Dean Mighell, Victoria branch secretary of the Electrical Trades Union, has called for unions to disaffiliate from the Australian Labor Party.
Mighell is known as an industrial militant, and his call won "congratulations" from the Socialist Alliance and Green Left Weekly.
But a warning note should be struck by Mighell's article - in The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald (11 February), not in a labour-movement publication - when he claims that disaffiliation will bring the advantage of a more pro-worker policy from the Liberals and the Nationals.
"By remaining affiliated with the ALP, unions are automatically the enemy of the Liberals and National Party and I seriously question if their stance on trade unions would be as severe if unions were not an intrinsic part of their political rival".
Mighell also cites the USA as a better set-up than Australia. "In the United States, unions largely support the Democrats and their campaigning and finance are critical, though they have no affiliation mechanism. They effectively lobby Republican politicians on many issues and some unions actively support Republican candidates if they believe it is in their members' interests".
Oh yes? US unions have no channel for open and democratic input into Democrat policy - that is what "no affiliation mechanism" means - and that some unions sometimes back the Republicans. And that has made George W Bush, Ronald Reagan, and other Republican leaders less "severe" against trade unions.
In fact the US unions operate in probably the most "severe" conditions of any more-or-less democratic capitalist country, and their lack of political clout is shown by the fact that even today public health insurance is a political non-starter in the USA.
And the US unions – like most non-affiliated unions in countries with a structure of union affiliations to labour parties, like Australia, New Zealand, and Britain – are as politically submissive to the Democrats as affiliated union leaders in Australia are to the ALP.
In 2005 Mighell publicly backed AWU union right-winger Bill Shorten’s attempt to launch a career in the ALP. In 2006 he briefly joined the Greens. In 2008, having returned to the ALP, he was denounced by Kevin Rudd, who called on him to resign. Mighell meekly resigned.
His record indicates a lack of a coherent political view.
Mighell is right to condemn the “deafening silence from the ACTU as Labor governs and workers' rights and conditions are attacked”. All the ACTU’s – and even the more left-wing unions’ – promises to fight for a decent positive programme of workers’ and union rights have been shelved in favour of backing Rudd’s WorkChoices-lite as a lesser evil (which it is) than Howard’s legislation and Tony Abbott’s promised future legislation.
Unions, even left unions, in Queensland and New South Wales, have quietly given up on fighting against privatisation.
The problem there is not lack of affiliation. Affiliation - that is, channels through which the unions can fight to change ALP policy openly, publicly, and at least to some degree under the supervision of their memberships - is a good move. Unions should affiliate, and stay affiliated. The problem is the failure of the union leaders to use the political channels opened by affiliation, and the failure of the left to build rank-and-file movements in the unions capable of pushing the union leaders into positive political action or replacing them.