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Troops as Strikebreakers:
Use of the Defence Force in Industrial Action Situations
Gary Brown
Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Group
1 September 1997
Contents
Introduction
Former ADF industrial action planning: Plan CABRIOLE
Nature and purpose of Plan CABRIOLE
Weapons and the use of force in Plan CABRIOLE
Lessons from CABRIOLE
Use of the ADF to achieve domestic politico/economic
goals
The 1989 Pilots' Dispute: How Good a Precedent?
Potential Problems Confronting the ADF
Conclusions: outstanding questions
Endnotes
Annex: Australian Joint Service Plan CABRIOLE (full text-hard copy
version only)
The use of Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel in industrial action
situations is not new in Australia, but has always been infrequent and
controversial.(1) Defence Force involvement in these situations poses
a number of difficult, possibly even dangerous, problems for Government,
employers, trade unions (including the Australian Council of Trade Unions-the
ACTU) and not least for the ADF itself. This possibility again came to
the fore following media claims that the Government has developed secret
plans to put ADF personnel onto the waterfront in order to push through
workplace microeconomic reforms and industrial relations changes which
it considers necessary.(2) Though this particular report has been denied,
the prospect of using the Defence Force in industrial action situations
raises a number of significant issues.
Whatever underlies current reports, it is certainly true that under
the Fraser Coalition Government (1975-83) the Defence Force developed
a classified plan for use of the ADF to maintain 'essential services'
adversely affected by industrial action. Plan CABRIOLE- which was cancelled,
declassified and released by the then Minister for Defence (Mr Beazley)
in 1986 - included the possibility that troops might be used on the wharves.
While it is not suggested that the detailed concepts and approaches used
in Plan CABRIOLE would necessarily be taken over by any contemporary ADF
planning along these lines, the plan does offer some indication of the
issues with which the Defence Force and Government must deal if ever troops
are to be employed in this way. In particular, examination of the plan
highlights issues connected with the use of force by Defence Force elements
in industrial action situations.
This paper, which is a revised version of one originally issued in 1991,
considers issues raised by Plan CABRIOLE in the context of recent media
reports.
Notwithstanding its use on several occasions since 1945 in industrial
action situations, the ADF has generally been unprepared for such activity.
Since World War II, it has had only one contingency plan-Joint Service
Plan CABRIOLE-for such eventualities, and CABRIOLE was drawn up only in
1982 and cancelled by Government in 1986.(3) Thus the Defence Force interventions
in the 1981 QANTAS strike and the 1989-90 pilots' strike were both undertaken
in direct response to Government decisions and with little or no prior
planning.
Though concerned with industrial action situations, former Plan CABRIOLE
would not entirely suit any current plans to employ the Defence Force
on the wharves. This is so because CABRIOLE was concerned primarily with
maintenance of essential services, and specifically not (para 1)
with forcing a resolution to the industrial dispute. But CABRIOLE still
provides useful insights into the way the ADF might approach some future
industrial action situations if required by Government to intervene. For
this reason, it will be discussed in some detail, and a copy of the plan
is attached to the hard copy version of this paper.
Nature and purpose of Plan CABRIOLE
CABRIOLE was essentially a planning framework intended to minimise lead
times(4) for Defence Force response to situations in which essential services
were adversely affected by industrial action. While operative, the plan
enabled Headquarters ADF (HQADF) to tell the Government at short notice
what the Forces could, and could not, do with respect to a range of essential
services, including the wharves. But CABRIOLE had several questionable
features which suggest that the real-life implications of using the ADF
in this way had not been fully drawn out, and pointing strongly to the
conclusion that more comprehensive analysis will be required if ever the
ADF is to be used where industrial action is involved.
CABRIOLE sought to put to rest some of the more lurid possibilities
which tend to surround discussions of 'sending in the troops' to replace
strikers in industrial disputes. The plan included a blanket prohibition
(para 23) on the carrying of weapons by ADF personnel involved in maintenance
of essential services. Nonetheless, there was a provision (para 18) that
ADF members retained the right of self-defence in accord with the doctrine
of minimum necessary force (on which see below); but CABRIOLE sought to
avoid the contingency by placing responsibility for provision of safe
access to sites and protection of ADF property and personnel squarely
on the shoulders of the civilian police. If the police could not provide
necessary protection then under CABRIOLE's provisions the ADF element
would not be employed or, if already in place, would be withdrawn (para
5).
