What can unions do? Addressing multinational relocation in North West Tasmania

Abstract

Trade unions often face complex and uncertain relations with multinational employers, particularly in old industrial regions. Such corporations have long histories in such regions, often attracted by a range of incentives such as financial support, cheap energy and a skilled workforce. However, the plants themselves often experience changes in ownership and face economic uncertainty. This constitutes the terrain within which recognised unions seek to organise, exercise their capacities and realise their purposes. Workers and their unions organise and operate in these plants, usually developing established routines and practices in relation to the terms and conditions of employment and advocacy of worker concerns. However, they also face difficult choices in relation to corporate decisions to restructure and/or close regional plants. In order for unions to respond to the shifting terrain of the employment landscape they must be able to mobilise around political and economic factors that impact on employment. These themes are addressed with specific reference to union struggles in North West Tasmania, a region that is undergoing a process of de-industrialisation.

Keywords

Multinational corporations regions union capacities union purpose unions

Introduction

One of the features of the Australian political economy is the de-industrialisation and revitalisation of regions (defined as broad topographical areas comprising one or more local councils). Often such developments involve multinational corporate decision-making in relation to regionally-based operations, with implications for workers and their unions. Where employers seek to relocate or scale back their operations, unions face very specific problems which in general have been under-theorised. The workplace is a core feature of unionism, the site where trade unions organise and represent members’ interests. Nonetheless, it may be difficult for workplace union groups – and their officials – to extend action beyond the workplace, either in relation to national and international levels of the union or indeed within the locality itself. When faced with the kind of challenges imposed by corporate relocation, for example, unions may need to draw on both internal and external solidarities to cope with and address such change (on this general point, see Lévesque and Murray, 2002, 2010). Such capacities are shaped by the conditions for union organisation and action, the intersection between structural and associational power (Wright, 2000; see also Fairbrother et al., 2013: 6–7).

Union capacities in relation to transnational corporate decision-making rest on their capabilities and the resources at their disposal, locally, nationally and internationally (Lévesque et al., 2013b: 273). Where local unions, for example, are able to work with global unions (Global Union Federations (GUFs)) and vice versa, then the capacity to empower local (and national unions) is likely to be enhanced (Fairbrother et al., 2013). But, locality-based unions also can be disconnected from global unions; such a feature limits the power resources available to such union groups. Local trade union capabilities thus may be limited by a local union’s ability to enable the integration of an inclusive approach to other locality-based organisations, such as environmental groups or farmers’ associations and/or transnational bodies; on occasion local unions can extend their repertoires of action to present an approach that builds on external solidarities (Lévesque and Murray, 2013a; Lévesque et al., 2013b: 273).

To extend this type of analysis, we draw on an understanding of the ways repertoires of action can become restrictive and narrowly focused rather than inclusive and expansive. Our core proposition is that union actors often construct their narratives of trade unionism in relation to the specificities of locally-based and -shaped trajectories as well as the broader institutional arrangements that define unions. Our argument is that unions may become locked into specific patterns of and approaches to trade unionism that can inhibit rather than enable capacity building in some situations.

These themes are explored in relation to union struggles on the North-West coast of Tasmania, Australia. Here unions face specific challenges, with the regional economy in a seemingly irreversible decline after having been the focus of inward investment and relative prosperity based on hydroelectricity and a skilled workforce, during the latter part of the 20th century. We trace out the history of two major employers in the region – Associated Pulp and Paper Mills (APPM) at Burnie and Wesley Vale, and McCain Foods (vegetable processing) at Smithton. These two cases have been chosen deliberately, to explore how seemingly capricious global decisions impact on workplaces and thus unions. In the case of APPM, sites were closed down after a long period of decline; McCain, however, only closed a part of their production facility, a decision made with little direct forewarning. Thus, not only do unions have their capacities tested over time (APPM), but they also face unexpected challenges for which they are seemingly poorly prepared (McCain). We examine why these unions found it difficult to address the texture and sequence of these developments.

Debates

Much of the analysis of unions in the current period, reflected in the relatively long-standing debates about union renewal, focuses on union organisation and union capacities (Lévesque and Murray, 2010). While opening up critical questions about union capacities and the process of capacity building, the focus is on unions as institutions, operating in complex settings, able to draw on power resources in different ways (Fairbrother et al., 2013). These analyses can now be extended to consider how unions may be bound in relation to their social setting, a workplace, a locality and a region. For most union members, most of the time, their collective activity is place bound and constructed over long periods of time.

