Anti VSU position hard to sell.
Yesterday I came upon some fellows who would like my support so they can keep compelling me to part with a huge wad of cash twice a year. They were the University of South Australia Students Association.
I thought "Well hell's bells, if the services these folks are providing were so indispensable, then surely people would pay for them voluntarily, would they not?"
Well obviously not. I mean, not everybody can afford childcare and stuff, and having gone to kindergarten at UniSA while my mum was studying education I can confirm that.
Wouldn't it then be fair to charge union fees based on the person's ability to pay? Then it would be more like the tax system and government spending. The less you pay, the more you receive- that's a fun game.
And like public spending It would be nice if every dollar was spent knowing that the only reason they had the money in the first place was because they extorted it out of people.
Considering governments don't think that way, I don't think there's much hope that student associations will.
With both there's an issue of accountability. We don't get a refund if we're unhappy with the job they're doing. Their revenue stream is guaranteed, so why should they bother working for it?
Jenny Macklin of the Labor opposition believes that this is merely an extension of Howard's ideology. Maybe so, particulary if Howard's ideology involves freedom of choice and association.
What she really means, however is that Labor ideology is threatened. Any prospective member of the Labor party must be a member of a union. No ifs, no buts. Unions once had an unburstable stranglehold on Australian workplaces. You wouldn't be getting on a building site, onto a waterfront or into a factory without a union ticket. Over the last couple of decades this has been stripped away so that obligatory student unionism is the last bastion.
If VSU does become a way of life, I think we'll see a similar shake up to one that happened with the trade unions. That is, they might have to actually do something for their members, rather than spend resources on political activity that has nothing to do with their brief. (Witness Student Union funded buses to easter protests recently and the Transport Workers's Union boycott of the Springboks in the 1980's).
So after much consideration, my answer is "No, you funny little unwashed men. I won't sign your petition."
I thought "Well hell's bells, if the services these folks are providing were so indispensable, then surely people would pay for them voluntarily, would they not?"
Well obviously not. I mean, not everybody can afford childcare and stuff, and having gone to kindergarten at UniSA while my mum was studying education I can confirm that.
Wouldn't it then be fair to charge union fees based on the person's ability to pay? Then it would be more like the tax system and government spending. The less you pay, the more you receive- that's a fun game.
And like public spending It would be nice if every dollar was spent knowing that the only reason they had the money in the first place was because they extorted it out of people.
Considering governments don't think that way, I don't think there's much hope that student associations will.
With both there's an issue of accountability. We don't get a refund if we're unhappy with the job they're doing. Their revenue stream is guaranteed, so why should they bother working for it?
Jenny Macklin of the Labor opposition believes that this is merely an extension of Howard's ideology. Maybe so, particulary if Howard's ideology involves freedom of choice and association.
What she really means, however is that Labor ideology is threatened. Any prospective member of the Labor party must be a member of a union. No ifs, no buts. Unions once had an unburstable stranglehold on Australian workplaces. You wouldn't be getting on a building site, onto a waterfront or into a factory without a union ticket. Over the last couple of decades this has been stripped away so that obligatory student unionism is the last bastion.
If VSU does become a way of life, I think we'll see a similar shake up to one that happened with the trade unions. That is, they might have to actually do something for their members, rather than spend resources on political activity that has nothing to do with their brief. (Witness Student Union funded buses to easter protests recently and the Transport Workers's Union boycott of the Springboks in the 1980's).
So after much consideration, my answer is "No, you funny little unwashed men. I won't sign your petition."
posted by Mr Schrempp @ 2:58 pm
2 Comments:
At 9:31 am,
Gilganixon said…
I find myself agreeing entirely with your statement. I believe that the destruction of the unions by Howard can only be a good thing for workers and Australia in general in the long term because:
a) Unions will have to earn the right to exist by providing useful services to members instead of just being corpulent structures held aloft by what amounts to a protection racket. This probably means that just about all the unions will collapse or enter a terminal decline in the next few years, if they haven't done so already. Conditions will get steadily worse for workers until they unionise again, hopefully doing it properly this time ( or at least waiting a couple of decades before falling back into a state of rotten corruption)
b) The Labor party will have to actually look for talent as opposed to just picking and choosing from the roster of lazy hacks available from the student union. Once it gets over the shock of putting up with non-indoctrinated members, it will either become a more effective party or resort to being a more blue collar party in a bid to pick up the disaffected worker vote again (or both). Neither scenario is a loss for the people of Australia.
At 4:31 pm,
Mr Schrempp said…
I think you'll find that while trade union membership is at an all time low, working conditions for the most part have not deteriorated. Where they have, it has been in companies that were going down the tubes for various reasons and which would have been killed entirely if it had been for irresponsible industrial action.
Exceptions are: The major banks, Telstra and Qantas. These organisations have all been going rather swimmingly and still treat their rank-and-file workers with more than a little contempt.
The Labor party is fucked. The blue collar they once represented is (With overtime) now making more money than high school dropouts have any right to.
Part of their trouble has come from believing that most of the electorate classifies itself as either "Left" or "Right"
Into which category would you put a worker at Holden who makes $50,000 a year with overtime, hates his tax dollars going to single mothers who cannot control their promiscuous impulses, has his kids in public school and couldn't give a rats arse about refugees?
A more common classification is "Us and "Them" and Labor has backed "Them" a little too often.
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