ADF involvement in 'non-defence' situations is not a new issue and there
are Defence guidelines and instructions for at least two such types of
activity-Defence Force aid to the civil power (DFACP) and Defence
Force assistance to the civil community (DFACC). Aid to the civil
power is defined as assistance 'where there is any possibility that force
may be required to be used by Defence personnel'; while assistance to
the civil community is activity 'where there is no likelihood that
Defence personnel will be required to use force.'(5)
Questioned in 1986, Defence Minister Beazley said that CABRIOLE relied
on a methodology similar to that for ADF 'assistance to the civil community'.(6)
On the face of it, maintaining essential services certainly seems more
closely related to DFACC than to 'aid to the civil power'. But this involves
an implicit assumption-namely, that assistance to the community will be
welcomed and facilitated at the point of delivery. In many industrial
action situations, and perhaps particularly on the waterfront, this assumption
is likely to be false. Protection and security will almost certainly be
needed, and this requirement raises a number of difficult issues for the
Defence Force.
By stressing civil police protection for ADF members, the military planners
who drew up CABRIOLE clearly intended that the ADF not be involved in
using force against civilians. If laws were being broken, it would be
a police matter to enforce them. Nevertheless - as will be shown below-aspects
of the plan still carried an implication that ADF members might use force,
and not only for personal self-defence. The self-characterisation of CABRIOLE
in its para 4 as a type of 'assistance to the civil community' is thus
open to question.
In fact, CABRIOLE and the type of Defence Force activity it presupposed
fit uneasily into either category. While the plan's objective was
of the 'assistance' type, in the implicit means of achieving its
aim, means which did not entirely preclude the use of force, it was closer
to 'aid to the civil power' than anything else. The difficulties apparent
in making CABRIOLE fit the accepted definitional structure for these types
of activity serve to emphasise the extent to which the initiators of the
plan were entering uncharted territory.(7)
Weapons and the use of force in Plan CABRIOLE
Nowhere is this more apparent than in CABRIOLE's treatment of the critical
questions of weapons and the use of force by ADF members. The unequivocal
prohibition on carriage of weapons (para 23) sought to dispose in advance
of some of the more sensational possibilities. Even so, CABRIOLE exhibited
uncertainty, even inconsistency, in its approach to the question of use
of physical force by ADF members.
CABRIOLE's preferred position was one where the ADF confined itself
strictly to the provision of an essential service while the civilian police
guaranteed ADF access to the sites and the security of personnel and equipment.
The plan included an entirely reasonable provision for minimum force in
personal self-defence by ADF members. Where the concept encountered difficulties
was the provision (para 19) for use of minimum force in defence of 'materiel,
whether Defence Force property or not, which is being used in the maintenance
of essential services to the community'.
This provision had the potential to draw unarmed ADF personnel into
direct confrontation with pickets or strikers by imposing on the Defence
Force a duty to protect inter alia the civilian plant or facility
which it was attempting to operate. This widening of the ADF responsibility
contradicted in spirit, if not in the letter, the stipulation in para
5 of the plan that the ADF element would not deploy, or would be withdrawn,
if the civilian authorities could not provide access to sites and protection
to ADF personnel and equipment, and contradicted as well the clearly stated
'non-violent' qualification (para 6) to the mission of Plan CABRIOLE.(8)
Such ambiguous planning opens up a range of possibilities, many of them
potentially very serious, for the ADF. A worst-case scenario could have
a situation in which unionists, the police and the ADF all became involved
with different objectives: the unionists to keep the service shut down;
the police to provide access and protect ADF personnel and all equipment
necessary to the service; and the ADF simultaneously to operate the service,
practise self-defence and defend plant or equipment. In these circumstances
also, the ADF commander on the spot might have to decide whether to withdraw
under para 5 of CABRIOLE because civil police protection was insufficient.
At the same time, a withdrawal might result in the non-provision of services
and/or damage to civilian property, which para 19 of CABRIOLE requires
the ADF to protect. So much uncertainty in the plan did not bode well
for its efficient execution, particularly when the uncertainty was centred
on such delicate and difficult matters as the use of force and allocation
of responsibility for the protection of relevant civilian property.
Functioning waterfronts are economically essential, but at what point
in a dispute would ADF involvement be necessary? A short strike, or the
imposition of bans and limitations, might restrict waterfront output without
shutting it off entirely. Intelligent union strategists might exempt certain
classes of 'essential' goods in the interests of retaining public sympathy.
