and representatives to raise problems around Work Choices, and the Howard government’s disrespect for working families in general, as reasons for voting against the Coalition. Workplace campaigning is core business for unions, but some found ways to liven up this activity. The Queensland branch of the CPSU developed a ‘Your Rights at Work Heroes’ campaign, through which they encouraged activists within the union to work with other members to explain the implications of the laws. Heroes’ tasks included urging people to enrol to vote; collecting personal messages from workers who wanted to see fair workplace laws and, with the union’s assistance, turning them into posters for display in their worksites; organising workplace ‘referendums’ on fair workplace laws and social activities in lunch hours and after work, such as ‘Your Rights at Work’ barbecues. By early October 2007, over 900 QPSU members had signed up as ‘workplace heroes’.8 The QPSU produced brightly coloured blue and red ‘Superman’ style 96

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T-shirts, YouTube videos and kits with ‘mission instructions’, a dedicated website, special heroes’ training and a well-publicised launch of the ‘Workplace Heroes’ campaign, attended by about 150 heroes, in early September 2007. This activism for the ‘YRaW’ campaign was badged as a specifically QPSU activity, promoting the union to their members as well as the campaign goals, celebrating activism itself as an enjoyable and high-status activity and the ‘Heroes’ as treasured union members. Nepean Hospital

Early in the campaign, the ‘YRaW’ committee in Lindsay (NSW) identified the Nepean Hospital in Penrith as a critical site through which to mobilise union members and promote the campaign to the community. Nepean Hospital has approximately 3400 workers, making it one of the most significant worksites in Sydney’s western suburbs. Some nine unions cover its workers, with the NSW Nurses’ Association and the Health Services Union having the largest memberships. The site already had a combined unions committee which met to consider the ‘YRaW’ campaign and possible involvement, deciding to run a specific workplace campaign inside the hospital, and to support the Lindsay community campaign. The workplace campaign focused on raising awareness of the fact that while Work Choices initially affected only employees under federal awards, it would in time apply in the state system. Parallels were drawn with the situation in universities, where the Government had made it a condition of funding under the Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements (HEWRRs) that all staff (new and continuing) be offered AWAs. There was no similar compulsion to ensure all staff had access to a collective agreement. The health sector unions were concerned that their members were dangerously complacent in believing their conditions would be protected because they were covered under state legislation. They wanted people to realise that federal funding of hospitals and the states meant 97

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it was inevitable, should the Coalition be re-elected, that Work Choices would be extended to cover all state employees. The Nepean Hospital campaign encouraged staff to enrol to vote or to update their enrolments, collected signatures on petitions against Work Choices and, in the lead-up to the NSW State election, on petitions calling on ALP leader, Premier Morris Iemma, to guarantee he would not introduce Work Choices-style legislation at state level. The committee held lunchtime sausage sizzles with guest speakers to raise staff awareness about the laws, distributed information, organised demonstrations and hung ‘YRaW’ signs on the hospital’s perimeter fence, a prominent location visible to commuters and passing locals. They raised funds for a large billboard to be erected on the adjacent Great Western Highway for two months, organised local Sky Channel broadcasts, sponsored a local Family Fun Day and ran stalls in local festivals. The campaign committee also worked to raise the visibility of participating unions and were responsible for signing up new members. The focus of the Nepean Hospital campaign was hospital workers, not patients or their visitors. All involved were clear that patients and their families were vulnerable, that any perception of being pressured would lead to much criticism. Active unionists often wore their ‘YRaW’ badges prominently on their uniforms, however, which resulted in many patients and visitors asking about the campaign and the impact of the laws on their lives – in these circumstances they could discuss their views. Peter, a longtime nurse delegate at Nepean, said hospital management had some anxieties about the campaign and some individual managers created difficulties but overall, as long as the focus remained primarily on fellow workers and was run outside work time, they were able to continue their activities. The Nepean Hospital campaign provided a model that the ACTU and other states were keen to take up. In Brisbane a similar campaign ran at the Princess Alexandra Hospital, which employs 98

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around 5500 workers covered by nine unions. Establishing this campaign required the development by the unions involved of a Memorandum of Understanding, with clear protocols preventing disputes over recruiting members, as any disagreements of this sort would jeopardise the credibility of the campaign. In areas of joint coverage, potential recruits were to be told there were two unions they could join, with any disputes to be mediated through Sharron Caddie at the QCU. Overall, the ‘YRaW’ campaign was notable for the extent of cooperation between unions with a history of fractious relationships.

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Getting the word out and mobilising the regions One of the most attractive features of the Sky Channel broadcasts of the national Days of Action to the CFMEU Mining and Energy Division, and the key reason for the Division’s sponsorship of the broadcasts with the MUA, was their capacity to link people living in outer suburbs, regional and isolated communities and thus create a virtual experience of solidarity. Not only could they aim to raise awareness about the problems with Work Choices but to mobilise opposition in communities where capital city rallies and protests rarely make great impact. Organising the rallies across Australia required significant effort and resources from ACTU, regional and state Labor Council and union staff, and local activists. Finding suitable venues, organising local speakers and associated activities, publicising the event and negotiating with management for members’ attendance were all time-consuming; in many towns there was little precedent for actions of this scale. The over 5000-strong network of pubs and clubs across the country subscribing to Sky Channel for its racing coverage made the hook-up possible. In some places, such as the far west of New South Wales, pubs and clubs did not open early enough and could not be utilised, which led to portable screens being used in community halls or outdoor venues.9 New South Wales, with a large number of significant regional towns and regional industries, enjoys high regional union presence and organised by far the largest number of venues, approximately 200 on both Days of Action. Interest had been aroused by the Unions NSW bus trips across the state in 2005 and 2006 (see discussion below), triggering the formation of numerous campaign groups which were active in organising regional broadcasts. Queensland, another state with a substantial regional population, large towns and a network of active regional Labor Councils, arranged nearly 50 broadcasts in 2006, while of the 100

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smaller states South Australia organised 18, Western Australia 13, Tasmania 17 and Victoria 15.10 The activists involved were exhilarated by the experience of coming together for a significant national event and meeting up with others of like mind in their community, some of whom they had known for years without realising they shared political sympathies. Even quite conservative communities turned out in large numbers for the Days of Action: For a conservative town like Bathurst, for the last two Sky Channel events we’ve had over two and a half thousand people come along. [For the first one] we had thought of doing a march but everyone was hesitant because in Bathurst people are conservative … And then when we got there you just couldn’t not do a march. So we did this quick ring around to the police. And then we did this massive march. You see how wide the streets are here, we filled up two to three city blocks and we marched all the way down to the park, and had a massive sausage sizzle for everybody. People just came out of the shops and clapped us, and people jumped in. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was unbelievable. To get those sort of numbers in Bathurst is amazing (Belinda Pearce, PSA, Bathurst/Macquarie).

Cheryl McG. (Bathurst/Macquarie) described the sense of connection through the broadcast as really important: ‘All of a sudden you don’t feel as isolated. You feel part of something really big and actually quite exciting. That there are all of these people who feel the same way you do and with all of these people surely we can change something.’ In many places the broadcasts became participatory events. Natalie L. (ASU, NSW) said that ‘in Springwood there were cheers and audience participation throughout, and afterwards people gathered outside the local Liberal MP’s office and held an open microphone event’. Coal miners watching in regional 101

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New South Wales and Queensland cheered when their retired ‘national treasures’ told their stories. Miners and MUA members felt particular satisfaction; since their unions had sponsored the broadcasts they felt some ownership of the event. Construction workers, along with many others in the crowd, shed tears when Andreia Veigas told how her husband died at work on a building site. Workers told of their own experiences with the laws, the stories of the Heinemann Electric workers (who had lost a whole week’s pay for implementing overtime bans even though they had worked their full requirement of ordinary hours) and the 107 Western Australian construction workers (who faced fines of up to $28 600 for participating in industrial action; see p. 172) being particularly powerful. Peter M., who organised the local speakers, a barbecue and an open microphone session for the two November rallies held at the Penrith RSL Club, said the auditorium was full on both occasions; local rallies enabled people to attend for an hour or two who would not have wanted to leave work for a whole or a half day: We can’t all get into town; even though we’re only one hour drive [away] but one hour in, one hour back, three hours, that’s the whole day gone. Whereas if they can come in and sit down with a group of people and watch a broadcast on Sky Channel it’s much easier.

This way, people could still ‘be loyal to their boss’ and to the union at the same time. Peter was particularly pleased with the diversity of people who attended the Penrith rallies. It was almost like a uniform party where you dress up in a uniform, because there were nurses in their uniforms, there were cooks and chefs with their uniforms on, there were police, ambulance, fire with their uniforms on so there were lots of uniforms. But there were lots of people that wore

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their khaki pants and the khaki shirt so you didn’t know where they were from but they obviously were workers. So yeah, it was really good.

Many agreed with Cheryl McG. that going to local venues but being connected to the major Melbourne rally meant people felt part of a bigger campaign, one that had a real chance of success. Witnessing the national rally signified the critical importance of the issue and the scale of the challenge ahead. The 2005 broadcast was particularly impressive for the sight of Melbourne’s CBD choked with workers massing for the rally. Several people wished that the broadcast could have cut to a series of actions in local areas and in other states, with regional voices included to feed back to the national audience, but the cost of such links was beyond the organisers’ resources. Instead, the ACTU included pre-recorded footage of workers and prominent Australians from a range of backgrounds and locations and a brief live crossover to the Sydney rally. Local press picked up on the rallies in many regional towns and outer suburbs where industrial issues get little attention except in the case of local disputes. In small towns without an industrial base union issues are rarely, if ever, covered, but in some the Sky Channel broadcasts made front-page news, along with extended interviews with local identities who had worked to organise the rallies. Victor Harbor in South Australia, a seaside town largely populated by retirees, sea-changers, alternative lifestylers and young families, held a small rally and screened the Sky Channel broadcast at a local hotel; this made the front page of the Victor Times and generated several letters to the editor. Similar experiences were reported in towns as diverse as Warrnambool (Victoria), Bombala and Albury (NSW) and larger centres such as Mackay (Queensland). The 2005 rallies drew the best response: here was a new idea, filmed clips of real workers telling fresh and powerful stories of 103

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their experiences under the laws, backed by clips from prominent community and religious identities. Anger against the legislation was at its peak and people still hoped that they could convince the Senate not to pass the legislation. The crowds, in Melbourne especially, were overwhelming. By November 2006, the laws had made it harder to get people time off the job, and unions were concerned to ensure their members would not be victimised for attending. The same fear prevailed in regional areas, as Wayne McAndrew, CFMEU Mining and Energy SW District President, Lithgow, explained: For the first Sky Channel broadcast, we struck for four hours. We pulled our people off work for four hours and then sent them back to work. There is no way in the world we could do that for the second one. In fact, individual members had received a letter, a warning from coal companies, saying we tolerated it once, do it again and you are out of a job. We rightly were not game to push that and in fact the second one, was not as well attended as the first. Because we had to rely a lot on people coming off shift and going to the meetings … You just can’t walk out of a coal mine. You can walk out of a shop in your lunch hour to attend the broadcast and walk back, but you just can’t do that in a coal mine.

Taking the message on the road In a memorable venture, Unions NSW hired a 40-seat tour bus to take the ‘YRaW’ campaign on the road, painted in bright orange with the ‘YRaW’ logo along all sides. By the second year, driver Juliano and tour coordinators reported being welcomed with cheers and applause on arrival in regional towns. When not in service on the campaign, the ‘YRaW’ bus was used for shopping trips, rail replacement and community hire. It made several 104

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major tours over the duration of the campaign around the state. In 2006, over five separate weeks, the tour covered over 10 000 kilometres. In 2007, over seven separate weeks of touring – first for the NSW State election and then for the Federal election – the bus covered similar distances. Each leg of the tour usually lasted from four to six days. Unions NSW Secretary John Robertson participated in every tour and was accompanied by Adam Kerslake, Unions NSW Organising and Campaign Director. Robertson described it as a ‘great opportunity for me not just to go out and talk to people but to listen and have people tell [me] how bad it is out there.’ His constant presence was widely remarked on. He regarded it as essential, saying ‘it builds the credibility of the campaign … and builds value for the movement’.11 Along with a number of young organisers from affiliated unions, the bus was staffed by a tour manager and an additional support person from Unions NSW, and a media officer from Essential Media Communications; these three staff were all aged 105

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under thirty. Robertson and Kerslake were the only two older participants. A large team of young people wearing the bright ‘YRaW’ T-shirts shook up traditional images of unions as well as creating an impression of a future-oriented movement. Brett Holmes, Secretary of the NSW Nurses Association, believed that having youthful unionists on the bus ‘should help to dismiss some of the myths about union bogey men and put a human face to the union movement’, also building rapport with younger casualties of Work Choices in the regions. Whitney E. and Natalie L., who participated in two trips, agreed, finding that many older people were impressed that young people were involved. Natalie: ‘A nice elderly gentleman yesterday [in Lithgow] wanted to tell us how good it was that we were out there campaigning. [He said] “And you’re out in the freezing cold, I’d like to buy you a cup of coffee.”’ Asked whether they felt respected by the public or regarded as a novelty, they agreed that there was genuine appreciation that young people were involved and a particular satisfaction that regional areas were receiving attention. For the young people who participated, it was a very positive, albeit strenuous experience. John Robertson warned them in advance, ‘You’re going to work like you’ve never worked before.’ In return, he promised them the chance to be part of history. He found it intensely satisfying ‘to see how much talent there is within the union movement. For me that’s pretty uplifting [and] there are some fantastic people coming through’. The tours were an unparalleled opportunity for participants to learn and receive mentoring from senior officials. A number of unions, such as the Australian Services Union/United Services Union, NSW Teachers’ Federation, NSW Nurses Association and the Electrical Trades Union, shadowed the bus along much of its route, setting up worksite meetings, visiting members, dealing with minor issues and answering queries related to the new laws. They encouraged members to attend public meetings held in association with the bus visit and to recruit people to assist 106

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the campaign. As Natalie L. (ASU) found, her members: love having an organiser there to speak to. They don’t just want to talk to you about their work issues [or the campaign], they want to talk to you about the world in general, they want you to have a cup of tea, and they’d like you to stay with them for about a year!

The publicity given to the ‘YRaW’ team’s visit would raise interest in individual unions’ visits to worksites. Shadowing the bus enabled the NSW Nurses Association, for example, to revive an earlier practice of visiting regional members once or twice every year. Brett Holmes, the Nurses Association Secretary, commented that the benefits included not only meeting and recruiting new members, hearing about their concerns and publicising the 107

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problems with Work Choices, but also helped nurses identify with the union movement as a whole. He found it impressive that rank and file members would take time out to attend ‘after they’ve finished a full day’s work to go along and listen to other unions, to Unions NSW, to John Robertson, who is a very inspiring speaker … and often to victims of Work Choices who get up and tell their stories’.12 Union and community members who attended the meetings were consistently horrified at the details of the laws and their potential to disadvantage so many more workers if they became consolidated and spread to the state sector. They in turn were motivated to talk to colleagues at work and to family and friends, generating fellow-feeling among people who might not previously have identified as politically active or felt anything in common with union members in different industries. In this way the bus tours were a textbook example of mobilising in practice. Natalie gave an example of one worker who had not been at all interested in joining the ASU on her past visits, but who attended an evening meeting, deciding to join and become actively involved in the campaign: You’re sitting in a room with a bunch of people who are energised going ‘Oh, what are you doing?’ ‘Oh well, we are going to do this’ and then you think, well, I could do something too. And from what he was telling me that’s what happened with this guy.

The tours were gruelling, leaving usually at 5 or 6 am (sometimes earlier) from Unions NSW’s Sussex Street offices. Two separate towns were often covered in a day, with street stalls, workplace meetings and public meetings held in each. While the young organisers were collecting signatures and raising awareness on the street, Robertson and the EMC staff would be conducting local media interviews, meeting business, church and community leaders. Often people would approach those on the street stalls 108

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with problems. Some offered up their personal experiences of victimisation or unfair dismissal, many others wanted information about their rights or where to go for help. The evening community meetings ranged from electric gatherings of several hundred people to smaller groups of 30 or so. They took considerable time to set up, with information brochures, petitions, supporters’ forms, T-shirts, badges, mugs and other paraphernalia to be organised. Local committee members worked to organise distribution of materials, sign up volunteers and network with the public. The visiting unionists sold campaign materials, answered queries and chatted with members. The usual format was for a local union or community leader to welcome people and introduce the significance of the issue, handing over to John Robertson. A powerful speaker, Robertson used every opportunity to weave local material into his talks. Workers who had experienced problems through the new laws would explain their situation and there were always questions and discussion. A key to all these sessions was to make listeners feel they had a personal responsibility to do something about the laws. On one occasion in Inverell, in northern New South Wales, tour coordinator Daniel Walton was not expecting many people as local contacts were limited. He told the team to put out a maximum of 30 chairs so that if just ten people came the venue wouldn’t look so empty. Over 80 people turned out on a freezing night in midwinter. Local meatworkers and nurses, already concerned about Work Choices, had urged their colleagues and friends to attend, indicating a depth of community concern even before the bus rolled into town. Another such meeting in Milton/Ulladulla (NSW) led to the creation of the Fair Employers’ Network, following a suggestion by the local campaign committee. Many small business owners had complained that the laws offered incentives to treat staff badly, since AWAs, in reducing pay and conditions, would increase profits. Milton/Ulladulla wanted to offer support and endorsement 109

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to employers who would sign a pledge to treat their staff fairly and pay award wages and conditions. The endorsement, in the form of a ‘Fair Employer Here’ poster for window display, would enable people to give their custom to businesses which treated their workers fairly. The initiative meant that supporters had a reason to have one-to-one conversations with local businesses about why Work Choices was unfair. By the time the election was held, 98 ‘fair employers’ from a wide variety of sectors were listed on the Fair Employer website, mostly in New South Wales.13 Natalie, who took part in two bus trips, said one of the most striking things was the way the evening meetings made people aware of the campaign’s ‘movement’ nature: Sometimes, when you walk into a workplace as an organiser and you say to them ‘you know we’ve got to do something about the federal election’, it can be hard to put it into a perspective where they see their small action as going to be able to bring about change.

However, as she observed, when you are at a community meeting there may be a few hundred people who are committed to doing something towards the campaign: so it makes change feel more possible. It’s more inspiring … Instead of thinking the world’s a big place and there’s all kinds of problems in it, how is my taking five badges to work and asking people to wear them going to help? Well there are fifty people in this room taking five badges and you know my extra little bit might just be that bit which pushes it over the edge.

John Robertson was deeply struck by the limited options available to regional workers: They don’t believe that they’ve really got any rights to stand up and say, ‘I am being forced to sign an individual contract

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even though the laws say it’s illegal.’ They know they can’t exercise those rights and expect to get another job in that town again. So they are very conscious of that and it [the bus’s visit] is almost like individual therapy for a lot of them. They just want to tell someone their story and they want to tell it to someone who’s going to be sympathetic and do something about it.14

Numerous people willingly told the crew they had voted for the Coalition at the 2004 election but wouldn’t be doing it again – they had ‘gone too far on these laws’. In the evenings, after the last meeting, the crew would eat together with political, sporting and popular culture discussions flowing around the table, interspersed with anecdotes about the best and worst hotels and coffee to be found in rural New South Wales, not to mention bosses. There was a lot of space for young people still fairly new to these activities to ask questions about details of the campaign and the laws as well as organising strategies. It was a rich opportunity and, despite the rigours of the long days on the road, some participated in as many as three trips. For the permanent organisers, however, the experience tended to lose its lustre. Tiring 14-hour days on a cramped bus, with uncertain conditions to look forward to at the end of the day, challenged their good humour. But for those on their first or second tour, although they became tired and grumpy toward the end, it remained a standout experience. Most felt it was a real privilege to be involved, despite lack of sleep and a degree of bus-induced claustrophobia. As Whitney (Student Organiser, UWS), said: It’s going to sound nerdy but I feel really chuffed that I’m part of a campaign that’s going to make history and it’s going to be in people’s minds for ever. And I love that everyone is like-minded … I’m getting so much experience, it’s like a real crash course … I never feel patronised. One of the things that I love is that no one talks down to you. 111

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The tour organisers, Daniel Walton in 2005–06 and Daniel Kildea in 2007, were relaxed in their management of the team. Everyone, from senior officials to bus driver, lugged boxes, organised forms, set up trestles and hooked up public address systems; everyone was involved in the debrief after each town. The bus trip provided a hands-on mentoring experience, as well as a highly tactical presentation of the next generation of unionism, as Natalie (ASU) notes: Deliberately or not you are taking notes in your head the whole time and you notice how others on the bus are talking to community members. Especially when you think that there is a certain demographic that for some reason doesn’t respond to you particularly well and you see how someone else approaches them and their response. Watching Wayne [McAndrew] from the Miners speak to the people in Lithgow yesterday, you couldn’t look away. I was enthralled the whole time because he spoke to all these people personally: ‘How’s your partner, how’s the kids, what’s going on with this and that?’ And that brings this amazing local touch that’s really wonderful to watch.

Although the ACTU and state Labor Councils run organising programs and events such as Union Summers to train young people, and Unions NSW runs an internship program for university students in fields such as industrial relations and social sciences, young activists in the union movement can be quite isolated. The bus trips were a rich model for organising and involving young unionists and for reinvigorating older ones.

Regional tours in other states The Victorian Trades Hall Council convened a Union Cavalcade to promote the ‘YRaW’ campaign in November–December 2005, covering 36 towns. Travelling from Bairnsdale and Lakes Entrance 112

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to Wangaratta, Echuca, Robinvale and south-west to Portland and Warrnambool, the tour involved twelve different unions and up to 20 people.15 In Queensland, promotional tours were organised in 2006 and 2007 by two separate groups of unions. The ‘Light the Fuse’ tour in March–April 2006, aimed at ‘lighting the fuse of discontent throughout regional Queensland’16, was sponsored by five unions: CFMEUQ, CFMEU (Mining and Energy), AMWU, CEPU (Electrical) and CEPU (Plumbing). A second regional tour, the ‘Fair Go for Working Families’ roadshow, was coordinated by the Queensland Rail, Tram and Bus Union and supported by eleven other unions. The Victorian and Queensland tours were similar to the NSW bus trips but on a smaller scale. Minibuses and union cars were used instead of a large tour bus. Public and workplace meetings were held, along with rallies to publicise the laws; family days and picnics were held on Queensland’s ‘Fair Go for Working Families’ tour. In Victoria, street stalls were organised. Local print and electronic media covered the regional tours extensively, particularly those held in 2005 and 2006. The officials involved often mentioned that early on in the campaign many of the media workers and police they met on the road had a number of questions about the operation of the laws and concerns about how their jobs might be affected. Some of the public meetings involved local church and community leaders. All adopted the approach of handing out leaflets in main streets, shopping centres and car parks, holding public meetings and collecting stories of exploitation experienced by locals under the new laws. The cavalcades and bus trips, particularly the iconic orange Unions NSW bus, drew attention to the problems with Work Choices, brought positive branding to the ‘YRaW’ campaign and presented a positive face for the union movement. The campaigners were clearly identified as union representatives, with signage on the bus prominently featuring the slogan ‘Your Rights at Work: worth fighting and voting for’ and ‘Unions NSW’. All 113

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vehicles in the convoys featured a union logo or name alongside the ‘YRaW’ signage. John Robertson called this invaluable publicity: ‘It doesn’t matter how much money the government spends [on advertising], the one thing they can’t buy is an army of people out there having conversations.’ The targeted seat campaigns, where ‘YRaW’ campaigners were visible for months on end, had an even greater lasting impact, embedding unionism within the community landscape (see chapter 5). As 2007 progressed and the election approached, the tours began to come under fire as a political campaign, attracting less – or more critical – coverage in local media, with conservative politicians, business people and citizens declaring support for Work Choices and decrying the influence of unions in the ALP.

The ‘40 Day Campaign’: 15 October to 23 November 2007 The ACTU campaign plan incorporated a final, intensive push, to take effect the day the election was announced. This was the ‘40 Day Campaign’, a schedule of the steps necessary to ensure that polling day activities ran smoothly, with additional coordinated actions to link the community campaign groups in targeted seats into state-wide campaigns, particular workplace campaigns and national campaigns. Once the official election campaign started, union and ‘YRaW’ actions would receive less media attention, as the focus narrowed to the political party leaders and their activities. Five of the 40 days were designated to highlight the contributions of key groups of workers in the community: ‘workers who keep us safe’, ‘workers who care’, ‘workers who make things’, ’workers who help our children grow’ and ‘workers who support our community’. These groups were chosen as having a reasonably high level of public goodwill and trust and whose contributions to the community could be represented as essential. On 114

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the appointed days, workers from the respective industries, in uniform where applicable, gathered for an event that involved reaching out to the public – nurses offering free blood-pressure checks and talking to people about the laws, asking them to keep these issues in mind when they voted, for example. Four leaflets were letterboxed to households in targeted seats and handed out at stations and transport interchanges in city and marginal seats during the final weeks of the campaign: ‘Howard hurts working families’; ‘Unfair dismissal’; ‘Real people, real stories’; and ‘He’ll go further’. ‘YRaW’ posters and core-flute signs were distributed to volunteers to display on their fences and other prominent public locations. The final phone calls and home visits were made to swinging voters, and the rosters for polling day were finalised. Groups of volunteers monitored talkback radio, alert to attacks on unions by candidates or business. Rapid-response groups were formed with the aim of being able to turn out quickly at local shopping centres or community venues if the Prime Minister or any Coalition candidate should appear. In the final weeks of the campaign, many unions released their organising, industrial and even administrative staff from regular duties to assist in the designated marginal seats. Community campaign coordinators and the committee activists were determined that the momentum for change would not falter due to any lack of effort on their part. Last-minute efforts included driving convoys of cars, vans and trailers with ‘YRaW’ signage around shopping centres; lining up battalions of placard-waving volunteers alongside major roads at rush hour; and organising small demonstrations on local issues in prominent locations. ACTU figures collected from coordinators across the country show some 4861 volunteers handed out ‘YRaW’ information and how-to-vote cards in 835 of a possible 1163 booths in the 24 designated marginal seats. In some seats one or two ‘typical’ booths were left unattended; analysis showed substantial differences 115

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in swings between the booths with volunteers handing out and those left unattended. Nationally, the average swing toward the ALP was 5.4 per cent, whereas the average swing in the targeted seats was 7.1 per cent. All but three of the targeted seats were won by the ALP; Bowman (Queensland) was lost by only 64 votes. Some wholly unexpected gains were made in seats with huge margins, the ALP wins in Dawson (with a swing of 13.2 per cent) and Flynn (7.88 per cent), both in Queensland, being the most pronounced of these. Maxine McKew’s victory in Bennelong (the Prime Minister’s electorate and not a targeted seat) was a symbolic triumph.17

‘YRaW’: a triumphant example of mobilising There is no doubt that the ‘YRaW’ campaign succeeded in mobilising union members to vote against John Howard and the Coalition government, particularly over industrial relations, and Work Choices specifically, successfully representing them as out of touch and uncaring. Many apathetic or inactive members joined in the workplace campaign, reconnecting with their union in the process. Others joined in the community campaign, finding a satisfaction different from any previous union participation (see chapter 5). The campaign resulted in membership growth in a few unions, despite the continuing small downward trend overall in recent years (see discussion of union density in chapter 1). The challenge now is to adapt the lessons learnt from the ‘YRaW’ campaign successes and translate them to an effective membership drive within individual unions and across the movement. In the next chapter we turn to the campaign run in the 24 Coalition-held marginal electorates to find out how it was organised. We hear from activists about why they became involved and how they found the experience of campaigning.

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5 Winning them over one by one

This chapter examines the political campaign conducted by the ACTU in the 24 targeted Coalition-held marginal electorates. It considers people’s motivation for becoming involved, their experiences on the campaign trail and how, for some, it has had a dramatic impact on their lives. We also look at the way the community campaign was managed, what it set out to do and the ways in which the coordinators built activism and commitment among the volunteers.

