What to Make of Hospo Voice?
Peter Craig
11/08/2021
Like many other members of the nascent hospitality-focused union Hospo Voice (HV), I was surprised at the start of last month by an email from the digital-only operation, which is the hospitality arm of the UWU. After all, it isn’t every day that one receives news – from the horse’s mouth – that “your” union intends to betray basic tenets upon which over a century of worker solidarity has been built.
As many may have heard, HV recently announced “Hospo Voice 2.0” – a lovely bit of naming poetry considering how the transition to “Web 2.0” opened the door for the exploitative greed of the modern day internet. A little on the nose, perhaps.
HV is giving their membership structure a subscription service style shake-up. Members will have to choose from three tiers – Basic ($9 a month), Standard ($29), and Plus ($79!). Individual members within a union paying different dues is nothing new: higher earning members often contribute more to finance union activities, while less well-off workers in the same industry still enjoy all the benefits of union membership for a lesser fee – an expression of the egalitarianism and solidarity upon which the union movement was founded. Dare I say: from each according to their ability, to each according to their need?
Not so under Hospo Voice’s new model. Want to access the union’s Mobilise app, or various IR workshops and “industry masterclasses”? $29 a month. But if you’d like the privilege of consulting with your union about employment rights or industrial relations it will set you back just under a thousand bucks a year! Think Spotify or Netflix, except you’re paying for the privilege of fighting for your basic rights. Considering the state of industrial relations in this country, it’s almost impressive that those running HV found new depths to plumb. But, where there’s a will, there’s a way.
According to an email from HV, the new scheme will offer members “more power to win”, “more ways to participate”, and “more benefits”. Of course, this only applies to those willing to shell out the top rate. What happens to the underemployed, exploited, casualised, abused workers who one imagines would be most in need of union support and who can’t afford the $79 a month? Well, they will have to content themselves with “participat[ing] in and support[ing] Hospo Voice campaigns”, and discounted movie tickets. Perhaps Hospo Voice imagines a discounted movie will distract workers from the fact that their union is extorting them.
The union claims the tiered model is necessary to maintain financial viability. Why HV cannot finance itself along the same lines as any other union, and instead feels the need to lock workers’ rights behind a paywall, is unexplained. One wonders how a digital-only outfit, which operates largely on the backs of many dedicated volunteers, has such large overheads that it has become unviable within a year of going nationwide. If HV is really spending so much on advertising and outsourced app development that it is on the brink of ruin, perhaps it should try some other novel ideas for growth, like workplace organising and building density. Instead of reaching out to workers who have spent a year being bombarded by worsening conditions, union bosses would rather reach into the pockets of these very workers.
The union is certainly not short of passionate people at the grassroots who are willing to dedicate themselves to building real working class power in an industry that is famously rife with the worst kinds of exploitation and harassment. Indeed, many of those members are leading the fight against the changes, and I encourage readers to join them. That being said, it is a sorry state of affairs when workers have to spend more time battling their so-called leaders than the bosses who exploit their labour. Time and again we see workers having to fight for the right to fight for their rights against complicit ALP-affiliated union leaderships. Let us not forget that HV was launched by Jess Walsh, United Voice secretary and Labor Senator for Victoria – apparently this kind of representation is what the “left wing” of the Labor Party has to offer workers.
As a lifelong hospitality worker, when Hospo Voice first went nationwide, I could relate to the many unrepresented workers who felt a naive sense of pride that they finally had a union they could call their own. However, these undemocratic changes spit in the face of any member who believes they have any say in how the union operates, let alone how the union might lead proletarians in the industry in a confrontation with capital. Unfortunately, this is a pattern we see play out time after time, in industry after industry. The apparatchiks of bourgeois political parties cannot be trusted to lead the workers’ movement. Australian workers deserve better, and it is only by building a militant, class-conscious trade unionism in this country that we can give it to them.