And in any event it would take time for waterfront shutdowns to threaten
the delivery of goods and services to the people, or to cause significant
stand-downs in industry. Until serious effects were felt, it might be
hard to justify calling in the military.
Joint Service Plan CABRIOLE represented an unusual excursion by the
ADF into the field of industrial disputation and politics. Given the unfamiliarity
of this territory, it should not be surprising that CABRIOLE revealed
a degree of political innocence or naivety on the part of its drafters.
While on paper it appears reasonable to state that the objective of CABRIOLE
was 'to minimise hardship to members of the public-NOT to provide an enforced
resolution of the dispute'(9), the chances of an embattled trade union
or the ACTU seeing matters that way are remote in the real world. Like
it or not, if the ADF moved in and took over a service shut down because
of industrial action it would almost certainly be perceived as strike-breaking
by a significant section of the community and all those involved on the
union side. Claims of nobler motives would be brushed aside as political
'cover stories' and most probably the dispute would escalate further as
unions sought to render ineffective any ADF efforts.
Similarly, the desire 'to avoid unnecessary provocation in what could
be a sensitive situation'(10) shows considerable ignorance of the realities
of industrial disputes, particularly those which have escalated steeply
enough for military involvement to be a serious option. The contradictions
already noted in CABRIOLE about the use of force appear to represent two
related but contrary lines of Defence Force thought: one, the desire to
leave all coercion to the police and get on with the job in hand; the
other, to permit self-defence and try to protect essential material, whether
ADF or not, necessary for performance of the task. Clearly the former
line is sound policy for the Defence Force, but whether it would be tenable
in practice is at the least debatable.
Plan CABRIOLE thus highlights some dangers and difficulties associated
with tasking the ADF in areas beyond its traditional responsibilities,
and especially in areas with high political content. CABRIOLE had the
potential to brand the Defence Force as being on 'one side' in the employer-employee
contest which is so fundamental a feature of Australian society and, indeed,
possibly to identify the ADF as the ultimate enforcement arm for one political
party's agenda.
The central questions raised by Plan CABRIOLE and indeed by any consideration
of using the Defence Force to achieve economic goals are first, whether
or not it is appropriate so to employ the ADF and, if it is, under what
conditions and obeying what rules?
Defence Force Objectives
The ADF has clearly defined and specific objectives. These are spelt
out in the 1997-98 Defence Portfolio Budget Statement as follows:
The most fundamental responsibility of Government is to provide for the
defence of Australia, its people and its interests. This is reflected
in the Mission of the Defence Organisation:
To promote the Security of Australia, and to Protect its People and
Interests.(11)
In the light of this clear mission, it will be readily apparent that
use of the military to achieve other goals - as in industrial action situations-can
at best be considered a peripheral activity.
There are, to be sure, a wide range of activities which could similarly
be characterised as 'peripheral' to the core ADF objectives quoted above,
including many 'assistance to the civil community' activities. The Defence
Force was not raised to fight bushfires or rescue floodbound people, but
is regularly and uncontroversially employed on such tasks.
The critical point in considering ADF involvement, however, is that
civil assistance activities would enjoy the broad approval of the population
and the active cooperation of people at the point of delivery. There would
be no organised resistance to Defence Force activity in such cases. But
this is much less likely in the midst of a major industrial dispute. Where
the Defence Force involvement is non-controversial and welcome, routinely
the case in 'assistance to the civil community', the favourable prospects
for success at least do not militate against ADF involvement in activities
which, nevertheless, remain peripheral to the Forces' main tasks.
Plan CABRIOLE was cancelled by the Labor Government in 1986. Thus, when
the domestic airlines were grounded in August 1989 by pilots taking industrial
action in support of pay rises outside the then accepted wage fixation
guidelines (the pilots later resigned their jobs en masse), the
ADF had no plan in place for response to Government directions to provide
civilian transport until the airlines rebuilt themselves with new pilots.
The success of the Defence Force involvement in this dispute (Operation
IMMUNE) is well known; the ADF contribution to the pilots' eventual defeat
was of major significance. But it is appropriate to consider whether this
sets a viable general precedent for ADF involvement in other industrial
disputes. Several factors suggest that it does not.
