Laurie Carmichael and Dick Scott raise the questions to be discussed among members about the forthcoming 1974 wages and conditions campaign, using the pages of the AMWU’s monthly journal.

This is the end of the second full year of the Whitlam Labor government and, of course, after the defeat of the penal powers in 1969. The new Labor government soon inherited a global recession through no fault of their own.

The unions had to work out how to make wage and other gains in the context of a recession and a Labor government more on the defensive because of that.

Note the use of questions to build membership involvement from below.

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.

Read the full interview.

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://www.fwc.gov.au/documents/sites/wage-reviews/2024-25/c2025-1%20-%20amwu%20initial%20submission%20to%20awr%20-%204%20april%202025.pdf

https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/401320

With Organising Works Trainees 1997 

In this excerpt we see one aspect of Laurie Carmichael’s approach to union education.

He is working with Organising Works trainee organisers from several unions, based in Melbourne.

Organising Works was set up by the ACTU and participating unions as a union education program that synthesised learning in the field with regular 2- and 3-day courses in the training room.

Key concepts in this excerpt include "learning by doing", the significance of awards, awards as a record of class struggle, history and the immediate priorities.

As the industrial relations system developed this seminar marks a transition from the primary importance of awards and award-based disputes in the conciliation and arbitration system to the system of enterprise bargaining that replaced it, eventually into what is now the Fair Work Act 2009 (as amended).

In those times industry, company specific and occupation awards set the minimum standards that would apply to all workers covered by them. Awards could be changed – for better or worse – by creating either a real dispute (strike, go slow etc.) or a “paper dispute”. At some point conciliation and arbitration would occur under the direction of a commissioner or a panel of commissioners.

Workers, through union membership, could use industrial action to pursue their claims or to prevent the employer from not “sticking to the award”, that is running the work process in some way that breached or weakened the award.

They could also use a simple application, either with or without the consent of the employer(s), to vary the award.

Carmichael was a leading figure in the tradition that said the best result from the Commission (The Conciliation and Arbitration Commission) came from the determination of members to exercise strikes and other actions as counter-power against the opposition of the employers and the pro-employer bias in the Conciliation and Arbitration Act.

Education and learning – in a union way – was an essential element of Carmichael’s approach to industrial disputes and the conciliation and arbitration process that went with them. He was a renowned advocate and had a thorough knowledge of the award system, including the pay relativities across different awards.

Carmichael saw awards as fluid industrial instruments, each one a compromise for a period that reflected the relative balance of power between the employer(s) and the workers and their unions.

The right wing of the union movement that included the Catholic organised “Groupers” usually opposed and even undermined the use of strikes and other forms of collective action to advance workers’ demands. Others took a middle ground.