Technological Change: Report to the AMWSU 1980 National Conference, by Laurie Carmichael
Laurie Carmichael studied technological change, especially the application of microchips and automation to production technologies and systems. This report was endorsed and then published by the AMWSU in pamphlet form to all members, used in its own union education program, and shared with the Trade Union Training Authority.
Carmichael wanted to work out the implications of automation for vocational learning at all levels, including at the trade level and above, and, the demands unions might put forward for changes to awards and pay levels.
Report to the AMWSU 1980 National Conference, by Laurie Carmichael
Authorised by the 1980 National Conference to be distributed to all members.
Extra commentary and links
The 1980 National Conference decision to endorse the report and reproduce it in this pamphlet form made sure that AMWSU members were learning more than the general community about the impact of the computer revolution on their work and other aspects of their daily lives, and on society as a whole.
The contents reflect Laurie Carmichael’s wide reading on the subject and deep thinking about all its implications. Above all, he wanted the union to be the vehicle through which metal workers could maintain and strengthen control over the labour process and build that control into their industrial awards.
Carmichael delivered the report orally to the National Conference of union delegates. Most to whom he was speaking were tradespeople, both shop stewards and full time officials of the union, who had secondary school at around their fifteenth birthdays. His plain language does not dumb down the content, thus respecting the members’ capacity to deal with the complex issues at stake.
His personal study enabled him to propose a historical summary of the development of technology through 4 principal stages, up to the “modern technological revolution” “bursting forth” in the 1970’s. He explains how that rapid development overlapped and influenced other changes in capitalists society, including the rise of “finance capital”: “The international monetary fund’s acts as an instrument to dominate by indebtedness enforcing wage controls, reduce social welfare, and create unemployment.” Despite the magnitude of forces and power arraigned against workers he rejects despair and defeatism, instead laying out the necessary ingredients for union activity:
“… to begin producing a renewed movement in all of its dimensions ….
“A vital part of this was the need tr an adequate core analysis of the new situation and its various features. The elaboration of strategies to meet it and organisation of forces to get it moving.
“There are now signs that renewal is beginning to occur. It will do so and develop to the extent that there is the deepest possible understanding of the situation.
“But there is need for concrete study. For metal workers this obviously means a concrete study of the metal industry.”
And from there he sketches the key ingredients for union activity, including:
“We cannot simply stand aside ‘waiting for something to turn up’. We must directly intervene and fight for egalitarian values and action to serve these values.
“A program is required and a strategy to achieve it. It is not enough to have a policy, although a policy is essential.
“… strategy essentially requires much greater organisation of workers exercising their own self-action, on all matters tat affect their lives …. Thus we contribute to the growth of democracy in the very task of giving effect to the strategy.
“A shorter work week, a new technical training policy, intervention on all managerial prerogatives, expanded social welfare, a worthwhile community education and creative recreation movement and increased trade union rights are vital components of such a program.
“… extension of democratic intervention into the national political economy must go to the supply side (ownership and control) …. A broader 7-point program in the course of the 35 hours campaign …..”
The pamphlet was read and discussed in shop stewards training courses at the AMWSU and in the Trade Union Training Authority and contributed to the self-confidence and determination among workers to win shorter working hours within the next 3 years.
Carmichael studied the development of technology right through to his retirement, especially in the proposals associated with award restructuring and new vocational education.
A significant cohort of union leaders, shop stewards, organisers, educators, industrial officers committed to developing aspects of the policy and strategy at industry and workplace level in several industries during the 80’s and on to the present day.
The proposals for workers democracy in driving the green transition from fossil fuel production systems to renewables is the modern version of these ideas.
Automation and the Unions
In this Laurie Carmichael joins with other union leaders in a 1966 seminar organised by the ACTU to discuss automation.
This excerpt from Laurie emphasises the impact of automation on wages and wage relativities, wages policy and bargaining.
This may well be one of the first of such discussions among Australian unions.
