Where to now for the ALP?

When things go wrong, there are a number of ways we can react. We can find ourselves in a state of shock, which is a human reaction that gives us the time and space to adapt psychologically; we can focus on finding the inspiration to draw together and become stronger and more united; we can learn from those events and find a new better way to be - or we can splinter into fighting and disunity, and thus turn a setback into a defeat, or a defeat into a rout.

In all the commentary I heard last night, one of the remarks that stood out to me was one by Peter Dutton, someone whose views and politics I loathe (and have written about previously - see here), who said the ALP had abandoned blue collar workers, and needed to get back to them.

Now, noting that Dutton, a former police officer who is one of the minority I have concerns about, possibly considers himself to have been blue collar (wrongly, if he thinks police are blue collar - and, as a member of the neoliberal party, he is far from blue collar now), the comment does raise some points which merit reflection.

The first is that, much as the Industrial Revolution (which led to the ubiquitous use of alarm clocks, beginning with "knocker-ups") irrevocably changed the nature of work, so too has the technological revolution - and especially the accelerating rate of change - irrevocably changed the nature of work. Gone forever for many (if not most) people, is a stable, single career path through life - rapidly going now is the stability and dignity of work which underpins the benefits of work, especially to peace of mind and the resultant mental, emotional and physical health and wellbeing, not to mention quality of life, which is something not measured by the extent of possessions one has, and definitely not by the wealth invested in house (not home) ownership.

Now, at the time of the Industrial Revolution, some people, much as King Cnut allegedly did with the tide (he was actually demonstrating he had no power over the tide), tried to hold that flood of change back - we even have a nice (but wrong) story now about how some of their actions gave us the term "sabotage". What did help us then was the development of unions - an event that was as radical as the Industrial Revolution itself, and one that focused on the clearly evident imbalance of power in society at that time.

The changes we face now are not quite so clearcut, but the reaction seems to be imitating the myth, rather than the reality, of the legend of King Cnut - trying desperately to stop the flood of technological change, in a set of actions with disturbing similarity to John Howard's attempts to turn Australia back to the white picket fence era.

It is too late for that - just as we are too late to prevent the climate crisis.

However, while all we can do with the climate crisis is focus on mitigating the effects, in the field of work we have a greater opportunity, the chance to emulate Bob Hawke's actions of 1983 and develop a worker's movement that will protect workers, their families, and their quality of life.

As we are now, I consider that the more hidebound, less visionary bosses have won the contest over workers' interests - and to quite an extent because workers focused on money and forgot the bigger picture, forgot things like the impact of losing work-life balance. In part, I consider that win because of the predominance until recently of men who had been limited by stereotypical male upbringing: we now have more women in key union positions, and men are less restricted by their upbringing than they used to be, but we still tend, most of us, to focus on what is in front of us - the next pay cheque, the next meal, the next bill, and forget to take a step back and look at where we're going to.

Both the union movement and the ALP need to inspire people to remember to take a step back, and look at the bigger picture. We need to adapt to the new world, rather than trying to do the union/ALP version of John Howard's white picket mentality by trying to resist inevitable change.

Unions, in my opinion, need to adapt support of workers to the new work life cycle, where rigid boundaries don't exist. Suggestions to consider here might include:

• having a union that is not industry specific, perhaps a "centralised "union or a change to allow workers to join the ACTU directly;
• for the many, many, MANY workers who know they get benefits from the union campaigns on pay and conditions and want to contribute to that but without necessarily getting caught up in aspects they disapprove of (and as an example of that I recall the blatant homophobia that existed in some unions until just a few years ago), implement the ability to contribute without having to be a member; and
• introduce the ability to change quickly and easily from union to union- which may require some changes to how fee collection and funding is structured.

Matters that the ALP needs to consider may include:

• provisions to help workers manage change - which I have written about here;
• focusing on acknowledgement of quality of life - which is what the economy is meant to serve - for workers and their families; 
• address the climate crisis in terms of the economic and job impacts it will have - which goes FAR beyond just losing tourist jobs: as examples, agriculture will have to adapt in major ways (the neoliberals talk about power costs, but why didn't any of the responses include that food prices will go up orders of magnitude when food has to be grown in greenhouses?),  and we are going to need many more disaster recovery specialists; and
• finally, just as consumers need to be educated on the impact of their choices on the climate crisis, we need to educate consumers on effect of their demands on workers- especially demands for faster responses, which erodes the work-life balance. This doesn't need to be done aggressively or with an accusatorial tone, but present a human face that shows consumers how their choices affects both the quality of life of other people and the demands bosses place on their own life.

Next, I want to raise the point that not all bosses are bad. I've worked for some excellent, understanding and supportive people - and even back in the Industrial Revolution days, there were bosses who wanted to do well by their workers. Their attempts to do well can often be criticised, but even some of the more questionable ones sometimes stumbled onto an unintended improvement, such as the rabidly anti-union Henry Ford, who - for self-centred financial reasons - introduced the five day working week. Perhaps most notably of all, one of my earliest meetings with a member of the ALP was (at a community service organisation in the mid-1980s) with one who was a business owner, who greatly impressed me by commenting that what business owners needed was to know what conditions they needed to allow for, not having conditions that constrain or restrict workers.

Lumping all bosses together under the label "enemy" is what the more abhorrent bosses do with workers. It is a mistake (as is militancy) that alienates many workers - and potential supporters of workers - these days and has as much to do with the decline of unions as anything else. It is also open to a charge that such simplistic thinking is as much an inability to cope with change and the nuance of reality as is the problem behaviour of some bosses. In the 21st century, it is the sort of thinking that will continue to poison and kill the union movement.

Finally, the delivery of this has to put responsibility where it should be: citizens are not passive couchsurfers who can expect a world to deliver to them their benefits, perks and "rewards": they and the government they shaped - either actively, or passively by cynical inaction - and then selected (a matter voters must collectively accept responsibility for), share the job of bringing a better world to all.