Supporters of the union movement and supporters of the Howard government at last have something in common: when pondering the reasons for their current diminution relative to past glories, both groups can deploy the soporific explanation that they are “victims of their own success”.
Thus we may hear from union supporters that the victories of decades past such as eight-hour days, sick leave, holiday pay, improved workplace safety and the like have lulled employees into believing that collective representation is no longer required, like an appendix or vestigial tail.
We may also hear from Howard supporters (now pay attention, Tony) that the relatively benign economic conditions of the last 11 years have inured voters to the strife of tough times, and thus they no longer consider a Coalition government to be an essential prerequisite for a strong economy (perish the thought!)
However the “victims of our own success” explanation contains within it four complacent assumptions that themselves explain far more powerfully why these two movements have lost momentum. These assumptions include:
- That our program has been successfully completed: i.e. that we have achieved all we set out to achieve.
- That our program can be successfully completed: i.e. that the obstacles to equality and prosperity will ever be fully addressed.
- That our program matters: i.e. that what we are doing is what people actually need and want.
- That we have everything we need to succeed: i.e. that we are as good and as competent as we profess to be.
It should be evident that such assumptions are dissipative and anti-motivational in the extreme. Since such assumptions admit no capacity for self-awareness or reflective criticism, they encourage us to imagine that it is we alone who are marching in step, if only the rest of the world would keep time.
So the next time you hear somebody bemoaning that they are a “victim of their own success”, it may be that the sentiment is exactly true, but not for the reasons the speaker believes.
Its a thoughtful post but I think the relevant issue is that there has been a measure of economic success in australia - 17 years of continuous expansion without a recession, low inflation and high economic growth. It is natural for people to take long-standing things for granted. In the past they were problematic and hence of more viviod concern.
Hence you do target new issues that are of more vivid concern - global warming for example or social justice.
My own view is that the Coalition didn’t recognise the change. They were spruiking economic achievement when people were concerned with other things. The Coalition has been a victim of australia’s economic success irrespective of the ongoing arguments about the extent to which they were responsible for it.
The Coalition’s problem is that they are still fighting the economic battles of the 70s and 80s.
So we have this ridiculous emphasis on unions, as if Rudd’s government will be run by the ogres of that era, John Halfpenny and Norm Gallagher (both long dead). And there was Howard still going on about “Labor’s 17% interest rates” and how he supported financial deregulation, both of which happened in the 1980s.
The problem is, it’s no longer the 1980s. It’s 2007.
Never has Howard looked more like yesterday’s man than he did in the debate, when he carried on about things that happened 20 years ago.
Very strange post. It certainly bears no relation to the state of the union movement either now, or ever in the past, or the way workers, or officials, see unions or provide any usable tools for understanding where the unions are where they are today and why.
Totally weird.
I’ve been watching the Victorian nurses
strikepay dispute with a great deal of interest for many reasons, not the least is which to witness Hockey & his thugs attempting to demonise a bunch of women unionists. Strangely, its been very very quiet from the Libs re this little outbreak of worker discontent.& better yet, the nurses aren’t just about the money - they’re very clearly offering to hold down wage demands to gain increased staffing levels - yes, they are concernced about patient care - the beast of social justice. The beast that dare not speak its name, then Mr Howard, just in case it looks like true blue Aussie values of the helping hand…
I can’t think of a better way to spend some of my valuable pre-election time down on the Nurses Assoc picket line….
a) Brolly
b) Wanting new brolly.
WTF? Must be me, but this post makes absolutely no sense.
WTF? Must be me, but this post makes absolutely no sense.
It must be a joke, Adrian. It makes NO sense.
Well done, Bernice, I envy you and if I could be in Melb I’d be there too. Being around, or part of, industrial actions taken by nurses, or other groups of predominantly women workers is one of the best, exhilarating (if historically rare) experiences it is possible to have, I reckon.
I confess I’m struggling too. How can 3). and 4). be considered antimotivational? Quite the reverse I would have thought. Assumption two is a way station on the road to assumption one but no one in their right mind and certainly no unionist assumes 1), especially in the wake of Workchoices.
Far from being antimotivational, assuming that inequalities can be overcome is a necessary precondition for getting up in the morning.
well, gals and boys, why the fuck should we struggle to understand this balderdash. The poster has posted something that is borderline incomprehensible, if not daft, and WE are supposed to comment on it and decipher what the hell it means, and speculate on why anyone would write such tripe!
