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.