This article addresses the issue of union strategies in response to management decisions about plant closures and redundancies. The specific aim is to develop understandings of the place of trade unions in relation to such events, particularly the way they organise, operate and develop their capacities to deal with such situations (see e.g. Fairbrother and Williams, 2007: 43–47 and Stroud and Fairbrother, 2011). One way of exploring these relationships and their associated possibilities is to consider the phenomenon of path dependence and ‘lock-in’, where factors that were strengths in the past turn into obstacles to innovation, in this case in relation to particular union approaches (cf. Grabher, 1993; see also Hassink, 2010, on lock-in in relation to regional change). While much attention about unions addressing employment change to date has been on capacity building, we draw attention to the way that past experience and current practices may become time and place bound and thereby circumscribe unions’ abilities to both mobilise power resources and develop inclusive narratives of change (cf. Lévesque and Murray, 2013a). In such cases, the exercise of union capacities may be limited and indeed inhibited.

To develop the analysis, we focus on a situation where unions have a long-standing presence in a relatively remote region. Although there is recognition that unions can influence closures (McDonald et al., 2012), such closure proposals and events provide an opportunity for more general reflections on trade union ‘power resources and (their) strategic capabilities (which are) central to union capacity building’ (Lévesque and Murray, 2010: 333). More specifically, such happenings allow for reflection and reconsideration of local union power in the context of a global economy. In this respect, Lévesque and Murray (2002: 45–58) present important insights into the way that local unions might mobilise their power resources in relation to the changing balance of power wrought by globalisation and the associated managements of transnational firms. Their analysis focuses on three particular levers of union power: agenda (the ability of unions to shape a programme of actions to defend workers and challenge employers), internal solidarity (the level of democracy and cohesion in the local union) and external solidarity (the level to which alliances and articulation can be formed within the larger union, between unions and with the community).

More recent analyses by the same authors develop the notion of agenda; they argue that the ability of workplace unions to enhance their capacity to act depends on the types of narratives that they present, as a renewed narrative or not (Lévesque and Murray, 2013a: 2, 18). This analysis focuses on four strategic capabilities: ‘intermediating between contending interests to foster collaborative action and to activate networks; framing; articulating actions over time and space and learning’ (Lévesque and Murray, 2010: 333; see also Yates, 2010). The implication they draw is that while unions may broaden their repertoires of action, they may not be able to renew their narratives. As we will show in relation to closures, this inability can have telling consequences.

One often overlooked dimension of union organisation is that of spatial context (exceptions include Ellem, 2003; see also Lévesque and Murray, 2010, in relation to capacities). In settler- and resource-based countries, such as Australia, industry and employment is often regionally based and located. Over the last 30 years, formerly long-established regionally-based multinational companies have begun to reposition themselves within regions, occasionally closing down local plants. Such developments pose challenges to unions as they seek to influence the decisions taken and the impact of closure and relocation.

Methods

The research focuses on union organisation, capacity and purpose in relation to two corporations – APPM and McCain – in North West Tasmania, both of which have a long history in the region and both of which staged withdrawals from the area. Our research draws on traditions of community studies to develop an analysis of the types of changes that are taking place. It involved three periods of extensive field research, developing a picture of the region, the ways in which unions are located in the local labour markets of the North West Coast of Tasmania, and the political economy of corporate reorganisation and in some cases relocation. The approach contextualises a set of key respondent interviews (16 interviews with 12 key respondents), supplemented by a broader range of interviews that locate the union activity in relation to the closures (a further 20 interviews), involving the union confederation, local politicians, local agencies and other key informants. These data were complemented by documentary research and historical analysis, using archives and related materials. This enables us to locate the unions historically, thereby providing an account of the forms of organisation that characterised the two sets of unions involved in the closures.

The two companies

The two cases illustrate different aspects of the process of Multinational Corporation (MNC) withdrawal and closure and the challenges faced by unions. In the first case, a well unionised plant faced uncertainty and tried to anticipate the possibility of closure, but was eventually overwhelmed by events that were seemingly beyond its control. In the second case, a sudden and unexpected announcement of closure was challenged, although without success.

