Educate! Agitate! Organise!
Over 20 years, the vision of those who set up Organising Works is bearing fruit, says Tom McDonald
IN the decade before the birth of Organising Works, the trade union movement was facing many challenges.
The era of globalisation had arrived.
A new form of economic crisis called stagflation was upon us.
The trade union movement was under attack and membership was in decline accelerated by the ending of closed shops which had inflated the level of conscious unionism.
The corporate Right was mounting a campaign to “Americanise” the Australian economy and our industrial relations system and our system of democracy.
Industrial relations was moving from centralised award bargaining to enterprise bargaining.
To meet these challenges, the ACTU developed a strategic plan, part of which was an Accord Agreement with the Hawke Labor Government to tackle the economic crisis.
Another part was to create 20 super unions and later Organising Works became a key part of the strategy.
What did the Accord achieve?
The Accord Strategy:
- Won government for Labor;
- Ended stagflation and repositioned the Australian economy to face globalisation; and
- Halted the corporate Right’s anti-union offensive for 13 years which gave the trade union movement the time needed to create super unions and build unionism at the grass roots.
The strategy achieved major social reforms such as Medicare, Award redundancy pay, a world best minimum wage standard and universal superannuation which has changed the fabric of Australian society and is the envy of the world.
Organising Works was able to unite the trade union movement in support of the “organising model” which was about uniting and empowering workers at the workplace.
Organising Works took the then existing “left model” of organising which was a mixture of workplace democracy, centralised leadership, struggle and solidarity and enriched that model so as to make organising a science.
It became a science when all of the elements of the OW course were put together and their interconnection understood including the importance of strategic thinking and planning, the dominant role of strategy as against the supportive role of tactics.
Organising Works recognised that strategy was about maximising power and understanding that power has many forms which could be utilised to our advantage or to our opponent’s advantage.
It recognised the need to develop union consciousness and take workers to a new level of commitment and leadership capacity.
“The working class are indebted to those that had the vison and capacity to create Organising Works such as Bill Kelty and Chris Walton.”
Organising Works created the greatest affirmative action initiative ever undertaken by the trade union movement — about half the 850 trainees have been women, near on 50% were young people and a significant number of trainees were from Non-English Speaking Background.
Those trainees went on to become union and community leaders. People like Bill Shorten, George Wright, Sally McManus and Lisa Darminan.
As a result, the composition of the leadership of the trade union movement now more accurately reflects the composition of the workforce.
Organising Works made a major contribution to end the Cold War mentality that had divided the union movement for decades into “left” and “right”.
Of the 21 Organising Works trainee groups, rarely if ever, did trainees divide into Right and Left wing camps.
Organising Works helped build the spirit of comradeship across the movement. At the yearly Award Presentation Night there is always a wonderful spirit of unity.
Organising Works has fast-tracked the development of capable new union leaders.
The influence of Organising Works trainees can be found in many places; some have become national or state union leaders or occupy other important positions in their union.
Others have become academics or taken up law. Some have become political leaders like Bill Shorten. Some others have become leaders in local government and in various people’s organisations.
And we are all proud of the key role played by Organising Works trainees in the defeat of WorkChoices.
Building a different kind of society
Organising Works is a key part of the ACTU strategy for building a different type of society to the neo-liberal models championed by Thatcher and Reagan.
The working class are indebted to those that had the vison and capacity to create Organising Works such as Bill Kelty and Chris Walton.
Over the last 20 years the trainers, mentors, trainees, elders and others have enriched the course to what it is today.
This is an edited extract of a speech Tom McDonald gave to a symposium on the 20th anniversary of Organising Works in Sydney yesterday.
Tom McDonald was the former Building Workers Industrial Union National Secretary and one of the key figures who helped amalgamate several unions into the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union.
Published on 21 November 2014.
