Australian managers should be careful not to mistake the burst of union militancy over the last year or so as unusual or localised incidences. The repeated shut down of the car industry, the destruction of the clothing manufacturing industry, the emerging militancy in the call centre sector and trouble in the building industry are profile examples of wide and co-ordinated strategies aimed at saving the union movement.
It's necessary to recognise that new industrial games are in play in which the capacity of managers to do quiet deals with union officials is limited!
The core understanding is that union membership is less than 18 per cent of the private sector workforce and ACTU worst-case scenarios a few years ago predicted union disappearance by 2012. To save their business unions undertook a strategic re-think in 1994 and under the ACTU established a unit called Organising Works. The unit creates long-term strategies and trains and assists union operatives on implementation at grass roots. The tactics are sophisticated, multi-disciplined, have long time-frames and draw on lessons learned from activists' community-style alliances.
The central focus of the strategies can be gleaned by looking at the published language of the ACTU which now talks of working to defeat "the dictatorship of the market", how to "beat our bosses", "protect ourselves against labour market changes" and "employer neutrality is the aim".
Now that trained union-activists are operational through Organising Works the full force of the new strategies are being felt. In essence selective guerrilla industrial warfare has broken out targeted at key points in vulnerable industry supply chains. The aim is to maximise commercial terror while using minimal union resources in any one attack. Once these "softening-up" campaigns are completed friendlier union faces emerge offering seductive solutions to cowering managers.
The problem is that this business terror campaign is chasing investment away from Australia in critically impacted areas and is likely to worsen. This is now recognised by experienced state governments and cooler headed but worried union officials. Although the "employer war" approach is the official union campaigning strategy it is not universally agreed to within the labor movement. Vitriolic disagreement exists within unions and between unions and along with concerned labor governments frantic attempts are being made to discipline the processes. An era of unpredictability has dawned!
One of Australia's most important institutions, the labor movement is grappling with the horns of its own dilemma. The business chums approach of the 1980s to 1990s, Kelty Accord period produced a collapse in union membership. War with bosses may and will send targeted industries off shore. What to unions do?
But as importantly what do businesses and managers do? First it is essential to understand but not become involved in the swirl of union and labor politics. Becoming a willing or unwitting player will only lead to commercial complications and even disaster. Second, do only what any business person can do and maintain a fanatical focus and insistence on achieving the operational outcomes necessary for business survival.
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