The APPM Burnie and Wesley Vale mills closed in 2010, as did the McCain vegetable processing plant at Smithton. In 1936, five Australian companies formed APPM to manufacture pulp and paper at Burnie, Tasmania. In 1983, APPM was taken over by North Prospecting Pty Ltd, a subsidiary of North Broken Hill Holdings (NBH), and in 1993 sold to Amcor Ltd (previously Australian Paper Manufacturer Ltd (APM)). With increasing global emphasis on packaging, rather than paper manufacture, Amcor began to reposition its paper manufacturing plants. In 2000, APPM became part of PaperlinX, a new company formed by a demerger from Amcor. In 2009, PaperlinX sold its manufacturing facilities to Nippon Paper, who declined to buy the Burnie and Wesley Vale plants; PaperlinX closed these two plants in 2010. Over time the two sites appeared to local commentators to have become increasingly disconnected from larger corporate arrangements (Jamieson, 2011).

McCain was established in 1957 in Canada and currently has more than 20,000 employees working in 53 factories in six continents and annual sales in excess of CDN$6bn (Anon, 2011; McCain, 2011). In 1984, McCain purchased the Copper Kettle vegetable processing plant in Smithton, Tasmania and in 1988 built an additional potato processing plant at the same site (Scott, 2009). The plant directors reported directly to the Canadian head office (particularly on wage negotiations and related matters) and not to the Australian head office in Ballarat, Victoria. As a result, there was a perception in the region that it was a stand-alone plant, not closely connected to other facilities on the Australian mainland.

Unions at work

The two sets of unions faced different situations.

APPM, Burnie and Wesley Vale

APPM was a major employer on the North West coast and during the 1950s and 1960s employed about 3500 people (Jamieson, 2011). The workforces at both Burnie and Wesley Vale were unionised, with over 75% of the Burnie workers members of the Pulp and Paper Division of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) and the remainder in the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU). At Wesley Vale, the site was evenly divided between the AMWU and CFMEU. A single bargaining unit was established for the Wesley Vale plant, although the relationship was fraught from time to time (CFMEU National Official, 9 May 2011).

In the period from the 1970s, the pulp and paper industry became increasingly internationalised and the locus of decision-making shifted from Burnie to mainland Australia and then overseas, reshaping the context in which the unions organised and operated. From the 1970s, tariff reductions and aging plant affected the company’s competitiveness (Jamieson, 2011; Pink, 2000). Consequently, unions became experienced in dealing with job loss and attempting to secure acceptable arrangements for displaced workers. With the takeover by NBH in 1983, the new owners stripped APPM of some $10m in capital to prop up their ailing mining investments, moved the mills’ senior management to Melbourne, and restructured operations (including closing parts of the mills). Although production reached record levels, the number of employees fell to less than 1300 (GHD, 2010; Jamieson, 2011; Pink, 2000).

The unions came under increasing pressure from NBH management. By the early 1990s, management argued that the mills were no longer internationally competitive and union power had to be curtailed (Baker, 2008; Pink, 2000). In March 1992, NBH announced it would withdraw above-award conditions, deal directly with employees rather than unions, and require greater workforce flexibility. In response, the workforce went on strike and picketed the site for three months. The strike became increasingly bitter and costly until NBH took decisive legal action and the parties settled (Jamieson, 2011; Medwin, 2009). NBH continued to invest in the mill and a year after the dispute the workforce was down to 700 people, with a 30% increase in productivity (Pink, 2000).

During the 1990s, the relatively well-organised and cohesive unions found themselves campaigning for the very survival of the plants. With the acquisition of the plants by Amcor in 1993, the Tasmanian mills were placed firmly in an increasingly competitive and globalised industry. Investment decisions were made in an international context about where the company would obtain the greatest return on their capital, and these decisions were then conveyed to local management for implementation. Amcor transferred profitable products and some functions from Tasmania to mainland Australia (CFMEU National Official, 9 May 2011; CFMEU official, 17 May 2011).

With senior management based outside Tasmania, the unions found it increasingly difficult to exert influence over corporate decisions; their organisational approach was mill specific and based in Tasmania, although the unions were all part of Australian-wide union structures. The CFMEU was well aware of the increasingly globalised nature of the industry. It was active in the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM) and had received international support in some of its campaigns (CFMEU National Official, 9 May 2011). Against this backdrop of experience, the local unions entered a period of defensive struggle as they sought to prevent further contraction of the mills and the possibility of their closure.

