Analysis: Don’t let the political right take the ‘Union’ out of AUU
Words by Ana Obradovic
With the Adelaide University Union planning to retire ‘union’ from its name, an embattled ex-student representative says its time to fight back
NOTE: The National Union of Students is hosting a rally against the University of Adelaide’s proposed staff and course cuts on Wednesday 11 August, 1pm at the North Terrace Campus.
A recent survey by the AUU revealed most students don’t know why the union exists.
Who can blame them? Today, our student union is run by neoliberal aspirationalists, not radical activists. The project of these careerists is to destroy student unions from the inside, or at least politically distort them to the point that they can be used for little more than political and corporate training.
The board’s right-wing coalition has used evidence of the AUU’s irrelevance to students as the pretext for removing the word ‘union’ from its name.
The Young Liberals and Progress (the supposedly ‘apolitical’ student faction) want the union reduced to nothing more than a service provider — a kind of neoliberal NGO that hobnobs with uni management, and uses its own funding to offer services like campus events the university would otherwise be pressured to organise.
Unionism, the radical practice of collective action in defence of the interests of the exploited and oppressed, has nothing to do with their vision for the AUU Board. Get rid of that pesky word, union, and you quit confusing students who might hope the AUU takes the lead on political issues.
That the AUU’s corporatism does not prioritise the interest of students is evident in the recent construction of ‘The Store’. Smack-bang in the centre of the Hub, this merch store embodies their business logic. It is a revenue-raising project that bulldozed study spaces to make room for the flashy, useless premises no one asked for.
Instead of mobilising its vast resources to defend student interests, the AUU directs much of its focus towards increasing the union’s profitability. I have first-hand experience of this because I sat on the Board this year (until I was kicked off for calling our Young Liberal VP a sexist).
When I tried to push motions arguing the union was irrelevant precisely because it didn’t act like a union and engage in political struggles important to students, I was met with hostile stares and scoffs.
But even when issues directly relevant to campus have come up, like major staff and course cuts, our right-wing student Board has twiddled its thumbs and done absolutely nothing.
Our AUU today
Last year, AUU President (now SRC President) Oscar Ong blocked student representatives from opposing the first round of COVID-19 staff cuts, claiming it was not an issue directly affecting students, therefore not up for debate. This year, Ong is taking a similar line.
Uni boss Peter Høj recently announced plans for the merger of five faculties into three, and the firing of another 130 staff. Ong’s response is that he is against ‘unnecessary cuts’ — implying that some cuts can be ‘necessary’ and are therefore fine (as if our already encumbered education system can take any more attacks).
With this recent history, it’s tempting to give up on student unions as hopelessly right-wing and deformed.
But they haven’t always behaved this way — and with some effort, we can set the foundations for rebuilding a rich tradition of radical student unionism.
Our history
Before the introduction of anti-union student legislation, student unionism was a normal part of everyday life. All students were automatically members of their union, and their paid membership provided the funding and freedom to run student campaigns and organise politically.
At their high point in the 1970s, student unions both intervened in political struggles, and contributed materially by lending bail money to protesters and support funds to striking workers.
In 1972, for example, the La Trobe SRC had its funds legally frozen after it paid the bail of student demonstrators, who were arrested for protesting their VC’s links to apartheid South Africa and the war in Vietnam.
Legendary Black Power founder Gary Foley described ‘tremendous support’ from the ANU student union as crucial to the survival of the famous Aboriginal Tent Embassy ‘in that freezing Canberra winter of 1972’.
Student union buildings also became important organising centres for the struggles of the time, from the anti-war movement to women’s liberation. Some even sheltered draft-dodgers.
And even from the mid-60s, before the Vietnam War was widely hated, the national student union was organising protests against the slaughter. By the mid-70s, the Australian Union of Students (precursor to today’s National Union of Students) was known as the leading, militant edge of 70s student radicalism.
Crucially, the AUS at this time was headed by elected socialists and other anti-capitalists who integrated a politics of principled, collective struggle against the systems’ injustices into the union.
The political lead given by the AUS kept radical culture alive on campuses, even as struggle in wider society died down.
Naturally, politicians, CEOs, and the Murdoch press were apoplectic over the potential of these unions, as independent bodies, to lead student struggle on issues important to them. At the time, the AUS and other student unions were championing Palestine, Aboriginal and worker’s rights, the anti-war movement, boycotts of apartheid South Africa, and various anti-colonial movements.
Conservatives began plotting ways to curb the ability of student unions to have a voice in society and give a political lead to young people on campuses.
End of an era
In 1977, the first death blow struck. The first form of ‘voluntary student unionism’ was introduced in WA to limit the fighting capabilities of these organisations. It put an end to universal student unionism, and prohibited the use of union funding for political activity.
Then, Australia entered the Hawke-Labor era, and with it, a neoliberal turn.
From this point on, both Labor and Liberal governments recognised the necessity of crippling student unions in order to ram through the neoliberalisation of higher education.
By 1987, the movement was just weak enough that the Hawke government could finally end free education — though not without a massive fight. Campus activism and fee boycotts exploded. Even at sleepy Adelaide Uni, then Education Minister John Dawkins was once barricaded in a building for five hours by furious students.
First expanded on a state-by-state basis, by 2005 VSU legislation was finally enacted nationally by the Liberal-Howard government. It prohibited the collection of any funds for unions by universities. This had the intended effect of further diminishing the confidence and resources available for militancy.
Student unionism today
Today, the situation for our student unions is bad, but not hopeless. In 2011, we were led to believe that the Gillard government would reinstate CSU. Instead, the hated SSAF fee was introduced — the one you pay twice a year at the start of each semester.
Uni management controls this money and decides how much goes to the union. This cripples the independence of institutions that should, at the very least, act as a defence against uni bosses — not depend on them for funding.
Despite this, there have been brilliant student union struggles in recent history.
The mass 2014 anti-fee deregulation campaign, championed by socialists in the NUS, defeated the Abbott government’s attempts to Americanise higher education. And last year, when the right to protest was banned under the cover of COVID-19 in NSW, student unionists successfully organised a staunch, combative ‘Democracy is Essential’ campaign that forced a forfeit from the Berejiklian government.
The unions we need
The key problem for student unions today is not their source of funding. It is their politics.
We need a revival of the militant, uncompromising activism that swept through campus life in the 60s and 70s. Student unions, like worker unions today, are not in and of themselves inherently radical, activist bodies. Last year, for example, the National Tertiary Education Union leadership sold pay and staff cuts to workers, instead of kicking off a fightback. In 2019, the right-dominated AUU disaffiliated from the peak representative National Union of Students.
To see a revival of the student union that makes it relevant and visible to students again, we need to reorientate to left-wing, grassroots politics that gives students a voice in the political arena.
They should fight power and raise people’s expectations for what’s possible. They need to make progressive arguments around climate change, racism, imperialism, and involve masses of students in grassroots political organising to win those demands.
Our power is collective, and if we fight, we can win.
Don’t let right-wingers distort their potential. Left-wing collective struggle is what our student unions are for. Rebuilding them according to that perspective is what will make them relevant again.
The National Union of Students is hosting a rally against the University of Adelaide’s proposed restructure on Wednesday 11 August, 1pm at the North Terrace Campus.
