Art Centre Melbourne workers face a battle between industrial and cultural policy

For the first time in decades, union members at Arts Centre Melbourne (ACM) are taking protected industrial action.

Over the last month, workers have taken their campaign to audiences, leafleting patrons and opening a Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) performance with an announcement about pay and conditions. Last week, union members stopped work for 30 minutes ahead of an MSO performance.

The action follows stalled wage negotiations between ACM management and members of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, Community and Public Sector Union Victoria, and Electrical Trades Union.

More than 95% of union members voted in favour of protected industrial action.

According to the unions, ACM staff wages have fallen 10% behind inflation since 2022, while almost 40% of the workforce is paid at the minimum award rate. In line with the Victorian government’s wage cap, management has offered a 3% pay increase, but under current cost-of-living pressures, members argue this amounts to a cut in real wages.

The dispute is unfolding amid broader funding crises across Australia’s arts and cultural sectors. In Victoria alone, state funding has reduced by over $20 million since 2022.

For the unions, these issues are interrelated. In a joint petition, members are calling on Victorian Minister for Creative Industries Vicki Ward to “increase funding to Arts Centre Melbourne and give workers a real pay increase that reverses years of real wage decline.”

These are serious concerns, for the livelihoods of ACM workers and for sustaining Melbourne’s cultural life.

Yet these joint demands highlight a tension between industrial and cultural policy.

Where in most other industries bargaining occurs between workers and employers, in subsidised cultural institutions wage negotiations are often inseparable from questions of government support.

Before arts funding

Cultural and industrial policy were not always so closely intertwined.

In 1944, Actors Equity of Australia led a strike against commercial theatre giant J. C. Williamson’s over their use of non-union labour.

Over three weeks, union members stopped work across several productions, distributed pamphlets, and picketed performances at five venues across Sydney and Melbourne.

As the dispute escalated, the Melbourne Tramways and Omnibus Employees Association “black-banned” transport to non-union performances, while the NSW Trades and Labour Council issued a statewide boycott notice against Theatre Royal.

The strike ended when federal Labor minister Jack Holloway intervened through the arbitration system. Williamson’s performers would be required to join the union.

The dispute was resolved through the institutions of industrial relations. The government acted as an arbiter, not a funding gatekeeper.

A shift in the policy landscape

The expansion of cultural subsidy in the 1970s reshaped the industrial terrain. Whitlam’s funding boom enabled an explosion of new arts organisations. But the grant system increasingly tied wages and conditions to government support.

The consequences became apparent in 1981, when substantial cuts to federal arts funding under the Fraser government resulted in the defunding of eight theatre companies. In response, unions and arts advocacy organisations coordinated a national rally called Stage Crisis Day.

Unlike the Williamson’s strike, activists were mobilising against government decisions rather than a single employer. Supported by high profile figures including actors Mel Gibson and John Bell and playwright David Williamson, the campaign ultimately secured the restoration of around 80% of cut funding.

This feat proved political mobilisation could win back cut funds. But in doing so, it further shifted the focus of industrial action away from bargaining and towards funding.

The politics of subsidy

When workers in the Williamson’s dispute withdrew their labour, government intervention was contained to the industrial relations system. In the cultural policy arena, ministers hold extraordinary power over the sector’s resources.

In 2014, artists and arts workers withdrew from the Biennale of Sydney in protest against its founding partner Transfield’s operation of offshore detention centres.

Arts Minister George Brandis labelled the boycott “shameful” and said future funding agreements should demand recipients don’t “unreasonably refuse private sector funding”.

The next year, he diverted $100 million from the Australia Council, to create an arts fund which would not be held at arms-length from government, but would be distributed under his own discretion.

In a dramatic fallout, the Brandis “raids” left more than 60 arts organisations without funding, and cost thousands of cultural sector jobs.

Where historic disputes were resolved in a matter of weeks, it took two years of arts organisations, workers, advocacy groups and unions fighting against the changes before much of the funding was restored (though not all).

These events showed not only the significant shift in the site of industrial relations, but how much the sector’s time, resources, and collective action were now devoted to preserving the funding system.

Lessons of history

These disputes trace the increasingly central role of government funding in shaping working conditions in the arts sector.

In 1944, workers pursued their claims through industrial relations.

By 1981, they were more frequently organising around funding.

By 2015, the Brandis raids revealed how profoundly those two spheres have become entwined, and the political risks when arts workers’ conditions are set at the discretion of the arts minister.

At historic lows in union membership, ACM workers face considerable challenges in mobilising at the scale of historic strikes. As the dispute continues, the question is not whether collective action works, but how it adapts in a sector increasingly shaped by cultural policy.

Izabella Nantsou received funding from the Australian Historical Association’s Allan Martin Award.