Pulp had become an increasingly global commodity and when its price dropped on the global market in the late 1990s, Amcor decided to cease pulping operations in Burnie (CFMEU official, 17 May 2011) with the loss of 150 Amcor employees and 50 maintenance contractors (Amcor, 1998). This announcement attracted one of Burnie’s largest protests, with over 1000 people attending a rally, but the closure went ahead with the loss of 200 jobs (GHD, 2010). The CFMEU negotiated and reached a compromise on workforce reductions, ensuring that those who left were paid relatively generous redundancy entitlements (CFMEU official, 17 May 2011).

In 2009, when PaperlinX sold parts of its manufacturing business, Australian Paper, to the Nippon Paper Group of Japan (Print 21, 2009), the two Tasmanian plants were doomed. Nippon Paper refused to purchase the two sites for two reasons. First there had been a sustained lack of investment in the Burnie site:

Everyone just seemed to take money out, put no more in than what they really had to to keep it running. … there was little bits and pieces but nothing major like a new paper machine … . So the investment in Burnie was bugger all. Maybe if they’d invested more in the place in the earlier years … it may have been right, who knows. (CFMEU official, 17 May 2011)

Second, if Nippon Paper purchased the two plants, they would have had to contend with the fractious Tasmanian environmental and forestry politics (CFMEU National Official, 9 May 2011). Unable to sell the two plants, PaperlinX retained the Wesley Vale and Burnie Mills and formed them into a new company, Tas Paper (Medwin, 2009). The company announced a review of its operations which, from the CFMEU’s perspective, could only mean closure (CFMEU National Official, 9 May 2011). The union organised a planning meeting of its Tasmanian delegates to address these threats. It resolved to create a $250,000 war chest to fight the closures (CFMEU, 2009a). Further, the union resolved to send a worker delegation to Canberra to lobby the federal government (CFMEU, 2009b).

In September and December 2009, the CFMEU held meetings with the company over the security of worker entitlements and held stop-work meetings to hear reports and consider future actions (CFMEU, 2009c, 2009d; Medwin, 2009). When recalling a workers’ mass meeting, an interviewee (CFMEU Forestry and Furnishing Products Division) reflected on the national union leader’s approach:

He [the national union leader] stood up on stage and talked about the rally and [told us to try and] make as much noise as we can and try and turn these buggers around, get the public on our side … and someone yelled out, ‘I’ve seen a lot of places go down and … how many bloody mills have we saved from shutting down when they said they’re going to shut down?’. He said, ‘To be honest, bloody none.’ He said, ‘But we’ve had a lot of good times and made a lot of noise … but this might be the first one’. (CFMEU official, 17 May 2011)

In December 2009, PaperlinX announced that the Burnie operations would partially close, and the Wesley Vale mill would close in April 2010 (Williams, 2009). The qualifier to the Burnie announcement was that if it could not find a buyer for the remaining operation, it would shut the mill, with the potential loss of 252 jobs (Fitzgerald, 2009).

The CFMEU and AMWU held discussions with the company over the closures and potential redundancies, with one participant saying, ‘we fought, we argued [to keep the plant open] … but we knew it was all on a hiding to nowhere, but you’ve got to try’ (CFMEU official, 17 May 2011). The CFMEU approached the Federal Government for assistance, but the Government was reluctant unless there were guarantees that the mills continued to operate; the company would not give this guarantee.

The unions’ abilities to campaign over the closure were hampered by the industry’s gradual decline and the shift from major employer in the region to a relatively minor one, with less than 400 workers over the two sites. Through the Federal Government’s Innovation Fund, the union was able to pursue a support programme for the redundant workers, funded through the Industry Skills Council, albeit after the event.

The unions were powerless to halt the corporate manoeuvres of a now global industry. In April 2010, PaperlinX announced that, although a potential buyer had made an offer to take over the business, the board felt the offer unsatisfactory. They made the decision to close the Burnie mill with the loss of 210 direct jobs and a further 57 maintenance contractors. The machinery was sold to Bangladesh (Clydesdale, 2010). The mill finally closed in August 2010.

McCain vegetable processing plant, Smithton

Three unions were present at the McCain vegetable processing plant, Smithton. The main union was the AMWU, with a full-time Branch Secretary and an organiser, both based in Devonport, 140 km away. The two full-time officials had a pattern of regular lunch-time meetings with the eight delegates and members on site. There was a strong union presence in the workforce of 180 people with an estimate that 96% of workers were union members (McCain AMWU member, 8 August 2011). The other two unions at the plant were the Communications Electrical and Plumbing Union (Electrical Trades Union (ETU) division), covering the electricians, and the CFMEU, covering the boiler workers. For nearly 20 years the three unions worked as a single bargaining unit, with the AMWU often representing the smaller ETU and CFMEU, whose full time officials were based in Hobart.