Perhaps chief among these was the almost complete isolation of the Australian
Federation of Air Pilots (AFAP) from the vast majority of the union movement
and the people. For a variety of reasons, the AFAP could not count on
effective support from the ACTU, from other unions in the air transport
industry, from any Trades Hall Council or indeed from the people. It was
the 'maverick' status of the AFAP-notably wage demands widely seen as
excessive and a stubborn refusal to accept the constraints agreed to by
most unions under the rubric of 'the wage fixing guidelines' - which led
the bulk of the industrial labour movement to leave the AFAP to its fate.
Perhaps only the former Builders' Labourers' Federation (BLF) in recent
years has been so isolated from the mainstream union movement and thus
so vulnerable. The Pilots' Federation, by embarking on a campaign of bluff,
escalation and counter-bluff without mainstream support, sealed its own
fate and made Defence Force intervention against it tolerable, if not
entirely popular, for unions generally, and politically possible for a
Labor Government. And, of course, there was no suggestion of the use of
armed force.
Mention has already been made of the generally unfavourable nature of
the AFAP's physical situation, especially after its members resigned their
jobs. This meant that they were isolated from their former workplaces
and had no real chance of hindering the ADF, even had they wanted.
Thus, use of the Defence Force in circumstances where the target union-for
whatever reasons-lacks effective support from other unions and the ACTU,
and its members can be physically isolated from the workplace, has a fair
prospect of success. Equally, however, it follows that use of the ADF
in industrial action situations where the target union has mainstream
support, including that of the ACTU, and where the workforce retains access
to the workplace, has no precedent in the 1989 pilots' strike.
Depending on the type of industrial action, active hostility at the
delivery point may or may not constitute a problem. But a situation very
different to the pilots' strike could well emerge if the Army were moved
onto the waterfront to enforce disputed or controversial Government microeconomic
reforms or industrial relations policy. There, the striking workforce
is likely be present in strength and, most probably, unwilling to give
the ADF access to the workplace. Other unions may be involved in 'sympathy',
either directly or via the ACTU. Therefore, the possibility that force
will be required to give the ADF access to the wharves and to maintain
a safe and secure working environment for the troops cannot be excluded.
Given the integrated nature of economic activity, there is a possibility
that demands on the ADF might rapidly escalate. For example, even if securing
and operating wharves with the ADF is feasible, this does not guarantee
delivery of goods from wharves to warehousers and eventually retailers.
Transportation workers might refuse to handle goods off a military-run
waterfront; there might then be pressure for the ADF to provide land transport
as well. If the dispute escalated (perhaps as a union response to the
use of troops), more services might be targeted by unions than the ADF
has resources to support. Such escalatory spirals, well known to military
strategists, can run out of control, so that an action intended to protect
one essential service may at the end of the day result in the loss of
others.
The ADF recognises the inherent right to self-defence of a member threatened
with physical attack. In such circumstances the member is expected to
use the minimum force necessary for effective self-defence. This doctrine
of 'the minimum necessary force' has, because of its inherent reasonableness,
been generalised to apply to a wide range of circumstances: as noted,
it appeared in Plan CABRIOLE. But the prospect of unionists and ADF members
coming to blows on the waterfront would, if realised, certainly put to
the test Defence Force training of personnel in the practical application
of the minimum necessary force doctrine.
Although the most relevant current ADF document, Defence Instruction
(General) OPS 01-1, Defence Force Aid to the Civil Power (DFACP)-Policy
and Procedures, is classified, some indication of the ADF position
can be gleaned from a supplement to an unclassified paper. This paper,
Australian Defence Force Publication 6, Supplement 2, Land Operations,
exists in a 1996 draft and includes the following observations:
Occasionally, land forces will be required to provide support to the civil
power in law enforcement activities. Law enforcement tasks are the responsibility
of the Commonwealth, State and Territory law enforcement authorities.
However, situations may arise in which aid from the ADF is sought in support
of the measures undertaken by the Commonwealth and State governments.
This form of support is known as Defence Force Aid to the Civil Power
and varies from small scale support in the form of specialist capabilities
to deployments of military units on law enforcement operations...
Where there is any likelihood that members of the land force will
be required to use force, aid is only permitted by order of the Governor-General
in Council. In all such cases, the use of soldiers will be subject to
the primacy of the civil power, be permitted to use only minimum force
and will remain under military command.(12)
These observations are accurate. The Defence Act (s.51) provides
that, if a State Government requests it, the Governor-General can proclaim
that domestic violence exists in that State and call out the Defence Force
to assist in dealing with the problem. It is noteworthy that s.51 of the
Act specifically prohibits the use of the Reserve Forces in connexion
with an industrial dispute, so that only Regulars could be used in such
cases.
