On the Crikey website and in today’s email:
I wrote yesterday in my review of Nicholas Stuart’s Kevin Rudd: An Unauthorised Biography that Rudd has “an overweening tendency to maintain control over events and their interpretations”.
Stuart correctly identified Rudd’s obsession with maintaining control as both a factor in his rise to date and a very big danger sign for the future. We’ve just seen another manifestation of Rudd’s characteristic reaction to events beyond his control — as Ken Lovell put it pithily at the leftie blog Road to Surfdom:
I have heard a rumour that Kevin Rudd wants all union officials to sign a loyalty oath, swearing that they will never under any circumstances say anything mean about an employer, on pain of being dismissed from the Labor Party in disgrace.Seriously, what is the man doing? First he gets Dean Mighell to resign, now he wants the WA branch to expel Joe McDonald. Has he gone completely insane? I mean, what is this, a sort of Ruddist mini-purge to improve manners in industry?
I can’t think of anything better designed to reinforce in the public’s mind that the Labor Party and the trade unions are one and the same thing. Howard’s mob must be hugging themselves with glee.
Not only this, but Rudd risks setting has set himself up for an endless series of misadventures between now and the election, and indeed beyond then if he’s stupid enough to maintain this ridiculous posturing. Does he seriously think Mighell and McDonald are the only two union officials in the country who’ve said something nasty to an employer? People will be queuing up outside News Ltd offices to hand over their videos or give statements.
You have to wonder if Rudd has the slightest idea of what actually happens in the robust cut and thrust of industrial relations in the real world. Maybe he thinks the Rottweilers on the wharves were there for the kiddies on the picket line to play with. Maybe he thinks union officials should say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ when they visit a site where a worker has just been killed because of an employer’s negligence.
Rudd wedged himself on this issue as long ago as Dean Mighell’s speech at the Labor conference. With further revelations about Mighell’s negotiating style, Rudd could have brushed off the story by saying that unions operate in a robust environment and that individual union officials’ behaviour was not his (Rudd’s) responsibility.
I’ve worked as an industrial relations consultant, representing community organisations as employers as well as employees, and I can vouch for the fact that industrial negotiations — even in white-collar settings — are not Baptist Union tea parties. It’s not too hard a point to make: people understand that IR is adversarial.
Instead, Rudd reacted, as he has again to the vision of Joe McDonald, without thinking of the political implications. Bursts from the blue like these do appear to be blind spots for Rudd — and his instinct seems to be to regain control by demonstrating “strength” and literally making the offenders go away (from the ALP).
But Lovell is quite right. The politics of this is horrible for Rudd. If anything is going to give the Government’s attack on union power legs, it’s Rudd’s mishandling of it. Rudd would have been far better off learning, and saying, that there are some things that happen that he can’t control.
Funny cartoon in ‘The Age’ today
LINK
I have experienced situations similar to the McDonald scene plenty of times, but never before without physical intimidation.
Amazing how people can modify their behaviour with a camera present.
Can’t see what Rudd is on about though, if any union meeting or dealing which results in some bad language results in expulsion from the ALP, he’ll end up with a Northern Ireland catholic/protestant type split between the ALP & the ACTU.
Jeez its a joke, isn’t it? A couple of union types cut up rough (in at least one case, with justification) and let loose some colourful language. The Howardites, displaying their usual hypocrisy, deceit and opportunism, jump up and down as though no-one in this industry but “union bosses” plays hardball or swears.
Saint Kevin gets all upset. If we’re lucky the upset is confected, on the focus-group driven advice of the people that Keating correctly dismissed as useless, and it’s all just a badly flawed strategy. But unfortunately I suspect the bureaucratic bible-basher really was upset by this intrusion of the real world into his little bubble, and that illustrates all I dislike about him.
I still hope Labour wins because I’ve had more than enough of the Rodent and his dreadful retinue but I can’t say that I’m all that enthusiastic about the alternative. I think I’ll go read Andrew Bartlett’s blog and try once more to kid myself that the Democrats are worth voting for.