There had been unease about the plan’s future for some time (McCain AMWU member, 8 August 2011; McCain AMWU member, 12 August 2011; AMWU official, 10 February 2011). There had been a gradual decline in the amount of maintenance undertaken in the plant. The number of casual staff had been reduced and there had been a few redundancies. This history had contributed to a poor relationship between the workers and management, as well as between the unions and management. There was a feeling that ‘there was something more going on around the place than we were being told about’ (McCain AMWU member, 12 August 2011). As well, the workers were aware that over the previous 12 months McCain had been importing increasing amounts of products from China to the Smithton site that would then be mixed with local produce and put into stir fry packs (McCain AMWU member, 12 August 2011). In the absence of any concrete information, despite these signs, local union leaders were unprepared for the moves to close the vegetable processing plant.

In September 2009, the Devonport-based AMWU organiser responsible for the McCain plant received a call from one of the site union representatives saying that the company had scheduled a meeting with the entire workforce. The AMWU enquiries about the meeting’s purpose met with refusals to clarify: ‘that's how McCain operates. They tend to keep it very much within their self’ (AMWU official, 10 February 2011). The company initially denied the AMWU entry to the meeting, but reversed this after union protests. At this meeting, the company announced ‘that they were closing the vegetable plant. That was it. There was no discussion, no opportunity to talk about how they could do it differently’ (AMWU official, 10 February 2011). Local management claimed to have not been forewarned about the closure, although the workforce was sceptical of this observation (McCain AMWU member, 12 August 2011).

The local management announced that they were going to shift vegetable processing to New Zealand, where they could process vegetables more cheaply in terms of labour, water for processing and indeed the entire production process, including freight (Kempton, 2009). The Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry claimed that the plant’s lack of competiveness was due to little capital investment in the preceding 60 years (Darby, 2009). The McCain workers and the union argued that this was not the case. Although the buildings were old, McCain had spent significant amounts of money upgrading the machinery and facilities (McCain AMWU member, 8 August 2011; AMWU official 20 May 2011). This sudden announcement shocked and angered the workforce (AMWU official, 20 May 2011).

The relationship between the union and McCain had been tense, with recent collective agreement negotiations frustrated by local management’s deference to the Canadian directors.

[McCain local management would] have to go … and ring Canada to get agreement for what they were doing. It was so frustrating. Even though they had their national or their head office people from Ballarat, 'cause that's where their head office is in Australia, they’d have their people there but they’d still have to ring Canada. It was so bizarre. (AMWU official, 10 February 2011)

Decisions were made by McCain in Canada and implemented by the Ballarat-based management (Victoria). This Australian management claimed they had little knowledge of the basis upon which decisions were made and refused to negotiate over the closure (McCain AMWU member, 12 August 2011). Such a process further strengthened the local view that the fate of the plant was decided in Canada, where the unions seemingly had little leverage.

The workforce’s confidence in management was shaken when human resources (HR) management ‘couldn’t even answer the question about redundancy entitlements. They’d done no homework at all’ (McCain AMWU member, 8 August 2011). Nonetheless, the unions were reassured by the redundancy agreement, which they described as ‘a really good redundancy agreement’ (AMWU official, 10 February 2011). Involuntary redundancies received four weeks' pay for every year of service, uncapped, and voluntary redundancies received three weeks' pay for every year of service with a cap of 52 weeks.

Following the company’s redundancy announcement, the State Government set up a task force, with the unions as key members. The unions held a lunch-time meeting of members outside the plant because the company refused access on site. The then Premier, David Bartlett, came and spoke with the workforce, assuring them that the government would do everything it could to retain jobs in the region. McCain management refused to address the meeting. Nonetheless, at the union’s behest, the State government met with McCain management in Melbourne. The company refused all government offers of assistance to save the vegetable processing part of the plant (AMWU official, 10 February 2011; McCain AMWU member, 12 August 2011; McCain AMWU member, 8 August 2011).