Moving from anger into action What is wrong about [Work Choices] is that when I walked into this country somebody that I never knew from a bar of soap had already laid down the hard work creating the conditions that I fortuitously enjoyed. I think I’ve got a debt to those people, whoever they are, they didn’t know me … I just came along, moved in and took advantage of what they had fought for and the time and money they’d lost getting these conditions that I’ve enjoyed. I owe it to those people to do for the next generation, the current and the next generation, what they did for me. It’s a question

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of right and wrong really, that if it’s good enough to enjoy these benefits somebody else gave us then it’s got to be good enough to put something back into the can for other people (Roger H.).1

For Roger, a self-funded retiree living in the Macquarie (NSW) electorate, and hundreds of others like him around the country, the campaign against Work Choices in marginal electorates offered them the opportunity to ‘put something back’ in support of a movement and a society that had benefited them, a rationale that echoed one of the key themes in the ACTU’s campaign speeches, especially from the Sky Channel broadcasts. Protecting the rights of their children and grandchildren was a powerful reason for many to become involved, expressed passionately in interviews, to campaigners on the street and on the web forums. Another community campaign activist, Terry S. in Kingston (SA), commented: I’m retired but we’ve got two boys at work, and we want a fairer system for them, because that’s what I’ve had through my working life. Why should we go backwards in relation to losing our rights at work? And that’s basically the main reason I got involved … I want that solidarity of employment and conditions for future generations.

Their children’s future, the work/family balance and maintaining hard-won rights and conditions that they saw as definitively ‘Australian’ were strongly identified through ACTU polling as of deep concern to low-income families, and so were emphasised in television advertising and the Sky Channel broadcasts. Feedback loops developed between the conversations occurring in pubs and kitchens across the country, the scripts of the ads, comments in focus groups and comments from the public to campaigners on street stalls, in shopping centres and at community meetings. Many of the more complex contributions on the ACTU 118

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websites, offering multiple reasons for opposing the laws, rallying and becoming involved in other ways, mentioned concern for children and grandchildren. Justice, dignity, respect and power at work were recurring themes, as was a passionate concern that Australian not become like the United States.2 I’m rallying because I believe that my children (if I should have any) have a right to future employment that allows them justice and dignity at work. I’m rallying because these laws do much more than simply shift the power balance away from those most in need of support; they impact upon the amount and quality of time our youth will have to spend with their working parents, and our ability to engage in voluntary work – things that strengthen the cohesiveness of our society. I’m rallying because I have no choice but to add my voice to the millions of Australians who are standing up for justice and fairness in our workplaces and our communities (Rachel D. WA).3 I’ll be at the rally because I have teenage kids who are about to begin their working lives. I want them to grow up in a country that values fairness, not the dog-eat-dog mentality of the United States. We are Australians, we should be proud of the good things about our country and fighting to protect them (Peter McC. Qld.).4

The undemocratic nature of the laws, that they had not been part of the Government’s election platform, was one of the factors that provoked intense anger. Small business owners, pensioners, students, workers and others found common ground in this indignation. One small businesswoman, Anne B. from New South Wales, wrote to the forum explaining why she would join the union day of protest in November 2006: First, let me point out that I am a small business owner and I’m 60. I’m not a ‘battler’ and I’m one of the people who is

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supposed to benefit from these IR laws. Nevertheless, I have rejected them from the first. And why? This is major social change by stealth and, as far as I’m concerned, about as unAustralian as you can get. I appeal to the Labour [sic] Party to get its act together and show the people there is a real alternative for them to vote for. I congratulate the Unions for their work on behalf of all Australians. I’ll be there on the 30th.5

Becoming actively involved offered a constructive means of harnessing such anger. Kevin, a disability pensioner who developed and maintained a website for the Macquarie community campaign committee, epitomised this response: ‘It’s so unjust what’s happened – the Howard government didn’t have a mandate to do this and it made me very angry. Working on the website made me feel I was doing something constructive towards getting rid of the Howard government and their terrible IR laws.’ Denise H., a retired schoolteacher who had previously been active in the refugee support movement in New South Wales, was similarly motivated by anger at the laws and John Howard’s disregard for the democratic process. She first joined the Lindsay community campaign, although she lived in the adjacent seat of Macquarie. Later, when a community campaign was launched in Macquarie, she joined that too: I think we nearly had things equally balanced between capital and labour, you know, and then just to have it completely stolen. [Howard] had no right to do it and that made me angry. He didn’t have a mandate, and it was just stolen. One hundred years of work, what my father went through and what I went through and then all of a sudden! He’s just got no right to do that to people and I don’t want it to be like America.6

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was extremely positive about ‘the chance to make a difference’ through the ‘YRaW’ campaign: I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do it within the Labor Party. Just being a member of the Labor Party, all you do is scream at the television set or get depressed which is definitely what I did in 2001, after the Tampa and again in 2004. So it was a really depressing time and you felt that you were completely inadequate to do something about it. This campaign that the union movement is running is different. It’s given us something to do. I can spend my time getting out there, trying to change people’s minds and I’m forever grateful to people like John Robertson and the ACTU of course. Here they targeted five seats and I was in one of them. Now I’m in two of them!

Personal economic hardship was a motivating factor for numerous volunteers. Ryan A., who took up an apprenticeship in 2006 when in his late twenties, got involved in ‘YRaW’ after talking with his union about his frustration with the low wages for apprentices and his ineligibility for the adult apprenticeship rate. Becoming involved in the community campaign enabled him to express his political (and economic) frustration. The confronting experience of being offered a ‘take it or leave it’ contract which cut hours or conditions, or the trauma of being unfairly dismissed, were the triggers transforming others into activists. One of the best known of these was Andrew Cruickshank, the high-income space planner for the Priceline group in Victoria whose employer made him redundant for ‘operational reasons’, then re-advertised his position a few weeks later at a salary $25 000 below what he had been paid. The AIRC ruled that Priceline’s actions were allowable under the law for ‘operational reasons’. Outraged at the way the laws left workers exposed, Cruickshank and his family denounced the Government’s policies and their impact on families in an ACTU television advertisement and in press 121

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interviews.7 The impact of the laws on his family and the prospect that they could cause similar misery and hardship to many others was the catalyst that transformed Cruickshank from an essentially apolitical private citizen to a very public political advocate (see discussion of the ad in chapter 3). These personal accounts reveal the degree of passion the issue provoked. The injustice of the Work Choices legislation and the removal of unfair dismissal provisions operated powerfully on many, transforming not only political allegiances but also the ways in which people saw themselves and the actions they were prepared to take in support of their views. People living comfortable suburban lives, some who had never previously joined any community or political organisation, some who had been loyal Liberal voters all their adult lives, were stirred to action on hearing about the impact and scale of the Work Choices changes. Ordinary rank and file union members, who had taken their conditions for granted and hitherto shown little interest in union activities, were likewise galvanised into support. Community activists in the ‘YRaW’ campaign came from a wide range of backgrounds: pensioners, small business people, former Liberal voters, union delegates, retirees, full-time parents, workers from all sectors and industries. More trade union members than non-members were involved, but a significant number of people with no previous history of activism became deeply committed. For some people, already disillusioned after a series of government actions and policies they disagreed with, the new laws were the last straw. Work Choices had the potential to directly disadvantage far more people than issues that had provoked previous community outrage, such as the Government’s refugee policy, its refusal to advocate on behalf of David Hicks and its refusal to apologise to the Stolen Generations. Work Choices was viewed as an assault on the historic rights and conditions of ordinary working Australians, the mainstream voters. Symbolically, it was seen as 122

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an attack on that amorphous but much-valued quality of Australian nationalism, the ‘fair go’. As a catalyst for community action it had more popular appeal, and the potential to generate far great community identification, than those earlier issues.

Building the community campaign Liberal MPs, party officials and many conservative commentators have attributed the Coalition’s 2007 loss in large part to the Work Choices legislation.8 Even people who were not directly affected believed it demonstrated the Government’s arrogance or lack of concern with the electorate. What these views do not take into account is how people found out about the issues. The ACTU’s advertising campaign, sophisticated though it was, was not the sole catalyst for thousands of people across the country becoming activists for workers’ rights and conditions. While the advertising raised awareness of the issue, it was the lower profile networking on the ground in the targeted electorates that built the energy and commitment of more than 5000 volunteers, who gave up hours every weekend over a whole year to talk to other people in their neighbourhood, individually, about problems with the laws and the need for change. The unions developed a community-based campaign in which they placed full-time coordinators in 24 Coalition-held marginal electorates around the country plus one held by the ALP (Franklin in Tasmania).9 The seats initially targeted by the ACTU were: Hasluck and Stirling in Western Australia; Solomon in the Northern Territory; Kingston, Makin and Wakefield in South Australia; Bass and Braddon in Tasmania; Corangamite, Deakin and La Trobe in Victoria; Dobell, Eden-Monaro, Lindsay, Macquarie and Page in New South Wales; and Blair, Bonner, Flynn, Moreton and Longman in Queensland. In addition, certain unions independently decided to employ coordinators in four additional seats they judged to be winnable or in which they had close 123

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connections to the ALP candidate. These were Dawson, Leichhardt and Bowman in Queensland and Franklin in Tasmania. In all, 25 coordinators were employed full time in the lead-up to the election. Individual unions funded the employment of the ACTU community campaign coordinators (or CCCs, as they became known), and nominated existing staff members or delegates to fill the positions; the ACTU coordinated the operation nationally. The targeted seats operation remained largely under the radar for the greater part of the election campaign year. In June 2007, press reports of the scale of the union movement’s efforts held up the sophistication of the campaign as evidence of ACTU ‘dirty tricks’10, but Liberal and National Party officials had little comprehension of the complexity of the union strategy. The thinking behind the community campaign

The idea of the marginal seats campaign was conceived early in the planning stages – over the 2004–05 summer – to be a major component of the third year of the election cycle, to be focused on changing people’s votes. Some union leaders I interviewed argued the ‘YRaW’ campaign was home-grown, but it is clear that close parallels to community elements of the campaign exist in other countries, in particular the political campaigns undertaken by US unions and their peak body, the AFL-CIO. Chris Walton, ACTU Assistant Secretary, acknowledged that although the ACTU had adapted strategies to suit Australian circumstances, the genesis of the community campaign came from its studies of US unions’ political campaigning.11 In the United States unions are heavily involved in getting people to register to vote and to actually turn out on election day. They employ community organisers in key seats and work with community-based organisations and networks to build alliances around issues of concern to working families, particularly in ethnic and faith-based communities. The US approach of using community members to encourage other members of the same community to regis124

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ter and to vote was one aspect which particularly impressed the Australian delegations. Australian unions have supported political candidates, usually ALP candidates, in previous state and federal elections with donations and through the contribution of union staff and resources. Even unions not actually affiliated to the ALP have periodically conducted campaigns in support of ALP candidates over specific funding and policy issues of relevance to their members and their members’ employment, such as health and education funding, quality of care or class sizes.12 The ACTU-organised study tours led to the adoption of policies that committed Australian unions to involving members in political lobbying and community ‘activity in support of their industrial and social goals’.13 The ‘YRaW’ operation in the marginal seats, if not entirely innovative, was nonetheless extraordinary for several reasons – the scale of its efforts; its duration; its success in attracting new and re-enthused activists; the discipline Australia-wide; the degree of coordination and support provided; and, most significantly, the extent to which it built recognition of the politics of work and workers’ rights as a legitimate issue for discussion in local communities. Never before had unions funded full-time coordinators in marginal seats a whole year ahead of a likely poll date. Never before had they developed a detailed blueprint for how these coordinators could best work their electorates, nor developed training programs tailored for community activists. The ACTU, together with affiliates and state Labor Councils, resourced the electorate-based political organisers through training, state-based support and coordination, the provision of cars, computers, information technology systems, other basic infrastructure and extensive publicity material and merchandise, although the contrast between the resources available in electorates such as Makin, Moreton or Longman, especially in the early stages of the campaign, and in places such as Bowman, was marked. In Bowman (Qld; margin 8.9 per cent after redistribution), the 125

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ETU was making a concerted effort to wrest the seat from the sitting Liberal member, Andrew Laming, and deliver it to former ETU official and ALP candidate Jason Young. They funded Jacqueline King to coordinate the local ‘YRaW’ campaign from a dedicated office, produced an enormous amount of campaign material, including press and radio advertising, much of it specific to the Bowman electorate, and funded additional campaign workers to support ‘YRaW’ activities in the electorate in the last weeks of the campaign.14 Other coordinators made do with far more limited resources. Nationally, nearly all CCCs were employed from around June 2006 until the election campaign. Most succeeded in a hugely demanding job, despite the appointment process being based on nomination rather than merit-based selection, and the varied experience they brought to the positions. Describing the scale of the role, Wendy Turner, the campaign coordinator for the Queensland seat of Longman, said: Basically as one of these coordinators you are in effect running a federal campaign on your own. I mean yes, you’ve got a committee but you are the manager of the whole campaign. Normally ALP campaigns, or any political campaign, have people on board that have been doing it for years, they know what they’re doing. But a lot of this is new for people that we have engaged. So you’re bringing people with you all the time and people are growing.15

The CCCs came from a wide range of backgrounds. Some were experienced union organisers or officials, some had significant experience in working with communities, some came from the ALP, others had gained experience as delegates in the midst of difficult disputes. Tim Palmer in Makin, for example, had been an active member of the TWU and later the NUW, gaining critical experience during the hardships of the Ansett collapse. Almost 50 per cent of the coordinators were women; two were 126

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of Indigenous background. Some were active members of the ALP, others were not. A few were active in faith communities or parishes, others had no connection with this segment of the community. Some coordinators knew their electorates well, having lived or worked in them, others were assigned regions a long way from where they lived and with which they had no existing connections. Finally, and importantly, the coordinators were drawn from all union and ALP factions. It was clearly impressed on everyone working on the campaign that factional allegiances had no part to play. Anyone found to be using their position to promote or undermine any faction or union would have their contract terminated. This determination to keep the ‘YRaW’ campaign free of the debilitating factional tensions that had crippled some previous political campaigns was important to its success. The rules applied not only to the coordinators, being also impressed on the campaign committee members. Divisions or rivalries would be a gift to the Government and undermine the efforts of the many people working to achieve change. The CCCs were responsible for recruiting and mentoring volunteer activists and building them into a coherent team, sometimes several teams in the larger electorates. Together with their committees, they mapped aspects of their electorate, including significant worksites, community organisations, ethnic minorities and other communities of interest. The CCCs used publicly available figures from census and social atlas data, plus voting figures for specific booths from previous state and federal elections, together with information from individual unions, to develop a profile of their area. This intelligence informed decisions about where to locate events, letterboxing and doorknocking efforts, and which shopping centres were most likely to reach key segments of the community. The CCCs were also expected to build links with existing community organisations and stakeholder groups. It was a huge job. By the time the election was called everyone was exhausted, operating on adrenalin alone. 127

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Sustaining such intense efforts over such a long time with limited support is an issue that future campaigns should review – everyone knew of volunteers or union staff whose health or families were suffering under the strain. Initially it was hoped that local organisations would endorse the ACTU campaign, or that mutual interest in seeing the Howard government defeated would lead to joint activities. This proved to be the case in certain electorates such as Longman and Kingston, where the coordinators were experienced in community work. But for some CCCs the job was sufficiently challenging and demanding without the very time-consuming addition of wide community networking and development of mutual goals. Other organisers were concerned about the value of what they could leave behind in their communities after the campaign. (The issue of building alliances is discussed further in chapter 8.) Building activism in the community

Unions NSW were the first to implement the targeted seats campaign. They made it a central feature of their ‘YRaW’ strategy from the beginning, appointing members of their own staff in early 2005 to build the community campaign in five marginal seats, initially Dobell, Eden-Monaro, Greenway, Lindsay and Patterson. Macquarie and Page were substituted for Greenway and Patterson in 2006, when polling indicated they were more winnable. Twenty-nine local groups were established by the end of 2005, rising to 44 by 2007. A ‘Last Weekend’ Family Picnic at Olympic Park, attended by around 30 000 people, was hosted in August 2005. The picnic was designed to highlight the impact of Work Choices on families, especially through its threat to the traditional spread of working hours that enabled families to enjoy a weekend together.16 Unions NSW also commissioned the bright orange ‘Your Rights at Work’ bus and took it on the road from August 2005 (see chapter 4). 128

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To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book

New supporters were also recruited through events such as the Penrith Festival, in Lindsay, where in 2005 an ‘YRaW’ float and stall were featured. The activities in Lindsay foreshadowed the shape of the community campaigns that would roll out across the country, preceding community activities in other states by nearly twelve months. Jo J. (at the time a non-unionist) was working in the child-care sector when she heard about the campaign from a neighbour, and attended a small public meeting at which John Robertson from Unions NSW spoke. Many of the community campaigns began with a public meeting, often quite small, but interest soon snowballed. Jo and her sister then attended the first NSW Day of Action event, broadcast in July 2005, at the Penrith RSL. She told me: We went to the Sky Channel broadcast with the children; I was in tears because I thought ‘What have we allowed to happen?’ Because there was no mandate. They’d taken nothing to the people. I consider myself quite 129

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knowledgeable in most things but I was just gobsmacked at what I heard and I thought ‘Okay, I need to get active, we need to do something.’

It was common for CCCs to have several hundred names on their list of supporters, filled in at shopping centres, stalls and community events. In Kingston in South Australia, John Short’s list of interested volunteers included over 350 names; Wendy Turner in Longman had over 325; Lindsay, established the longest, had nearly 600 names. Many signed up for a simple or passive job such as putting posters on their fences, others offered to spend an hour or two stuffing envelopes, a few volunteered to take on key organisational roles. Building momentum and commitment

In the other states the targeted seats campaign started later, around the middle of 2006, with people becoming involved in similar ways. As in New South Wales, people who initially volunteered to spend an hour or so a month found themselves contributing every spare hour each week. Eileen B. from Kingston heard about the campaign at an ALP meeting: I thought, oh, I’m not in the union anymore now I’m retired, what a shame, I won’t be much use to them, but I’d love to be involved. Anyway John [Short] said ‘We’ll have a retired persons’ group and I thought ‘I can be in that.’ And then a faith group, ‘I can be in that as well’ … I’ve been involved for almost 18 months. As it got nearer the big day, we’d be out on activities maybe five days a week. From thinking I would be useless it’s amazing what being elderly and retired could achieve.17

Sandy J.’s sister Annie was sacked from her waitressing job when she said she could not work an extra shift at short notice because she had university classes. Sandy realised her own manager, too, 130

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was starting to use the new powers of the Act to intimidate staff. The atmosphere in her workplace had also changed: Annie was sacked from [restaurant name] where she had been waitressing as a casual for three years because she could not come in and do an extra shift at short notice. They knew she had university classes on Wednesdays but they sacked her anyway. That made me really concerned and then I realised that my manager was starting to mention the new laws all the time whenever he asked people to do things and he kept ‘joking’ about how he could sack us any time now. I felt very insecure and I don’t want my whole working life in fear. So I asked around to find out how I could do something to help get rid of the laws.18

By November 2005, Adam Kerslake and Jennifer Acklin had developed and run the first training program for NSW community campaign committee members, who ranged from active union delegates to retirees. Peter M. in Lindsay observed that in his group there were a lot of professional people who were highly 131

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motivated but realised they did not know how best to make a difference and where to direct their efforts: ‘We had the training and by the end of the training I think that I could have just invited 50 people over for a barbecue with everybody and I think they all felt the same, that is like a big family, an extended family.’ The training built trust, knowledge, skills and confidence, but the actual experience of working on stalls, collecting signatures on petitions and talking to people one to one about the issues became quite addictive for many. The focus of much of the training was on capacity-building. The supporters learnt skills that would be of lasting relevance, in their working lives as well as in their political or social activism, not just as a means to an end in the ‘YRaW’ campaign. A number of participants identified the training as one of the significant factors in the personal growth they felt they had achieved through the course of the campaign. Campaign training and experience gave people who had not previously been sufficiently confident to engage in political debates in their workplace or their social environment the skills and expert knowledge to now do so, a capacity to advocate their views. Jo J. gave an example of talking with her brother-in-law, a selfdescribed ‘money tart’, and other family members about Work Choices and its impact: The campaign has taught me to argue to the point and, using diplomacy, to change it around to your side of the argument. I try to get them around to my argument and get them to think. And if I get them to think on that visit then the next time I see them, that’ll be my next pick-up point.19

Others wore their ‘YRaW’ regalia everywhere they went to open up opportunities for conversation. Many were people who previously had lacked the confidence to initiate political discussions at all, let alone with strangers. Retired teacher Denise H. said that the campaign had led to a huge growth in her confidence 132

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even though outsiders might have assumed that she was already confident: I wear my badge everywhere, like down to the Opera House, down to anywhere I go I wear the badge. I see people because I’m very aware I’ve got it on … I wear it into the shopping centre and because of my age, I’m not [threatening], I can say to people … ‘How are they treating you?’, that sort of thing.

Many of the community campaign groups collected signatures on petitions against Work Choices on local streets, in shopping centres, at sporting events and in other public venues.20 Mary Yaager, the coordinator for Lindsay and later Dobell, and John Robertson both emphasised that in New South Wales the petition was regarded as a vehicle for a conversation about the nature of the laws. Roger and Denise, working in both Lindsay and Macquarie, enjoyed this aspect of the campaign so much they devoted all their spare moments to it. They collected over 10 000 signatures from sporting venues, street stalls and shopping centres and, as they relished reminding people, that meant over 10 000 individual conversations. Another effective technique was the distribution of free orange ‘YRaW’ shopping bags. One CCC observed that if you offered someone a free shopping bag, they would open up and talk to you about their whole life. People who signed the petition were asked about their particular concerns with the legislation and whether they personally had bad experiences under them. The NSW bus tours collected some particularly distressing stories of exploitation. Some, such as that of 17-year-old Tenika Setter (discussed in chapter 1) were later released as examples of the damage the laws were causing. The ‘YRaW’ logo and bright T-shirts became widely recognised, often prompting strangers to stop and ask for advice. The training Kerslake and Acklin developed in New South Wales was run nationally, with local adaptations for community groups 133

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and individual unions. Subsequent training covered specific skills such as media interviews, doorknocking, handing out how-to-vote cards at polling booths and so on. These sessions often encompassed discussions of broader issues such as aspects of political economy, the distribution of wealth in Australia; how one might define the interests of workers’ and workers’ families, employers and their representatives; and broader questions of values and the kind of world people wished to live in. Jane Clarke, an ACTU educator based in Adelaide, described the ways people became engaged with this aspect of the training: ‘People have been very keen to have these conversations and to unpack how their world works and what factors are contributing to it. [They want] a discussion around values and different belief systems about how the world should run.’

Strategic activism: performing protest, managing anger Training was also offered in managing indignation with the Government and business, and (later) the ALP, for perceived limitations of its industrial relations policy. This was an aspect of the workshops that many people were keen to undertake – some ‘got it’ immediately, others were deeply frustrated about the laws and needed to work those feelings through in a ‘safe’ environment. Jane Clarke explained: Part of the exercise with a lot of the people we are working with is how you express your anger, and justifiable anger about this injustice, without that becoming the issue. So that the issue remains these unfair laws that are hurting people. So we’ve done quite a bit of work both formally and informally with people thinking about how we look, mindful about what happened in ’96, mindful when anger and behaviour became the focus rather the issue.21

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Sharron Caddie, from the Queensland Council of Unions, constantly reminded affiliates and community activists that ‘everything we do is about a positive union experience’22 Most volunteers understood the rationale behind the image management strategy, especially once the business ads depicting unionists as thugs commenced. However, a few wanted to retain a preferred image as political radicals. Andrew Ramsay, CCC in Moreton, found he lost a few potential volunteers from his own industry (construction) when they were told they had to wear ‘YRaW’ clothing, rather than favourite political T-shirts complete with provocative graphics and slogans, to community campaign activities. He said the dissent ‘took a bit of taming’ and a few didn’t bother helping after that, but he agreed with the approach ‘because if you don’t win Mummy, you don’t win anyone. I’ve found that at the markets, if you can’t get Mum in first, you don’t get Dad, or rarely do you get Dad’.23 Political opponents often baited unionists and ‘YRaW’ supporters, hoping to provoke them into unstrategic conduct, abuse, swearing or vehement gestures. Trainers, union officials at all levels and the CCCs constantly stressed the need for internal discipline. Sharron Caddie kept telling people: It is not about us, it is not about unions. It is all about the impact of the laws on ordinary people and anything that we do that distracts people from that is actually not in accordance with what we are trying to achieve, which is getting rid of the Government and the laws.

Rewards and personal growth Self-transformation was commonly mentioned both by activists and those who worked with them. Many who got involved initially to lend a hand here and there became passionately involved, devoting most of their spare time to the campaign and 135

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reorganising other priorities so that they could do even more. This commitment grew out of their belief in the campaign goals, trust in the coordinators, comfort with the organisation and fellow workers, and with their own expanding capabilities. Some discovered a talent for public speaking or organising and now have political or union career aspirations. CCCs agreed that many of their volunteers had gained enormous satisfaction from their involvement. Several people said it was the ‘best thing I have done in my life’. Kate Coleman, from the ACTU Education and Campaign Centre, talked about the satisfaction she got from watching the growth in volunteers’ skills: It was just beautiful to see and the excitement of his participation. I said to him, ‘I just never picked you for someone who would do this.’ And he said ‘Oh, why not? I’ve had the best time of my life.’ And so there was that elation of being part of something historically significant, but [also] the discovery in themselves that they can do stuff that they never ever thought they would do. And so that building of confidence, knowing that ‘Yeah, I can do this, I’m just going to have a go’.24

The identities that campaigners developed through their involvement were built in their engagement with each other, with committee meetings, planning sessions, training forums and the activities they participated in together. Activists tried their hands at things they’d never done previously – they took risks, spoke in public, rang talk-back radio, approached strangers on the street, doorknocked and letterboxed. They met politicians and convened meetings. They talked about politics with family members, friends and acquaintances, risking rebuttal, rejection and ridicule. They celebrated each other’s achievements and commiserated with each other when things didn’t work out the way they had planned. Many of these groups formed into strong and lasting communities or ‘dense networks’, which will take on other causes and stay in touch.25 136

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Linda E., previously a rank and file union member, became very involved in the Lindsay campaign and ended up speaking about it all over the country. She is adamant it has changed her life: I was facing life as a single parent, wondering how it was going to go and feeling quite disempowered … I have to say this campaign has changed my life in showing that the little person can make a difference and have a voice. But on a personal level, I have found the person I was before I had kids, but more, much more confident, and a lot happier. I’ve got really close to [my co-campaigners] because it’s like I’ve been waiting to meet these people all my life.26

Not all will continue their involvement in politics but the skills they learned are transferable into other aspects of community life; campaigners learnt some of the rewards of political organising and ways to ‘do politics differently’.27

The joys of common cause Despite their varied backgrounds, the community activists built trust, friendship and affection over a very short time. They talked with each other about their hopes (and fears) for the future, social ideals, values and faith. Whether it was working on a street stall, running a sausage sizzle, leafleting, attending a public meeting, collecting signatures on petitions or participating in a placard-waving event in peak-hour traffic beside a busy highway, the camaraderie built with every activity. Roger talked about his friendships with his co-volunteers, particularly in the Lindsay group: After we met them two or three times … you had complete trust in them … it was just this wonderful camaraderie that you knew you were mixed up with what seemed to me like

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a group of decent people, that you’re all going in the same direction and you felt as if you’d known one another for donkey’s years.28

Many volunteers and coordinators talked about the care people showed for each other. When things went wrong someone would be there with tea and scones straight away. Terry and Helen, from Kingston, told me that when Terry became ill during 2007 the concern and support from other ‘YRaW’ members had sustained him and been an important factor in his recovery. The labour movement has always prided itself on these layers of connection and the solidarity that common cause brings, although these days it sounds unacceptably nostalgic and idealistic to mention them. Historically, however, these pleasures have not always been characterised by inclusivity. Even in this campaign there were concerns in one or two of the groups that too few women were involved, or too few young people. Most of the CCCs and trainers were conscious of trying to ensure that all their volunteers enjoyed the work they did and that the local committees built a self-sustaining and inclusive group identity. The campaign timeframe was longer than a year in most states and even more in New South Wales. This was a long time to expect people to sustain their efforts and contribute their time. If the work was burdensome or the personalities fractious, volunteers would naturally fade away. It was a priority to ensure that people had a good time and celebrated every achievement; many of the interviewees praised their coordinators highly for their skill in making their groups cohesive and the work rewarding. Likewise, if an activity did not succeed the challenge was to work together to solve it, not to make the people involved feel that they had failed.

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The thrill of victory On 24 November 2007, in halls, sports clubs and bars in 24 marginal seats across the country, ‘Your Rights at Work’ volunteers were ecstatic. Not only had most of these seats been won, but the ALP was swept into power convincingly. In all, 21 of the 24 targeted seats changed hands, with Bowman (Queensland) being lost by a mere 64 votes. On average the swing to the ALP in the targeted seats was 7.1 per cent, compared to the national average of 5.3 per cent. The ‘YRaW’ activists were convinced that community rejection of Work Choices, of a government that was so arrogant and out of touch as to introduce such legislation, had won the election for the ALP. But they believed, too, that it was the combined efforts of the ACTU, affiliated unions and their own work in the targeted seats that established the issue as a winner for Labor. As Chris from Wakefield put it, ‘the Rights at Work campaign delivered the ALP victory on a plate’. The activists’ view was that the Labor Party had been slow to take up the issue as central to their campaign, waiting for the union campaign to prove its electoral value (the election result is returned to in chapter 8). Over the following weeks the groups held evaluation meetings that were also occasions to thank everyone involved and discuss their possible future involvement. In Kingston about 70 people came together in the Onkaparinga Rugby Club. The atmosphere was jubilant, people living at opposite ends of the electorate delighted to see each other again. Hugs, laughter and tears marked the first half hour. Richard, one of the campaign supporters, had compiled a DVD of campaign photos set to a soundtrack. This played to great cheers and general hilarity as triumphs, stunts and significant moments were relived. The newly elected Labor MP, Amanda Rishworth, spoke briefly to the group and thanked them for their efforts which she credited as significant in her victory. She reiterated her commitment to abolishing Work Choices. Her respect for the contributions of 139

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the group towards the ALP victory appeared heartfelt and was clearly appreciated. The evening included some small group evaluation exercises and a report on the overall achievements of the campaign across the country, noting Kingston’s place within that. Kingston had enrolled more people to vote than any other electorate campaign group and had involved 240 people handing out how-to-vote cards on polling day. Each small group considered the aspects of the campaign most significant to them and what, if anything, they’d do differently in the future. The excitement was palpable, with noise levels rising and shouts of laughter. As each group reported, applause rolled around the room. The standout aspects of the campaign included the ‘fabulous people’ they had met and ‘the companionship and solidarity built amongst the group’; the conversations they’d had with people in the street, especially when they had ‘contributed to someone changing their minds’; the quality of the ‘organisation of the campaign overall’ and a feeling of ‘pride at being part of something so well coordinated and so historic’; and the ousting of the Coalition government, notably the fact that ordinary people had made this happen through ‘people power’. The greatest cheers and a standing ovation were offered for John Short, their coordinator, who was held in great affection and respect. This was a micro-community in awe of the campaign’s success and their own achievements, their own part in making change. This glimpse into the Kingston evaluation night could easily be swapped for an account of the events in many other of the targeted seats, say Lindsay, Dobell, Longman, Dawson, Makin, Deakin, Bass, Hasluck. ‘Solidarity’ was a term used frequently in assessments of the campaign’s successes: the conviction of having built lasting bonds with others around a common cause, of having rediscovered the power of their voices. From looking closely at the union campaign we now turn to consider the Government campaign to promote Work Choices, 140

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and the criticisms of its expenditure of public funds on what was arguably a political advertising campaign. The business and employer campaigns are discussed, with an exploration of the lobbying tactics employed and their television advertising. Both business and Liberal Party advertising used scare tactics to demonise trade unionists. These analyses are relevant to a consideration of how successful or not the ACTU campaign was in achieving its goals, and the nature of the obstacles it faced.

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6 Campaigning on the other side: selling Work Choices

Having looked at the way the ACTU enacted its ‘YRaW’ campaign, it is worth considering the Government’s campaign to sell Work Choices. Business groups worked hard to retain the industrial relations changes and to convince the Government to take them further. Business sought also to exert influence on the ALP to retain key elements of the reforms should Labor win power. Both employers and Government attacked trade unions as a group and trade unionists as individuals. This chapter examines the two stages of the Government’s promotion of Work Choices – first as policy, then through its defence of workplace reform and attacks on the union movement within the election campaign – and the campaign by business to retain the reforms through advertising and the application of political pressure.

The Government campaign In promoting Work Choices, the Howard government argued that industrial relations changes were essential to national and to individual prosperity, both the Prime Minister and Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews saying the changes addressed the need for family-friendly policies. Andrews’ argument was that economic security was an essential pre-condition for, and 142

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enabled, a stronger, more fulfilling family life, claiming three times in the one interview that ‘[t]he best thing we can do for families is have a strong economy’.1 The Work Choices ads argued: ‘To help Australians reach a better balance between work and family life, we need to continue to make sensible, practical and fair workplace changes.’ The main selling point, as evinced by the name, was the claim that Work Choices would enable workers to negotiate flexible work hours with their employers to suit specific family situations, the Work Choices brochure specifically stating that ‘[b]argaining at the workplace level is particularly suited to tailoring working arrangements in ways that assist employees to balance work and family responsibilities’.2 The key claim was that Work Choices was a fairer system and promoted fairness. The Prime Minister argued that ‘[a] fair go relies on a strong economy that creates jobs and avoids recession’, though he avoided defining ‘fairness’.3 Fairness was also used to justify the abolition of unfair dismissal laws for small business. Howard and Andrews told stories about small business operators being effectively blackmailed to pay ‘go-away money’ to unscrupulous employees.4 It was employers who were to be delivered fairness through the abolition of unfair dismissal legislation. For employees, the concept was no longer relevant – ‘fairness’ had been replaced with protection from ‘unlawful termination’, a far narrower set of proscribed events. Indeed, Andrews was reported as having argued that the workplace was not an appropriate venue in which to pursue fairness, which ought to be ensured through the tax and social security systems.5 This was an echo of the business community’s position. The Business Council of Australia’s Workplace Relations Action Plan for Future Prosperity argued that the industrial relations system should focus on prosperity rather than fairness, claiming that fairness had restricted economic development.6 In selling the abolition of unfair dismissal, the Government deemed the definition of ‘unfair’ to be too vague and unworkable – but at the 143

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same time continued to argue that fairness was central to Work Choices and that individual employees would gain through the new arrangements. Fairness became central to the promotion of Work Choices from mid-2005 when, soon after the commencement of the ACTU’s television advertising campaign, the Government pulped 458 000 information brochures, reprinting them with the word ‘fairer’ inserted in the title: WorkChoices: A Simpler, Fairer, National Workplace Relations System for Australia. Clearly ‘fairer’ and ‘fairness’ were regarded as central to the framing of the debate and to winning community consent to the changes. Work Choices was promoted through emphasis on the individual.7 The Prime Minister was keen to boost its promise for individuals who were now ‘free’ to negotiate to suit their personal needs, no longer ‘hampered’ by the constraints of the collective. Unions and other observers pointed out that few people had access to real bargaining choice, most being presented with pattern contracts or a ‘take it or leave it’ option.8 Howard lauded the contribution individuals made to Australia through their roles as ‘enterprise workers’, which was central to his argument that the Work Choices laws were essential for the national good, and that opposition to them, being against progress, prosperity and security, was ‘un-Australian’. Unions were positioned as obstinate relics of the past and anti-progress. For both the nation as a whole and for individuals, Work Choices reflected and furthered the neo-liberal shift in the locus of identity from production to consumption, from strong social and work relationships to the shaping of lives through purchasing power. The rhetoric surrounding Work Choices underpinned the advertising campaign for the later Fairness Test as well, the messages that the union movement actively contested through their advertising and political campaigns (see chapter 3).

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Selling workplace reform Early promotion of Work Choices included multiple-page newspaper advertisements, beginning with a full-page Government ad in dramatic format reminiscent of front-page national tragedy style (white type on black background) telling readers that ‘Australia can’t afford to stand still’. The message – that the new workplace relations system would deliver ‘an even stronger economy, more jobs and higher wages’, that Work Choices was promoting the national interest through a change of major importance that would deliver benefits to all. The importance of the change was further emphasised in the same ad by a facsimile letter signed by the Prime Minister.9 The old system was described as being ‘too complex, inflexible and outdated’. Work Choices was simpler: it would ‘improve productivity, provide a real boost to the economy and lead to more jobs and higher wages’. In the initial ads fairness was not mentioned. Readers were encouraged to ‘find out the facts, call the WorkChoices hotline’ or visit the website. Radio ads run in July 2005 directed listeners to additional information, and specifically addressed some of the charges unions had made against the intended changes to the industrial relations laws, such as the erosion of conditions and the cutting back of holidays. In one such ad, a husband comes home from work early. His workplace is on strike because ‘the Government’s going to cut my holidays in half ’. His wife corrects him, referring to the newspaper: ‘No, that’s not right … look, it says here they won’t cut four weeks annual leave, won’t cut award wages or abolish awards.’ A voiceover follows, describing the new workplace relations plan as creating ‘more jobs, higher wages and a stronger economy’ and urging listeners to ‘find out the facts for yourself ’.10 Early television ads launched in October 2005 promoted Work Choices as a system that would remove obstacles to prosperity, combining footage of happy workers in various worksites, largely shot in industrial settings, a system that would ‘[move] us 145

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towards one simple fairer national system’. Obstacles to prosperity, such as the plethora of awards and rules covering industry, were listed: ‘That’s why the Australian Government is introducing Work Choices’. This round of advertising also included fourpage print ads and radio ads. The initial ad program was not particularly emotional, nor particularly engaging, but it was ubiquitous. Seeking saturation coverage, the ads were programmed so frequently that an average TV viewer would see them 29 times in the course of the campaign.11 But the blitz generated significant resistance among the public, arousing controversy because of the size of the advertising budget and the timing, rather than its specific content, controversy fed by press and talkback radio discussion of the expenditure of taxpayer funds (see below).

The ‘damaged brand’ Prime Minister John Howard again: We’ll be telling people in very plain, simple language, lacking spin as to exactly where they stand.12

The Government made several attempts to improve the credibility of its Work Choices program with the public. In January 2007, Howard replaced the dour Kevin Andrews with genial Joe Hockey as Minister for Workplace Relations, apparently hoping that his ‘avuncular appeal’ would better sell the legislation in the lead-up to the election. In May, Hockey agreed with insistent reporters that Work Choices was a ‘damaged brand’, explaining that the new Fairness Test would overcome unintended consequences such as rogue employers taking advantage of employees and presenting them with unfair agreements.13 From that point, the term ‘Work Choices’ was removed from governmental and departmental language, from the website, and call-centre employees were directed not to use it. The new advertising revolved 146

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around the slogan ‘Know where you stand’, and the legislation was now referred to under the generic term ‘workplace reform’. The second phase of advertising was launched in July 2007, another ‘information campaign’ designed ostensibly to inform the public about changes to the laws resulting from the introduction of the Fairness Test. In effect, however, since many of the ads went to air before the Fairness Test legislation was drafted, this campaign, too, was more promotional than informative. The Government’s advertising agency worked hard to make the ads more human, more personable, less technical; the actors playing bureaucrats were warm, friendly and empathic. The women and one man appearing as professional ‘problem-solvers’ were attractive, pleasant-looking people in their mid-thirties. The actors who played workers with problems or holding concerns about the laws were young. The ads seemed deliberately designed to sound similar to the ACTU ads. ACTU research showed some viewers were in fact becoming confused. A number of union organisers reported members saying they’d just seen one of the ‘new ACTU ads’, when they’d been watching a Government ad. Undoubtedly the Government was intentionally attempting to muddy the waters and lessen the importance of industrial relations as an election issue. To combat the problem, the ACTU added a voice-over at the beginning of their ‘Real people, real stories’ ads, explaining that these were real people, talking about what had actually happened to them as a result of the laws.14 One widely-screened ad from the Government ‘Know where you stand’ ads showed ‘Kerry’ from the Workplace Infoline smiling warmly at the camera, explaining that the Infoline takes calls from employers and employees about their agreements. Many people are checking on how much they should be paid and their terms and conditions: ‘And why shouldn’t they? They deserve to know their rights and how to get them.’ Viewers saw a young automechanic of southern European descent, a young, attractive 147

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Asian-Australian woman in a coffee shop, and a blonde woman in her thirties in a clerical job, all ringing for assistance. Kerry reassures viewers: ‘If the call is about things that might be against the law, like people being pressured into signing agreements, I put them on to the Workplace Ombudsman. And we understand the importance of confidentiality. After all, they are people’s jobs we’re talking about.’15 Other ads in the series showed ‘workers’ at the Workplace Ombudsman’s Office and ‘Mark’ at the Workplace Authority, whose job involved checking fairness tests. Another group, fronted by Barbara Bennett, head of the new Workplace Authority, generated uproar due to the fact that a very senior and recently promoted public servant was taking a lead role in Government political advertising, and resulted in substantial correspondence to the editor in several newspapers.16 To a significant degree these ads worked to reinforce the negative impressions of the law and the Government, rather than dispelling anxieties, by reminding viewers of the perceived problems.17 Another ‘Know where you stand’ series featured two casually dressed mates in their early thirties, one ad set in a bar, another at a barbecue, and one in a worksite. In the bar, ‘Dave’ remarks he now worked under a workplace agreement. The boss had talked to him about it and it sounded all right, ‘but with the new Fairness rules he also had to get it passed by the Workplace Authority. They said he needed to “up the money a bit” though to get it through, to make it fair’. His mate looks at him: ‘So you get more money … Well, your shout then.’ Aimed at tradespeople and bluecollar workers, this series appealed to the hip-pocket nerve in a group of men who, market research shows, are among the most confident of their ability to negotiate with their boss.18 But the Government’s advertising campaign suffered another blow to its credibility when Damien Richardson, one of the actors, was accused of ripping off a young apprentice he employed in real life as a professional painter.19 Richardson played the concerned 148

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father in an ad featuring a man and his son. ‘There is nothing to stop his employer from ripping him off,’ says Richardson, to which Barbara Bennett responds, ‘That’s not true.’ The Workplace Ombudsman, Nicholas Wilson, undertook to investigate the former apprentice’s complaint. Then the actor’s son claimed his father had not paid him properly either. These developments provoked a new round of parodies on radio, television and online. The ads featuring Richardson were pulled amidst much furore.

‘An avalanche of advertising’ The Howard government was heavily criticised, at every stage of its project to transform the industrial relations system, for the amount of taxpayers’ money it was spending on ‘political advertising’.20 Advertising for both Work Choices and the ‘Know where you stand’ campaign in 2007 commenced before the relevant legislation had been finalised or even introduced into Parliament. The scale and the tenor of the advertising were both criticised as being promotion for the Government rather than provision of information about changes. Even worse from the Government’s point of view, a majority of employers surveyed by the Australian Financial Review after the October 2005 advertising campaign said the ads did not help them understand the changes.21 The Government then designed a program called the Employer Assistance Program (EAP) to increase employers’ understanding of the laws and their application. The first block of Work Choices advertising was criticised as the second largest expenditure of taxpayer funds on advertising in Australian political history. The most expensive was the ‘Unchain my heart’ campaign – promoting the Goods and Services Tax – in 2000, another campaign launched before the details of legislation were clear. ‘Unchain my heart’ cost at least $118 million.22 The ACTU, joined by the ALP, sought an injunction to prevent the Minister for Finance from approving funding for 149

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the Work Choices advertising, arguing that Parliament had not made a specific appropriation for the campaign and that existing appropriations did not cover an advertising campaign for new policy. The High Court found against the ACTU in September 2005, refusing to grant an injunction, and later rejecting the arguments. The Court was split five-to-two over the decision, with the majority view being that Executive control of Parliament implies a right to manage business with a degree of autonomy within the ordinary services of government.23 Senate Estimate Committee hearings and the Senate Inquiry into Government Advertising held in 2005 revealed details of the total cost of the first round of Work Choices advertising. Greg Williams, First Assistant Secretary, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, told the hearings that initially $44.3 million was budgeted for advertising, plus a further $10.7 million for a call-centre and information booklets. The total budget was $55 million. When polling revealed that public hostility to both the laws and the advertising was growing, that the advertising was not producing a change in mood in favour of the laws, the campaign was reduced in scale. Williams claimed that the actual expenditure on advertising was $38.3 million. The cost of the callcentre was scaled back to $4.7 million, leading to a final estimate of $45.7 million.24 A minor scandal erupted over the expenditure on information booklets produced for distribution to households and those seeking additional information on the changes. Close to half a million copies of the initial print run were pulped at a cost of $152 944 because it had been decided to reprint them with the word ‘fairer’ inserted into the title, which now read ‘A simpler, fairer, national Workplace Relations System for Australia’. In June 2008, the Senate Estimates Committee hearings were told that the final costs of the advertising campaigns for the various stages of the Howard government’s Work Choices and Workplace Relations reform, together with the promotional activities 150

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conducted under the Employer Assistance Program, amounted to $137 million. Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard described this in Parliament as ‘an avalanche of advertising’. The breakdown of expenditure provided to the 2008 hearings placed the 2005–06 budget for Work Choices advertising at $44 million. The expenditure on ‘Know where you stand’ advertising, promoting the changes associated with the Fairness Test, totalled $58.5 million, exclusive of GST. A further $35 million was spent on the Employer Assistance Program. The aggregated total of $137 million made it the most expensive advertising campaign by any government in Australia’s history.25

The employers’ campaign Lobbying for industrial relations reform commenced in earnest soon after the 2004 election, with a letter to the Prime Minister from twenty business leaders, many of them from the hard right, advocating particular policies.26 The business community had to convince not only the Government but also the general public of the need for industrial relations reform to build the pressure necessary for the Government to pursue the major changes it so desired. Employer groups adopted a series of public relations strategies to assist in promoting their cause. While these varied depending on the organisation and the issue, there was an overall general strategy.27 The peak bodies would commission research from a body like Access Economics or Econtech on an issue that they wished to promote. The research was released publicly, along with a position paper from the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) or the Business Council of Australia (BCA) or the Australian Mines and Minerals Association (AMMA), depending on which group commissioned it. These reports appeared every few months. At the same time key office-holders contributed opinion pieces to major newspapers, made themselves available 151

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for media interviews, held seminars for their members, and spoke at public forums in venues such as the National Press Club, the Sydney Institute or the H.R. Nicholls Society. Key employers often wrote in support of these positions, and the peak organisations developed submissions to the Senate and to relevant ministers. Each of these elements generated media attention to their case and kept the pressure on the political parties. Within this strategy direct advertising to the general public was only infrequently employed, although when it was it played a controversial role. There were two phases of advertising: in October 2005, the BCA ran television ads on ‘Economic reform vital for Australia’s future’, indirectly supporting the Work Choices laws28; and in 2007 the Business Coalition for Workplace Reform (BCRW), through the National Business Action Fund (NBAF), ran a series of television ads on ‘Let’s keep workplace reform’, attacking unions and their influence and promoting four continuing priorities for reform (see below).29 After Work Choices was passed, ACCI commissioned a report from Econtech to outline the benefits of the changes made to industrial relations legislation since 1993. The result, The Economic Effects of Industrial Relations Reforms since 1993, aggregated the industrial reforms of the ALP and the Coalition from 1993 to 2005, hypothesising about effects on employment and the economy if all these laws were repealed.30 The business lobby used Econtech’s arguments to underpin its ‘Let’s keep workplace reform’ campaign, implying that all these reforms would be overturned should the ALP be elected, when in fact ALP industrial relations policy proposed only to repeal certain aspects of Work Choices.31 The Liberal Party also used this report in election campaign material, citing it as ‘independent economic research’.

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A symbiotic relationship: business and the Coalition As the Government prepared its Work Choices legislation, in November 2005 the Business Council of Australia launched a series of television, print and billboard advertisements: ‘Economic reform vital for Australia’s future’.32 The ads covered the BCA’s four platforms of lowering taxes, cutting red tape, renewing infrastructure and creating a new industrial relations system. The timing of the ads, leading up to the introduction of Work Choices in the Senate, where the Government hoped to win the support of both potential waverers, the Nationals’ Senator Barnaby Joyce and Family First Senator Steve Fielding, was significant. Despite peak business organisations largely having kept a careful distance from party politics, and portraying themselves as primarily concerned with economic policy, in mid-2007 a number of organisations formed the Business Coalition for Workplace Reform (BCWR) and established a National Business Action Fund to publicly campaign in support of Work Choices and the Coalition government.33 The creation of the BCWR appears to have been a direct response to an appeal from the Prime Minister in April 2007, in an interview on ABC Radio in Adelaide, for business to contribute money to an advertising campaign to support Work Choices and counter the ACTU campaign. Eventually nineteen business and employer organisations joined the BCWR, raising $10.5 million for a series of five advertisements.34 Their campaign was developed by Crosby Textor, the Liberal Party’s political campaign managers, which cast doubt on attempts to represent it as non-party political. Michael Chaney, then President of the BCA, insisted the campaign was ‘not about politics’ but rather aimed ‘to provide the facts’ in order to restore ‘balance in the public debate about workplace relations reform’.35 Also driving the business lobby’s campaign was the deep offence caused by the depiction of business CEOs in the ACTU’s ‘Boys in the boardroom’ television ad.36 The initial ACTU ads 153

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featuring Tracy had also upset some employers, who felt they represented bosses as uncaring and unreasonably demanding. The Minerals Council of Australia’s statement announcing the BCWR campaign makes these views plain: The ACTU’s advertising campaign both explicitly and implicitly challenges the industry’s commitment to the well-being of its workforce and seeks to trash its reputation as employers and companies with a strong adherence to corporate social responsibility. Therefore, it should be challenged [emphasis added].37

Research commissioned by employer organisations was also used to support Liberal Party election campaign advertising. The Liberal Party leaflet, 10 ways that Labor’s Industrial Relations policy will affect you, showed Julia Gillard, Shadow Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations, with pursed lips and apparently looking shifty-eyed. Accompanying text read: ‘Do you want to risk: Your job? Your pay? Your quality of life? Your house? Your loan? Labor’s IR policy will affect you’.38 Consistently throughout 2007, the Liberal Party tried to whip up public distrust of Gillard as a radical socialist. Several media organisations cooperated.39 Of the ten claims in the leaflet that ALP policy would harm people and the country’s prosperity, half were sourced from the Econtech report, another from the Australian Mining and Minerals Association (AMMA) report Constructing Lawful Work� places, and another was a quote from Wal King of the Australian Constructors Association. One used ABS statistics, one referenced an OECD employment outlook and another referred to the Sydney Morning Herald, although not to the source within the paper. John Howard, too, used the Econtech report as evidence ‘proving’ that ‘any reversal in industrial relations [law] according to Econtech would lead to higher unemployment and higher interest rates’.40 154

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As the ‘YRaW’ campaign continued to consolidate public anxieties about Work Choices and opinion polls continued to show deep distrust of the legislation, employer organisations worked even more closely with the Government to counter the union campaign and hammer home the economic arguments in support of Work Choices. The joint push built into a crescendo of propaganda in the period immediately before the 2007 election. Then the BCWR released a series of highly controversial advertisements that depicted union officials as criminals.

Taking advantage of Work Choices Once Work Choices took effect, from March 2006, employers were pleased by the ‘freedoms’ available to them under the new laws, and began to use them with confidence. Many of the larger employers, including Rio Tinto, CBA and Qantas, were refusing to negotiate with unions and offering only AWAs to workers. Some of the deals, as businesses sought to shift a critical mass of their employees off awards, initially appeared very attractive. Other businesses immediately took advantage of the new laws to sack their workforce, offering to re-employ them on AWAs at lower pay (as happened to the Cowra meatworkers; see chapter 3).41 Employer confidence in the future under the Coalition’s industrial relations policies was in sharp contrast to their negative views about continued prosperity under an ALP government. By September 2006, the ACCI and BCA had both written to Kim Beazley expressing their deep concern with the ALP’s position, especially the promises to reinstate unfair dismissal provisions for small business employees, and to ‘tear up AWAs’.42 AMMA, which had urged the Howard government to further weaken collective bargaining, also attacked the ALP for pledging to abolish AWAs and the ABCC. This attack was renewed with even greater force after the ALP National Conference in April 2007 and the release of the ‘Forward with Fairness’ policy. Business 155

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concerns were widely and sympathetically reported in the press, particularly in the Australian. On 31 May 2007, MBA and AMMA pressure succeeded in getting the ALP to reverse key elements of the policy endorsed at the National Conference. Labor now pledged to continue the ABCC until 31 January 2010. MBA threats that they would need to insert a ‘risk of Rudd’ premium in building contracts, and their claims that the ALP commitment to disband the ABCC would result in a major inflationary explosion of wage claims and industrial action, alarmed Kevin Rudd and the Party’s election strategists.43 ABC-TV’s 7.30 Report revealed in mid-June that the Australian Constructors Association had been considering a strategy to ‘coerce’ Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard to amend their industrial relations policy. An ACA briefing paper seen by the 7.30 Report proposed that the Association ‘threaten to unleash a politically damaging campaign if they do not agree to ACA’s demands’.44

Desperation tactics The BCWR advertising campaign, intended to run for about six weeks, generated controversy in the business community and externally. In mid-August The Age published a story regarding a leaked confidential email from the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry president to fellow board members, seeking their support for participating in the campaign. In part, the email argued, ‘so much effort went into supporting the WorkChoices package, we have to help defend it now … We have had in excess of $600k in grants to help implement WorkChoices’.45 Greg Combet claimed that the leaked email showed that ‘business feels obliged to run TV ads supporting the Howard government’s unfair IR laws’. He also argued that Government and business should come clean on any relationship between Government funding of business and the TV ads, ‘lest the public have the 156

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impression that the Government indirectly funded the ads’.46 Some business leaders were concerned that the direct engagement of their community with political campaigning would compromise any future relationship with an ALP government; others wanted to remain clearly distanced from party politics.47 The Australian Industry Group for one refused to participate in the advertising campaign, CEO Heather Ridout remaining a critic of the ALP industrial relations policy but declining to engage in direct action.48 The Master Builders Association (MBA) also refused to contribute, running their own ads promoting the continuance of the ABCC instead. On 8 August 2007 the BCWR launched its $10.5 million television, print and billboard campaign in support of Work Choices, and implicitly in support of Coalition policy. It relied on scaremongering and presenting unions as ‘economic vandals’. Patrick McHendry from the National Retailers Association, interviewed on ABC-TV’s Lateline, said, ‘We think it is an appropriate and measured response to the misinformation that’s been peddled about for so many months.’49 The myth of union misuse of power relies on old media stereotypes and outdated industrial relations practices, stereotypes of particular masculinities, and associates male blue-collar union officials with criminal tendencies, corruption and violence. One of the BCWR advertisements, set in a small dressmaking business, quite transparently plays on these associations in portraying the archetypal feminised small business being forcibly overrun by a gang of three overweight thugs. The way these scenes were shot, in full warm colours for the harmonious, cooperative small business and sombre monotones when the union heavies appear, together with the camera angles (the men were shot from below) and the threatening theme music, plainly signal the ad’s intent to raise fear in the viewer. In the initial scene we see two young women working happily together. One unfurls a length of fluid rose-coloured silk which 157

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magically floats down, settling perfectly on the table. Another pins more pink fabric around a dressmaker’s dummy by the window. Through the window we see three large, malevolentlooking men walking purposefully towards them. One of them is plainly meant to resemble the notorious WA construction unionist Joe McDonald. His build is similar, he wears distinctive red braces like McDonald’s, and a ‘Eureka’ patch on his sleeve.50 We see a close-up of the door handle and then a muscular, hairy forearm forcibly shoving the door open. Once inside the colour fades. The central man’s braces remain distinctively red but most other colour (and life) has been drained from the scene. The men loom over the workers who look very apprehensive and, without a word being spoken, the apparent leader rips the fuse from the wall, plunging the business into darkness. The none-too-subtle imagery signified that unions squeeze the life from small business and evoked the fear of male violence towards women, associating it with union officials. Several of the BCWR ads featured common visual metaphors to suggest union violence.51 These included a scene where a slim, pale pair of female hand holds a white paper headed ‘Workplace Agreement’. Two large, hairy male forearms in blue shirt-sleeves grab the top of the paper, tearing it in half as the woman’s hands try desperately to cling on. The line that accompanies this scene varies slightly between the ads but essentially it says, ‘But what will it cost [alternatively ‘what will happen’] if workplace reforms are scrapped?’ A second scene in several of the ads is a shot of a derelict shop front with a sign scrawled across the window: ‘Gone out of business because of union bosses’. The claims made in favour of changing the industrial relations laws are represented through scenes of smiling workers working cooperatively, while statistics about productivity, mostly sourced from the Econtech report mentioned above, are flashed on screen: ‘Since workplace reforms 306 000 full-time jobs have been created’; ‘Since workplace reform exports are up 10 per cent’; 158

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To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book

‘Higher dividends paid to ordinary shareholders’. The Econtech report is also used to demonstrate the costs of overturning Work Choices: ‘Independent economic research says that our ability to compete with the rest of the world will suffer and our standard of living will fall from 8th to 14th’.52 David Noonan, National Secretary of the CFMEU Building and Construction Division, felt that the ads were in general ineffective, merely reinforcing community opposition to the legislation. However, he was alarmed and offended by the association between unionists and violence towards women: The three officials, big tough officials are actually going into a female workplace and not a building site … not to put too fine a point on it, it is calculated to prey on women’s fears of violence by men. So they take what is a prominent concern in the community and try and turn that into an election campaigning thing, so it is a very dark and cynical ad.

