- by Graham Holton
- The Guardian
- Issue #2200
Stuff the Accord! Pay Up!: Workers’ Resistance to the ALP-ACTU Accord is a superb history of industrial struggles under the Hawke-Keating governments. Ross argues that the 1983-1996 Prices and Incomes Accord was not the successful partnership between the ALP and the ACTU it is often made out to be.
Instead the Accord weakened organised labour and helped consolidate neoliberalism. The 1996 election of John Howard deregulated the labour market, ending wage fixing practices, and allowing ‘market forces,’ heavily weighted towards big business, to determine wages.
Ross rejects Laurie Carmichael’s description of the Accord as a “pathway to socialism” contending that it accelerated declining union numbers and industrial militancy. It was a deal between union leaders and the ALP that traded wages for often undelivered promises, allowing a massive wealth transfer from workers to employers. The Accord restrained wage rises, limited industrial action, and shifted wealth and power to employers. Workers often waged fierce resistance against it.
Ross demonstrates that many promises under the Accord failed to materialise. Union leaders policed workers making deals out of view. Ross argues that the Accord destroyed militant unions like the BLF, while shredding class solidarity. Each dispute examined reflects the broader structural changes brought about by the Accord. She documents widespread resistance by workers, re-examining important industrial disputes, such as the Mudginberri abattoir conflict, the deregistration of the BLF, the Victorian nurses’ strike, and the introduction of enterprise bargaining.
Refreshingly, Ross writes from the standpoint of rank-and-file workers, examining what they were doing on the factory floor, construction sites, hospitals and government workplaces. She challenges the dominant narrative that the Accord was broadly supported by organised labour. Workers’ resistance never disappeared, but was actively discouraged by sections of the union leadership. Ross concentrates on the costs borne by workers.
Importantly Ross researched the female rank and file, as they made up the majority of trade union members. That’s true now – across the general workforce, 14 per cent of women are unionised, compared to 12 per cent men.
The nurses’ industrial action in 1986 lasted for months, uniting women workers despite abysmal treatment by hospital management, governments, and the media. One nurse said: “For the first time thousands of nurses here are finding that they do have the power, that they can change their own lives.” After a five-week strike action the government finally agreed to demands.
Stuff the Accord! is a powerful critique of institutional cooperation between unions, employers, and the state. Ross argues convincingly that any improvements in wages and workers’ conditions came from collective struggle and not corporatist agreements negotiated by union officials and governments.
Ross’s book is well researched, using union publications, newspapers, archival sources, interviews and official documents, to reconstruct disputes in impressive detail. Ross, a Marxist union delegate writes passionately, avoiding unnecessary academic jargon.
Stuff the Accord! Pay Up! is a significant radical history of Australian trade unionism. Ross’s Marxist analysis makes a compelling case that the Accord years cannot be understood solely through government policy, or union leadership decisions.
By recovering the experiences of workers who resisted wage restraint, deregulation and enterprise bargaining, Ross adds an essential study of Australia’s labour history. This book is important for Australian political history, industrial relations, and labour history. It offers an inspiring lesson on the necessity of militant, independent struggle. Well worth the read.
4.5 out of 5 red stars