Despite the company stance, the AMWU put in place a campaign strategy designed to pressure McCain to reverse their decision to close the vegetable processing section of the plant. Nonetheless, union leaders were pessimistic about their chances of success (AMWU official, 5 May 2011). However, as stated by the union leaders:

We’d been dealing with McCain’s for twenty years and knew that that would never happen but you’ve got to try 'cause if you try you know that you’re not left wondering down the track, gee, if we’d gone and met with them, would that have made a difference? So, we set that into play. We then just went into campaign mode really, which was a number of elements to the campaign. One was about getting the community involved because it’s a small community. It is fairly isolated. A lot of the money that’s made at McCain’s flows back obviously out into the community. Not only from the workers at McCain’s but from the actual producers. (AMWU official, 10 February 2011)

Altogether, the closure would affect about 110 permanent workers and about 60–70 casual/seasonal workers directly employed by McCain. The impact went beyond the plant confines to affect the local vegetable farmers. The union leaders drew on prior experience with other closures in the region and organised a Saturday rally (AMWU official, 10 February 2011). They reached out beyond the direct workforce and into the community with speakers at the rally representing farmers, local government and community organisations. Although not a large gathering, there was a march through the streets and media coverage (AMWU Official, 10 February 2011).

The unions began holding regular meetings with McCain local management and the Victoria-based HR Manager on the implementation of the redundancy clause in the collective agreement. Management and unions had differing interpretations of the operation of the redundancy clause: whether the redundancies should be voluntary or involuntary and apply to the whole site or just to vegetable processing. As well, there were issues with how many and which fitters from the maintenance and logistics section would be retained (AMWU official, 10 February 2011; AMWU official, 20 May 2011).

Overcoming these issues led to drawn-out negotiations. From September 2009 onwards, the AMWU Branch Secretary and the local organiser went to the factory on an almost weekly basis to negotiate along with the local delegates and meet with members. As the negotiation process lengthened, the workforce became more angry and frustrated. Nonetheless, the AMWU was able to deal with the production workers in the vegetable processing plant. A number of these workers were long-term or close to retirement, and the unions were able to secure enhanced arrangements for them. The unions secured agreement for volunteers also to come from the potato processing section, thereby opening up places for workers in the vegetable processing section. Altogether, around 115 permanent staff and 75 casual employees were made redundant (Carter, 2009). The remaining 120 McCain potato plant employees then had to wait for the outcome of McCain’s benchmarking process of the four Australian French fry plants:

… because they’re not injecting any money into the plant, the employees and particularly the community … see it’s a huge issue. (AMWU official, 20 May 2011)

These workers were given a reprieve when McCain instead chose to close the plant in Penola, South Australia (Ockenden, 2013).

In developing their campaign, the unions recognised the global dynamic of the closure. First, they acknowledged that McCain in Canada had made the decision without consulting local management or the Smithton workforce. The union leaders thus wrote to Allison McCain, the Chair of the McCain board in Canada, outlining the situation, decisions and arguments they had had about the redundancies, and:

We asked him to come down and attend a meeting. We never got a response, which we didn't expect. It was really about – I think what the people on the plant wanted to do was to hear from the people who had made the decision about why. 'Cause we kept getting all this feedback about, oh well it's cheaper and we can't compete and all of this stuff. I think the people would've got a lot of comfort … having that person stand up there and even if they could've just asked him some questions or somebody yelled at him or just to get something off their chest, would've been [a lot easier]. (AMWU Official, February 2011)

Second, the unions contacted the Service and Food Workers Union (SFWU), which represented McCain workers at the Hastings, New Zealand plant where the processing was to move (Carter, 2009). However, the exchange between the union leaders did not move beyond dialogue about the relocation and the importance of ongoing contact (AMWU official, 10 February 2011).

The decision to close the Smithton plant was made in Canada and implemented in Tasmania. It would appear neither the local HR and line managers nor the local plant manager were cognisant of the decisions; they were not aware of who made them, and had little or no leverage in the process. Although the decision to close the plant was made at a global level, the union’s response was primarily located at a local level, attempting to engage with the local community. Although the AMWU is a member of the International Union of Food Workers (IUF), the local union did not appear to make use of these linkages at either the State or the national level.

Analysis

These two sets of unions were integrated into the region through a complex network of relationships within the workplaces and localities. But these unions remained bound by past practice and focus, even when it was no longer appropriate. First, each set of unions had a long history representing workers in the region employed at relatively large multinational corporation plants. They had developed the means and practices to represent their members, calling on full-time officials, usually based in the region and occasionally in Launceston and Hobart. Second, these unions had once also belonged to local Trades and Labour Councils, which had provided the fora for union leaders to meet and engage with each other. Such relationships can provide the bases for support from unions in the region when major events occurred – a strike, closure and so forth. But, these regionally-based confederations were no longer operative. The challenge for the unions was to readjust and refocus in these new circumstances.

