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
After the Revolution; (Micro) Chips with Everything
“After the Revolution; (Micro) Chips with Everything”, Laurie Carmichael in Australian Left Review, February 1989
This is one of several items that show Laurie Carmichael’s long term study of technological change and, its implications for working people. The Australian Left Review was the analytical discussion magazine of the Communist Party and Carmichael was a regular contributor to it.
The article features a thumbnail sketch of the 4 major periods of technological change and what happened in its interaction with social relations. It concludes with a reminder of how the emergence of the microchip was shaping and was shaped by the macro-political economy of the times, especially for Australia the replacement of manufacturing by mining, defining Australia, as a prime supplier of raw materials dug from the ground.
Click here to read the article.
In this article Laurie Carmichael provides a sketch of the 4 major periods of technological change and what happened in its interaction with social relations. He finishes by reminding the reader how the emergence of the microchip was shaping and was shaped by the macro-political economy of the times. For Australia that featured its re-shaping as a prime supplier of raw materials dug from the ground.
Carmichael presents his analysis of “Taylorism” as the major development that shaped the division of labour in metal industry, in manufacturing generally, extending from there through most industries. At the time he ensured the study of “Taylorism” was a feature of union education, starting in the metal workers union and extending into the work of the Trade Union Training Authority. He encouraged union delegates to grapple with its meaning in their own workplace, both how it retarded their own skills development and cultivated incompetent management. Workers’ descriptions of inadequate management were a regular feature of their storytelling in union education courses.
The delegates discussed the impact of mass production technologies and processes on workers, including their health and safety, the job classification system, and its associated pay relativities, reflected in Australia’s industrial awards and side agreements.
Learning resources included the short documentary, “Clockwork”, and Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 film, “Modern Times”.
Carmichael also summarises the brief history of the microchip as hardware and its interaction with software. He briefly suggests that employer control of work suppresses and inhibits the liberating potential of software development that could be controlled by workers for the benefit of society.
Carmichael, with much support and in the face of resistance also, argued that a new award classification system that integrated payment for skills acquired and used would be of great benefit for workers in the near and longer-term future. That led to his great determination to raise the status of vocational education and to its synthesis with “general education”.
- Don Sutherland
Links:
“Clockwork” : https://vimeo.com/ondemand/clockwork
“Modern Times” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n9ESFJTnHs
Technological Change - Report, 1980
Report to the AMWSU 1980 National Conference
By Laurie Carmichael
Published by the AMWSU, authorised by the 1980 National Conference
CLICK HERE to read the Report
Introduction – Don Sutherland
The AMWSU National Conference decision to endorse the report and reproduce it in this pamphlet form made sure that its members were learning more than the general community about the impact of the computer revolution on their daily lives and on society as a whole.
The contents reveal Laurie Carmichael’s widespread reading on the subject and an unerring capacity to link technological change to its impact on daily lives, changes in the workplace, and the broader national and international political economy.
Carmichael delivered the report orally to the National Conference of union delegates – most of whom being shop stewards (union delegates) and union organisers and officials who had left secondary school at around their fifteenth birthdays. The plain language does not at any time dumb down the content and pays full respect to the Conference’s ability to deal with the material.
The pamphlet was read and discussed in shop stewards training courses at the AMWSU and also in the Trade Union Training Authority.
There is no defeatism and no resignation. He argues for why and how workers must organise to take control of the technology.
Carmichael would work on this right through to his retirement, especially in the significance of award restructuring and new vocational education that would enable.