Thanks (the fuck) for sharing, Jinmaro. Feel better now?
What I proposed to do is illustrate how the explanation “we’re a victim of our own success” leads to the kind of complacency that has led the union movement, and the Howard government, into their present predicament.
You obviously think this hypothesis is a load of daft balderdash, but have yet to explain why you think this, short of asserting it to be an inaccurate portrayal of the union movement, and in the next breath loudly proclaiming the whole idea to be borderline incomprehensible.
So, would you care to advance an explanation of why the union movement today is a shadow of its former self - an explanation, mind you, which steers clear of assumptions 1-4, and which doesn’t fall foul of saying, in effect, “we’re marching in step, if only the rest of the world would keep time”?
I’m all ears.
Su, assumptions 3 & 4 are anti-motivational because they are inherently complacent. Movements that lose the capacity for self-reflection fall into the uncritical and self-congratulatory assumption that what they are doing is what people want and need, and that they need not lift their game to achieve it. We must remain wary of such assumptions if we are to avoid failure.
Assumption 2 can decrease motivation because it leads to the belief that one day we can rest, that struggles for rights and freedom will be over. Wish it were so, but it ain’t.
WTF are you talking about, man? You got an honest and half-way sympathetic, let alone intelligent question, I just might, in the goodness of my heart, be inclined to answer your busy bothering crapola and dispense some wisdom. But you gotta do a whole lot better than this, man, if you expect some kind of illuminating answer.
I take your point of comparison, Mercurius, although I think that these two groups are operating on different levels, or at least different time scales. Unions are the victims of long term, broad trends - maybe a ‘boiled frog’ scenario - whereas Howard seems to have always operated on an election by election basis.
Some alternatives to the ‘victims of own success’ narrative for unions:
1) The success of what could be called neoliberal rationality in promoting individualism of a particular kind that is, if not totally antithetical to, at least in tension with collective action. The way in which unions have been redefined as part of the main game, as part of a formal process rather than as a place to invest time and energy at a human level may be related to this.
2) Workplace changes like casualisation that have disrupted the ‘organic workplace’ model of relatively stable employment in one job or field, and in which unions had become firmly entrenched. This takes place within a context of deregulation and emerging globalisation.
I don’t know how to answer these kinds of shifts, although I sincerely hope that answers are found, because objectively the union movement or some variation thereof has been profoundly important.
“If you‘ve got an honest”, etc. Jinmaro, is the correct question. If you’re going to sneer, sneer properly.
No, not we. Just you.
…
Mercurius,
Trade unions of course have had a failure of organisation due to Government co-option since the Accord. Thus, I look forward to a non-unionist Social Democrat government under Julia Gillard after Kevin Rudd resigns, and a National Workers’ Confederation along CNT/UGT lines when the trade unions en bloc disaffiliate from the ALP c. 2010.
I think it must go back before this, however. I may be biased because I grew up in QLD but I think some of the antiunion rhetoric of the seventies and early eighties had a large effect upon recruitment to unions. It was particularly virulent under Joh. I see what you meant about complacency Mercurius, but I am still unsure about your final point. It is an aspiration that exists in a permanently deferred future perhaps, but I don’t think that the goal itself is antimotivational.
Administrator FYI: comment(s) under moderation.
Thanks to Klaus K and Liam for suggesting perfectly plausible, sophisticated and useful explanations that go beyond the glib “they’re a victim of their own success.”
From such insightful analyses, it’s possible to begin constructing a solution.
See Jinmaro, it’s not that hard.
BTW Jinmaro, why do find it so “exhilarating” to be part of a picket or protest? Have you noticed how successful were the massive protests against the Iraq war, Gunns pulp mill, Telstra privatisation and WorkChoices? Do you find failure exhilarating?
If you won’t listen to me, do try and learn something from Klaus K & Liam.
Yes Liam, I removed the stoushing. Jinmaro can take all the pot-shots she wants at me, the author, but I draw the line at her slagging off at you or any of the others who have taken the trouble to add constructive comments.
Peace out.
I used to like LP when there were lots of academics and postgradutes types engaged in conversations I found it hard to understand.I’m neither of the above .
Glen was always an interesting read. Never said fuck if I remember correctly.
What happened ? Have we reclaimed fuck from being a fuck ?
