Pod Insights ABC Rewind 07 | Conspiracy | We're still feeling it About this episode In this bonus episode Jan Fran and historian Dr Geraldine Fela discuss how the waterfront dispute has shaped the way we work in Australia today. 27 years later work is more precarious – casual and fixed term jobs have grown, the kind of work we do has changed and employers now have more power over employees. Politics and industrial relations were also changed by the dispute and unions have learned to fight in a very different way.
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0:17 Speaker 01 Hello, it's Jan Fran here. I am the host of Conspiracy War on the Waterfront. We thoroughly hope that you have enjoyed listening to the podcast. If you've made it this far to our bonus episode seven, welcome. This is the episode where we talk a little bit about a bunch of things that we just couldn't cover in episodes one to six. I know, I know, you'd think we would be able to squeeze it in, but there's just so much to discuss around the dispute and the long lasting effects that it's had on all of our lives. And we're going to do that in this episode. And of course, joining us, she has joined us for every episode this series is Geraldine Feller, who is our series historian. You might remember her dulcet tones. Hello Geraldine.
1:00 Speaker 02 Hi Jan, nice to join you again.
1:02 Speaker 01 Nice to join you again for the 100th time, maybe. I can't remember how many times we've jumped into a recording booth together, but it must be quite high. I'm a journo, you're a historian, and we've worked on this project together. And a little bit of it was a balancing act because as journalists do, you know, they want to kind of sell the story and use emotive language and, you know, really capture people's attention. And historians are like, well, yeah, but it's not exactly 100% accurate to say exactly this. So I'm going to let you run this episode in the way that you want to do it and, and put the dispute into context for us. I mean, how significant do you think it was on a broader,
1:46 Speaker 01 much broader timeline, say in the 30 years leading up to it and the 30 years since?
1:51 Speaker 02 So I guess the first thing to say, Jan, is I absolutely don't want to understate the significance of the 1998 waterfront dispute. It was hugely significant at the time. It still looms large, I think, in our political history, our political consciousness even. And obviously for the people who experienced that dispute, and I'm thinking particularly of the people who were sacked on the 7th of April 98, a hugely important moment. But it was also the culmination of decades of change, so of things that had already happened. There'd already been a pretty significant shift in power in Australia from workers and
2:36 Speaker 02 towards employers.
2:37 Speaker 01 So if you're talking about the changes that happened under Hawke and Keating, what were they?
2:42 Speaker 02 So it all comes down to the accord. Bear with me, I'll be super quick. This is a series of agreements between business, government and unions, the ACTU. The unions basically say, we'll really tone down the industrial action. And in return, you give us steady wage increases that are centrally determined and good social things like superannuation and Medicare. But what this really led to was a little bit of atrophy in terms of the union movement's muscles. We saw a massive decline in strikes over that period. We saw a decline in union density. And those things really did see a shift in terms of the level of power that the union
3:27 Speaker 02 movement was able to exert.
3:29 Speaker 01 So that was stuff that had already happened well before 1996, which was when John Howard came into power. But what happened in that moment?
3:38 Speaker 02 So that's absolutely right, Jan. So these things had already happened. There was already declining strikes, so days lost to strikes had massively decreased in the 80s and 90s. Union density had massively decreased in the 80s and 90s. But when Howard comes to power in 1996, he implements further change. So he further restricted The right to strike and he increased penalties on what's called a secondary boycott. Bear with me, a secondary boycott is when one group of workers take industrial action in support with another group of workers in another part of the economy or another
4:19 Speaker 02 part of the industry. So an example would be if Woolies workers are on a strike, then the Coles workers go on strike as well in support or solidarity of the Woolies workers. This is a really powerful tool that unions, you know, used. Howard makes it just that much harder to do it. He also outlawed compulsory unionism. That was usually a kind of agreement between employers and the union where when you signed up to the job, you also signed up to the industry. He outlawed that, which saw union density decline further.
4:51 Speaker 01 Right. And that was in his Workplace Relations Act, I believe, that it was him and Peter Rees that were driving when they came into power.
4:58 Speaker 02 That's right. So that was in 1996.
5:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah. I mean, Howard also had the MUA specifically in his sights. Just quickly, what was it about this particular union that I guess riled him up?
