Reports from LabourStart today highlight the imminent creation of truely international trade union, with Unite, which has 2 million members in the UK and Ireland, and the Unites Steel Workers, which represents 1 million workers in the USA, Canada and the Carribean, announcing their plans to merge. One cannot help but compare the formidable prospect of a 3 million strong trans-Atlantic union with the sorry state of union fiefdoms in Australia and New Zealand.
It is time for the trade union movements in both Australia and New Zealand to shape up, and understand the very simple concept that most global corporations see each nation as a sub-region within the Asia-Pacific area. In fact, it is quite common for the one HR department to cover both nations. To this end I would advocate for a simple idea; the NZCTU and the ACTU should unite to form the ANZCTU. Furthermore, the leadership of this regional congress should actively encourage the merging of trade unions with overlapping coverage in each jurisdiction, and/or the formation of meaningful and strategic alliances between trade unions in each nation. The commonsense of this simple proposal is only made clearer when we have a look at similar examples in the UK and Ireland, and the USA and Canada. The TUC is the union movement peak body which covers both Irish and UK trade unions. While the AFL-CIO (excluding Change to Win for the purposes of this piece) is the peak body for trade unions throughout North America.
Capitalising on a very anti-worker Tory government in New Zealand the bosses had the luxury of practicing and refining their union busting techniques until they had the opportunity to inflict this on an Australian union movement grappling with the demise of protectionism. We cannot ever let this happen again. It is time to realise that for major global corporations the existence of Australia and New Zealand as separate sovereign nations is nought but an historical accident of the late 19th century. A mere legal technicality that really does not change the way they conduct their business. It is time to get over our tendency to jealously guard our little union principalities and confront the new economic reality. Our union movements need to fight as ANZACs to secure justice and dignity for working peoples in our little area of the world.
Over to you guys. Do you think we should merge the peak bodies? Furthermore, which trade unions should merge with each other?
