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.

In the mid-1990s Laurie Carmichael gave lectures and ran at least one workshop for young trainee union organisers, in a programme run for the ACTU through "Organising Works". He focussed on the themes of History, Social Analysis, Strategy and Leadership. He used a set of 4 or 5 slides that, not all of which have been located. Here is one that has been ...

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Laurie Carmichael was a renowned organiser as a shop steward, senior shops steward and in his various roles as a union official.

In this excerpt from the Organising Works Trainees’ seminar, Carmichael explains his methods of organising at the workplace level, including the “thrippance” technique.

It is worth noting the educating character of his organising method.

Laurie Carmichael Speaks at Organising Works, Melbourne, Victoria, 1997: Excerpt

Key ideas in Carmichael’s presentation are summarised at the start of the video. 

Organising Works was an ACTU young organisers traineeship programme introduced in the early 1990s to support union efforts to reverse the decline in union density. The program concept and the organising method it taught the trainees drew heavily from the US unions that were organising relatively well in a hostile anti-union political climate.

This excerpt focuses on Carmichael’s method of union organizing including his “thrippence method”, “the active 10%”, and networked shop stewards’ committees.

The method he describes was an Australian method of organising – including within the context of the award system – that was established well before the Australian unions’ discovery of the core ideas in the US unions’ methods.

Carmichael’s election to his first full-time role as the Secretary of the AEU’s Melbourne District would not have been possible without the application of this method developed during his time as Convenor of the AEU and Combined Shop Committees at the Williamstown Naval Dockyard. As Secretary, he extended this method through his dedicated, strong-minded team of organizers and, that led to the successful union campaigns that followed.

Around the same time Carmichael was working with two other renowned, retired union leaders to contribute to the Organising Works Programme: Tom McDonald from the CFMEU and Tas Bull from the MUA.

Each gave a very important lecture about their experiences over decades of activism and leadership at an Organising Works Residential Course later in 1997. Those lectures were recoded but, regrettably, the recordings have been mislaid.

Carmichael’s lecture elaborated on the theme of strategy and leadership, providing a theoretical framework for strategy in a union and left political context, using three case studies out of his own direct experience: the defeat of the penal powers in 1969, the Vietnam Moratorium Movement against the war in Vietnam, and the shorter hours campaign.