Theoretically, these cases demonstrate the interplay between resources and capabilities. The focus on union capacity by Lévesque and Murray (2010, 2013a) draws attention to the possibility that the integration between resources and capabilities may enhance union power and thereby ‘may alter path dependencies’ (2010: 346). But these two sets of unions addressed the prospect of closure in limited and conventional ways. What this means is that they were locked into the prevailing arrangements and past practices; that they were unable to exercise their putative capacities because they did not have the strategic capabilities to reframe the debate and to articulate it across space and time (see Lévesque and Murray, 2010, 2013a). But, more than this deficit, both sets of unions were unable to build on external resources (vertical links outside Tasmania, let alone Australia). Hence, these unions were unable to draw on current and potential power resources and exercise capabilities in ways that may have opened up different futures for their members (cf. Fairbrother et al., 2013).

Although the regional economy was tied into global relationships (via forms of ownership and trade), these regionally-based unions had limited capacities. First, both sets of unions were only able to build limited solidarities vertically beyond the region, within the established institutional relationships. Each set of unions maintained and promoted locally-based and locally-focused procedures, both in negotiating with local management and in representing their memberships. They did not promote organisational activity within the national and global unions, develop narrative understandings of multinational corporations, and thereby extend their capacities in ways that confronted these corporations (on this prospect, see Gibson-Graham, 2002: 35–37). These possibilities could have been realised; or steps could have been taken to expand their capacities in relation to these corporate announcements.

Both sets of unions nationally, for example, were relatively active members of their respective GUFs, but such linkages did not extend to the localities in North West Tasmania. The local union groups, at the McCain plant for example, did not make use of the national narrative resources to explore alternative futures and/or build trans-border solidarity in relation to the GUFs and associated unions in Canada and elsewhere (see a range of examples where local unions took steps in this direction in Fairbrother et al., 2013). Instead, their repertoires of action were largely restricted to the locality, with some lobbying at the State level. The local APPM unions, for example, reached out to national union leaders, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), state agencies and politicians, often lobbying for relief from the prospect of closure. This activity, however, had a limited focus in that the owners defined two local plants as a problem, which no other corporation wanted and the inability of the APPM owners to sell the plants to Nippon Paper reinforced the specificity and limitations of the Tasmanian location (on this corporate aspect, see Dicken, 2011). One outcome was that the union activity in relation to closures did not involve clearly articulated alternative strategies of development or transition (on this feature, see Gibson-Graham, 2011). Rather, the focus was on the immediate defence of workers who had no hope of retaining their jobs and limited prospects of transferring to other like jobs in the region.

Second, the two sets of unions were unable to embed their campaigns within their localities in broadly-based and comprehensive ways. They were unable to form effective horizontal links with other interested parties in the area, such as the regional policy decision-makers (Lévesque and Murray, 2010). Even so, the local union leaders did reach out to others, such as the vegetable growers in the case of the McCains case, but such steps were generally limited to public events, such as rallies. While of note, there is no evidence of alliance building, rethinking approaches to de-industrialisation or long-term planning aimed at securing the future of these company plants. Rather, attention in both cases centred on how best to ensure some sort of future for employees, albeit in relation to compensation and, in the case of APPM, a limited post hoc retraining strategy. These ways of addressing these challenges seemingly confirmed the long-term trajectories of de-industrialisation that marks North West Tasmania, where unions responded to the changes taking place in reactive rather than pro-active ways.

This analysis points to the way in which the explanations of capacity building require further refinement. To date, analyses have focused on capabilities (framing) and power resources (narratives about the past and present) drawing distinctions between union groups (in workplaces, as organisations, in different sectors and so forth). But it is also important to ground these elements of explanation with reference to spatiality (on this latter aspect in relation to union organisation, see Fairbrother et al., 2013). In this respect, explanation thus involves an account of institutional arrangements and organisation and the ways in which practices are shaped in relation to place, be it within a region or within the GUFs. Despite the institutional associations and involvement of a long-standing sort, neither did the unions refer to the GUFs, nor did the GUFs reach out to these localised unions.