Automation and the Unions
Australian Left Review, December 1966-January 1967
WITH the further development of automated techniques in Australia, the trend away from the concrete concepts of the basic wage and margins in arbitration will further increase. The total wage concept now adopted in principle, with its less tangible and more abstract concepts of “economic content” and “work value” will be carried further, compounding the already difficult processes of substantiating argument in the arbitration system.
This will aggravate the growing difficulties of arbitrationists within the trade union movement. The extreme right will base themselves upon the amorphous concepts as a means of more and more trying to head off into a dead end the workers’ complaints which will arise from the effects of automation. On the other hand, there will be an increasing section of the traditional reformists concerned with the lack of concrete procedures.
From the point of view of an alternative to this development in the form of mass campaigning, the needs concept (perhaps a better term should be. found for it) plus a margin for skill (and perhaps a different term for this too) would still have the most attractive force. The needs concept, however, would certainly have to be associated with modern needs, in particular the capacity to absorb the great wealth of goods that can be produced and distributed. The difficulty with the word “needs” is that it carries a connotation of existence levels only, rather than the high standard of living possible from the great quantity of goods wnich can be produced from automated industry.
Problems arise in regard to wage claims of a general nature where automation penetrates only some industries at the one time. For example the relatively high degree of mechanisation at General Motors produces fantastic profits for that company and large scale redundancy for the workers in the industry. But the general wages approach of the whole trade union movement at the present time fits in with the arbitration concept that the productivity of a highly mechanised industry is taken into account in a general claim, and that “efficient” industries are tree to enjoy all the fruits of their automated processes.
Despite the impact of automation in the particular industries into which it is introduced, it does not penetrate all industries simultaneously, and wages problems associated with spasmodic introduction will occur over a protracted period. Even in the United States only a relatively small proportion of industry is yet automated.
If one thinks of autom ation as being fully introduced, it is possible to think of a wages policy which on a nation wide scale can take the whole situation into account. Where the whole of industry and commercial activity is not automated, special claims and special problems arise in those sections where it is introduced, because an overall wages policy does not apply. This is where the special claims arise, such as a three months term ination allowance after 12 months employment, special payments available for people made redundant in industries whilst being retrained for others, etc.
A great deal more effort must be made to argue out the ideological problems of a mass wages policy with the onset of automation, as an alternative to the deliberately adopted “abstract” policies of arbitration.
A point regarding change of skills. Differences in skills for the performance of work will have to continue to be recognised, but a stronger stand should be taken with regard to the allegedly super skills which are often elevated to managerial and similar levels and so “bought off.” There should be more striving for a higher common content and lower differentials as the possibility of higher living standards for all increases.
Extra commentary and links
This short contribution is pregnant with profound and unique insights prescient for our modern times with the advance of what is called “artificial intelligence”.
Laurie Carmichael alerts the activists of those days to the interactive relationship between automation technology and wage setting and other content in industrial awards.
Those times were marked by significant disagreement and conflict within the union movement, including the tension between specialist arbitrationists and “mass campaigning” leaders.
“Mass campaigning” was built by nurturing shop floor mindful militancy. The intent was to build the “mass” workplace by workplace to a point where its influence and demands could overwhelm the claims of the employers for a wage cut or moderation.
In those times the “mass campaigners” were very influential, while very good at arbitration when it was required. The “arbitrationists” either opposed or placidly went along with “mass campaigning”.
The use of the “penal powers” to prevent “mass campaigning”, set up in the Conciliation and Arbitration government by the Menzies governments and then applied by the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, required a campaign that would defeat them. Under Carmichael’s guidance, the membership of most unions combined in national strikes to defeat the penal powers in 1968.
Note Carmichael’s challenge to the “needs” concept in setting wages. Compare that to the AMWU claim to the current 2024-5 Annual Wage Review that is based on the advanced “health and well-being of workers”.
For more depth on wages concepts as they had developed at that time, and the tension between “arbitrationism” and “mindful militancy”, readers should go to the AEU publication “Six Wage Concepts”, by its National Research Officer, Jack Hutson.
The last paragraph points to what emerged in the mid to late 1980’s as “award restructuring”.
- Don Sutherland
Link
https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/401320