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As it was, the campaign suffered a humiliating blow to its credibility when the Sunday Age revealed on 23 September that two of the actors playing the union heavies in the small business advertisement were convicted criminals.53 The BCWR denied any knowledge of the actors’ backgrounds, and issued a statement saying that all the actors in the advertisements were ‘recruited at arms’ length by a specialised and professional talent agency’. Press reports that the agency had been trawling rough bars in Melbourne’s western suburbs looking for a particular type of character to appear as extras certainly fuelled the charge that Crosby Textor were using ‘dog whistle’ tactics once again to play on subliminal fears.

Attacking union influence in the ALP During the election campaign the Liberal Party mounted an attack on the ALP as being full of former ‘career trade union unionists’ and ‘union bosses’. This took the form of print advertising, leaflets, billboards, television advertising and a website entitled unionbosses.net, which included multiple recordings of a few of the country’s more colourful or notorious unionists. (Permission was sought from the Liberal Party to include in this book a photo of their election billboards and a still from the unionbosses.net website, but this was denied.) The Liberal television ad ‘They’ll stuff our economy’ featured black and white footage of WA construction official Joe McDonald behind a megaphone, shaking his fist and shouting, ‘We’re coming back’, followed by a series of short black and white clips of demonstrations and police–union clashes from decades previously, including several from the attempt to break into Parliament House in 1996 (discussed in chapter 2). The voiceover asks: ‘Want to go back to teachers’ strikes, petrol strikes, airline strikes, bus strikes, train strikes, wharf strikes? Don’t go back to Labor and the unions. They will stuff our economy.’54 There were 160

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several other ads in this series. All included black and white footage of previous demonstrations or protests and featured similar claims about 70 per cent of a Rudd ministry being made up of former union officials and how Labor would wreck the economy. One used the example of the 1998 Waterfront Dispute and the ‘damage they [unions] caused to Australia’s exports’ as a reason not to vote for the ALP.55 The repeated use of images of Joe McDonald, a thickset individual who habitually wore red braces over his paunch, reflected the poor standing of the WA CFMEU (Construction Division) in the public domain. Led by Kevin Reynolds, the WA CFMEU was one of the few union branches in the country not to conform to the ACTU’s urgent appeal for discipline. McDonald was facing a series of charges, some of which were dismissed during 2007, arising from incidents on Perth building sites. The Liberal Party and the employers used these two men, and to a lesser extent footage of Dean Mighell, the outspoken Victorian secretary of the Electrical Trades Division of the CEPU, to ‘prove’ the stereotype of the intimidating union thug and justify their fear campaign about the alleged influence of union bosses over the ALP. One aspect of both Liberal Party and business advertising of ongoing concern to unionists was this renewed demonisation of unions and their officials. While these ferocious attacks probably had little impact on the way ordinary Australians viewed trade unions, they did seem to affect ALP politicians. Suddenly it appeared to become a virtue for the federal Labor leader and other senior figures to repudiate the union movement. When the Coalition attacked a union background as being too narrow or of limited relevance to a political career, many possible defences could have been made, such as the value of the diverse experiences gained in attempting to assist people from all sorts of backgrounds with their day-to-day problems. However, most serving ALP politicians avoided the issue, refusing even to draw on their own experiences. Perhaps this was from reluctance to give 161

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it oxygen but it also appeared to be a conscious strategy – that the Party was keen to distance itself from its industrial wing.56 Ironically, the strongest defence of the role of trade unions in a contemporary democracy the whole of that year was made by former leader Kim Beazley in his farewell speech to Parliament on 21 September 2007. He said, in part, ‘If you undermine unions, if you undermine democracy in the workplace, then you will undermine democracy in the nation overall. First destroy the unions; then you destroy democracy.’57 Beazley’s speech was widely regarded as a fine, deeply-felt piece of political oratory; however, it tended to be seen as the voice of the past rather than the future. The Coalition government had mounted the most expensive political advertising campaign in Australian history to sell its Work Choices policy to the community, but the Australian people rejected both the policy and the government. Some observers, however, argued that the election campaign ads about union influence succeeded in limiting the extent of the Coalition’s losses, bringing the result in from a landslide to ‘merely’ a substantial loss.58 Business groups that had campaigned long and hard for reforms to industrial relations were more successful. While they did not achieve popular support for their argument, they did achieve sufficient influence over the Labor Party to ensure that some aspects of ALP policy were amended and some transition arrangements made that better suited their needs. The issue of ALP–union relations around policy and preferencing is one of the matters taken up in the next chapter, which examines some of the controversies and internal debates that arose during the ‘YRaW’ campaign.

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7 Staying on message despite the differences

‘Your Rights at Work’ was an ambitious undertaking. Greg Combet (followed by Jeff Lawrence from August 2007) and Sharan Burrow had to keep the union movement united over three long years of hard campaigning in the face of a hostile government, increasingly litigious employers, membership anxiety and laws that greatly restricted union activity. Inevitably there would be differences of opinion, disagreements over strategy and policy, political and personality clashes. From time to time, other pressures arose – for example, following the almost gleeful attention accorded Dean Mighell and Joe McDonald as renegades, the media was itching to record more examples of ‘bad behaviour’. Despite the differences and tensions, an unprecedented unity was maintained. This chapter explores a few of the varying opinions on priorities, strategies and tactics to shed light on some of the complexities and costs – the relative importance given to rallies as a mode of protest in the twenty-first century; the victimisation of building unions and the challenge of taking on the ABCC; the decision to focus on the experiences of individuals in the media campaign and to downplay the importance of unionism itself; and, briefly, union frustration with ALP industrial relations policy. 163

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‘Feet on the street’: the roles and risks of rallies The traditional expression of industrial protest has been to down tools and gather in the street. Despite the development of other innovative and subversive forms of protest1, the mass rally was, and for some people still is, the best way to demonstrate popular disapproval of a government or business policy, express support for a particular cause, or call for action. In recent years mass protests have become popular with young people connected with anti-globalisation activism, such as in Seattle in 1999, and with deeply-felt causes such as reconciliation. In countries such as France, Greece and Korea, huge political and industrial demonstrations are still regularly mounted. But these days, most political campaigns have to have media appeal to be successful. A rally of 7000–10 000 people in an Australian capital city with the usual placards and speakers might get 30 seconds news coverage that night and a paragraph on page five of the next day’s paper, but what message is being communicated and who is it reaching? Unions and other organisations have tried various tactics in recent years to increase the impact of their demonstrations and to swell their numbers. Work Choices protests were always going to attract attention and a large attendance because the laws were so deeply resented. However, the ACTU and its affiliates had to think carefully about the resources they were prepared to allocate to rallies, the degree to which they could rely on them as a means of communicating their concerns, how they could increase their impact, and who they actually benefited. Some officials felt it was sufficient to ‘let the walking do the talking’;2 others, such as LHMU National Secretary Louise Tarrant, felt that smaller targeted actions often made more impact: Ten cleaners with drums and dusters is how we do our public vocalising. How many people did we have on the streets

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over Iraq and it made no difference. So rallies are symbolic and they inspire and they give heart to those that are there. They don’t move public opinion and they don’t change government attitudes.3

For many unionists involved in an exhausting, hard-fought campaign, a rally is what reinvigorates them. The exhilaration of being part of a really large turnout with people of similar political persuasion is not to be underestimated, as is clearly seen in the stories from those who took part in the Sky Channel broadcasts of the Days of Action (chapters 3 and 4). For those in low status occupations or working in difficult and dangerous jobs, taking part in a rally, becoming part of a collective, is one of the few times they feel they have any power at all. Others enjoy the physicality of marching together, flexing their muscles (corporeal and metaphorical) and taking up public space. These pleasures are real and have an important role to play in sustaining the union movement. Some officials regard rallies as critical to building political awareness; Brian Boyd, for example, Secretary of the Victorian Trades Hall Council (VTHC), thinks ‘mobilisations are crucial to the psychology and health of the union movement, the mental health of how people think about the union movement and unions’.4 Like Brian Boyd, Julius Roe (National President of the AMWU) argues that the function of rallies is to ‘mobilise and activate your heartland’, to get people in their workplaces and their communities involved. Roe went so far as to say that he thought ‘the [‘YRaW’] campaign would have had no success whatever without the rallies’. The AMWU were ‘very strong advocates of mass mobilisation of the membership and the community’. The AMWU were large contributors to the advertising campaign and also supported the marginal seats campaign, funding one campaign coordinator and supporting others. Roe was clear that even when the laws prohibited stop-work action, 165

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it was critical that unions defended the rights of their members. He argued: There is no point in having a community campaign if the union’s destroyed. Therefore you’ve got to defend members’ rights regardless of what the laws are and so actually organising to defend workers despite the laws and to put industrial pressure on the employers, given that they’re the main architects, is very important. That’s where mass rallies were incredibly important, because essentially, the mass rallies were, from the point of our union, nation-wide strikes by members in defiance of the legislation and risking direct penalties under those laws. And the union of course also [was] risking a lot doing that and there weren’t a lot of other unions that took that approach but we certainly took that approach and we did deliver on that.5

Roe emphasised that ACTU support, energy and resources devoted to organising the rallies had been critical, for without the national endorsement of the Days of Action, more AMWU ‘members would have been victimised, more of our members would have been fined [and] the union would have suffered a lot more than it did’. National action was clearly a significant factor in deterring employers from adopting that kind of response. The ACTU conducted an inspired and disciplined campaign from mid-2005 – and yet had no power to implement change. A minority of militants argued the ACTU was practising ‘tame cat unionism’ in their mediatised, non-confrontational and political response to the industrial relations changes. Some objected to the perceived reliance on the election of the ALP to ‘fix’ the problem. To overturn the laws, the ACTU had to rely on the ALP not succumbing to damaging internal leadership struggles, winning the election, and finally delivering on their commitments. Union and public opposition to the laws had to be maintained to ensure the ALP realised this was a deeply and widely felt priority, which 166

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inevitably exercised constraints on union behaviour. Unions were working hard to respond in a way that displayed discipline and was sensitive to shifts in public opinion. In early 2005, meetings of elected delegates in blue-collar unions across the country called for a mass stoppage and rallies. In Victoria, a meeting of several hundred delegates convened by the VTHC called for a mass rally to be held on 30 June, the day before the Coalition gained control of the Senate. This proposal had general support from blue-collar unions and some state Labor Councils, and thus the ACTU declared a national Week of Action from 27 June to 3 July, as well as the major national Day of Action on 15 November. In 2006, similar pressures arose, with some blue-collar unions agitating for 30 November to be officially designated a national strike day.6 This, however, would have left individual members, and unions, liable for huge fines for participating in illegal strikes and was firmly rejected. A small minority of fringe left groups, such as the Democratic Socialist Party, Resistance! and Workers First, argued publicly that the unions should have called a general strike immediately the laws became known. ‘Ultimately, the only thing that can save the union bureaucracy, and indeed working class conditions, is a union campaign of mass industrial action.’7 The call for a general strike was limited to a small minority, but the call for further rallies had significant support and was debated within ‘robust’ meetings. In 2007 there was pressure for another national rally. This time the majority on the ACTU Executive resisted, arguing that – at this point – it would be a far better use of resources to concentrate on campaigning in workplaces and in the community, and contacting members in marginal seats. Tony Maher, National Secretary of the CFMEU Mining and Energy Division, explained, ‘It takes four months of ACTU leadership and staff time [and of] affiliates … once you set a date, everyone drops everything and works towards making that day fantastic.’ There 167

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was not a third national Day of Action. In 2007 New South Wales organised the ‘Rockin’ for Rights’ concert and march in April; Queensland put their efforts into the traditional Labour Day (1 May) rally; and Victoria organised both a family day in April and a mass rally of predominantly blue-collar unionists in the September school holidays, to which they asked workers to bring their children. The culture of mass rallies is deeply embedded in some unions, while other industries have little history of acting collectively in any way. My own university sector is an example, although there is usually a small group of activists willing to turn out for a major issue. Martin Kingham, Secretary of the Victorian branch of the CFMEU Construction Division, explained the value to his members of mass rallies, pointing out that in a highly transitory industry such as construction, ‘often the only time you reconnect with someone you worked alongside a year or two previously is at a rally’. Not only do rallies strengthen unity and reinvigorate a union perspective, they work to create a sense of community among workers in a fragmented industry, ‘a reminder to our broad disparate group of employers that we can still marshal the industry together as one’.8 Kingham went on to explain his position in relation to the conduct of the national ‘YRaW’ campaign: Regular mobilisations and activities are really critical [for us] and some of the blue-collar unions. I understand they have the potential to outweigh the other parts of the strategy – but as far as I’m concerned, that’s just the maths. And its very, very important for the organisations that are going to keep putting up the funds for the other parts of the campaign, that they get something out of it too!

The tactic of ‘when in doubt call a rally’ no longer works for the movement as a whole, however. Different kinds of activities work best for particular campaigns and in different contexts. When it comes to the allocation of resources and the calculation 168

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of return for effort, union officials have to weigh the possibilities carefully. The negative costs when a rally goes wrong in some way can be enormous, as the 1996 ‘Cavalcade to Canberra’ showed (see discussion in chapter 2). The two meticulously scripted, highly televisual November Days of Action, a new approach for the ACTU, were tailor-made to maximise their impact on the general public. Their success was reflected in boosts in the polls (see chapters 3 and 4). The numbers game

The ‘Fill the G’ experience in Melbourne for the 2006 Day of Action, which filled 70 per cent of seats in the MCG, was an interesting lesson in the inherent risks of mass rallies. The Day of Action was in fact a very successful rally under the conditions imposed by the new laws. The national broadcast reached people in 300 locations who would not otherwise have the chance to participate, and attendance across the country was good. But two significant mistakes were made in Melbourne. The Victorian blue-collar unions were wrong in their judgment of how many of their own members would attend and, despite several opportunities for reassessment, assured the ACTU that they could deliver sufficient numbers to ‘fill the G’. Subsequently, many Victorian officials argued that the low numbers resulted from the combination of the timing (Melbourne rallies have traditionally been held at 10 am)9 and the site, the MCG being harder to get to than the centre of town. The second mistake was the choice of the ‘Fill the G’ slogan, for empty seats would inevitably show up the organisers (as they did). The unions had made themselves an easy target for criticism by focusing on the attendance rather than the issues. Not many mistakes were made in the ‘YRaW’ campaign – but this one was immediately recognisable to anyone who saw the broadcast. It provided the Government with a free kick, both the media and Coalition politicians declaring the Melbourne event a failure and ‘proof ’ that the community had accepted the laws.10 169

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Attacks on the building unions: a campaign challenge The Australian Building Industry Improvement Act (ABII), passed in September 2005, set very severe limitations on union activity in the building industry and provided substantial penalties for breaking these laws (see chapter 1).11 The Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC, the successor to the Building Industry Task Force), was established in October 2005 under the provisions of the ABII following the recommendations of the Cole Royal Commission into the Building Industry to investigate suspected contraventions of the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act, the Workplace Relations Act and Work Choices. It had a budget of $32 million in 2007–08 and a regular staff of around 155 people.12 Construction unions, particularly the CFMEU, were outraged over the ABII laws, which singled them out for ‘special treatment’ and gave them fewer rights than any other group in Australia. This was, however, a complex matter to explain to people unfamiliar with the industry or the political and industrial history behind the ABCC. Martin Kingham, Secretary of the Victorian branch of the CFMEU, was acutely aware, as were all construction industry union leaders, that there were plenty in the media, both shockjocks and more traditional journalists, who would be quick to attack the union and its members over any controversy or instances of ‘bad behaviour’. This meant that they had to be very careful in their campaigning, against the ABCC as well as against Work Choices more generally, not to let outrage prompt them into action that would be counter-productive. Asked about his union’s communication strategy, Kingham wryly responded: ‘We understand we’re rumoured to be the most militant union in Australia and, in terms of getting an ALP government elected, if we go stomping around the place it’s a bit of a liability. So part of our communication strategy is to shut the fuck up.’13 170

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In Victoria, the CFMEU was working closely with activists and shop stewards to explain the challenges the industry faced, the strategic decisions they had made about how to campaign over the laws. ‘It’s not like we’ve rolled over [but] we’re strategically trying to keep a lower profile because it’s not helping the overall cause. We’re not shying away from the job – just not giving the opposition free kicks,’ Kingham said. The membership was less than satisfied – their slogan is, after all, ‘We’re angry! We’re loud! We’re union and we’re proud!’, and there were complaints the ACTU was not giving the issue sufficient attention. Bruce, a construction worker in Adelaide, was one of those I spoke to: ‘The ACTU is spending $8 million of our contributions in advertising and they aren’t telling people about what’s really happening out here. It’s like show trials, what’s happening in WA. Building workers are the new terrorists, mate!’ Bruce, more politicised than some others in the building industry, understood that swinging voters would be more concerned about their children being unfairly dismissed and their own loss of penalty rates but considered the building industry laws were such an abuse of democratic rights and civil liberties that they needed to be thoroughly exposed. At the Sydney launch of the film Constructing Fear (see p. 175) in September 2007, Peter McLelland, President of the NSW branch of the CFMEU, told the crowd that ‘we have chosen not to introduce this issue into the IR debate so as not to confuse’ the debate in the public’s mind. Others vehemently denied that the union had ‘gone quiet’ on the ABCC. Dave Noonan, National Secretary of the CFMEU Construction Division, agreed that the persecution of building unionists through the ABCC was ‘a hard issue to sell’ because of the bad press that building unions had received over the duration of the Cole Royal Commission and since the establishment of the ABCC. The public also remembered the militant activities of the building unions in the 1970s, and the legacy of the Norm Gallagher years. The CFMEU attempted to 171

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interest the media in the civil liberties angle – that one section of the Australian community was now deprived of the right to silence before the ABCC, and at the same time denied the right to speak to anyone else about their experiences before it – but with limited success. Noonan held that the CFMEU nationally had worked very hard to: raise the issue in the community, in the industry and the broader trade union movement, the civil liberties issues resulting from [the ABII] legislation that removes construction workers’ rights to silence about union meetings, sets up a quasi policing body with extremely broad powers to enforce the laws. And we’ve been active in highlighting some of the particular examples of the use of these laws.14

One CFMEU ad about the impact of the laws showed how workers could be threatened with huge fines for stopping work after an incident such as an industrial accident or death. The ACTU screened it as part of their national ‘YRaW’ advertising in 2006. The 2006 Day of Action broadcast included a feature on the situation of 107 construction workers on the Perth–Mandurah rail line in Western Australia, who were sent home by a union delegate after the temperature reached 108°F (42°C). The delegate was sacked and the workers took industrial action. The case went to the Industrial Relations Commission, was settled, and everyone went back to work. Months later, however, all 107 workers received writs from the ABCC for illegal industrial action, were charged with being in breach of the ABII and faced fines of up to $28 600 each and up to six months’ jail if they failed to answer questions at an ABCC hearing or spoke to anyone about the proceedings. The CFMEU was campaigning vigorously in every state about the plight of these workers, holding speaking tours, raising funds and trying to raise awareness within the general community. Noonan argues that construction is a tough environment to 172

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work in, largely due to the temporary nature of the industry, the insecure nature of employment, and the very serious problems it has with safety. Each time another workplace is set up, the struggle to win conditions achieved at other sites has to be repeated. The industry is full of contractors and subcontractors, all of them trying to squeeze costs and chasing others for payments. This means that workers often lose out when a contractor fails or does a runner, not uncommon among the ‘cowboys’ in the industry. Faced with such factors, union officials have to be seen to be tough. Construction industries internationally are characterised by similar problems. Public culture no longer readily accepts the kinds of negotiating styles that in the past characterised some employers’ representatives, site managers, contractors and unions in the construction industry. Exchanges used to stay on site, but now it is often the case that the union side, especially, will be taped or filmed and this record used to discredit unionists. The positive contributions made by construction workers are poorly recognised, Noonan argues. Their work is forgotten once a building or facility is operational. Their decades-long charity and solidarity work is also little known.15 Instead, they have a one-dimensional image as ‘trouble’. As Dick Williams, Queensland Secretary of the Electrical Trades Union, observed, improving the public image of construction workers will not be achieved by a campaign like the ‘What’s a nurse worth?’ campaign to increase public recognition of the work of nurses. Noonan accepted the reasons for the ACTU public advertising campaign focusing attention where it did: My view is that the community’s imagination has been grabbed by Tracy if you like … and I think a lot of building workers’ imaginations have been grabbed by that too because we have families, a lot of our partners work and people are juggling … very long hours. We have tried to

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get [the ABCC issue] out but we’ve accepted that it is a whole of movement issue. We’re copping the most extreme elements of [Work Choices], but we think it’s about workers’ rights across the board and there’s no doubt that if this Government gets back they won’t stop at Work Choices and the sorts of things that they are doing to construction workers will go to other industries … Both Sharan [Burrow] and Greg [Combet] have been absolutely on the front foot every time construction workers have been challenged, they have been very vocal about the laws and certainly in terms of the ACTU leadership we have no complaints about their willingness to speak up for construction workers … But yeah, there is an element of frustration that what are really extreme provisions for workers in our industry aren’t well understood in the community.16

When the ALP changed policy in mid-2007, under pressure from construction industry employers, and announced they would retain the ABCC until 2010, there were unconfirmed reports of construction workers threatening resignation and withdrawing support from any campaigns to elect the ALP. Noonan acknowledged that some members: feel that Labor has not taken their interests into account in trying to placate big business and people have said they’ve been betrayed … But we think that the operation and behaviour of that organisation means it is going to be increasingly untenable for Labor to support its operations … that the extremes of its political behaviour will be the downfall of the ABCC.17

The example of the ABCC and the building laws highlights some of the real limitations of the new mediatised campaigning for social and political movements. Some issues are not as ‘appealing’ as others. Some are too complex, which was certainly one of the 174

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problems with revealing the workings of the ABCC – it needed far too long to explain. Some issues impact upon sections of the community which do not have high public sympathy. Building workers do not have street appeal, they are not televisual except as the face of ‘the other’, the threat to industrial harmony and profits.18 Constructing Fear If you can’t stand up and say what you feel and believe, then you’re a slave. And I ain’t no slave (Charlie Isaacs in Constructing Fear).

Probably the most effective attempt to explain the unusual and extreme powers of the ABCC and the impact of the laws was generated by an independent Melbourne film-maker. Joe Loh decided to do something about the laws after seeing a report in the Melbourne Age headlined ‘Mother faces building probe’, about the writ served to crane operator Brodene Wardley, an awardwinning health and safety representative on a mineral sands plant in Hamilton, rural Victoria.19 She received a summons to appear before the Commission over a stop-work meeting she had called on her site after a near-miss accident. Constructing Fear, released in August 2007, tells the story of the impact of the ABCC on the lives of the 107 WA rail construction workers, Wardley, and another Victorian worker, Charlie Corbett.20 The CFMEU (Victorian branch) funded the production of the 40-minute DVD after Loh approached them with an offer to make the film. It has been shown around the independent film circuit, at industrial relations conferences, political campaign gatherings and by unions to their members. SBS and the ABC have both declined to screen it, so Constructing Fear has been relying on its website for distribution and to get the word out.21 Apart from this film, the debate over the role, powers and values of the ABCC has received little coverage. 175

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Pluses and minuses of the TV advertising campaign The ‘YRaW’ advertising campaign humanised industrial relations and communicated the downsides of Work Choices by bringing alive its impact on an individual’s everyday life. This was one of its great strengths. In the Sky Channel broadcasts, this same message was combined with an unambiguous articulation of union values and the benefits of working collectively, and the achievements of the labour movement in giving presentday Australians their working rights and conditions were also passionately conveyed. This parallel messaging was rarely present in the television advertising, with the exception of the ‘Three generations’ ad, and even there it was not stated that the rights and conditions won through past struggles were won by unions.22 For me, a constant question throughout the campaign was whether the advertising should have been promoting unions and collective action as a secondary theme along with the impact of the laws on individuals. My feeling was that the concentration on individual workers’ stories to the exclusion of other themes was a strategic weakness, despite the case being made to me many times that focus-group testing had showed these ads to be very effective, that messages have to be simple, they must not risk confusing people. The television ads implicitly supported unionism (being made by the ACTU) – but did nothing to demonstrate the benefits of unionism or collective action. The advertising campaign was widely regarded as enormously successful, many union leaders interviewed saying they could not imagine how it could have been improved, and winning applause from mainstream media commentators.23 Sharan Burrow argued that the ‘advertising broke new ground [as] it allowed us into a space where there was almost an invisibility about the individual lives of workers, it was becoming a private territory rather than a public understanding of rights and entitlements’.24 This was 176

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without doubt one of the advertising campaign’s great achievements (discussed in chapter 3). A case might nonetheless be made that the advertising could have been still stronger, perhaps also working to buttress unions from the attacks on their validity. The mainstream press discussion of unions, if not directly hostile, consistently constructed them as irrelevant because of declining membership. While the ACTU did engage with the relevance and value of unions in their communications with members, they did so to a much lesser extent in their public communication and barely at all in the paid advertising which focused on the stories of individuals. This left the public domain open to business interests and the Coalition to argue, unchallenged, that ‘unions were irrelevant’ and ‘unions were thugs’. Eventually, the ALP’s final version of the ‘Forward with fairness’ industrial relations policy, released in August 2007, and ALP parliamentarians’ public statements at that time, emphatically distanced the Party from the unions and even from union criticisms of Work Choices. If the value of unionism had been embedded more strongly in the advertising and public campaigning, would the ALP have found it more difficult to disassociate itself ? Also, and importantly, would the unions have been more convincingly able to claim that the ‘YRaW’ campaign laid the groundwork for the ALP victory, rather than the general consensus of political commentators seeming to be that Work Choices lost the election for the Howard government? This question is worthy of greater examination both by the union movement and more generally as an example of the strategic choices organisations make in framing campaigns and the opportunity costs associated with these choices.25 Chris Warren, Federal Secretary of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, discussed with me the framing of the media discussion and the unions’ engagement with it in the week the ALP policy came out. Warren said, ‘Look at the Labor statements this week – what was bad about it was not the policy, though that 177

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was terrible, it was all the rhetoric in it. It was all that sort of “unions are thugs”, “unions are third parties”, “unions are outsiders” sort of approach.’ As for the success of the television ads, he said, ‘The ACTU were very keen to make the story about workers not about us [unions] and I understand that, but you actually do need to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.’ Asked what he would do differently, he replied: I don’t think we should have been so apologetic about unions, because fundamentally that’s what the campaign is. I mean it’s all very well to say ‘Oh we don’t want the campaign to be about us [unions]’ but that’s basically saying we don’t feel confident about selling the ‘U’ word. I think we needed to be more assertive about unions.26

Martin Kingham felt that the political objectives could be better achieved by finding ways to communicate both sets of messages, how bad the laws were and that ‘it’d still be better if you are in a union, if in this hostile environment you organised collectively. That message isn’t in the ads. That’s a debate. Election or union building, that’s a tension’.27 The LHMU’s National Secretary, Louise Tarrant, thought the ads had done what they’d intended to do ‘reasonably well, they have humanised the union message. Now whether people then get that’s humanised unions is maybe too long a leap to make and I think that’s what we’re probably hoping for but I’m not sure [the ads] really achieved that.’28 She felt that if people could see themselves in the characters of Tracy and Ross, that was a big achievement (see chapter 3). The ads succeeded in personalising the industrial relations issue as being about workers’ rights. She also acknowledged that LHMU members loved the ads; they had been asking for years why unions didn’t advertise, and believed that the value of advertising had now been undeniably demonstrated. Other unionists confirmed that their members had really appreciated seeing these experiences on their television screens. 178

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Tarrant was interested in trying to disentangle the ad campaign strategies, both in relation to the positive results achieved by some aspects, and aspects that she saw as needing still greater attention: I would have wanted the campaign to be more multi dimensional … but it’s been a very negative campaign, a fear campaign basically saying ‘workers, you’re fucked under Work Choices, you’ve got to change the government’ … If you’ve got a single solution, ‘vote Labor in’, and then Labor defaults or doesn’t win, or wins and doesn’t keep its commitments then all our eggs are in this one basket. [However, we could have] had a dual message going on over the last 12 months whether it be through the advertising or a combination of activities that said ‘Yep there’s problems with this it’s a real issue. [But] both through unions and through collective activity we can actually fight this, and part of the fight is to change the government but unions are part of the solution’. Whereas if you look at the messaging, unions are not part of the solution, the unions are helping to articulate the problem but almost impotently.

Union–ALP relations and YRaW how-to-vote cards Few union officials were willing to talk on record and in detail about their response to the ALP ‘Forward with fairness’ policy and its revisions during the course of 2007. Even fewer were willing to talk about the ways the ‘YRaW’ how-to-vote card preferencing arrangements were hammered out. I was on the Unions NSW bus the day that the final ‘Forward with fairness’ policy was released, and the vibrations emanating from John Robertson’s ‘office’ at the back were thunderous. To say unions were disappointed with the Party’s policy, especially the reneging on 179

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the commitment to dismantle the ABCC, is an understatement. Likewise, the ALP’s refusal to reinstate right of entry provisions except in very limited circumstances raised significant anger. The ‘Forward with fairness’ issue came up at every public meeting after the final policy was released, and was often related to questions about how union preferencing would work. During 2007 many ‘YRaW’ committees appeared to be considering producing a how-to-vote card that would advise supporters to vote for the ALP in the House of Representatives and to vote in the Senate for any party or candidate committed to overturning Work Choices – effectively the ALP or the Greens. John Robertson, from Unions NSW, had publicly advocated that the ACTU should produce such a card and was on record pledging that if the ACTU wouldn’t, then Unions NSW would produce their own how-to-vote card along these lines. Other union leaders were deeply committed to maximising the ALP first preference vote and would not countenance public support for the Greens.29 Preferencing would be important in many targeted seats, as the Greens were active supporters of the ‘YRaW’ campaign and their industrial relations policy was arguably more progressive than the ALP policy. Greens Senators Kerry Nettle (NSW) and Rachel Siewert (WA) had been particularly supportive of the unions over the legislation, and vocal opponents of the operations of the ABCC. At one point it seemed that a plurality of preferencing options would be negotiated, but in the end most ‘YRaW’ how-to-vote cards mirrored ALP preferences in the targeted seats, even those published by Unions NSW. There were a couple of exceptions where local campaign committees negotiated with the ACTU to preference the Greens ahead of other candidates in seats where the ALP had ranked them lower. In one targeted seat the ALP had ranked the Greens below the conservative Christian Family First Party; if the ‘YRaW’ committee produced a how-to-vote card that 180

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mirrored the ALP’s it would, as the CCC explained, have deeply alienated the strong group of Greens supporters who had worked tirelessly in campaigning for ‘YRaW’ in that community. In Bowman (Queensland), the ‘YRaW’ committee (funded directly by the Queensland branch of the ETU and independent of the ACTU) put out their own double-sided how-to-vote card. On one side it showed how to vote first for the ALP in the House of Representatives (with second preference to the Greens) and in the Senate. On the reverse it showed how to vote for the Greens first in the lower house (with second preference to the ALP) and Greens in the Senate.30 The Queensland journal Electrical Worker (Spring 2007) recommended to its members ‘a vote for Labor or the Greens as the best way to get rid of Howard’s unfair IR laws’. The NSW Teachers’ Federation suggested their members consider voting Greens in the Senate due to their policies on industrial relations and public education.31 Most other unions and ‘YRaW’ publicity were less direct, recommending a vote for the ALP in the House of Representatives and including general phrases such as ‘Do not vote for the Liberal or National Party in the Senate’,32 or ‘Vote for a party that supports “Your Rights at Work”’ or ‘The only way to get rid of Work Choices is to get rid of the Howard Government’. Even Unions NSW’s how-to-vote card said, ‘Put a 1 in a box above the line for a party which will abolish WorkChoices’, an instruction that assumed the voter knew the policies of the different parties.33 Unions may have pragmatically decided to direct preferences to the ALP, but most were (and still are) under no illusions about the need to continue the campaign to protect the rights of workers. As New Zealand Labour leader, Helen Clark, once said: We need unions in New Zealand to keep campaigning – even after we are elected – just as we can be certain the employers

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will do. Unions need to keep the pressure on a Labour Government if they are to match the pressure that will be exercised on us by our opponents.34

The final chapter looks back over the ways in which Australian unions found new ways to campaign and to invite the Australian people to engage in a national conversation about the politics of work; an invitation they took up with gusto. It specifically considers some of the lessons learned from working with communities and the ways in which unions can build on the campaign into the future.

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8 Doing politics differently

Sharan Burrow believes one of the great successes of the ‘YRaW’ campaign was the way it reconnected the issues around work to discussions about contemporary life. Activists campaigning in the community (as we saw in chapters 4 and 5) found that people were keen to talk to them about the laws, their own situations and the direction the country was headed. They also talked about why they were supporting this campaign, why they were rallying, handing out leaflets, talking to friends and workmates, why they’d become involved, often for the first time, in a campaign for change. This chapter looks at some of the things the campaign did differently and the ways people (and unions) practised politics differently. It also considers some lessons for the future that have become clear from this experience. Specifically, it looks back at some of the techniques unions developed to talk differently about workers’ rights and a fairer society, engaging particular groups in the community in this conversation. It examines the ways people were invited – and took up the invitation – to talk about politics, reviews some of the key lessons from the campaign for the union movement and others, and concludes with a few of the campaigners’ final reflections and hopes for the future. Whereas, historically, trade unions have focused on the physical relationship between the work and the worker’s body, 183

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increasingly researchers are questioning the ways work impacts upon people’s sense of themselves, and how they shape themselves, and more often are required to shape themselves – their presentational style, their attitudes, their values and their lifestyle – both inside and outside the workplace for the benefit of their employer. Sociologist Paul du Gay calls the persona which results the ‘entrepreneurial self ’;1 John Howard was referring to this process when he spoke glowingly of the ‘enterprise worker’ in his arguments that unions are irrelevant and that Work Choices recognised the ‘true’ cooperative relationship between employers and employees.2 The boundaries between personal life and work life are breaking down. More than ever, people are doing some of their work from home (quite often by choice) and are contactable outside ‘normal’ work hours on their mobile phone or by email. Working life is insensibly encroaching further and further on the ‘rest’ of our life. Paradoxically, it has become harder to mount a critique of work through a collective lens. The collective and industrial politics of work are unfashionable, whereas the individual struggle to balance work and family life, what economist and social scientist Barbara Pocock calls the ‘work/life collision’, has opened up a new area of debate in the popular media.3 Allied to this is the increasing tendency, encouraged by advertising and the processes of capitalism, to persuade us to express our identities – and to think of ourselves – through consumption rather than through productive work. This shift has been identified as one of the factors in the decline in union membership (see chapter 1) and the parallel declines in the membership of political parties and most formal community organisations.4 For this reason unions have been striving over the past decade to find new ways to connect with people in the workforce. In response to these challenges, unions around the world have had to find new ways of connecting with working people.5 Faced with often-hostile employers, they are talking to members and 184

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potential members at home, through personal visits and phone calls, while the ACTU recently launched Unions Australia, a callcentre and web-based one-stop union joining facility for those looking for union representation.6 The ‘YRaW’ campaign was a quantum leap for the trade union movement in reconnecting the debates about work to the debates about contemporary Australian life. Through a series of conversations with the community via paid advertising, oneto-one discussions, web-based discussion boards, workplace and community forums, and national high-tech addresses, the campaign connected the political and ideological aspects of the new laws with what was happening in the kitchens and loungerooms of Australian families.

‘Working families’ The decision to talk to workers and the community from the perspective of ‘working families’ was a significant contribution to the success of the campaign (see chapter 3 for the way it was represented in the advertising). Immediately broadening the appeal of the ACTU’s message and its reach, it reflected the reality that in addition to paid-up union members there are significant numbers of people living in households which include a union member, or who work under a union-negotiated award or agreement. Unions point out, with justification, that their work benefits many more people than those who pay for the services. The term ‘working families’ was not new to the Australian political lexicon. In 2000 the ACTU had produced an action plan entitled Working Families in the New Millennium, and in 2001 the election leaflet Howard’s Legacy for Working Families.7 Mark Latham used the expression in interviews in 2003 and in his address to the ALP National Conference in 2004.8 It has been a key feature of the AFL-CIO’s political campaigning in the United States since the late 1990s.9 Writing in the Australian after the 2007 185

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To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book

election, commentator George Megalogenis argued that the ACTU campaign had transformed ‘working families’ into the dominant terminology for discussion of what had formerly been referred to as ‘middle Australia’.10 In the unions’ campaign briefs, ‘working families’ were the voters with family responsibilities in their thirties to early fifties earning less than $60 000 per annum.11 EMC divided this group, which they called ‘nationalistic battlers’, into three subcategories – Liberal-leaning, ALP-leaning and unaligned – which became the campaign’s target audiences. ‘Working families’ enabled the ‘YRaW’ campaign to transcend (at least in part) the traditional divisions of gender and class within the Australian labour movement, and also transcend party affiliations. It made it possible to address non-unionists who shared ACTU concerns about the legislation but who would not have responded to a call to union members or to the working class. It was a term with which aspirational as well as struggling families identified. It appealed to those who, in the words of one of the characters in the ads, ‘work hard to get ahead’. ‘Working 186

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families’ aligned the moral authority of families, and work, with the Protestant work ethic. It connected to the positive values of the labour movement, such as defending people’s rights. At the same time it wrested the discourse of ‘family’ away from the conservatives and religious right and brought it back into the centre of political debate. The ‘YRaW’ image of the working family was not wrapped in 1950s nostalgia – white picket fences and a stay-at-home mother. ‘YRaW’ working families were the suburban families with two jobs, a big mortgage and the constant pressures of juggling the demands of increasingly complex lives. There was still, however, a traditional gendered discourse embedded within the advertising, and often in the rhetoric, of ‘working families’. The expression excludes groups such as single people, who may have caring responsibilities for ageing parents or friends or children who are not their biological offspring. Promotional material tended to rely on traditional gender roles; women appeared most often as subsidiary income-earners with greater responsibility for household management and childcare. Suzi, the mother in the car who needed to be able to pick up her kids after school, and Ross, the footy dad who took care of the kids ‘when the missus works’, relied on traditional family models. The ad called ‘Cost to families’, in which the impact of a new AWA was discussed, most clearly showed working family dynamics in operation – a working couple shown discussing the impact of the husband’s new workplace agreement on the family budget. The message revolved around his diminished capacity as a provider. Male unionists responded to the ad with horror. Martin Kingham, Victorian Secretary of the CFMEU Construction Division, recounted that construction workers saw it as ‘their worst nightmare, to have to go home and tell their missus their pay had dropped. “Whoa!” they said. “Don’t ever want to have to do that!”’ Nor were young people’s experiences of work and their potential as activists specifically encompassed within the ‘working fami187

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lies’ rhetoric. Parents might envisage their children as included, but young people themselves did not identify with the term. A number of young activists and community campaign groups sought out other ways of reaching young people, and much of the ACTU’s online campaign was directed at this group (see chapter 3). One particular initiative provoked considerable uproar.

Condoms and Chupa Chups Linking unionism with safe sex was an unusual – and controversial – attempt to get young people to enrol to vote and to increase their awareness of the problems with Work Choices. Free wallet-sized condom and lubricant packs were distributed at universities, hotels and nightclubs, promoting both safe sex and ‘protection at work’. Variations of the pack were given away in at least three electorates: Eden-Monaro, Kingston and Dawson.12 The condom and lubricant were presented in a cellophane and cardboard pack printed with slogans that included ‘SAFE SEX: the best type of union’, ‘This election make sure you’re well protected!’, ‘This election, don’t let lil’ Johnny slide back in!’ and (in some places although not Kingston), generating most complaints, ‘Don’t get fucked at work’. The wrapper included the ‘Your Rights at Work’ logo, website, Myspace and Facebook URLs. On the reverse side was a caricature of John Howard and a smiley condom figure with the slogan ‘Everyone needs on-thejob protection’. There was a message to enrol to vote, the Unions Australia toll-free number and the message ‘Get protected – join your union!’ Safe condom use instructions were also included. Those involved in the promotion were careful not to cause offence or to appear sleazy; male activists handed the packs only to male hotel patrons, females to females. If there were no women on a particular team female patrons were offered Chupa Chups, arguably a less useful gift but one that still offered a point of contact for a conversation about the promotion’s goals. 188

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The promotion was a cheeky message couched in the same style as much other promotional material aimed at 18- to 25-yearolds, a clever attempt to put the campaign’s message in a language and a form that resonated with young people: those least likely to belong to unions, least likely to be enrolled to vote and statistically some of the most exploited at work. Although older activists might have cringed at the overt sexual puns, older people were not the target audience. Ryan A. and Harlan M., two young activists in South Australia involved in producing and handing out the packs in Kingston, collected the materials, designed the packs and paid for the additional costs out of their own pockets. They were somewhat frustrated that so much of the campaign messaging was targeted at ‘working families’ when so many young people they knew were experiencing poor work conditions and yet had little political awareness. The promotion was seen by the young activists as a humorous and responsible way of engaging young people with the issue of industrial relations, but unsurprisingly generated hostile comment from Coalition politicians and local media. Joe Hockey called the packs ‘tacky and tasteless’. The complaints were directed both at the notion of giving away condoms to promote unionism (a criticism that ignored the widespread attempts by sexual health educators to use any means possible to promote sexual health) and, specifically, at the wording of the messages. The ACTU called a halt to the promotion, and offered an apology for any offence caused by it.13 Elsewhere, unions and state Labor Councils worked with groups of young activists to help them connect with younger workers and make the campaign meaningful for them. Building the awareness of young people was not well integrated into the overall strategy at the inception of the campaign and is an element that most recognise could be improved in future. There is a large potential pool of enthusiasm among young activists, but this group can quickly become disillusioned and frustrated if 189

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they feel unable to contribute constructively. This is particularly likely if their insights into ways of best reaching their peers are not valued. Better ways of involving and reaching young people is a challenge for the labour movement, and for most political parties.

Talking politics The ‘YRaW’ campaign gave people a vehicle for talking about far more than just Work Choices. It opened up a way to talk about broader frustrations, with the Government, with the way their work was organised, with the direction society was taking and what was effectively their ‘line in the sand’. People were taking up the invitation to talk about politics and values publicly, sometimes for the first time. In Lindsay, Jo J. told me she had said to Greg Combet at a local event, ‘Thank you so much for creating this campaign and making it what it is because you’ve allowed us to have our voice [even those of us who] were never tied with unions. So thank you for allowing us to have that political voice … and that voice will continue.’ Jo said ‘the campaign has helped us to look at politics – how important politics is in our everyday lives’ and also at political structures and how they work. ‘If we hadn’t had this campaign we wouldn’t be the people we are today.’ Judging by conversations on the street and contributions on the web, people relished the chance to debate the issues. Jessica Stanley (the ACTU’s Online Director) invited the readers of the ‘YRaW’ website to contribute their reasons for joining the November 2006 Day of Action. Ninety-nine pages of replies were posted on the ‘Thousands of good reasons’ (TGR) discussion board within days. A similar avalanche of 275 comments was posted about ‘How to vote for “Your Rights at Work”’ (‘VRaW’) in the lead-up to election day. This was a passionate subterranean stream of engagement that received little recognition in the 190

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mainstream media where, although a number of people who had suffered as result of the new laws were interviewed, only a few reporters paid attention to the marginal seats campaign and why people were involved.14 The reasons people gave for their involvement varied widely, but a well-articulated political rationale was often apparent. This comment from Mary L. in Victoria, on the TGR discussion board, reflected a sophisticated set of political values. The political philosopher (and liberal thinker) Isaiah Berlin said ‘Freedom for the wolves means death for the sheep.’ WorkChoices involves a very limited form of freedom and a distorted type choice. It gives free rein to the wolves. Even if I am not mauled myself (and there are no guarantees of that) I do not want goods and services that are subsidised by the low wages of people with much less bargaining power.

Others displayed a visceral political passion. A deeply held sense of values, especially a reverence for the ‘fair go’ as a defining feature of Australia, and a determination to fight to retain these values, were among the most common features of the postings: I’m rallying because under John Howard, Australia is now the only developed country that gives workers no legal right to bargain collectively – even when they express a unanimous wish to do so. I believe this is an outrage and a gross insult to Australia’s long history of egalitarianism and its tradition of mateship (Phil T. ACT, TGR). I am a small business owner. I will be rallying because I believe the Federal Govt’s WorkChoice legislation is unAustralian. It undermines our way of life, will ruin families trying to buy a home without any security & makes us a lackey to so-called global ‘market forces’, which is a farce (Janet L. NSW, TGR).

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Other comments combined nationalism and concern for children’s or grandchildren’s futures. This was very much in keeping with the framing of the ACTU advertisements, and led to ongoing conversations in which people took up the issues in the ads. They also responded to Greg Combet and Sharan Burrow’s speeches to the Days of Action. People adapted these messages, reflecting their own experiences, and fed them back across a multiplicity of forums, including talk-back radio, letters to the editor, web forums and conversations in their own communities: My ancestors fought and some lost their lives fighting for the right of every man, woman and child to have the right to be treated with decency, respect and an honest fair go. Now that I am an exceptionally proud father to two of the most honest, loyal and brave little mates any bloke could ever have been blessed with I have a duty bound obligation to stand up to the mark and fight to see that their rights as free and loyal subjects under the Australian flag shall never be jeopardised and that is precisely that these IR laws are set out to do … (Larry F. Qld, TGR).

Here Larry F. combined passionate and proud patriotism with an equally fervent commitment to his family. He went on to say, ‘Yeah, I’ll march, I would even lay my life down for my mates, especially my boys, something I certainly wouldn’t do for the likes of the Howard-led coalition.’ He was clearly prepared to act in support of his deeply-held beliefs. Many others expressed similar views, the theme of protecting their children’s future being the most commonly expressed of all, as this comment from Anthony McG. in Tasmania shows: ‘We have built something special in Australia, a community that looks after its own. I feel these laws in the long term will consign millions of Australians to a life of working poverty. As a father of 4, I want to leave my kids with a “just society” not just a society.’ Other themes included commitment to democratic princi192

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ples and deep anger that the Government had no mandate for change. Many contributors felt that the laws would change society in ways that would significantly diminish the quality of life and make Australia a harsher country in which to live. A number of commentators compared the Coalition’s industrial relations program to the US industrial system and strenuously objected to Australia going along that path. This, too, had been a consistent theme in the ACTU campaigning. Others compared it to Thatcher’s Britain. Megan from New South Wales wrote: [A]s the saying goes, ‘bad things happen when good people do nothing’. We have become so individualistic in our thinking, and that has been encouraged by this Government. Now they have even legislated for our IR laws to ensure that thought process continues. Well, now we need to show them that their approach for our society is coming to an end.

Some commentators were first-time activists or ALP voters; some were long-term Liberals changing the voting habits of a lifetime, as this anonymous comment on the ‘How to Vote for YRaW’ discussion board reveals: Along with many other Australians I didn’t think much about the new IR laws when they were first introduced. I had faith in our Prime Minister and Government. Until I guess it affects you directly. We considered our family to be middle class working Australians but with the introduction of the IR laws we feel we are of no value or worth to this Government and large businesses can do whatever they like when it comes to employing or unemploying you. As a mother of 5 children I lost my job as a teacher aide 2 years ago and had no recourse against the final decision … My eldest child … was dismissed from his job just recently because a supervisor didn’t like the idea of him moving stores to obtain a permanent job … Where do these laws

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leave our children? What will their futures be like? … And how do we as parents help them? I have always voted Liberal but I am now a Labor supporter, Mr Rudd, do us proud!

Unsurprisingly, a number of contributors were ardent supporters of unions. This was their main reason for marching, being involved and for how they planned to vote. Gavin S. from New South Wales was one: Because UNIONS are about bringing people together, Howard’s AWAs are the exact opposite. Shouldn’t the Federal Government be aiming to bring people together? UNIONS are a valuable component of the democratic structure of our society because they encourage people to stand up and defend their rights. UNIONS are worth fighting for [emphasis in the original].

Danielle was another on the ‘VRaW’ discussion board to feel this way: The trade unionists we are all supposed to fear are the nurses at our local hospitals, our children’s teachers, firefighters and the people who collect our rubbish. I’m fed up with the Liberal scare campaign. Put Greens or ALP first. Put the Liberals and Nationals last.

Some contributors, like Lorraine H. from Queensland, mixed assorted elements with a plea for others to support her vision for a better society: I want to live in a country where everyone is treated fairly and workers are not exploited by unscrupulous bosses. I want to live in a country where workers are not afraid to stand up to bosses when they are treated unfairly. Under John Howard’s IR laws, these rights are at risk of being lost forever. I want to know that my union can bargain

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collectively for fair pay and conditions for all people in my workplace. On AWAs I won’t even know what the workers next to me [are] even being paid. I want harmony both in the workplace and in society. John Howard’s IR laws are driving a wedge between the haves and have nots … These laws must be removed. Australia used to be the lucky country. It isn’t anymore. Thanks to John Howard.

Reflecting on the legacies of the Howard years, Sharan Burrow agreed with political scientist Sarah Maddison, economist Clive Hamilton, and the other contributors to Silencing Dissent.15 ‘[I]t’s a pretty shocking thing that Australia uses as an excuse to demean public voices, [that] “it’s political”.’ Burrow and the ACTU ‘want people to be a whole lot more political and to hold everybody they elect to account’.16 The ‘YRaW’ campaign was a very significant step in helping people find their voices and use them politically. The heartfelt contributions sampled above are unusual in day-to-day social discourse in Australia, where politics and religion were once topics to be avoided. But it is clear that people relished the chance to engage. The ‘YRaW’ campaign opened up the conversation and thousands of people joined in.

How successful was ‘YRaW’ in building community alliances? The experiences of volunteers involved in the ‘YRaW’ campaign in marginal seats were explored in chapter 5. As well as engaging local activists, the community campaigns’ additional objectives included developing alliances and networks between ‘YRaW’ and community organisations. The ACTU itself has a relatively recent history of coalition-building with peak councils in the social justice area, although some individual unions have lengthy 195

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experience in working closely with geographic communities and social movements with which they share particular goals. The meatworkers (AMIEU), for example, have a long-standing history of cooperation with Animal Liberation in trying to stop the live sheep export trade.17 In coal-mining communities, the CFMEU (Mining and Energy Division) has for generations been at the forefront of struggles to gain better funding and services for health, education and housing. Similar examples can be found in manufacturing and transport unions in regional areas with just the one large employer, where the unions’ members and their families make up the bulk of a town’s population. Internationally, community unionism is well established in Canada and the United States, and is a growing influence in Britain. 196

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The original intention of the ‘YRaW’ targeted seats campaign was that the CCCs would network quickly within their areas and build alliances with existing community groups. This aspect was probably over-ambitious given the time and resources available, but it points the way for alliance-building in the future. Sharron Caddie, responsible for coordinating the Queensland CCCs, pointed out that they already had a full-time job building the networks among existing union members and interested community volunteers: [T]he coordinators were distracted for a long time because they knew they were meant to be making these links but they weren’t really sure how. I think we could have run something from the start that was very much about our union people living and working in these seats, where are the workplaces we need to be campaigning in and what are the links that these union members have in the broader community, and we wouldn’t have done all that work identifying all of the community groups and sending the coordinators off to meet with the local sporting association.18

Wendy Turner from the Australian Services Union, who coordinated the Longman campaign in Queensland, was a skilled and experienced community networker. Her experience was invaluable in organising the campaign and the unexpected defeat of popular sitting member and Minister, Mal Brough. Turner used her knowledge and contacts to build on concerns not only about the Work Choices legislation but also on single mothers’ and welfare recipients’ worries about the Government’s welfare-towork policies; a potent combination of issues but particularly in Longman, which has a high percentage of single mothers. Turner ran community forums to which she invited welfare agencies, church groups and key community figures. She ‘introduced Welfare to Work into my first meeting because I thought people 197

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needed to see what was happening for the people that dropped out at the bottom end’. Turner also worked with ethnic communities around common issues. She organised multicultural forums over the Government’s immigration policies and citizenship issues, which were of concern to significant groups in the electorate. The Deception Bay area has a large Pacific Islander community, with over 3000 Samoans alone: A lot of [Samoan] people come in through New Zealand as migrants. They can work here and they can pay taxes but apparently the New Zealand visa doesn’t give them the right to have access to Medicare and the likes. So on the one hand we use their skills, we take their taxes from them but there’s no method of them being easily able to become citizens. I understand the immigration laws were changed in 2001. Consequently a lot of these people have had children here now and of course the children are in no-person’s land because they’re not citizens of New Zealand and they can’t become citizens of Australia.19

Initially introduced by a local community worker, Turner organised a community day at the Samoan maoto fono (meeting house) in Deception Bay. Instead of the ubiquitous sausage sizzle, the ‘YRaW’ group funded the Aiga Samoa Society (aiga means ‘extended family’) to put on a more appropriate hangi for the day. Turner ran a series of forums with ethnic community leaders and the local multicultural organisation, about both Work Choices and immigration, to which she invited ALP Shadow Immigration Minister Tony Burke. She explained ‘it had always been my wish to create a trust between myself and the community and to try and give something back in terms of how their concerns might be addressed as well’. Turner’s approach of supporting the concerns of local community groups rather than solely promoting the ‘YRaW’ agenda led to close cooperation and support from key 198

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figures, who explained the problems Work Choices caused for the various communities on local radio programs. On election day Samoan leaders handed out how-to-vote cards at the booths that were likely to attract members of the Samoan community. Similar approaches to building extended networks are the basis of much community development work, but they have not historically characterised union campaigns in Australia. Amanda Tattersall at Unions NSW is one who is determined to increase unions’ understanding of the ways genuine coalitions work to long-term mutual benefit, rather than seeing them as short-term alliances.20 The ‘YRaW’ campaign formed alliances with church, sporting and welfare groups in many electorates, but these were generally thought of as short-term, pragmatic relationships. How long they will last, and to what extent unions will continue to resource them, remains to be seen. Several CCCs and activists regard the issue of providing continuing support for community activism as being of key importance for the future. John Short in Kingston (SA) had a clear vision of what unions could do to make a lasting contribution. He argued strongly for ongoing support to the community groups established during the campaign, because ‘these people have become very active, they’ve become activists and that was our job. It was our job to get people active. Whether it’s in the workplace or in the community.’ ‘YRaW’ was an example of community unionism at work: Instead of talking about it we’ve actually done it this time but we need to keep it going. We need to keep those links going [and leave] some kind of legacy [such] as some kind of community training fund. Because what we found in the community groups is there’s a lot of passion, there’s a lot of commitment, there’s a lot of hard work but some of them lack knowledge. And some of the stuff that we get taught in the trade union movement, some of those skills will be very

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valuable to community groups and a lot of churches. So oneon-one skills, organising skills, lobbying skills, that kind of thing would be very valuable to a soccer club or a football club or a church or a community organisation.21

Building on the legacies of the ‘YRaW’ campaign The first thought of many may be that the election of the ALP Government is the most significant legacy of the ‘YRaW’ campaign. The Liberal Party certainly attributes to it a lot of the blame for their defeat. Federal Liberal Party Director, Brian Loughnane, argued that Work Choices was a factor in their election loss; in particular he targeted the scale of the ‘YRaW’ campaign. In a speech to the National Press Club soon after the election he said, in part: WorkChoices united and activated the labour movement. Union leaders saw it as make or break for their own survival. Unprecedented resources were devoted to reversing it and the defeat of the Howard Government became the necessary first step … The union campaign was at three levels: a national television and radio campaign, the funding of 22 [sic] full time campaign workers for over twelve months in key marginal seats, and I believe most importantly, a largely unreported campaign in individual workplaces … This development has profound significance for the Australian democracy and has been largely ignored in the commentary on the election since 24 November … For the first time in our history, a third external force has intervened in our political process with resources greater than either of the major political parties. I believe this is an extremely unhealthy development.22

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There are, however, some very significant legacies of the campaign other than the election of the Labor Government. Unions found their members welcomed being contacted at home and asked about their views – or asked to assist in relation towards a particular goal. The union movement discovered quite a lot about how to work effectively with and within communities, becoming convinced that the approach works and is worthy of being built on. Working with communities will need to be managed carefully, however, and resourced appropriately, to ‘give something back’ to those who, while not union members themselves, supported the ‘YRaW’ campaign. There are encouraging signs that unions are aware of this (see below). The campaign also convincingly demonstrated that despite popular belief Australians are neither essentially apolitical nor apathetic, that they are willing to engage in debate and take action when an issue is seen to be relevant to their quality of life and to the rights they value. The nature of the issue, the content of the message and the way in which it is framed and presented are all-important. In this regard, the ACTU nationally had two important assets among their officials. Greg Combet had acquired national recognition and great respect through his role in several high-profile disputes: the Waterfront Dispute, the collapse of Ansett and, jointly with Bernie Banton, leading the campaign to make James Hardie pay compensation to workers suffering from lung diseases as a result of exposure to the company’s asbestos products. The quality most associated with Combet was integrity. He consistently spoke calmly but with great conviction, and both his strategic leadership and his profile were of great advantage to the campaign. Sharan Burrow too was widely respected, particularly highly regarded among women for her unflagging advocacy of paid maternity leave and equal pay for women (still not achieved), and support for low-paid workers in general. Another obvious lesson was the value of carefully targeted paid advertising campaigns informed by market research. The only 201

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risk here, as chapter 7 attempts to establish, is that mass media advertising should not be regarded as a panacea. It is a means to connect with the broader community, and can assist unions to represent their image, but it is not a substitute for ongoing advocacy of the role and value of unions. The final lesson to take from the campaign is that parliamentary politics are not reliable as the foundation of the solution. While pragmatically the connection with the ALP is critical, historical ties and common values cannot be relied upon, particularly as the Party moves further toward the centrist pragmatism of ‘Third Way’ politics. The competing pressures of business lobbying and populist politics means that the labour movement must constantly articulate its case within both Party forums and the broader community so that the momentum for change is not lost. Some of the ‘YRaW’ activists recognised this problem clearly. Denise and Roger, retiree volunteers in Lindsay and Macquarie, talked about it within the context of the campaign and the future should Labor be elected. Denise said: ‘What I say to people who sign the petition for Kevin Rudd [to abolish Work Choices] is, look he’s under enormous pressure. Let’s put the pressure back … Whether he thinks he’s got us in his pocket I don’t know, we’ve got no alternative at the moment.’ Roger agreed: ‘If he [Rudd] doesn’t do something about this [Work Choices] in a fashion that we expect him to then that would keep me involved.’ The role and value of unions in twenty-first century Australia was ably demonstrated in the ‘YRaW’ campaign for those who were already inclined to see it. Others, however, might merely have seen a successful single-issue campaign, not the wider role played by the union movement that underpinned the popular support for a switch from the Coalition to the ALP. How to build on the ‘YRaW’ campaign?