Presumably any attempt to enforce new industrial relations laws on the
waterfront by means of troops would be seen by the Defence Force as 'aid
to the civil power' and be managed accordingly. The classification of
the relevant Defence Instruction, however, precludes detailed analysis
at this point.
Thus a number of questions, some few foreshadowed in the preceding discussion
of Plan CABRIOLE, will need to be addressed by any policy envisaging use
of the ADF as an instrument, even in the last resort, of Government microeconomic
and industrial relations policy. Among these questions are:
- If the civilian police cannot maintain order, will the Defence Force
be required to do so under 'aid to the civil power' procedures, or under
some other procedure or new legislation?
- Will the Defence Force be required to protect property and equipment-eg,
loading/unloading cranes-if the police cannot?
- Will troops be authorised to use force (exclusive of weapons) to protect
themselves, the police, or equipment?
- If the police are outmatched, will any troops be charged with protecting
the wharves and their comrades working there, and would they then be
issued with weapons?
- Would troops obey an order to fire on unarmed civilians?
- Could action by unions in support of their waterfront colleagues create
further demands on the ADF for provision of services and, if so, could
there be an escalatory spiral sucking the ADF ever deeper into a national
industrial relations confrontation?
- To what extent can the Defence Force be diverted from its central
national security functions onto industrial relations activities without
compromising its core capacity and mission?
- If worst came to worst and serious violence, perhaps with fatalities,
broke out, could ADF involvement compromise its perceived neutrality
and impartiality in Australian domestic affairs? What effects would
this have on longer-term ADF relations with the community?
These questions can only be posed; they cannot be answered in advance
of the event. But it can be said with some confidence that there are a
number of very important issues and problems-notably those connected with
the use of force by ADF members-which Government and Defence Force planners
will need to address most carefully before the ADF is used on the waterfront,
if this course were ever adopted. The risks of error in this area, with
its hair-trigger sensitivities and pitfalls, are so great that a cautious
and thorough approach to the subject seems warranted.
- Cases include use of troops during the 1949 miner's strike; use of
troops at Bowen (Qld) during a mining dispute in 1953; use of the Air
Force during industrial action that grounded commercial flights between
Australia and New Zealand (1981) and most recently, Operation IMMUNE-the
Defence Force action during the 1989-90 pilots' dispute. Readers interested
in he strictly legal issues surrounding this kind of ADF activity should
obtain a copy of a paper entitled Call Out the Troops, by Elizabeth
Ward, to be reissued by the Parliamentary Library owards the end of
September 1997.
- Pamela Williams, 'Coalition's secret plan to break the docks union',
Australian Financial Review, 15 August 1997.
- The absence of other ADF contingency plans is attested in the Answer
to House of Representatives Question No.3991 (Hansard, 19 August
1986, p.171.) Development of CABRIOLE began in 1979, but was not finalised
until 1982.
- Lead time' is defence jargon for the time which must elapse from the
moment a decision is made to do something (acquire an equipment, undertake
an operation) until the decision can be put into practical effect.
- Both definitions are taken from Defence Instruction (Operations) 05-1,
Defence Assistance to the Civil Community Policy and Procedures,
issued on 12 February 1993. The Instruction governing Aid to the Civil
Power, where force may be used, is classified, though earlier versions
are available on the public record. As discussed in the body of the
present paper, some ndications of present ADF policy can also be garnered
from current unclassified material.
- Hansard (House), 19 August 1986, pp.66-7, Answer to Question
No.3743.
- Answering Parliamentary questions about CABRIOLE, Minister Beazley
said that the plan was drawn up in the period of the Fraser Government
(it is dated 1982), but went on to say that the plan was not drawn up
on the orders of that Government but on the initiative of the military
staff in Department of Defence (Central Office). (See Answer to House
of Representatives Question No.3743, Hansard, 19
August 1986.)
- The stated mission was to be carried out '...in circumstances not
involving the use of force by the Defence Force.' (Emphasis added).
- CABRIOLE para 1 (emphasis in the original).
- CABRIOLE, para 3.
- Department of Defence, Portfolio Budget Statements 1997-98,
p.5.
- Department of Defence, Australian Defence Force Publication (Operations
Series), ADFP 6, Supplement 2, Land Operations (Draft), November 1996,
paras 706 and 708.
Annex: Australian Joint Service Plan CABRIOLE
(declassified, full text-hard copy version of this paper; not available
on Internet).
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