Mercurious , I think this is an interesting idea - as circumstances change responses evolve and outcomes vary from those previously achieved.
It doesn’t mean people who want to pursue collective or other action need to use historical attitudes to set their future goals either.They could start there but will need to metamorphose and be cognisant fo the needs that arise in the new circumstances.
Same pressure applies to the Liberals - they don’t have any agenda as others have written on this thread. They don’t have a bold plan to take our society to better places just a steady as she goes mentality and appeals to the electorate to not “go backwards ” as if that were possible.
Abbott has been happy to say he is a true conservative - things should only change after long and rigorious scrutiny and when all negative outcomes have been considered. This becomes stasis usually and that is clearly unacceptable these days.
The success of individualism and I’d add consumerism is pretty pervasive as Klaus K suggested .The preeminence of the pursuit of individual goals seems to be limiting collective efforts as a side effect.
Failure? What are you talking about? All of the actions I have in mind, and I hope so for the Vic nurses, were successful. You have no idea what you are talking about Mercurius, which is kind of majorly insulting to all us here who have buckets of direct experience. But, heh, don’t let that stop your fatuous, juvenile, ignorant opining about something, ie the trade union movement, you patently know zero, repeat, zero, about.
Thanks Su - agree the goal isn’t antimotivational. What reduces motivation is the ever-present temptation to rest on our laurels or to declare “success”.
Here’s to the struggle…
Thanks boredinHk for your thoughts. Hope we made you less boredinHK
Well, since I’m (alas) unable to continue the enjoyable feud, I’ll expand on my substantive comment.
…
Since the Accord the organised trade union movement has been set on two goals: 1) the protection of specific collective and individual legal rights of workers in particular industrial disputes when and where they occur, through the use of legal advocacy and quasi-monopoly power where labour shortages make it possible, and 2) the adoption of its broader aims of normalising collective bargaining through the use of Parliamentary power.
Number 2) has been pretty well comprehensively defeated now, and even if Kevin Rudd were to win this November, the defeat would stand in most industries. The achievement of goal one, therefore, must happen some other way, most probably, extra-Parliamentarily.
Me, I favour and expect confederations and supra-mergers. Most likely by 2010 I’ll be a member of Unions Australia or some such general federation rather than any body associated with a workplace.
Mercurius and Klaus K: good points, all, but what about the obvious:
1. People are required to be working in a relevant workplace before they are allowed to join a union. Churn them in and out of short-term/casual jobs enough, and they’ll lose their membership and stop bothering to transfer/reapply. Or not even know who to apply to.
2. Non-members are legally required to be offered the benefits gained by unions for their members in enterprise agreements, so there is an enormous temptation for people to freeload.
3. Folks are often ignorant of the union origin of the good bits in their working conditions, and of points (1) and (2) above. Plus, many casuals and short-termers don’t know that they may be eligible to join a union, don’t know which union to join, and/or don’t feel part enough of a community to make the commitment. And, of course, establishing contact with any of these people has been made more difficult by Serfchoices.
In the meantime, I love the way that unions for the extremely well paid and employers rather than employees are not referred to as ‘unions’ but as ‘associations’ (AMA), ‘councils’ (BCA) etc, and are treated completely differently by Right Wing Dead Meats. Note the missing hysteria about the coalition side of parliament being dominated by non-union bosses. And Ratty’s advocacy of collective bargaining for employers would have been ROTFLable in its blatant hypocrisy if it had not been so evil.
Liam: hopefully, called something other than ‘Unions Australia’. I can’t help the suspicion that rebadging anything as ‘Buzzword Australia’ is a symptom of administratium poisoning, dizzifying spin and imminent credibility breakdown.
“1. People are required to be working in a relevant workplace before they are allowed to join a union. Churn them in and out of short-term/casual jobs enough, and they’ll lose their membership and stop bothering to transfer/reapply. Or not even know who to apply to.”
Yes, this relates to my point on the context of casualisation. Personally, I don’t earn enough to be sure I can keep paying union fees, even for six months, and I don’t know where I’ll be working next month, let alone next year (and including what type of job), so a version of this applies in my experience.
While unions can do little about the temptation to freeload, ‘public ignorance’ is not a particularly useful stance to take. A hostile environment demands innovative strategies to reach people.
Liam, some good points. I like the idea of something that is not tethered to a specific workplace, and such a body may more effectively meet the needs of the large numbers of young people in casual service industry positions as well.