Articulating the current and future role of unions and translating that into membership is a key challenge. The unions have 202

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to make the case for a more extended set of industrial relations changes than the Rudd-led Labor government seems currently prepared to deliver. This may require a two-term strategy. But any ALP expectations of mass mobilisation of support for its reelection may be disappointed if the Government does not offer more and quicker changes than it currently has committed to. Such progress will, of course, also depend on the negotiations with the new Senators who take up their positions in July 2008. So will the unions build on the ‘YRaW’ campaign? Early in 2008, around 200 union leaders met in Canberra to develop a framework for their work into the future. They agreed that the ‘[YRaW] campaign was significant in shifting the priorities of working people to the centre of the national debate’. They also agreed that comprehensive campaigning was essential to achieve success23, and settled on a number of goals, strategies and priority projects – a framework for the future. One of the framework’s six major elements, ‘A voice for working Australians and their families’, has as one of its strategies an information campaign ‘about the role unions play in standing up for working families using a variety of mediums including paid advertising, free media and the internet’.24 Another element, ‘Connecting with our communities and regions’, builds on the success of the ‘YRaW’ campaign in the community and looks to build enduring coalitions and ‘opportunities for dialogue and agreement’ with communities and faith groups.25 For the union officials and paid staff involved in the long and hard-fought campaign, election night was a thrill. But there is still a lot of tough work ahead, to maintain the pressure on the new government to change the laws and to put pressure on certain industries where workers have lost conditions and new agreements are due to be negotiated. Achieving a more active and engaged support group was a wonderful outcome, but the laws have impacted upon union membership levels (as they were designed to do) and that also needs to be turned around. The 203

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January 2008 forum was designed to regroup for that struggle. In May 2008 the ACTU launched a new television advertising campaign. The first ads reminded viewers, politicians and the public alike, that in November 2007 Australians ‘voted to scrap Work Choices’ and that ‘It is time for workers’ rights to be protected. It is time for politicians to deliver’. A second pair of ads was released in June, detailing the specific benefits of collective bargaining.26 These ads build on the ‘real workers, real stories’ style and address viewers as workers and voters. The ongoing campaign to change the laws may require a combination of strategies, including holding community-initiated Commissions of Inquiry into the ill effects of the laws, if the Government or the Senate are reluctant to change key aspects. The union movement evidently recognises many of the most important lessons from the three-year campaign and is working towards building on that knowledge. How successful it will be and whether it can maintain the extraordinary unity of purpose achieved between affiliates over the last three years remains to be seen.

Some final reflections, and hopes for the future After the euphoria of election night, it was hard for those involved to come down to earth and assess the campaign. We saw in chapter 5 the excitement in Kingston when the committee got together afterward to evaluate the campaign and celebrate their achievements. Asked about her reflections on the campaign, Jo J. in Lindsay recalled how enormous the task had seemed at the beginning: We thought John Howard was invincible – now we look at the fact that our campaign, coupled with a strong and cohesive Labor Party, actually worked together to get where we need to be. So that has been the motivation and the drive. It’s been amazing, it really has, just fantastic … 204

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The rewards have been that getting out there and being active has opened up a whole new world. My husband said, ‘You’ve just grown so much in the last few years.’ It has opened my eyes so much to what’s out there and the fact that I can make change. I can be part of the change and that has empowered me – personally and collectively as part of the community.

On election night in Lindsay, Jo J. and Linda E. were in raptures. The icing on the cake for them (and for other activists across the country) was that John Howard, whom they saw as the architect of the unjust, undemocratic, anti-worker industrial relations laws, had lost his own seat. For the ‘YRaW’ campaigners that was the perfect finale. It is important in community and political campaigns to celebrate the victories and to honour the extraordinary efforts 205

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that people make in pursuit of change. Kate Coleman from the ACTU Education and Campaign Centre expressed feelings similar to Jo’s when asked about the campaign’s greatest success: We won! And the best aspects were the development of people who’d never been activists before [who] now have the skills to talk to people about the things that they care deeply about – using good questions and listening skills – and showing to others that there is hope we can have a better world. So for me, the best bit has [been] to see people growing in confidence and stature, knowing that ‘what I did made a difference’. To me, it’s the absolute best.27 Crediting the union movement?

Unlike in the fictitious scene with which we started the book, the ALP did not publicly credit the union movement’s ‘YRaW’ campaign as playing a significant – or even any – role in their victory. Challenging the belief that governments lose elections, the ALP’s National Director, Tim Gartrell, claimed: ‘Kevin Rudd and Labor won this campaign outright – with a clear message about new leadership and a long-term plan for Australia’s future.’ Crediting Rudd as the decisive factor in the victory, Gartrell said, ‘The momentum started a year ago from this day, when Kevin Rudd took over the leadership … Our research was telling us that people thought Kevin Rudd was different to the old Labor Party; a new style of Labor leader with an agenda that connected with people.’28 In light of the Coalition’s negative scare-campaign about the close links between Labor and the unions it was probably foreseeable that the union movement’s contribution would be played down. Work Choices rated a mention in Gartrell’s speech, but not the work of those who made it a live issue in the community well before Rudd was even elected leader. On election night in his acceptance speech Kevin Rudd, Australia’s new Prime Minister-elect, thanked the volunteers, 206

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‘members and supporters of our Party for the work they have put in right across this nation today … I admire your contribution, your patience, your perseverance, and the blood, sweat and tears you’ve dedicated to this election victory’. He made special mention of Bernie Banton and his efforts to achieve justice for the victims of asbestos and acknowledged that ‘you have been supported in your fight by the great Australian trade union movement’.29 But in the 24 targeted marginal seats around the country and in the hearts of thousands of unionist and ‘YRaW’ volunteers there was no doubt – it was their efforts and the innovative ACTU campaign that had created the pre-conditions for the ALP victory: ‘It was the unions wot won it.’

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epilogue

Scenes from the evening of 24 November 2007 On screen, the ABC Television desk at the National Tally Room, Australia Votes 2007. Kerry O’Brien (ABC Host), Julia Gillard (Labor), Nick Minchin (Liberal), Antony Green (ABC election analyst). At approximately 7.30 pm (Eastern Standard Time) Antony Green makes a cautious prediction of Labor forming Government. Loud cheers from the crowd watching on the tally room floor. At approximately 7.55 pm Green says, ‘The picture that I’m seeing is that the Government is behind in everything.’ Kerry O’Brien asks, ‘Julia Gillard, you must be getting to a point where you’re feeling pretty good?’ Julia Gillard replies with a large grin, ‘Yes I am! I’m a cautious type Kerry, but I’d say on the numbers we’ve seen tonight Labor is going to form a government.’ As Gillard is speaking the tally summary bar across the bottom of the screen flips over to show the ALP as winning 76 seats – this is the 16 required to win government. Wild cheers from the tally room floor. A few minutes later O’Brien asks Minchin what he thinks accounts for the strong swing against the Government.

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Minchin: ‘Well winning five terms is incredibly difficult … Labor and the trade union movement very successfully demonised Work Choices. They made a great big bogey-man of this election. The union movement threw what $20, $30 million at it – and it’s not easy to defend our position on IR, and clearly that’s been damaging to us. Without conceding anything, we knew this was going to be a tough election for us.’

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notes

Introduction 1 My thanks to Jonathan Mill and Janet Giles for allowing me to quote the DVD How good will this feel? 2 There was some anxiety in 2007 that a copy of the DVD might leak into the wrong hands and that the union movement might be accused of cockiness. This was never the intention. The idea was to use imagination to build hope and belief that change was achievable. 3 Jonathan Mill, pers. comm. Chapter 1: The context of the challenge to the unions 1 Hon. J. Howard, Prime Minister of Australia (2005) ‘Closing Address to the Liberal Party of Australia Federal Council’, Hyatt Hotel, Canberra, 26 June 2005. 2 Hon. J. Howard (2005) ‘Reflections on Australian Federalism’, address to the Menzies Research Centre, Melbourne, 11 April 2005. 3 Watson, D. (2005) ‘Howard’s Australia’, The Age, 1 July 2005. 4 Australian Bureau of Statistics (2000) Australian Social Trends, Catalogue no. 4102.0. 5 For a discussion of the impact of union amalgamations and structural reforms on union recruiting and organising see Peetz, D. (1997) ‘The Accord, compulsory unionism and the paradigm shift in Australian union membership’, Centre for Economic Policy Research Discussion Paper No. 358, Canberra, Australian National University. 6 Pocock, B. & P. Wright (1997) ‘Trade unionism in 1996’, Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 120–136. 7 Peetz (1997) ‘The Accord’; Spooner, K., C. Innes & D. Mortimer (2001) ‘Union membership: Australia’, Employment Relations Record, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 27–37. 8 Bellamy, J. & K. Castle (2004) ‘2001 Church attendance estimates’, NCLS Occasional Paper 3, National Church Life Survey

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Notes to pages 10–17

9 Mackay, H. (2007) Advance Australia … Where?, Sydney, Hachette Australia. 10 Leigh, A. (2006) ‘How do unionists vote? Estimating causal impact of union membership on voting behaviour from 1966 to 2004’, Australian Journal of Political Science, vol. 41, no. 4, pp. 537–552. Leigh’s calculations, based on post-election surveys for elections 1966–2004, do not include people who voted for another party – e.g. Greens or Democrats – first and the ALP second. This excludes those who use preferential votes for minor parties strategically but the figures are still useful as an indicative guide. 11 Pocock & Wright (1997) ‘Trade unionism in 1996’. 12 For an extensive account of the Waterfront Dispute see Trinca, H. & A. Davies (2000) Waterfront: The battle that changed Australia, Sydney, Doubleday. Bradon Ellem’s summary of union issues in 1998 is also useful: Ellem, B. (1999) ‘Trade unionism in 1998’, Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 41, no. 1, pp. 127–151. 13 Trinca & Davies (2000) Waterfront, pp. 278–285. 14 Ellem, B. (2000) ‘Trade unionism in 1999’, Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 42, no. 1, pp. 59–82. 15 The term ‘aristocracy of muscle’ is borrowed from the title of David Atkin’s fascinating study of the meatworkers’ union: Atkin, D. (1991) Aristocracy of Muscle: Meatworkers, masculinity and trade unionism in the 1950s, Masters thesis, Melbourne, La Trobe University. 16 Crosby, M. (2005) Power at Work, Sydney, Federation Press. 17 The term ‘community unionism’, sometimes also called ‘social movement unionism’, is derived from the work of US and Canadian unions in building alliances with community organisations, religious and ethnic communities, and organising through such communities. For further discussion about the applications of community unionism see: Fine, J. (2005) ‘Community unions and the revival of the American labor movement’, Politics and Society, vol. 33, no. 1, March, pp. 153–199; Clawson, D. (2003) The Next Upsurge: Labor and the new social movements, Ithaca, NY and London, ILR Press. For an Australian perspective see Buttigieg, D., S. Cockfield, R. Cooney, M. Jerrard & A. Rainnie (eds) (2007) Trade Unions in the Community: Values, issues, shared interests and alliances, Melbourne, Heidelberg Press. 18 Hon. T. Abbott (2002) ‘Workplace Relations Amendment (Fair Termination) Bill 2002’ [No. 2], House of Representatives, Hansard, 22 October 2002, p. 8268. 19 O’Neill, S. (2005) ‘Workplace Relations legislation: Bills passed, rejected or lapsed, 38th–40th Parliaments (1996–2004)’, Current Issues E-Brief, Australian Parliamentary Library 20 Cooper, R. (2002) ‘Trade unionism in 2001’, Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 44, no. 2, pp. 247–262. 21 Spooner et al. (2001) ‘Union membership’. 22 Ellem, B. (2001) ‘Trade unionism in 2000’, Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 43, no. 2, pp. 196–218.

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23 Peetz (1997) ‘The Accord’; Spooner et al. (2001) ‘Union membership’. 24 Wright, T. (2000) ‘PM, Murdoch at war: A tale of two factories. Some win, some lose’, The Age, p. 1, 11 February. 25 Cooper, R. (2002) ‘Trade unionism in 2001’. 26 Ellem, B. (2001) ‘Trade unionism in 2000’, p. 215. 27 Hon. J. Howard, (2004) ‘Press Conference’, Sydney, 11 October. 28 O’Neill, S. (2005) ‘Workplace relations legislation’; Hon. J. Howard (2005) ‘A New Workplace Relations System: A Plan for a Modern Workplace’, Speech to the House of Representatives, 26 May. 29 Marr, J. (2003) First the Verdict: The real story of the Building Industry Royal Commission, Sydney, Pluto Press. 30 The Australian Parliamentary Library website includes a timeline of key events: see O’Neill, S., I. Kuruppu & B. Harris (2007) ‘Workplace relations reforms: a chronology of business, community and government responses’ at 31 Group of 150 Australian Industrial Relations Labour Market and Legal Academics (2005) ‘Research evidence about the effects of the “Work Choices Bill”’, A Submission to the Inquiry into the Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Bill, November 2005. 32 Readers interested in more information would find the ACTU website useful . See also the annual summaries of trade union matters, industrial relations law and employer matters in the Journal of Industrial Relations: for example, Cooper, R. (2005) ‘Trade unionism in 2004’, vol. 47, no. 2, pp 202–211; Barnes, A. (2006) ‘Trade unionism in 2005’, vol. 48, no. 3, pp. 369–383; Barnes, A. (2007) ‘Australian unions in 2006’, vol. 49, no. 3, pp. 380–393; Hall, Richard (2006) ‘Australian industrial relations in 2005 – the Work Choices revolution’, vol. 48, no. 3, pp. 291–303; Hall, Richard (2008) ‘The politics of industrial relations in Australia in 2007’, vol. 50, no. 3, pp. 371–382; Riley, J. & T. Sarina (2006) ‘Industrial Legislation in 2005’, vol. 48, no. 3, pp. 341–355; also Peetz, D. (2007) Assessing the Impact of ‘WorkChoices’ One Year On, Report to Department of Innovation, Industry and Regional Development, Victoria. 33 Group of 150 Academics, ‘Research evidence’, p. 5. 34 Hall, R. (2006) ‘Australian industrial relations in 2005 – the WorkChoices revolution’, Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 48, no. 3, pp. 291–303. 35 ACTU (2007) One Year On: The impact of the new IR laws on Australian working families, Melbourne, ACTU. 36 Stewart, A. & E. Priest (2006) The Work Choices Legislation: An overview, Supplement to B. Creighton & A. Stewart, Australian Labour Law, Federation Press, Sydney, 4th edn. 37 Hall, R. (2006) ‘Australian industrial relations in 2005’. 38 ibid; also Riley, J. & T. Sarina (2006) ‘Industrial Legislation in 2005’, Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 48, no. 3, pp. 341–355. 39 Riley, J. & T. Sarina (2006) ‘Industrial Legislation in 2005’, p. 347. 40 Hall, R. (2006) Australian industrial relations in 2005’; ACTU (2005) ‘Government plan to destroy 100 years of fairness: ACTU announces

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Notes to pages 26–31

national campaign’, Media Release 16 March 2005; Group 150 Academics (2005) ‘Research evidence’; Barnes, A. (2006) ‘Trade unionism in 2005’. 41 Jensen, P. (2005) ‘A statement from Archbishop Peter Jensen on industrial relations reform,’ Media Release, Anglican Archdiocese of Sydney, 8 August. 42 Shorten, in AWU/ACTU (2005) ‘Sacked mums go to court over AWA’s 25% pay cut’, Media Release, 22 February at 43 Hildebrand, J. (2005) ‘Chili’s fronts red-hot wage row’, Daily Telegraph, 5 July. Eventually the NSW Industrial Relations Commission identified underpayment of more than $45 000 for 27 workers across five Chili’s outlets; Hon. N. Hay, Private Members’ Statements, 19 October 2007, Parliament of NSW, p. 2988. 44 Sharan Burrow told me Tenika’s mother’s story; a version of it can be found in her speech to the 2007 ACTU national Conference at <www.qnu.org. au/__data/ page/2561/SBurrow_speech_111007.pdf>. John Robertson also told the story of Tenika and her mother during the ‘YRaW’ bus tours across NSW in 2007. 45 O’Neill, S. & M.A. Neilsen (2007) ‘Workplace Relations Amendment (A Stronger Safety Net) Bill 2007’, Bills Digest No. 181, Parliamentary Library. 46 ibid. 47 ibid; also Sutherland & Riley (2008) ‘Industrial legislation in 2007’, Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 50, no. 3, pp. 417–428. 48 Academic research into the impact of Work Choices included the following reports: Elton, J., J. Bailey, M. Baird, S. Charlesworth, R. Cooper, B, Ellem & G. Jefferson (2007) ‘Women and WorkChoices: Impacts on the low pay sector’, Report to the National Foundation of Australian Women, YWCA and Women´s Electoral Lobby; van Wanrooy, B., S. Oxenbridge, J. Buchanan & M. Jakubauskas (2007) Australia at Work: The benchmark report, Workplace Research Centre, Sydney; Peetz, D. (2007) Assessing the Impact of ‘WorkChoices’ One Year On, Report to Department of Innovation, Industry and Regional Development, Victoria. 49 O’Neill & Neilsen (2007) ‘Workplace Relations Amendment’. 50 Sutherland & Riley (2008) ‘Industrial legislation in 2007’. 51 ABC Radio National (2007) The World Today, ‘Workplace Authority under fire for temp placements’, 17 August. Chapter 2: The rise of media-driven politics 1 Some of the material in this chapter is adapted from previous papers, published and unpublished: Muir, K. (2006) ‘Sky Channel and the battle for Australians’ hearts and minds: The ACTU’s use of media in the “Rights at Work” campaign’, in C. Anyanwu (ed.) Empowerment, Creativity and Innovation: Challenging media and communication in the 21st century, Adelaide, Australia and New Zealand Communication Association; Muir, K. (2006) ‘Fairness versus choice: The contested discourses of “Australian” and

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2 3 4

5 6 7 8

9 10 11 12

“unAustralian” values in the industrial relations debate’, The UnAustralia Papers, electronic proceedings of the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia Annual Conference; Bailey, J. & K. Muir (2006) ‘Popular culture and union struggle in the twenty-first century’, Unpublished paper presented at the Work, Industrial Relations and Popular Culture Conference, Brisbane, 25 September. I would like to acknowledge the contribution of Janis Bailey, who co-authored the latter paper with me. Ray Martin (1998) interviewed in ‘The uncertain eye – the medium is the market (Episode 4)’, 4 Corners, Channel 2 ABC-TV, screened 2 February. Turner, G. (2005) Ending the Affair: The decline of television news and current affairs in Australia, Sydney, UNSW Press. Natasha Stott Despoja, former leader of the Australian Democrats, was one of the most successful Australian politicians in promoting her party’s concerns across a diverse range of media. However, her media success ultimately became a political liability, with critics claiming she ‘had more style than substance’. See Muir, K. (2005) ‘Media darlings and falling stars: Celebrity and the reporting of political leaders’, Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 54–71, for a discussion of the role of media in building political leadership and Stott Despoja’s experiences in particular. Mills, S. (1986) The New Machine Men: Polls and persuasion in Australian politics, Ringwood, Penguin; cited in Young, S. (2004) The Persuaders: Inside the hidden machine of political advertising, Melbourne, Pluto Press Australia. ibid, p. 47. Corner, J. & D. Pels (eds) (2003) Media and the Restyling of Politics, London, Sage, provides a very useful discussion of the range of interconnecting ways in which this process operates. Bennett, W. & R. Entman (2001) ‘Mediated politics: An introduction’, in W. Bennett & R. Entman (eds) Mediated Politics: Communication in the future of democracy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–32; for a discussion of the ‘mediatisation of politics’ – essentially the same processes, just different terminology – see Meyer, T. (2002) Media Democracy: How the media colonize politics, Cambridge: Polity; or Louw, E. (2005) The Media and the Political Process, London, Sage. Turner (2005) Ending the Affair; Graber, D. (2001) ‘Adapting political news to the needs of twenty-first century Americans’, in Bennett & Entman (2000) Mediated Politics, pp. 433–467. Plasser, F. with G. Plasser (2002) Global Political Campaigning: A worldwide analysis of campaign professionals and their practices, Westport, Praeger. Young, S. (2004) The Persuaders: Inside the hidden machine of political advertising, Melbourne, Pluto Press Australia. There is a growing body of literature on the use of new and established media for campaigning purposes by social movements, see, for example: Atton, C. (2002) Alternative Media, London, Sage; Meikle, G. (2002) Future Active: Media activism and the Internet, New York, Routledge; Waltz, M. (2005) Alternative and Activist Media, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press.

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Notes to pages 35–42

13 Glasgow University Media Group (GUMG) (1981) Bad News Vol. 1, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul; Ward, I. (1995) Politics of the Media, Melbourne, Macmillan. 14 Trade unionist and new media practitioner Eric Lee was an early advocate of the benefits trade unions would gain from using the Internet more for internal communications and organising and their public face; his 1997 book, The Labour Movement and the Internet: The new internationalism, London, Pluto Press, was a bible for many in unions and other political movements trying to figure out how best to take advantage of new information and communication technologies. 15 Scalmer, S. (1999) ‘The battlers versus the elites: The Australian right’s language of class’, Overland, no. 154, Autumn, pp. 9–13. 16 ACTU (2004) Next Steps for Australian Unions, Melbourne, ACTU. 17 ACTU (1999) Unions@work, Melbourne, ACTU; ACTU (2003) Future Strategies, Melbourne, ACTU; ACTU (2004) Next Steps. 18 Clawson, D. (2003) The Next Upsurge: Labor and the new social movements, Ithaca, NY, ILR Press; Masters, M. (2004) ‘Unions in the 2000 election: A strategic choice perspective’, Journal of Labor Research, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 139–182. 19 These figures come from Masters’ study (op. cit.) of the 2000 Presidential election, no figures were available for the 2004 election; Masters (2004) ‘Unions in the 2000 election’, pp. 157–160. 20 Stirling, J. (2005) ‘There’s a new world somewhere: The rediscovery of trade unionism’, Capital and Class, no. 87, pp. 43–63. 21 Masters (2004) ‘Unions in the 2000 election’, p. 153. 22 ACTU (2004) Next Steps. 23 ACTU (2005) ‘Union Update 2005 No. 2’ Melbourne, ACTU, p. 3. 24 ‘Blood on the marble floors’ is a quote from one of the reports on the Cavalcade to Canberra rally and the fracas at Parliament House. Armstrong, G. & C. Tan-Van Baren (1996) ‘ACTU under fire over violent rally’, West Australian, 20 August, p. 1. 25 For an analysis of the protest and the use of space see Bailey, J. & K. Iveson (2000) ‘The parliaments call them thugs: Public space, identity and union protest’, Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 42, no. 4, pp. 517–534; for an analysis of the media reporting of the events see Muir, K. (2004) ‘Tough enough? Constructions of femininity in news reports of Jennie George, ACTU President 1995–2000’, PhD thesis, University of Adelaide. 26 Muir (2004) ‘Tough enough?’ 27 See, for example: Herald Sun, 20 August 2006, p. 1; Mercury, 20 August 2006, p. 1; Canberra Times, 20 August 2006, p. 1; Australian, 20 August 2006, p. 1; The Age, 20 August 2006, p. 1. 28 GUMG (1981) Bad News; Windschuttle, K. (1985) The Media: A new analysis of press, television, radio and advertising in Australia, Ringwood, Penguin. 29 Briggs, C. (2006) ‘The return of lockouts down under in comparative perspective’, Comparative Political Studies, vol. 39, pp. 855–879. 30 Ian Ward’s book about media and politics in Australia demonstrates the

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Notes to pages 42–59

persistence of these reporting frames in Australian news reporting: Ward, I. (1995) Politics of the Media. 31 Greg Combet, ACTU, interview with author, April 2001. 32 Allan, S. (1999) News Culture, Buckingham, Open University Press; Tiffen, R. (1989) News and Power, Sydney, Allen & Unwin 33 Trinca, H. & A. Davies (2000) Waterfront: The battle that changed Australia, Sydney, Doubleday. 34 Combet, interview with author, April 2001. 35 Trinca & Davies (2000) Waterfront. 36 ibid. 37 Combet, interview with author, 2001. 38 LabourStart is the international labour website established and run by Eric Lee. It acts as a clearing house of union news, and promotes online and virtual protests and solidarity actions, an area in which they claim considerable success. As Lee is an advocate of unions using the Web more effectively, LabourStart runs an annual award for ‘Website of the Year’. At the time of the Waterfront Dispute it also ran a website of the week competition at 39 McConville, C. (2000) ‘The Australian waterfront dispute 1998’, Politics and Society, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 393–412. 40 The MUA website can be found at and Takver’s Soapbox ‘War on the Wharfies’ is archived at 41 Tony Maher, CFMEU, interview with author. 42 Plasser, F. with G. Plasser (2002) Global Political Campaigning. 43 Farr, M. (2007) ‘WorkChoices opens Pandora’s ballot box’, Daily Telegraph, 9 April, p. 21. Chapter 3: Meeting the communication challenge 1 ACTU (2005) ‘Government plan to destroy 100 years of fairness: ACTU announces national campaign’, Media Release, 16 March 2005. 2 ACTU (2005) ‘Union Update 2005 No. 1’, Melbourne, ACTU, p. 4. 3 ibid, p. 2. 4 ACTU (2004) Next Steps for Australian Unions, Melbourne, ACTU. 5 ACTU (2005) ‘Update No. 2’, p. 4. 6 ibid, p. 3 (emphasis is added). 7 ibid, p. 6. 8 Jeff Lawrence replaced Greg Combet as ACTU Secretary from 21 August 2007 when Combet resigned to contest the seat of Charlton in NSW for the ALP. 9 Lakoff, G. (2004) Don’t Think of an Elephant! Know your values and define the debate, Melbourne, Scribe, p. xv. 10 Bearfield, S. (2003) ‘Australian employees’ attitudes towards unions’, ACIRRT Working Paper 82, Sydney, Australian Centre for Industrial Relations Research and Training.

