August 2001 Volume 82 Number 8 "serving the protectors"
By Trevor Haskell PASA Vice President

Union musings

Holidays can be dangerous. They sometimes allow one to forget the realities of the day-to-day, to recharge the thoughts, goals and aims of one’s life. Listening to, or reading the words of others, often stimulates the trigger to such thoughts. Such has been my lot for a couple of weeks.

I have been to Western Australia for the WA Police Union of Workers annual conference during my holiday. It provided a perfect opportunity to listen and reflect on others’ words and thoughts. It was a bit unusual because the new government minister was very upbeat on more funding of and an increase in police numbers - and this in the immediate aftermath of the election.

I am a unionist. Most police officers (98 per cent) in Australia are. I have, in my past, been an upper-class, snobby unionist. We police unionists were above the cut and thrust of the usual media portrayal of a unionist. You know the images of blue-collar workers battling the police to prevent access of scabs to picketed sites, or police battling the workers to keep them out of government or bosses’ offices. Those nasty types, all sweaty and often not even wearing a tie.

I would curse the unions and accepted that these were not unions made up of people like me because I am a good, upstanding middle-class worker who, while sympathetic to some causes, did not protest on the streets. Then I started my union education. I became involved in the union of police. We call it an association to ensure that 90 years ago we weren’t lumped in with “those other unions”.

Well there we were - in my first year as an active union member - marching in the streets of Adelaide and protesting at the door of Parliament. Colleagues flanked me as they did their union-control bit and saw our cause for better pay supported by thousands. We took on the “boss”, which happened to be the Labor Government of the day. We had work bans and devised strategies to ensure that the boss heard our needs. We acted like a union - we were a union. Each enterprise bargain agreement since has been achieved through acting like a union.

In the past 10 years we have federalized our union. We join with 40,000-plus other police unionists and have taken on the federal government to ensure that policies that harm our members are reconsidered. We have been successful on a number of issues and the lobbying of our president and CEO has strengthened our position. Lobbying? Curious word. It basically means trying to get the ear of those in power and convincing them that they would be better served to agree with our position.

Those “upper-class unions” have always been able to lobby with those in power because they came form their own class. Upper-class unions are more often referred to in the media as employer organizations or professional organizations. The most powerful are in the media daily and include the Australian Medical Association and the various state and federal employers’ chambers. They are unions. They have devolved from the craft guilds of the 1850s just as the traditional unions have.

The fact that they have the lawmakers’ ears and a different status (in governments’ eyes) was recently reinforced by the good Federal Health Minister, Dr Wooldridge. He was reported as accusing the AMA of “acting like a union”. As the old saying goes: “If it waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, the chances are it’s a...”

Here the good minister tries to create a class behaviour like I once did. The upper-class unionist. Make no mistake, as powerful as some unions have been, none has reached the control of its destinies such as those that have created the aura of a professional body. The traditional professionals litter the parliament benches and that is why they wield such control.

The police have state and federal union coverage because they are vulnerable to the whims of governments. And, just like our upper-class comrades, we need to ensure that our members’ legitimate needs are listened to by Australia’s parliaments. A bargaining body more than 45,000. Together we can have strength.

Those new-age types who were toiling for OneTel and HIH certainly were above needing unions. They were happy little individuals with their individual employment contracts. Then it all fell over and who led the fight for their entitlements - the union to which they could have and should have belonged.

Perhaps the loss of their jobs would be put down to bad personal choices by the Federal Employment Minister Tony Abbott, who believes the poor in our society are there because they made errors (Four Corners and Advertiser reports). Perhaps they should have known the companies were going to fall over. All goes well for the future of labour relations and the continuation of a compassionate society with such a narrow thinker in government. Perhaps the upcoming election will give us all a chance to get it right.

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