I really liked Ken’s post. Really, Labor has backed themselves into a wall with the way that they’ve over-reacted in these situations.
Does John Howard expel every young Lib that shows up at a lefite protest march in order to start a fist fight? No, because it has nothing to do with him. Rudd should have just distanced himself from this sort of thing. Now he has to take personal responsibility whenever someone in the ALP plays up. That’s going to happen more than a few times between here and election day.
As I have said all along. Rudd’s treating trade-unions as though they have leprosy will see him as Opposition Leader next year. Or hopefully, back as Opposition Spokesman for Foreign Affairs and LA Gillard as Leader. You Go Girl!
derrida derider
Yes it is a joke! And you are right, Stop The Press! Union heavy swears. And farts!
It is refreshing to read someone, like Ken Parish, who is articulate and who also, critically, has a non-academic understanding and experience of “the real world”. So rare on this and similar blogs.
I have two personal favs of the “cut and thrust”:
The foreman who habitually, stood, dropped his dacks and masturbated during the dull dead hours of the night shift in his elevated, strongly lit glass surveillance office box overlooking his female process workers charges.
The female process worker (another factory) who brandished and then pressed into my neck, a knife, because I, as an elected shop floor OH&S delegate, in a semi-formal verbal way had complained to her. in good faith, in her capacity as acting leading hand, about a work process that had sent 10 per cent of women in that work location off work in a six month period on RSI-associated sick leave.
Apologies, wrong Ken. That was Ken Lovell on Rudd and IR realities.
Ken Parish’s superlative post on Howard’s emergency at Club Troppo got plenty of accolades here today too.
I think that Dave Noonan of the CFMEU summarized all this quite well. [link]
Beware the Unions!
What is it with the agreeing with John Greenfield thing? It’s getting embarassing!
Kim
It makes my blood boil. If Dean Mighell were a business leader taped saying he got a great deal on an acquisition or negotiated a huge discount on some raw materials, he would probably get a knighthood! But shock, horror, trade-union leader does the same thing, and he’s a cross between Jeffrey Dahmer and Mata Hari. Good on Joe MacDonald and Dean Mighell. If they run candidates in my electorate, I will even work on their campaigns. Gratis!
Newsflash Mr. Rudd, the ETU and CFMEU are trade-unions. They represent people who pay union dues for said representation. These people are commonly known as “workers” you know “labourers?”
Kevin, here’s a fun game for you. Take the last word in the preceding paragraph. Delete the “u.” Then have a look at the name of the organisation you lead. Get back to us with your thoughts.
Lets give the Unions some credit Rudd needs them to do the thinking for Him. That pit in my gut tells me the man has no thoughts or imagination and relies heavily on the theory in books. Like the 30 days to Priminister for Dummies. While I’m at it Gillard should read Natural speak DeMYSTiFied a self teaching guide. Her robotic speech and autocratic style are so much a turn off.
That’s from the piece mick linked to.
Some years ago I heard a session on Radio National which featured a union official in the building industry who specialised in worker deaths and a father whose son had been killed and wrote a book about what had happened, how he found out and how he pursued and finally got justice.
Imagine a man who has just fallen 40 feet onto concrete. With the shocked workers standing watching and seeing the red blood on the concrete the first guy who turns up is the company lawyer. Their dead comrade was dismantling a roof without a harness.
The workers are told on pain of dismissal not to talk about what happened. At the wake one takes the father aside and tells him. Then it is a tale of the lies the company told and how they cut off the foreman without blinking when he became a liability. It goes on from there.
Rudd needs to grow up.
I just remembered that on Thursday in Parliament the Libs came up with this little gem:
I believe Rudd came up with the response that Harkins wasn’t convicted of anything so it was OK. I’m sure Dean Mighell and Jo McDonald will be impressed.
Now Glenn Milne has more.
The CFMEU has condemned the US for “sponsoring terrorism” and has been
But that too is not his concern:
But now this: