Pericles

I my experience, no battle between ideologies is ever 'won'. Just because unions made great progress in achieving some legislated forms of equity in the workplace, it doesn't mean that they can just fade into history, comfortable in the knowledge that their job is done. I would have thought that the latest upheavals in our society would have demonstrated how easy it is to overturn legislation and change the fundamentals of our society. If you can legislate something in, then you always legislate it out.

Few principles are won for all time. After all, who would have thought that the enlightened democracies of the world would have ever attempted to justify torturing people. Surely groups like Amnesty helped win that fight long ago. Yet, here we are with the US refusing to condemn torture and actively using it in the 'war on terror' and the rest of us having to go back and retake that moral principle yet again.

Justice for both workers and bosses comes from the tension inherent in the relationship between labour and business, with the legislative/legal bodies acting as impartial 'reasonable people'. Just as business establishes bodies to collectively support themselves, then labour does the same through unions. This is absolutely necessary and unions will always have a role to play. The only time this becomes a problem is when one side (or the other) gets vastly unequal power. As it was in the 'bad old days' of the union movement; just as it is currently with the business movement, which is why the Liberal party got handed it's head.

Not all of WorkChoices was bad- but what it attempted to do was eliminate the necessary counterbalance in the equation. And that was the step too far

What are the unions currently doing for us?

In Victoria nurses had a recent industrial squabble (they said "strike" but they didn't down tools and nurses ended up working double shifts - 16 hours for 6 hours pay). It strikes me as immoral that you don't get paid for the hours you work - stealing? The nurses rejected a 3% over 3 year pay offer, they settled for a pay increase of 3.8% over 3 years (that's less than inflation girls) and kept their nurse patient ratios. Why are nurse patient ratios important? When nurses have too many patients to care for - the standard of care falls as nurses are spread to thinly to attend to their patients properly.

Victorians would also be familiar with the new Worksafe campaign reminding supervisors that they shouldn't ask subordinates to do jobs that they wouldn't do because they are too dangerous.

Bernie Banton's union has fought James Hardie to provide care for mesotheleama sufferers. British research in the 1920s identified the dangers of asbestos in the lungs yet companies could still make a profit building asbestos sheet houses until the 1970s.

As the Queen of Mean said "only the little people pay taxes" and the little people need unions to give them equal power with their employers.

I love the way that groups of employers can band together into organisations and lobby Governments to get what they want, yet try to deny their employees the same privelege.

They may not be industrial unions but the NFF, the AMA, the Small Business Council and many others are not much different from member groups of the ACTU.

The way that many eagerly pounced to exploit Workchoices like pitt-bulls onto a pre-school shows that things have not really changed that much from the "bad old days" and given the chance, some would like to return.

Divide and conquer has always been the best strategy and confrontation doesn't always come from below.

I also think the right to with-hold labour without the threat of imprisonment is one that seems to have been quietly taken away in recent years.

Interesting article and responses. Chris, are you or have you ever been a card carrying member of the DLP. Just wondering. It reads a bit like a sermon.

About the first time I've heard of God via Rome being invoked in the name of Australian unionism. I can sort of see where you're coming from in in psycho-social sense. You're spot on that we do perform some tasks better in groups but not all.

I agree with you that collectives (communities) are 'happier' (maybe more satisfied is a better word) than people who are alone (not necessarily lonely).

I reckon you're making a bit of an intellectual jump to therefore say that political unions are natural.

Interesting article and responses. Chris, are you or have you ever been a card carrying member of the DLP? Just wondering.

About the first time I've heard of God via Rome being invoked in the name of Australian unionism. I can sort of see where you're coming from in in psycho-social sense. You're spot on that we do perform some tasks better in groups but not all.

I agree with you that collectives (communities) are 'happier' (maybe more satisfied is a better word) than people who are alone (not necessarily lonely).

I reckon you're making a bit of an intellectual jump to therefore say that political unions are natural.

OK, so maybe I was so irritated by the article's tone and substance that I overreacted. But the reality as I see it is that the Union movement needs a serious makeover by serious people in order to lose its present image, and to formulate a mission and strategy that is relevant in today's workplace.

It wasn't accidental that the Liberals targetted Unionism in their attack-dog advertisements during the election campaign. They were supported by some heavy research into the Union's public image and the citizens' response to it. That the campaign ultimately failed does not mean that this research was faulty, only that there were other factors - such as the Howard Mendacity Quotient - that held greater sway in the night.

But I willingly accept that there is a need for worker representation in situations where working conditions are for whatever reason insupportable. What is not needed is the mindless rhetoric and gratuitous sloganeering that seems to accompany Unionism wherever it treads.

The danger is that the baby of necessary protection could be thrown out along with the bathwater of antediluvian business practices. It will require a significant reinvention to stop that happening, even with a Labor government.