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Notes to pages 59–70

11 Meagher, G. & S. Wilson (2007) ‘Are unions regaining popular legitimacy in Australia?’, in D. Denemark, G. Meagher, S. Wilson, M. Western & T. Phillips (eds) Australian Social Attitudes 2: Citizenship, work and aspirations, Sydney, UNSW Press, pp.199–202. 12 van Wanrooy, B. (2007) ‘The quiet before the storm? Attitudes towards the new industrial relations system’, in D. Denemark et al. Australian Social Attitudes 2, p. 186. 13 William Gamson has written a fascinating study of the way working people in the United States talk about politics and the implications for those involved in organising and promoting campaigns, including in the labour movement. His discussion confirms many of the points made by Douglas and others involved in developing the ‘YRaW’ campaign. Gamson, W. (1992) Talking Politics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 14 Tony Douglas, EMC, interview with author. 15 Morgan Finding No. 4006, ‘Majorities of people disagree with IR reforms, think they will be bad for Australia,’ Roy Morgan Research Finding 4006, 7 April 2006. 16 Figures courtesy of Chris Walton, ACTU Assistant Secretary. 17 A number of unions also produced radio advertisements in particular states and regions and some, such as the SA/NT branch of the TWU, uploaded theirs to YouTube. 18 Hon. K. Andrews (2005) ‘ACTU Workplace Relations ads are wrong and misleading’, Doorstop interview, Parliament House, Canberra, 20 June. 19 This is a quote from the ACTU ad ‘Cost to families’, launched 11 June 2006. 20 Canning, S. (2008) ‘Now life’s imitating ad for star of ACTU’, Australian, 28 February. 21 The impact of juggling work and family responsibilities on workers’ and their families’ wellbeing is outlined in ACTU-commissioned research into ‘unreasonable’ working hours; see Pocock, B., B. van Wanrooy, S. Strazzari & K. Bridge (2001) Fifty Families: What unreasonable hours are doing to Australians, their families and their communities, Melbourne, ACTU; see also Pocock, B. (2003) The Work/Life Collision, Sydney, Federation Press. 22 The Tracy ad succeeded in drawing the link to unions not because of the content of the ad but because of its extensive use across union promotional material. The image of a distressed Tracy on the phone to her boss, watched by her children, became the iconic image of the campaign and was used for the ‘YRaW’ election posters. 23 Turner, G. (2005) Ending the Affair: The decline of television news and current affairs in Australia, Sydney, UNSW Press. 24 In one version of the ad released on DVD, along with the Sky Channel November 2005 broadcast, the character is called John; however, in the press release about the launch of this ad he is called Ross. 25 The ‘footy dad’ ad was launched on 25 September 2005, along with two others. 26 The footy dad scenario had its origin in the interviews members gave to

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researchers preparing evidence for the ACTU’s Reasonable Hours Claim; Pocock et al. (2001) Fifty Families. 27 ETU (2005) ‘Real-life footy dads’, ETU online newsletter, vol. 6, issue 10, 5 October. 28 Hon. K. Andrews (2006) interviewed by Barrie Cassidy on ABC-TV Insiders, 2 April, transcript available at 29 Sadly, in August 2006 the company collapsed, leaving all the workers unemployed and owed around $2 million in accumulated benefits and redundancy pay. 30 Hon. J. Howard (2006) ‘Doorstop interview, Upwey-Belgrave RSL’, Upwey, 26 July. 31 McIlveen, L. (2006) ‘Sacked legally’, Daily Telegraph, 26 July. 32 The Victorian newspaper Herald Sun of 5 June 2006 covered the story of the quilters’ protests; see Masanauskas, J. ‘Worker’s pin-up girl’. The ‘YRaW’ website also developed an email that people could send to Spotlight’s proprietors to support their staff: 33 Tony Sheldon, TWU National Secretary, interview with author. 34 McAllister, I. & J. Clark (2008) Trends in Australian Political Opinion: Results from the Australian Election Study, 1987–2007, Canberra, Australian National University. Similar findings came from the 2005 Australian Social Attitudes Survey. It showed well over 80 per cent of trade union members believed unions should have the same or more power and 44 per cent of nonmembers agreed; Meagher, G. & S. Wilson (2007) ‘Are unions regaining popular legitimacy in Australia?’, in D. Denemark et al Australian Social Attitudes 2. 35 As of June 2008 this ad was no longer available from the ACTU website nor was it archived on YouTube. Readers may be able to find it through 36 Morgan (2005) ‘2.5 million Australians belong to a trade union – and a further 1.5 million want to join them’, Roy Morgan Research Finding 3928, 17 November. 37 Norton, A. (2007) ‘The end of industrial relations reform?’, Policy, vol. 23, no. 4, Summer 2007–08, pp. 20–27. 38 Morgan (2006) ‘Majorities of people’ Roy Morgan Research Finding 4006, 7 April. 39 Comments from Morgan (2006) ‘Majorities of people disagree with IR reforms, think they will be bad for Australia’, Roy Morgan Research Finding 4006, 7 April. 40 Levine, M. (2006) ‘IR is the real issue – not Howard vs Costello’, Roy Morgan Research, 22 July. 41 Ben Spies-Butcher and Shaun Wilson have undertaken a statistical analysis of the election results in the House of Representative seats that changed hands at the 2007 election. They considered various factors, including the

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ACTU’s ‘YRaW’ campaign, and concluded that ‘the ACTU campaign had a significant impact on the outcome of the election’, increasing the swing to Labor on average by 1.3–2 per cent. This confirms the ACTU’s own analysis. B. Spies-Butcher & S. Wilson (2008) ‘Federal election 2007: Did the union campaign succeed?’, Australian Review of Public Affairs, February. 42 The ads and information about the campaign can be viewed at 43 Jessica Stanley, Online Director ACTU, interview with author. 44 LabourStart is run by Eric Lee, author of the influential 1997 book The Labour Movement and the Internet: The new internationalism, London, Pluto Press; see 45 and <www.youtube.com/ yourrightsatwork> 46 Although no longer available on the LHMU site it can be seen online at (accessed 27 March 2008). 47 Manic Times ‘What have the unions ever done for us?’ (accessed 26 March 2008). 48 A list of bands and other information about the event can be found at (accessed 21 April 2008). 49 Unions NSW (2008) ‘Unions NSW 2007 Annual Report’, Sydney, Unions NSW. 50 Burrow, S. (2005) ‘Remember This Day – 15 November 2005’, Speech to National Day of Action, Melbourne. 51 Media Entertainment and Arts Industry Association (MEAA) members tend to have a high level of union consciousness and many contributed their time and skills generously, greatly adding to the profile and appeal of the campaign. There was some anxiety in the arts industry that public opponents of Work Choices might suffer discrimination in future employment, and Corrine Grant was personally attacked by Government members before she compered the rally, after she had appeared in MEAA campaign material condemning the legislation. Her highly popular comedy show with Dave Hughes and Will Anderson, The Glasshouse, was axed from ABC-TV during this period, although the ABC denied it had anything to do with the stars’ politics. 52 In November 2005 people were encouraged to fill in a postcard to be sent to politicians urging them not to vote for Work Choices. The message onscreen read: ‘“I didn’t vote for an attack on my rights at work”. Send John Howard a message: fill in the postcard.’ At a later rally people were urged to recite a pledge (distributed on another card) to work to overturn the laws and to take it home and keep it to hand as a reminder of the importance of the campaign. 53 Combet, G. (2005) ‘Address to the National Day of Community Protest, 15 November 2005’.

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Notes to pages 91–116

Chapter 4: Mobilising to win 1 Combet, G. (2005) ‘Address to the National Day of Community Protest, 15 November 2005’. 2 For discussion of mobilising and unions or other social movements, see Kelly, J. (1998) Rethinking Industrial Relations: Mobilization, collectivism and long waves, New York, Routledge; and Tilly, C. (1978) From Mobilization to Revolution, Reading, Addison-Wesley Publishing, among others. 3 Scalmer, S. (1999) ‘The battlers versus the elites: The Australian right’s language of class’, Overland, no. 154, Autumn, pp. 9–13. 4 Johnson, C. (2000) Governing Change: Keating to Howard, St Lucia, University of Queensland Press. 5 ACTU (2004) Next Steps for Australian Unions, Melbourne, ACTU; see also Crosby, M. (2005) Power at Work, Sydney, Federation Press. 6 ACTU (2007) ‘Federal Election 2007 Union Political Strategy Manual, 6 Steps’, Melbourne, ACTU (internal document). 7 Steve Pierce, CFMEU Mining and Energy Vice-President, Mackay, interview with author. 8 QPSU Hero Campaign Update 4 October 2007 9 Sky Channel broadcasts through its network of Tabcorp screens in commercial venues such as hotels and clubs, and as Sky Racing through pay television networks Foxtel, Optus Vision and Auststar via cable and satellite to domestic subscribers. It offers a commercial business service in the hours outside its racing commitments and this is the service the ACTU utilised. See 10 A list of all the 2005 venues, and the ACTU’s summary of attendance numbers, can be found at ; a list of all the 2006 venues can be found at (accessed 17 March 2008). 11 John Robertson, Unions NSW, interview with author. 12 Brett Holmes, NSW Nurses’ Association, interview with author. 13 For further information about the network see <www.fairemployers.com. au> (accessed 19 March 2008). 14 Robertson, Unions NSW, interview with author. 15 VTHC (2005) ‘VTHC IR Country Campaign 28 November–16 December 2005’, Melbourne, VTHC. Victorian unions involved included the AMIEU, VNF, AEU, RBTU, ASU, CFMEU, VIEU, HACSU, NTEU, LHMU, MEAA and TWU. 16 Dick Williams, Electrical Trades Union, Queensland Branch. 17 For only the second time in Australian history the Prime Minister of Australia lost his own seat at the election. Bennelong had been undergoing significant demographic change over the previous few elections but, given the high status of the incumbent, few seriously expected Labor to win it. The ALP candidate Maxine McKew won Bennelong with 51.4 per cent of the two-party preferred vote, a swing of 5.53 per cent, just higher than the national average.

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Notes to pages 118–124

Chapter 5: Winning them over one by one 1 Roger H. (Macquarie/Lindsay), interview with author. 2 ACTU (2006) ‘Thousands of good reasons’, online discussion forum at (downloaded 2 December 2006). Ninety-nine pages of contributions were uploaded by campaign supporters in the weeks leading up to the 30 November 2006 rally. 3 ibid. 4 ibid. 5 ibid. 6 Denise H. (Macquarie/Lindsay), interview with author. 7 Hannan, E. (2007) ‘Sack your costly workers and save’, Australian, 24 April, p. 1; Bachelard, M. (2007) ‘Burned by IR, Howard’s battlers exact revenge’, The Age, 26 November, p. 5. 8 See, for example, the Federal Liberal Party Director’s speech to the National Press Club about the Coalition’s election loss. Brian Loughnane was one of the few who credited – or rather ‘blamed’ – the ACTU’s campaign for much of the swing against the Coalition; Loughnane, B. (2007) ‘Address to the National Press Club’, Canberra, 19 December. 9 The seat of Franklin had been held for the ALP by Harry Quick, who was retiring in 2007. Quick was opposed to the candidate originally selected for the ALP, former ETU official Kevin Harkins; he also made some very critical public comments about the operations of factions within the ALP. Some Tasmanian unions decided that even though Franklin was held by the ALP and was not on the ACTU’s list of targeted seats, they would contribute funds to employ a ‘YRaW’ community campaign coordinator to assist in campaigning in the seat as a defensive strategy. Harkins subsequently withdrew as a candidate after intense public criticism from Quick and after it became known that he was also facing a civil charge from the ABCC over his involvement as an ETU official in an illegal strike. Julie Collins was installed as the replacement candidate shortly before the election and won Franklin with 57 per cent of the two party preferred vote. 10 Lewis, S. (2007) ‘Union army to hit the seats’, Australian, 13 June, p. 1. 11 Chris Walton, ACTU Assistant Secretary, interview with author. The targeted seats campaign was a direct outcome of policies the ACTU had approved in 1999 and in 2004 in response to the 1999 Unions@work report and the 2004 Next Steps report, produced after international study tours to examine innovative political, industrial and organising campaigns. For more detail on the US style of campaigning, see Clawson, D. (2003) The Next Upsurge: Labor and the new social movements, Ithaca, NY and London, ILR Press; Masters, M. (2004) ‘Unions in the 2000 election: A strategic choice perspective’, Journal of Labor Research, vol. 25, no. 1, which provides an account of the various types of campaigning undertaken in the 2000 election and the resources allocated to them; also ACTU (2004) Next Steps for Australian Unions, Melbourne, ACTU; ACTU (1999) Unions@work, Melbourne, ACTU.

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Notes to pages 125–143

12 Tattersall, A. (2006) ‘Bringing the community in: Possibilities for public sector union success through community unionism’, International Journal of Human Resources Development and Management, vol. 6, no. 2/3/4, pp. 186–199. 13 ACTU (2003) ‘Unions and the Wider Society’ policy, adopted at the ACTU Congress. 14 The sitting member, Liberal Andrew Laming, retained the seat by a margin of 64 votes. 15 Wendy Turner, CCC Longman, interview with author. 16 Unions NSW (2006) ‘Unions NSW 2005 Annual Report’, Sydney, Unions NSW. 17 Eileen B. (Kingston), interview with author. 18 Sandy J. (Melbourne), interview with author. 19 Jo J. (Lindsay), interview with author. 20 There were several different petitions circulating over the course of the campaign and in different states. Some were addressed to Kim Beazley as ALP leader, some to Kevin Rudd and in NSW, prior to the 2007 state election, one was addressed to Premier Morris Iemma seeking a guarantee that he’d protect workers covered by State laws. Those that asked the ALP to overturn the Work Choices legislation seemed to be most successful at generating productive discussion with members of the community about the impact of the legislation and the need for the ALP to restore workers’ rights, as opposed to those that ‘congratulated’ Kevin Rudd on the ALP industrial relations policy. 21 In 1996 during the ACTU’s ‘Cavalcade to Canberra’ demonstration against the Howard Government’s first wave of workplace relations laws, a small group of unionists and other demonstrators tried to forcibly enter Parliament House. They caused significant property damage in the process and their actions were universally condemned. The Government and media headlines represented unionists as un-Australian thugs, creating a public relations disaster for the labour movement (see discussion in chapter 2). 22 Sharron Caddie, QCU, interview with author. 23 Andrew Ramsay, CCC Moreton, interview with author. 24 Kate Coleman, ACTU E&CC, interview with author. 25 Clawson, D. (2005) ‘Response: Organizing, movements, and social capital’, Labor Studies Journal, vol. 29, no. 4, Winter 2005, pp. 37–44. 26 Linda E. (Lindsay), interview with author. 27 For a discussion of ‘doing politics differently’, particularly the way the labour movement engages with politics, see Crosby, M. (2005) Power at Work, Sydney, Federation Press. 28 Roger H. (Macquarie/Lindsay), interview with author. Chapter 6: Campaigning on the other side: selling Work Choices 1 Hon. K. Andrews (2005) ‘IR changes family friendly, says Andrews’, Insiders, Australian Broadcasting Commission, Transcript of interview, 23 October.

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Notes to pages 143–149

2 Commonwealth of Australia (2005) WorkChoices: A simpler, fairer, national workplace relations system for Australia, Canberra, Australian Government, p. 63. 3 Hon. J. Howard (2005) ‘Workplace Relations Reform: The Next Logical Step’, Address to the Sydney Institute, 11 July, p. 8. 4 Hon. J. Howard (2005) ‘Why Our Unfair Dismissal Laws Aren’t Working’, Address to the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Western Australia, 25 September. 5 Towart, N. (2005) ‘Framing the debate: The unions’ campaign’, Journal of Australian Political Economy, no. 56, pp. 268–276. 6 Business Council of Australia (2005) Workplace Relations Action Plan for Future Prosperity, Melbourne, BCA; Hearn Mackinnon, B. (2006) ‘Employer matters in 2005’, Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 48, no. 3, pp. 385–389. 7 David Peetz (2006) discusses the shift to individualism in workplace relations at length in his revealing book Brave New Work Place: How individual contracts are changing our jobs, Sydney, Allen & Unwin. 8 Ellem, B., M. Baird, R. Cooper & R. Lansbury (2005) ‘“WorkChoices”: Myth-making at work’, Journal of Australian Political Economy, vol. 56, pp. 13–31. 9 The ads are discussed and the letter reproduced in Orr, G. (2006) ‘Government advertising: Informational or self-promotional?’, Democratic Audit of Australia, Political Finance & Government Advertising Workshop, pp. 14–16. 10 The scripts of these ads were sourced from Sally Young’s excellent resource for media politics 11 Williams, G. (2005), First Assistant Secretary, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, in evidence to Senate Finance and Public Administration References Committee Inquiry into Government Advertising and Accountability, pp. 47–48. 12 Hon. J. Howard (2007) ABC-TV, Lateline, 18 May. 13 Coorey, P. & J. Irvine (2007) ‘Work Choices backlash sparks a war of words’, Sydney Morning Herald, 17 May, p. 6. 14 George Wright, ACTU, pers. comm. 15 ‘Know where you stand – Workplace Infoline’, television advertisement downloaded from the Workplace Authority website, October 2007, transcribed by author. 16 Norington, B. (2007) ‘Workplace Authority ad an “abuse”’, Australian, 17 July, p. 3; Burgess, V. (2007) ‘Treading on dangerous ground’, Australian Financial Review, 20 July, p. 69. 17 George Wright, ACTU, pers. comm. 18 See discussion of the ACTU’s market research in chapter 3. 19 Bachelard, M. (2007) ‘Painter gets brush-off from boss-turned-actor’, The Age, 7 August, p. 1. 20 Orr, G. (2006) ‘Government advertising: Informational or selfpromotional?’; Hannan, E. (2007) ‘PM to spend millions on IR ad blitz’,

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Notes to pages 149–153

21 22 23 24 25 26 27

28 29 30

31

32 33 34

Weekend Australian, 5–6 May, p. 9; Crowe, D. (2007) ‘Ad blitz has Howard on the defensive’, Australian Financial Review, 23 May, p. 5. van Onselen, P. & W. Errington (2007) ‘Managing expectations: The Howard Government’s WorkChoices information campaign’, Media International Australia, no. 123, pp. 5–17. Young, S. (2004) The Persuaders: Inside the hidden machine of political advertising, Melbourne: Pluto Press Australia . Schubert, M. & P. Robinson (2005) ‘Court rejects ban on IR ads’, The Age, 30 September, pp. 1 & 4. Williams, G. (2005), in evidence to Senate Finance and Public Administration References Committee Inquiry into Government Advertising and Accountability, pp. 47–48. Commonwealth of Australia Senate Estimates (2008) Senate Standing Committee on Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, Estimates, Hansard transcript of Hearings, 2 June. Hearn Mackinnon, B. (2006) ‘Employer matters in 2005’, Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 48, no. 3, pp. 385–389; 223–224. The use of a combination of commissioned research, opinion polling, public relations techniques and political pressure to attempt to frame a debate and influence an agenda is a standard approach to lobbying. The union movement also uses variations of this approach as far as it is able. But union research and submissions are viewed with more scepticism by the media as representing the interests of a sectional (even marginal) interest group than are those of business. Business, plainly also a particular interest group, is given greater authority or, as Australian politics expert Ian Ward calls it, a ‘privileged voice’ in the news media: Ward, I. (1995) Politics of the Media, Melbourne, Macmillan, p. 114. BCA (2005) ‘BCA reform advertisements go to air around Australia: “Economic reform vital for Australia’s future”’, News Release, 30 October. BCWR (2007) ‘Big and small business groups join forces to promote modern workplace relations’, Media Release, 8 August. Econtech (2007) The Economic Effects of Industrial Relations Reforms Since 1993, Econtech Pty Ltd, Canberra, Report prepared for the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry; Lyons, M. (2007) ‘“Lies, damned lies and statistics”: The Business Coalition for Workplace Reform Campaign of 2007’, Labour and Industry, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 119–136. A couple of economics commentators pointed out the misleading brief given to Econtech by ACCI and the equally misleading ways it had been utilised in the BCWR campaign, but most took the claims at face value; see Gittins, R. (2007) ‘Opinions about Labor dressed up as the truth’, Sydney Morning Herald, 1 September, p. 47; Lyons (2007) ‘“Lies”’. BCA (2005) ‘BCA reform advertisements’. BCRW (2007) ‘Big and small business groups’; see also Hearne Mackinnon, B. (2008) ‘Employer matters in 2007’, Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 50, no. 3, pp. 463–474. Coorey, P. (2007) ‘Exposed: Secret business plot to wreck Labor’, Sydney

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Notes to pages 153–158

Morning Herald, 20 June, p. 1. 35 Chaney, M. (2007) ‘Injection of facts into IR debate’, Australian, 9 August, p. 14. 36 Marris, S. & P. Karvelas (2007) ‘Business rallies for an IR blitz’, Australian, 23 April, pp. 1–2. 37 Minerals Council of Australia (2007) ‘The advertising campaign on flexible workplace arrangements’, Fact Sheet, 8 June. 38 Loughnane, B. (2007) 10 Ways that Labor’s Industrial Relations Policy Will Affect You, election leaflet, Melbourne, Liberal Party of Australia. 39 For example, the cover of a December Sunday West Australian Extra magazine in 2006 included the headline ‘Julia Gillard: Golden girl or red witch?’ and the Bulletin magazine depicted her on its front cover on 2 October 2007 under the headline ‘Red Alert’. 40 Hon. J. Howard (2007) ‘Interview’, 10 August, quoted in Lyons (2007) ‘“Lies”, p. 121. 41 Hearn Mackinnon (2007) ‘Employer matters in 2006’. 42 ibid. 43 Skulley, M. (2007) ‘Builders warn Rudd against IR reversal’, Australian Financial Review, 28 May, p. 8. 44 ABC-TV (2007) 7.30 Report, ‘Politicians not standing alone in election divide’, 13 June. 45 Bachelard, M. (2007) ‘Business split over funding IR ads – government grant sways decision’, The Age, 14 August, p. 2. 46 ACTU (2007) ‘Big business admits direct link between pro-Liberal ad campaign and $40m taxpayer-funded program’, Media Release, 14 August. There was no suggestion that the Employer Assistance Program grants were used by business toward their advertising. Instead, concern was expressed that the EAP-funded workshops benefited business through demonstrating ways that ‘WorkChoices will provide employers with opportunities to improve productivity and/or achieve labour flexibilities that may not have existed previously’ (AIG ‘WorkChoices delivers’ ) and that this could create a sense among employers that they were obligated to support the Government; or that a perception of such an obligation might arise in the public mind. 47 Coorey (2007) ‘Exposed’; Bachelard (2007) ‘Business split’. 48 Wallace, R. (2007) ‘Employer group warms to IR push’, Australian, 2 August, p. 6. 49 ABC-TV (2007) Lateline, 11 June. 50 The Eureka flag logo on his sleeve appeared to have been digitally manipulated so that the four ends of the cross were angled forward, apparently in a visual reference to the Nazi swastika. 51 At the time of writing, June 2008, all five TV advertisements could still be viewed on the BCA website. The advertisements were: ‘Journey’, ‘Economic cost’, ‘Small business – unions’, ‘Daily Telegraph’ and ‘Mining’, plus a sixth print advertisement, ‘Workplace reform: supported by big

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Notes to pages 159–167

52 53

54 55 56

57 58

and small business’, all authorised by R. Crawford. See <www.bca.com. au/Content/101143.aspx>. The ‘Small business – unions’ ad may also be available on YouTube. Crawford, R. (2007) Journey; Economic Cost; Small Business Reform – Unions; Television Advertisements, Business Coalition for Workplace ReformNational Business Action Fund, Canberra. Koutsoukis, J., R. Switzer & D. Gough (2007) ‘Truth in advertising: What you see is what you get’, Sunday Age, 23 September, p. 1; and Koutsoukis, Switzer & Gough (2007) ‘Drug pair star in pulled ad’, Sun Herald, 23 September, p. 25. Loughnane, B. (2007) ‘They’ll stuff our economy’, Television Advertisement, Canberra, Liberal Party of Australia. Loughnane, B. (2007) ‘Unions to take control of the economy’, Television Advertisement, Canberra, Liberal Party of Australia. Former ACTU Secretary Greg Combet, at that time a candidate for the NSW seat of Charlton, and Senator Penny Wong were among the very few to talk about the skills they had gained from their union backgrounds and their pride in the work they had done on behalf of working people in conjunction with trade unions. Queensland Premier Anna Bligh also affirmed her party’s relationship with the union movement, saying ‘100 per cent of her cabinet were proud members of their relevant trade union members’; see (accessed 18 October 2007). Downloaded from the Sydney Morning Herald website Richardson, C. (2007) ‘Anti-union campaign did what it was supposed to’, Crikey Online, 28 November; van Onselen & Errington (2007) ‘Managing expectations’.

Chapter 7: Staying on message despite the differences 1 New forms of protest adopted by the union movement include consumer boycotts and community alliances such as the Australian FairWear campaign , internationally known as Clean Clothes campaign or Stop Sweatshops. See Ross, A. (ed.) (1997) No Sweat: Fashion, free trade and the rights of garment workers, New York, Verso. Some of these new forms include Internet-based actions. 2 Kerin quoted in Vassilopoulous, J. (2006) ‘Howard’s attacks demand solidarity’, Green Left Weekly, 28 June. 3 Louise Tarrant, LHMU, interview with author. 4 Brian Boyd, VTHC, interview with author. 5 Julius Roe, AMWU, interview with author. 6 See, for example, the discussion in the pages of socialist left newspaper Green Left Weekly, such as and (Green Left Weekly is

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Notes to pages 167–175

7 8 9

10 11

12

13 14 15

16 17 18

available online at ); and Graham Matthews (2006) ‘Work Choices: A huge challenge for organised labour in Australia’, Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal, online at Bramble, Tom (2005) ‘Resisting Howard’s industrial relations “reforms”: An assessment of ACTU strategy’, Journal of Australian Political Economy, no. 56, p. 264. Martin Kingham, CFMEU, interview with author. Construction and some manufacturing unions argued that the early start caused problems, as they had to rely on people finding their own way directly to the Melbourne Cricket Ground rather than assembling at work and marching or being bussed to the rally venue, the traditional means of conducting rallies in Melbourne. Rintoul, S. (2006) ‘MCG half-empty as workers stay at work’, Australian, 1 December, p. 2; Advertiser (2006) ‘Howard plays by the numbers’, 1 December, p. 2. For further information about the role of the ABCC, the ABC National Interest Program interview with Commissioner John Lloyd, 24 June 2007, provides a useful layperson’s overview ; a follow-up story broadcast on 30 September 2007 may also be of interest: For further information about the ABCC’s brief and staffing, and annual reports, see ; the ACTU’s criticisms of the recommendations of the Cole Royal Commission can be viewed at Kingham, interview with author. David Noonan, CFMEU, interview with author. Builders have funded school breakfasts at schools in low-income areas of Victoria for many years, raising over $200 000 in conjunction with the AMWU, the ETU and the Plumbers’ Union. They regularly raise funds for other charities, disaster relief and international solidarity work. Examples can be seen in their Handbook for Apprentices, which can be found at <www.cfmeu.net/construction/pdfs/23347_Handbooksection2.pdf> Noonan, interview with author. ibid. In May 2008 the construction unions launched a new campaign to raise awareness about the operations of the ABCC and attempting to influence the ALP to wind up its operations earlier than 2010. One key aspect of the law they are seeking to change is the hefty fines and threat of jail that building workers face for refusing to answer questions posed by the Commission or by disclosing to others the questions put to them by the Commission. The CFMEU and their supporters argue such laws are in direct contradiction to the rights of most other sections of the community.

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Notes to pages 175–181

Indeed, Noel Washington, Vice-President of the Victorian Branch of the CFMEU Construction Division, is currently facing a possible penalty of up to six months’ jail for refusing to attend an ABCC hearing. For more information see 19 Shaw, M. (2006) ‘Mother faces building probe’, The Age, 2 May, p. 8. 20 Charlie Corbett was a 65-year-old La Trobe Valley building shop steward who tried to get the company Hooker Cockram to hire apprentices on the site. See Bachelard, M. & D. Cooke (2007) ‘Building man faces big fine over apprentice hiring row’, The Age, 8 May, p. 6; see also ABCC, ‘Stuart v CFMEU & Ors’ at 21 Constructing Fear website 22 The Three Generations ad, or ‘Why is it my grandson has less rights at work than I had?’ can be viewed on YouTube: 23 See press reports such as: Bachelard, M. (2006) ‘Burned by IR, Howard’s battlers exact revenge’, The Age, 26 November, p. 5; Megalogenis, G. (2007) ‘Heroes behind campaign catchcry’, The Weekend Australian, 15–16 November, Insight, p. 6. 24 Sharan Burrow, ACTU, interview with author. 25 The point about the ‘YRaW’ campaign shaping the ground for the ALP is relevant even to the relative credibility of the leaders, that is, the argument that the ALP won because Kevin Rudd’s appeal was very strong and in comparison John Howard seemed very stale. Howard’s popularity and trustworthiness declined as a direct result of union advertising and actions against the Work Choices laws. Once people understood the full implications of the laws they believed the Government had become arrogant and gone too far. Of course this was not the only factor, but its influence has been insufficiently acknowledged (see chapter 8). 26 Chris Warren, MEAA, interview with author. 27 Kingham, CFMEU, interview with author. 28 Tarrant, LHMU, interview with author. 29 Some unions in the forestry and mining sectors, in particular, had very significant differences with the Greens over environment and industry policies. Members in some of these unions would have been outraged if their union had produced a how-to-vote card that suggested voters should preference the Greens ahead of the ALP. 30 ‘How to vote for “Your Rights at Work” in Bowman’, authorised by Jacqueline King. 31 Sally Edsall, ‘Why vote Green in the Senate?’ 32 This advice is quoted from the ‘YRaW’ “How to vote for ‘Your Rights at Work”’ card given out in Wakefield in SA, which preferenced the What Women Want candidate second and Family First third in the House of Representatives.

