Time for a new union accord?
Following successful COVID-19 crisis leadership, Prime Minister Scott Morrison recently proposed that employer groups and the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) negotiate a new Industrial Relations (IR) framework for the post-COVID-19 labour market under the guidance of IR Minister Christian Porter.
He did this having already worked closely with ACTU Secretary Sally McManus on the details of the government’s wage subsidy program JobKeeper.
Commentators immediately jumped on the idea that this was a proposal for a new accord – just like the successful Prices and Incomes Accord (Accord) of the Hawke-Keating era which lasted for 13 years between 1983 and 1996. It was originally expected to last a year or two when first announced ahead of the 1983 Federal Election that swept Bob Hawke to power.
So, when looking at what Morrison is proposing in 2020, it’s important to look at what the Accord of 1983 was, and what it was not – or in the words of Crocodile Dundee: “That’s not an Accord. Now, this is an Accord!”.
What was the Accord of 1983 about?
First of all, it didn’t involve business or employer lobby groups. It was an Australian Labor Party (ALP)-ACTU document in response to the Coalition government of Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and the 1982-3 recession (when Australia was experiencing double-digit inflation and unemployment and an Olympic gold medal standard of working days lost due to industrial action).
The Accord was developed by the ACTU research team of Bill Kelty, Jan Marsh and Rob Jolly when Bill Hayden was the Opposition Leader and Ralph Willis (also a former ACTU Research Officer) was the Shadow Treasurer.
When former ACTU President Bob Hawke became the Labor leader, he swept to power by promising to ‘bring Australia together’ with the Accord, as opposed to the industrial division of the Fraser years.
Three things that the Accord was and was not
But the Accord in many ways was as much to the previous Labor government – the Whitlam government – as an alternative to Fraserism. The Whitlam government was hampered by poor economic management; particularly in wages policy where Prime Minister Gough Whitlam often clashed with the then ACTU President Bob Hawke.
When I interviewed Bob Hawke, he said: “what Gough knows about economics you could write on the back of a postage stamp and still have room to spare.”
But later on, Whitlam said as a retort: “Bob Hawke’s greatest advantage as Prime Minister was that he didn’t have to deal with Bob Hawke as ACTU President.”
The Whitlam government was considered by the union movement to be a lost opportunity, so when they got another chance with the election of Hawke government, they didn’t want to blow it.
As ACTU Secretary Bill Kelty once said: “As we left the unions to rally for Gough at the South Melbourne Town Hall towards the end of the 1975 election campaign, Laurie Carmichael turned to me and said ‘you know they deserved better’. And I never forgot those words until we won again in 1983.”
Tim Harcourt is the J.W. Nevile Fellow in Economics at UNSW, Sydney and host of The Airport Economist TV show and The Airport Economist Podcast.