These two cases demonstrate an important analytic step in relation to debates about union capacity building. On the one hand, neither set of unions was able to lay the foundation for a narrative development in ways that could effectively question managerial decisions. The union leaderships (organisers and delegates) sought to safeguard jobs through established and customary repertoires of action, with limited steps taken to extend these capabilities, via rallies, lobbying and minimal consideration in relation to external solidarity action. Thus, the way in which union purpose was articulated remained partial, concerned with the defence of the status quo: either continued employment at these plants or, alternatively, compensation for losing jobs. It can be argued that the unions in each case lacked both effective forms of internal solidarity and externally-based resources.

Thus, there is an organisational base to this conundrum. These unions had gradually contracted into the region, and increasingly relied on beleaguered organisers, struggling to deal with the challenges they faced, in the region. The possibility of capacity building becomes difficult in such circumstances. Hence, to extend the debates about union capacity building it is necessary to locate these enquiries within a rigorous analysis of the spatial and temporal context (e.g. Ellem, 2003; Hassink, 2010). The 60 years of hydro-industrialisation in North West Tasmania had developed enterprises, often owned and operated by multinationals, and built unions based on the principles of mass-based forms of representation and activity. When this environment changed, the unions in the region found themselves unable to take pro-active steps to address these new circumstances. In effect, these unions were unable to overcome lock-in by developing collective understanding and strategies (via deliberation, learning and capacity building) to overcome the constraints that limited their ability to adapt (Pike et al., 2010). These unions did not have the narrative framework to develop robust and outward-looking proposals to address the dilemmas they faced. Even so, these two sets of unions did have choices and were potentially in a position to consider pro-active rather than reactive responses (confirming path dependency); in effect, for a range of compelling reasons, they did not exercise this choice.

Conclusion

This examination of two events involving closure or partial closure of processing plants in North West Tasmania, Australia allows three analytic points to be made about union capacity.

First, as noted, capacity building rests on interplay between resources and capabilities. These unions were organised and operated as economistic locally and regionally focused union bodies. Nonetheless, the possibility of capacity building was there. The practices of internal solidarity were in place, via delegate and related representational structures as well as external forms of solidarity with local groups, albeit limited in relation to focus and scale. The outcome was that the unions were unable to step beyond the self-imposed parameters of localised economistic unionism. To go beyond this limitation, unions would have to develop ways of organising that involve both links with the community (perhaps via locally-based confederations) as well as positive and pro-active links beyond Tasmania, with other Australian union groups (even within the same union) as well as internationally, with global union federations and the like. The outcome would have been a pro-active form of unionism, building awareness of international developments, alternative structures and arrangements for investment and economic diversification. Nevertheless, these unions were unable to mesh themselves effectively into emerging regional or global networks of power.

Second, initially while debates about union renewal focused on organisation, this has become a more implicit focus as analyses around capacity have been developed and refined. The analysis presented here suggests that there should be a return to some of the basic and initial concerns about forms of representation, types of leadership and the role of workplace representation. Unions are often in positions where they are hard-pressed organisationally with telling impacts on their capacity to address the challenges prompted by such dramatic and traumatic events as closure.

Finally, union purpose is both constructed and contested, in relation to the spatial and temporal specificities faced by unions. Hence, narratives are embedded in the ways union purpose is constructed and expressed. There are two sides to such articulation. First, union purpose can become both an aspiration (concerned with social justice, for example) and a practical response to a difficult situation (negotiating the terms of departure or retention). Second, the articulation of narratives that underpin repertoires of action in these circumstances is often driven by the press of immediate concerns, such as retaining a job. This tension between the immediate and the more long term makes for an articulation that often appears to be reactive rather than pro-active. Addressing this appearance is the dilemma facing unions today.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received funding support from the School of Management Research Committee, College of Business, RMIT University as well as the Australian Research Council DP140103489.

Biographical notes

Ruth Barton is a lecturer in the Centre for Sustainable Organisations and Work, RMIT University. Her research interests include trade unions, corporate culture and Tasmanian labour history. She is currently a Chief Investigator on an Australian Research Council project, Unions and Regional Regeneration. She has published widely on these topics.

Peter Fairbrother is a professor of International Employment Relations and director of the Centre for Sustainable Organisations and Work. He is also a core researcher of the Interuniversity Research Centre on Globalisation and Work (CRIMT). He has researched and published widely on trade unions, industrial restructuring and regeneration. His recent work focuses on the mobilisation of labour in relation to social and political transition, particularly with reference to old industrial regions. He has published ten books and numerous articles.

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