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Notes to pages 181–186

33 ‘How to vote for “Your Rights at Work” in Dobell’, authorised by John Robertson. 34 NZ Labour leader Helen Clark quoted in Crosby, M. (2005) Power at Work, Sydney, Federation Press, p. 245. Chapter 8: Doing politics differently 1 Du Gay, P. (1996) Consumption and Identity at Work, London, Sage. 2 Hon. J. Howard (2005) ‘Workplace Relations Reform: The Next Logical Step’, Address to the Sydney Institute, 11 July. 3 Pocock, B. (2003) The Work/Life Collision, Sydney, Federation Press. 4 Peetz, D. (2006) Brave New Workplace: How individual contracts are changing our jobs, Sydney, Allen & Unwin. 5 Crosby, M. (2005) Power at Work, Sydney, Federation Press. 6 Unions Australia is an initiative of the ACTU that aims to eradicate any potential confusion or anxiety over finding the appropriate union to join. Research has shown that many Australians would like to join a union but are either confused about which union to join or are waiting to be asked. Members are covered from the date of joining Unions Australia and receive a ‘Welcome’ letter from the union appropriate to their industry soon after joining up. For more information go to 7 ACTU (2000) Working Families in the New Millennium: An ACTU action plan for balancing work and family life 2000–2003, Melbourne, ACTU; ACTU (2001) ‘Howard’s Legacy For Working Families’, Melbourne, ACTU. 8 Hon. M. Latham (2003) ‘Mark Latham – Biggest Taxing Government Ever Keeps Getting Bigger’, ALP News Statements, 6 July, available at . My thanks to Carol Johnson for this source. 9 For discussion of the 2001 AFL-CIO campaign see Masters, M. (2004) ‘Unions in the 2000 election: A strategic choice perspective’, Journal of Labor Research, vol. 25, no. 1. William Gamson notes that in interviews undertaken with blue-collar male workers in the United States these men nearly always refer to themselves as ‘working men’ or ‘working people’ rather than ‘working class’: Gamson, W. (1992) Talking Politics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 10 Megalogenis, G. (2007) ‘Heroes behind campaign catchcry’, Australian, 15 December. Megalogenis wrongly credits Essential Media Communications with having devised the term; they did establish its resonance to the target audience, but the ACTU had been using it at least since 2000. See ACTU (2000) Working Families in the New Millennium. 11 There is some debate about the classification of working families and their income levels. Some, such as Treasurer Wayne Swan, argue that families in major capital cites such as Sydney and Melbourne, whose primary income may be as high as $80 000 and whose secondary part-time income may be $20 000 to $30 000, should also be included.

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Notes to pages 188–207

12 This account is based on interviews with Ryan A. and Harlan M., two young activists in Kingston, SA. 13 Herald Sun (2007) ‘Condoms tactic embarrasses’, 19 October 2007, online; Sydney Morning Herald (2007) ‘Union offers condom to stop work choices’, 9 November, online. 14 See, for example, Shaw, M. (2007) ‘Campaign of persuasion’ The Age, 14 June, p. 6. 15 Hamilton, C. & S. Maddison (eds) (2007) Silencing Dissent: How the Australian government is controlling public opinion and stifling debate, Sydney, Allen & Unwin. 16 Burrow, ACTU, interview with the author. 17 See Jerrard, M. (2007) ‘Building alliances to protect jobs: The AMIEU’s response to live animal export’, in Buttigieg, D., S. Cockfield, R. Cooney, M. Jerrard & A. Rainnie (eds) (2007) Trade Unions in the Community: Values, issues, shared interests and alliances, Melbourne, Heidelberg Press, pp. 185– 200. 18 Sharron Caddie, QCU, interview with author. 19 Wendy Turner, CCC Longman, interview with author. 20 See, for example, Tattersall, A. (2005), ‘There is power in coalition’, Labour and Industry, vol. 16, no. 2, p. 97. A useful discussion of community unionism in the Australian context together with a range of examples can be found in Buttigieg, D., S. Cockfield, R. Cooney, M. Jerrard & A. Rainnie (eds) (2007) Trade Unions in the Community. For discussion of international work in this area see Clawson, D. (2003) The Next Upsurge: Labor and the new social movements, Ithaca, NY and London, ILR Press; also Fantasia, R. & K. Voss (2004) Hard Work: Remaking the American labor movement, Berkeley: University of California Press. 21 John Short, CCC Kingston, interview with author. 22 Loughnane, B. (2007) ‘Address to the National Press Club’, Canberra, 19 December. 23 ACTU (2008) ‘Your Rights at Work’: Unions organising and working for a fairer Australia, Melbourne, ACTU. 24 ibid, p. 8. 25 ibid, p. 18. 26 ACTU (2008) ‘Collective bargaining lifts pay and community standards say unions in new TV ads’, Media Release, 21 June. The ACTU’s media release, fact sheet and the advertisements themselves can be viewed at 27 Kate Coleman, ACTU Education and Campaign Centre, interview with author. 28 Gartrell, T. (2007) ‘Labor Won the Campaign, Outright’, Speech to the National Press Club, Canberra, 4 December 29 Hon. K. Rudd (2007) ‘Election Victory Speech’, 24 November

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ACTU (1999) Unions@work, Melbourne, ACTU. —— (2004) Next Steps: For Australian Unions, Melbourne, ACTU. —— (2008) Your Rights at Work/Unions Organising and Working for a Fairer Australia, Melbourne, ACTU. Allan, S. (1999) News Culture, Buckingham, Open University Press. Barnes, A. (2006) ‘Trade unionism in 2005’, Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 48, No. 3, pp. 369–383. —— (2007) ‘Australian unions in 2006’, Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 49. No. 3, pp. 380–393. Bennett, WL. & R. Entman (eds) (2001) Mediated Politics: Communication in the Future of Democracy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Buttigieg D., S. Cockfield, R. Cooney, M. Jerrard & A. Rainnie (eds) (2007) Trade Unions in the Community: Values, issues, shared interests and alliances, Melbourne, Heidelberg Press. Clawson, D. (2003) The Next Upsurge: Labor and the new social movements, Ithaca, ILR Press. Commonwealth of Australia (2005) Senate Finance and Public Administration References Committee Inquiry into Government Advertising and Accountability, final report, Canberra. —— (2005) WorkChoices: A simpler, fairer, national workplace relations system for Australia, Canberra. —— (2008) Senate Standing Committee of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, Estimates, Hansard transcript of Hearings 2 June, Canberra. Cooper, R. (2005) ‘Trade unionism in 2004’, Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 47, No. 2, pp. 202–211. Corner, J. & D. Pels (eds) (2003) Media and the Restyling of Politics, London, Sage. Crosby, M. (2005) Power at Work: Rebuilding the Australian union movement, Melbourne, The Federation Press. Ellem B., M. Baird, R. Cooper & R. Lansbury (2005) ‘“WorkChoices”: Mythmaking at work’, Journal of Australian Political Economy, Vol. 56, pp. 13–31. Fantasia, R. & K. Voss (2004) Hard Work: Remaking the American labor movement, Berkeley, University of California Press. Fine, J. (2005) ‘Community unions and the revival of the American labor movement’, Politics and Society, Vol. 33, No. 1, March 2005, pp. 153–199.

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Gartrell, T. (2007) ‘Labor won the campaign, outright’, Speech to the National Press Club, Canberra, 4 December Glasgow University Media Group (1981) Bad News, Vol. 1, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul. Hall, R. (2006) ‘Australian industrial relations in 2005 – the WorkChoices revolution’, Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 48, No. 3, pp. 291–303. —— (2008) ‘The politics of industrial relations in Australia in 2007’, Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 50, No. 3, pp. 371–382. Hamilton C. & S. Maddison (eds) (2007) Silencing Dissent: How the Australian Government is controlling public opinion and stifling debate, Sydney, Allen & Unwin. Hearn Mackinnon, B. (2005) ‘Employer matters in 2004’, Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 47, No. 2, pp. 212–225. —— (2008) ‘Employer matters in 2007’, Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 50, No. 3, pp.463–474. Johnson, C. (2007) Governing Change: From Keating to Howard (rev. edn), Perth, Australian Scholarly Classics. Kaid, L.L. (2004) Handbook of Political Communication Research, Mahwah, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Kelly, J. (1998) Rethinking Industrial Relations: Mobilization, collectivism and long waves, New York, Routledge. Lakoff, G. (2004) Don’t Think of an Elephant!: Know your values and define the debate, Melbourne, Scribe. Lee, E. (1997) The Labour Movement and the Internet: The new internationalism, London, Pluto Press. Louw, E. (2005) The Media and Political Process, London, Sage. Maddison, S. & S. Scalmer (2006) Activist Wisdom: Practical knowledge and creative tension in social movements, Sydney, UNSW Press. Martinez Lucio, M. (2003) ‘New communication systems and trade union politics: A case study of Spanish trade unions and the role of the Internet’, Industrial Relations Journal, Vol. 34, No. 4, pp. 334–47. Masters, M.F. (2004) ‘Unions in the 2000 election: A strategic choice perspective’, Journal of Labor Research, Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 139–182. Meagher, G. & S. Wilson (2007) ‘Are unions regaining popular legitimacy in Australia?’, in D. Denemark, G. Meagher, S. Wilson, M. Western & T. Phillips (eds) Australian Social Attitudes 2: Citizenship, work and aspirations, Sydney, University of NSW Press, pp. 195–216. Meikle, G. (2002) Future Active: Media activism and the Internet, New York, Routledge. Meyer, T. (2002) Media Democracy: How the media colonize politics, Cambridge: Polity. Milkman R. & K. Voss (eds.) (2004) Rebuilding Labor: Organizing and organizers in the new union movement, Ithaca, ILR Press. Muir, K. (2006) ‘Fairness versus choice: The contested discourses of “Australian” and “unAustralian’ values in the industrial relations debate”,

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index

Page numbers in bold denote photographs; page numbers followed by n denote endnotes. The following abbreviations are used: IR for industrial relations; and ‘YRaW’ for the ‘Your Rights at Work’ campaign 36 ways to get fired thanks to John Howard (film clip) 82 Abbott, Tony 16 Access Economics 151 Accord demobilising effect 9–10 Acklin, Jennifer 131, 133 ACTU (Australian Council of Trade Unions) adopts and launches ‘YRaW’ media campaign 8, 36, 46–47, 53, 66 adopts strategy for ‘YRaW’ campaign 46–52 asbestos victims’ compensation 17, 201 attacks on 66, 72 ‘Cavalcade to Canberra’ 40–42 coalition building 195–96 funding of ‘YRaW’ campaign 8, 36 halts condom distribution 189 High Court actions 14, 23–24, 47, 149–50 management of ‘YRaW’ campaign 55

manual on telephone polling 93–94 prods Rudd government 204 quality of officials 201 role in ALP victory 207 union criticism of media strategy 166, 177 and Waterfront Dispute 43–45 advertising campaign (business groups) anti-union pre-election advertisements 75 attempt to counter ‘YRaW’ campaign 156–60 BCWR advertising campaign 152–60 supporting the Coalition 156–57 advertising campaign (Howard government) ACTU injunction against 149–50 cost and scale 28, 149–51 credibility questioned 148–49 employer criticisms 149 newspaper advertisements 145 public resistance and criticism 146 pulping of Work Choices brochures 144, 150 radio advertisements 145 Senate Inquiry into 150 television advertisements 145–48 use of senior public servant in 148 advertising campaigns (Liberal Party) 160–62

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Index

advertising campaign (‘YRaW’) ‘Boys in the boardroom’ 65, 153–54 ‘Cuts, cuts, cuts 75 depicting actual workers’ experiences 71–73 depicting a sacked executive 75, 121 depicting disaffected Liberals 73–74 depicting working families 67–71 downplaying the importance of unionism 176–79 ‘Footy dad’ ad 69 funding 8, 36 Government and business responses 66 impact and effectiveness 70, 76–77, 176–79 making them relevant 62–63 opinion polling and issue framing 57–63 ‘Real people, real stories’ ads 71–74, 115, 121–122, 147 ‘Sarah’ ad 69 target group 85–86 themes 67–68 timing of the launch 66 ‘Tracy’ ad 67–68, 154, 173 AMWU (Australian Manufacturing Workers Union) 56, 113, 165–66 Andrews, Kevin 18, 71–72, 142, 146 ‘anger, hope, action’ mobilisation 91, 117–23 Ansett Airlines 17 anti-unionism big business 17 Howard government 12, 16 press 16, 41–42, 44 Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) 18–19, 156, 170–72, 174–75 Australian Building Industry Improvement Act (2005) 170

Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) 151–52, 155 Australian Constructors Association (ACA) 156 Australian Fair Pay Commission (AFPC) 25 Australian Industrial Relations Commission diminished powers 11, 13, 25 legitimises employee dismissal for operational reasons 22 Australian Industry Group 157 Australian Labor Party (ALP) alleged union influence in 160–62 centrist pragmatism 202 decision to retain ABCC 156, 174 distancing itself from unions 161–62, 177 ‘Forward with fairness’ policy 155–56, 177, 179–80 how-to-vote cards 179–82 ‘It’s time to deliver’ campaign 77 succumbs to business pressure 156, 162 tardy on Rights at Work issue 139 unionist electoral support 11 Australian Mining and Minerals Association (AMMA) 154, 155–56 Australian (newspaper) 16, 156 Australian Workers Union 26 Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) 13, 23, 27–29 Beach, Justice Barry 44 Beazley, Kim 16, 77, 155, 162 Bennett, Barbara 148 billboard advertisements business 153, 157 Liberal Party 160 unions 78, 98, 99

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Bowman electorate (Queensland) 127, 181 Boyd, Brian 165 ‘Boys in the boardroom’ ad 65, 153–54 Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act (2005) 18–19 building community alliances 195–200 building industry Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) 18–19, 156, 170–72, 174–75 Constructing Fear (DVD) 171, 175 public image of building unions 170–71, 173–74 restrictions on union activity 170–75 Royal Commission into 14–15, 19, 170 Burrow, Sharan 46, 55, 85, 86, 94, 163, 174, 176, 183, 192, 195, 201 business and business groups anti-union pre-election advertisements 75 attempt to counter ‘YRaW’ campaign 156–60 BCWR advertising campaign 152–60 hostility to ‘boys in the boardroom’ ad 75, 153–54 lobbying by 151–52, 155–56, 162 political campaigning for Coalition 156–57 public relations strategies 151–52 symbiotic relationship with Coalition 153–55 taking advantage of Work Choices 155 Business Coalition for Workplace Reform (BCWR) 152, 153

advertising campaign 152–60 Business Council of Australia (BCA) 143, 151–52, 155–56 bus tours (YRaW) 104–113 Caddie, Sharron 93, 99, 135, 197 ‘Cavalcade to Canberra’ 40–42 CFMEU (Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union) 18–19, 41, 86–87, 95–96, 161, 168, 175 Chaney, Michael 153 Chili’s restaurant (Wollongong) 27 Clarke, Jane 134 Coleman, Kate 136, 206 Cole Royal Commission 14–15, 19, 170 Combet, Greg 42, 44–45, 55, 88, 90–91, 174, 20044–45 community activists avoiding unstrategic conduct 134–35 backgrounds 122 camaraderie and solidarity 137– 38, 140 development in skills and confidence 132–33, 135–37 motivation for action 117–23, 190–95 training of 131–135 community-based campaigning 124–25 see also community activists; community campaign coordinators (CCCs); marginal-seat campaign community campaign coordinators (CCCs) alliance building role 124–25, 127, 195–200 avoiding unstrategic conduct 134–35 backgrounds 126–27

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camaraderie and solidarity 137– 38, 140 role in marginal-seat campaigns 124, 126–28, 130 strain and exhaustion 127–28 union financing for 125–26 community unionism ACTU and 14–15 United States 14, 37–38, 196 ‘YRaW’ campaign and 124–25, 195–200 condom and lubricant packs 188–89 Constructing Fear (DVD) 171, 175 Coombs, John 44–45 corporate collapses 17 Cowra abattoir workers 71–72 CPSU (Queensland branch) 96 Crean, Simon 16 Crosby, Lynton 34 Crosby Textor 153, 160 Cruickshank, Andrew 74, 121–22 Curran, Claire 45 ‘Cuts, cuts, cuts’ ad 75

ACTU role in ALP victory 207 business support for Coalition 156–57 enrolling voters 82, 93–94, 96, 98, 140, 188 target groups 36, 65, 85–86, 92, 188–90 ‘YRaW’ bus tour 105 see also marginal-seat campaign election campaigning ‘dog whistle’ politics 34, 160 ‘It’s time’ campaign’ (1972) 34 rapid-response groups 115 employer groups see business and business groups Employers Assistance Program (EAP) 149 Essential Media Communications (EMC) 45, 55, 84, 105 ETU (Electrical Trades Union) advertisements in Football Record 70 Bowman electorate 126, 181

Darrell Lea (confectioners) 78–79 Days of Action 48, 55, 76, 81, 85–89, 100–101, 164–69, 192 Democrats use of Senate balance of power 13–14, 15 and workplace relations legislation (1996) 12 disengagement with civic and community participation 10 with party politics 32 dismissals for ‘operational reasons’ 22, 72 see also unfair dismissal legislation ‘dog whistle’ tactics 34, 160 Douglas, Tony 46, 55, 57, 62

Facebook 81–82 fairness and ‘fair go’ ALP’s ‘Forward with fairness’ policy 155, 177, 179–80 for employers 143 Howard government’s use of 143–44, 146, 148 public commitment to 58–59, 191–92 Work Choices as assault on 58–59, 88, 122–23 Fairness Test 146–48, 151 Fair Pay Commission see Australian Fair Pay Commission (AFPC) Fielding, Senator Steve 153 ‘Fill the G’ rally 89, 169 Fingerhut, Vic 57 Firth, Charles 83 focus groups 56 Football Record 70 ‘Footy dad’ advertisement 69, 69,

Econtech 151–52, 154 election (2004) 7–8 election (2007)

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97, 187 framing the message 57–63 fundraising ACTU levy 8, 36 through online websites 78 Gartrell, Tim 206 Giles, Janet 65 Gillard, Julia 154 Green candidates 180–81 Group of 150 academics 20–21 Harris, Annette 73–74 High Court 24, 47, 149–50 Hockey, Joe 146, 189 Holmes, Brett 106 Howard, John appeals for business support 153 commitment to curbing unions 6, 12, 18 Cowra abattoir sackings 71–72 denounces ‘real people: real stories’ advertisements 71–72 justifications for Work Choices 142–43, 154, 184 loses own seat 116, 220n17 as workers’ ‘best friend’ 70, 73–74 ‘Howard Battlers’ 11, 36, 92 Howard government anti-union goals 11–12, 18 industrial relations legislation (1996) 11–12 Howard’s Legacy for Working Families (ACTU leaflet) 14 How good will this feel? (DVD) 1–3 how-to-vote cards 179–82 Independent Contractors Act (2006) 19 ‘It’s time to deliver’ ad 77, 204 James Hardie 17, 201 Jensen, Archbishop Peter 26 Joyce, Senator Barnaby 78, 153

Kerslake, Adam 105–6, 131, 133 Kildea, Daniel 112 King, Jacqueline 126 Kingham, Martin 168, 170–71, 178 Kingston electorate (South Australia) 139–40, 189, 204–5, 205 Latham, Mark 16, 185 Lewis, Peter 46, 62 Liberal Party attempt to counter ‘YRaW’ campaign 160–62 demonisation of union officials 157–62 symbiotic relationship with business 153–55 use of employer-commissioned reports 152, 154 Lindsay (electorate, NSW) 129 lobbying by business 151–52, 155–56 Loh, Joe 175 Longman electorate (Queensland) 197–98 Lukin, Elizabeth 46 Maher, Tony 46–47, 167 Manic Times 82–83 marginal-seat campaign ACTU’s ‘40 day campaign’ 114–16 effectiveness 115–16, 139–40 Green candidates 180–81 how-to-vote cards 179–82 opinion polling for 92 role of community campaign coordinators 124, 126–28, 130 targeted seats 123–24, 128 Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) 13, 43–46 market research see opinion polling Master Builders Association (MBA) 157 maternity leave 62 McAndrew, Wayne 112

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McDonald, Joe 158, 160–61, 163 McHendry, Patrick 157 mediatised politics as challenge for trade unions 35–36 and electoral campaigning 34 and non-party organisations 34 and policy issues 32–33 and politicians’ self-presentation 31–33 media training 45 Merbein Mushroom Investments 26 Mighell, Dean 161, 163 Mill, Jonathan 2 Mining and Energy division (CFMEU) 18–19, 41, 46, 66, 86, 95,100, 104, 113, 159, 161, 167–68, 170–172, 175, 187, 196 Minerals Council of Australia 154 mobilisation strategies (‘YRaW’ campaign) activating union members 91– 96, 98–99, 104–12 Days of Action 85, 88 effectiveness 116–17 marginal seat campaigning 114–16 networking in communities 123–134 regional community meetings 91–96 regional rallies, NSW 100–104 regional tours, NSW 104–12 regional tours, other states 112–14 workplace campaigns 97–99 ‘mobilising for change’ 88, 90–91 MySpace 81–82 National Business Action Fund (NBAF) 152, 153 national identity, use of 87–88 National Retailers Association 157 National Textiles 17

Nepean Hospital (Sydney) 97–98 Nettle, Kerry 180 News Limited 16 Next Steps: For Australian Unions 15, 37, 39, 49, 92 No Disadvantage Test 23 Noonan, Dave 159, 171–174 Office of the Workplace Ombudsman 28, 149 Office of Workplace Services (OWS) 72 One.Tel 17 on-line campaign (‘YRaW’ ) ACTU’s ‘YRaW’ website 78, 80, 190–91 discussion boards 79–80, 190–95 fundraising via 78 MySpace and Facebook 81 petitioning politicians via 78 photo websites 78–79 problems in using 78–79 Stanley, Jessica (ACTU online director) 78–81, 190 urging off-line activism 78–79 opinion polling gender differences on IR issues 63 impact of ACTU ad campaign 76–77 in marginal seats 92 telephone polling techniques 92–94 of union members 92–95 used to frame the message 56–63 in waterfront dispute 45 Palmer, Tim 126 Patrick Stevedores 13, 43–44 petitions to politicians 78, 133 as vehicle for ‘talking politics’ 133 photographic competitions 81 ‘Political Strategy Manual: 6 Steps’ 93–94

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Priceline 74, 121–22 Princess Alexandra Hospital (Brisbane) 98–99 protests and demonstrations Cavalcade to Canberra (1996) 40–42 Waterfront Dispute (1998) 43–45 see also rallies public opinion see opinion polling rallies arguments for and against 164–69 Days/Weeks of Action 85–89 ‘Fill the G’ 89, 169 public relations value 84–85 in regional areas 88, 100–104, 112–13 ‘Rockin’ for Rights’ 83 televised broadcasting 85–89, 100–104 Ramsay, Andrew 135 rapid-response groups 115 ‘real people, real stories’ ad 71–74, 115, 121–122, 147 reasonable working hours test case 14 regional campaigns 86, 100–104, 112–13 Richardson, Damien 148–49 Ridout, Heather 157 ‘rights at work’ as campaign ‘frame’ 58–63 as catalyst for action 118, 122 Rishworth, Amanda 139–40 Robertson, John 7–8, 86, 105–6, 108–11, 129, 133 rock concerts 83–84 ‘Rockin’ for Rights’ 83 Roe, Julius 165–66 Rudd, Kevin 206 Senate how-to-vote cards 180–81 inquiries and hearings 19–20,

28, 150 lobbying and petitioning Senators 78 sympathetic Greens 180 Setter, Tenika 27 Short, John 130, 140, 199–200, 205 Shorten, Bill 26 Siewert, Rachel 180 ‘Sitting ducks’ ad 75 Sky Channel broadcasts 84–89, 100–104 solidarity, sense of 137–38, 140 Spotlight dispute 73–74 Stanley, Jessica 78–81, 190 swinging voters 36 Takver’s Soapbox 46 talk-back radio, monitoring of 115 ‘talking politics’ as union strategy 92 via community campaigning 133 ‘YRaW’ campaign as vehicle 190–95 Tampa incident 34 Tarrant, Louise 164, 178–79 Tattersall, Amanda 199 televised broadcasts, of Days of Action 100–104 Textor, Mark 34 ‘The boys in the boardroom’ ad 75 ‘Three generations’ ad 61, 176 ‘Tracy’ ad 67, 67–68, 154, 173, 178 trade union members Coalition voters among 94 falling numbers 9–10, 15–16, 116 trade unions, Australia Building on YRaW campaign 200–204 business antagonism 17 community unionism 14–15, 124–25, 195–200 demonisation of union officials 157–62 media relations (1990s) 39–46 membership decline 9–10, 15–16, 116

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negative public images 40–42 as part of labour movement 48 presenting a positive image of 113–14 public attitudes towards 76 public image of 84 public sympathy for 59 relations with ALP 16 rights to assemble and picket 44 rights to organise and bargain 21, 23–24 victimisation of building unions 170–75 trade unions, USA community unionism 14–15, 37–38 membership recruitment 37 political campaigning 37–39, 124–25 Turner, Wendy 197–98 ‘un-Australian’ government’s use of 144, 222–21 Work Choices as 40, 88 unfair dismissal legislation removal of unfair dismissal protection 11–13, 15, 22, 143–44 as theme in ‘YRaW’ campaign 71–72, 82, 115 unpopularity of changes 60, 63, 122 ‘union bosses,’ demonisation of 157–62 Unions Australia 185, 188 Unions NSW 7–8, 86 ‘Last Weekend’ Family Picnic 128 opinion polling 56 targeted seats campaign 128, 180 use of Sky Channel broadcasts 84–86 ‘YRaW’ bus tour 104–13 Unions@work 15, 37 United States community unionism 14–15,

37–38 political campaigning by unions 37–39, 124–25 Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry 156 virtual media see on-line campaign (‘YRaW’) voter enrolment 82, 93–94, 96, 98, 140, 188 voters disengagement 10, 32 self-interest of 32 Walton, Chris 55, 124 Walton, Daniel 112 Warren, Chris 177–78 Waterfront Dispute government’s reputation damaged 13 unions’ community campaign 13 unions’ legal challenges 13 websites ACTU’s ‘YRaW’ site 78, 80 Liberal Party’s ‘unionbosses’ site 160 use during Waterfront Dispute 45–46 see on-line campaign (‘YRaW’) wedge politics 34 Weeks of Action 76, 85–89, 167 Wilson, Nicholas 149 women attitudes to new IR laws 63–64 voting at 2004 election 63–64 Work Choices legislation business community’s arguments for 143–44 as ‘damaged brand’ 146 as election ‘sleeper issue’ 77 government’s arguments for 142–44 High Court case 24 High Court challenge 24 major objections to 20–26 public opinion towards 76–77

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Senate inquiry 19–20, 20 work-family balance 14, 70–71, 143 ‘working Australians’ 87 ‘working families’ advertising 65–66, 187 appeal of the term 87, 186–87 earlier usage of the term 14, 185 gendered aspect 187 no appeal to young people 188 use of term 14, 66, 185–87 Workplace Authority 28, 148 workplace campaigns 8, 91–97, 114–16 ‘Workplace Heroes’ campaign 97–98 Workplace Ombudsman 28, 149 Workplace Relations Act (1996) 11–12, 40–42 Workplace Relations Amendment (A Stronger Safety Net) Act (2007) 28 Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Act (2005) 19 see also Work Choices legislation Wright, George 57, 76 Yaager, Mary 7–8, 133 Young, Jason 126 young people attempts to engage 65, 188–90 awareness-raising video clips 82–83 condom and lubricant packs

188–89 electoral enrolment 82 non-identification with ‘working families’ 188 rock concerts 83–84 ‘YRaW’ bus tour 106, 111–12 young activists and union organisers, mentoring 106, 111–112 ‘Your Rights at Work’ campaign campaign management 54–55 decision to use paid media 46, 49 ‘How to vote’ cards 115, 134, 140, 179–181, 190, 192, 193, 199 legacy and lessons 200–207 role in ALP victory 200, 206–7 strategy and logic 54, 61–63 ‘working families’ as target 65–66 young voters as target 65, 188–90 see also advertising campaign (‘YRaW’); building community alliances; election (2007); marginal-seat campaign; on-line campaign (‘YRaW’); rallies YouTube 81–82 ‘YRaW’ campaign committee 55 ‘YRaW’ website 78, 80, 190–91

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