5:11 Speaker 02 Yeah, like the MUA is kind of the heart and soul of the union movement in Australia. It's one of the oldest unions, or its, you know, its predecessors are. It's a union that has consistently taken really progressive positions on social issues like apartheid, land rights, things like that. But it was also the muscle of the union movement in Australia and to a large extent still is. And if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. Australia is an island nation. Heaps of our trade comes through the ports. And when you've got a really, really strong union there, in that spot, that kind of pinch point, it's pretty powerful and it's something that, that business and government often don't like.
5:56 Speaker 01 Okay, enough with the context, we've done it. We've set up.
5:59 Speaker 02 Thank you for indulging me, Jan.
6:00 Speaker 01 You're so welcome. But in terms of this dispute itself, I mean, what are the sort of long lasting effects? What are some things that we might see in our day to day life now that we actually wouldn't know had a genesis or an origin in the dispute?
6:17 Speaker 02 This is the really, really tricky question and.
6:20 Speaker 01 See, you're doing the historian thing again, Geraldine.
6:23 Speaker 02 Oh, I am, you're right. My apologies and apologies to the audience. Look, I guess let's set the scene, let's start with that. Okay, so I think in our kind of popular memory or imagination, the maritime dispute, it looms really large. And that's because I think it's felt as the kind of last great showdown in people's living memory between capital and organised labour. And it kind of harks back to a world of of union power, right? And I think people don't really feel that much in their lives today.
7:04 Speaker 02 I think in lots of ways, the dispute was kind of a testing ground for unions and how they would respond to this new industrial schema that was their world, post Hawke and Keating and in the middle of the Howard government. And how they responded to it, how they dealt with the dispute, the strategies that they took, has really set the tone for how unions operate today.
7:28 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:29 Speaker 02 So that's my kind of starting point. Does that, does that make sense?
7:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, I'm with you.
7:33 Speaker 02 Yeah. So this is tricky to talk about, but I think a decision was made and a strategy was come to, you know, in the leadership of the unions that decided, you know, rightly or wrongly, whether or not they had a choice. They decided to more or less accept the limits that had been set by that industrial relations schema. So the limits, for example, on the right to strike.
8:01 Speaker 01 And when you say schema, you're talking about the act that Howard and Reith passed, the Workplace Relations Act?
8:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, the Workplace Relations Act.
8:08 Speaker 01 Among other things.
8:08 Speaker 02 Among other things. I guess the kind of schema's not a great word. How about landscape? Is that a bit better?
8:13 Speaker 01 That is a bit better, yeah, thank you.
8:16 Speaker 02 So this new landscape, they're kind of been, they've found themselves in this new world, this new landscape, they're working out how to negotiate it. And ultimately, like I said before, they kind of accept the landscape that they're in. And the prime example of that is historically, if the kind of, you know, extraordinary unprecedented attack that was the lockout on April 7, if that had happened in the past, the entire, every port in the nation would have stopped.
8:47 Speaker 01 Right, whether it was Patrick's or not Patrick's.
8:49 Speaker 02 Absolutely. And perhaps even a general strike might have been called. You know, that was the kind of level of attack that they were facing. The decision not to do that, to instead, I guess the term might be box clever or fight clever, meant that those laws that had, you know, been put in place, so the big prohibitions on secondary boycotts, the restrictions on the right to strike, really remained unchallenged. And they've remained unchallenged to this day.
9:21 Speaker 01 Hmm. And there's something about unions when they're active, when they're seen to be striking, when they're out there sort of being very public facing, they tend to attract more union members because people go, oh, well, look, the union is doing something. But in this particular schema, landscape, I guess they shifted to doing things a little bit more behind the scenes. So they weren't as visible in seeming as though they were doing something. Did that affect the membership of the unions?
9:47 Speaker 02 Look, I think it's definitely part of the picture. Like, you do see increasing strategies that look to the courts, that kind of look to doing things within the rules that were set, you know, by this new legislation. The trouble with pursuing strategies through the courts is it's pretty hard for everyday members often to get involved in. Those kinds of things. What I will say as well, though, is that the waterfront dispute, how the the union ran it, did also involve a really big public campaign where they were getting heaps and heaps and heaps of people down to the wars. And, you know, we have certainly seen elements of that public campaigning as well since in work choices, in the Change the Rules campaign. So it's not like that disappeared altogether.
10:32 Speaker 02 But there was a, you know, a little bit of a shift there, I think.
10:35 Speaker 01 Hmm. I guess for those listening who are not part of a union, have never been part of a union, never worked on the waterfront, I mean, why does something that happened almost 30 years ago matter to them now?
10:49 Speaker 02 One thing that strikes me, you know, going back to this story and from all of the stories that you and I have heard, Jan, from, you know, people all over the place in this dispute, is that on the 7th of April, 1998, a really, really extreme thing happened.
11:06 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:06 Speaker 02 Like, there were dogs, people in balaclavas, who went into a workplace, threw workers out of their equipment and locked the gates behind them. And whether or not you're a union member, if you work in this country, that is something that should concern you. If that had happened and they had been successful in sacking that workforce.
11:31 Speaker 01 Hmm.
11:32 Speaker 02 I think the ramifications through all of our workplaces and the conditions under which we work, which the vast, vast majority of us do, would be very, very different today. It was also a very significant civil liberties question, you know, that was posed by what happened, and that's something that should concern us all.
11:51 Speaker 01 Hmm. The other thing I feel is a part of, well, I mean, certainly our landscape here in the media, and I acknowledge that that's, you know, one particular industry, but the thing that kind of permeates it is casualisation, which is people on very short-term contracts that renew or don't year on year. And I wonder, could you trace that back to the waterfront dispute? Or did that have slightly earlier origins? And did the waterfront dispute in any way affect or accelerate that?
12:22 Speaker 02 Yeah, so not to be a historian again.
12:24 Speaker 01 Here we go.
12:26 Speaker 02 It does have earlier oranges. Earlier oranges, it does have earlier oranges.
12:31 Speaker 01 Earlier origins. Good, yep.
12:34 Speaker 02 It does have earlier origins in that we really see a big acceleration of casualisation before the disputes in the 80s and 90s in particular. But I think there's something important about what happened in terms of the settlement because what you see prior to the dispute, this was not a casualised workforce. People there, MUA members, Wharfies, had permanent jobs, jobs for life. Which is how the majority of people used to live, surprise, surprise for us, Jen.
13:05 Speaker 01 But it is a surprise, yeah.
13:06 Speaker 02 Yeah. You know, you and I, I'm not sure about you, I've never had a permanent job in my life.
13:10 Speaker 01 No, neither have I.
13:11 Speaker 02 Yeah. But it didn't used to be this way. So this change had already happened, but you can kind of think about the Wharves as a little bit of a holdout, you know, representing a different way of working. And with the settlement, casualisation did sweep through the waterfront. And whilst it had already happened elsewhere, I think there's a kind of, you know, an importance to that happening in one of the strongest-held union industries in the country. It's a little bit like, I'm trying to think of an analogy, like if you've got a dam wall on casualisation, the MUA is one of the kind of last blocks holding it back from sweeping through everywhere else.
13:52 Speaker 02 So, you know, when it happened there, it made it that much harder, I think, to push it back elsewhere and did signify this shift of, you know, this is, casualisation is kind of, you know, entrenched in the economy and how we work.
14:06 Speaker 01 Yeah. Just before we let you go, Geraldine, this was a curious thing for me, putting the series together, is that of all of the folks that we asked this question to, which was all of them, who won, each person had their own spin on who came out victorious here. Chris Corrigan, John Howard, Greg Combe, the workers, I think it was just the alternative workforce that was sort of universally felt like they'd been done over. But I'm curious about how you see it. I mean, do you see a winner here, who won this dispute?
14:39 Speaker 02 It is the kind of lasting question of the dispute and...
14:45 Speaker 02 You know, someone who I interviewed, Jim Donovan, who is a long, you know, life member of the MUA and was a union official for a period in Sydney, said to me when we were talking, with that settlement, we lost part of our body, but we didn't lose our soul. And I think that really captures what happened. Because I think we have to be pretty clear here. If the MUA had been destroyed in 1998, the implications for the rest of the union movement, the implications for really every worker in the country, would have been very, very severe. So the fact that the MUA showed they were here to stay on the waterfront
15:30 Speaker 02 was an important political victory. It was very, very important and shouldn't be understated. But of course, you know, that there are those complexities to the story that that we've kind of talked about as well.
15:41 Speaker 01 Well, Geraldine, thank you so much for joining us, not just on this episode, but on the entire series. And thank you to all of you for listening to the series and to this episode. I would say catch you next time, but I don't think I will. I think we're kind of done.
15:57 Speaker 02 Thanks so much for having me, Jan, and thanks, everyone, for listening. I hope you enjoyed it.
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