BY TOM ALTER
SYDNEY, Australia - A week-long trip to Australia in late May, talking to dock workers, coal miners, meatpackers, and students, gave this reporter a firsthand feel for the impact of the battle to defend the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) against the efforts by the bosses and government to bust their union. Accompanying me on this fact-finding visit was Gale Shangold, a garment worker and the Socialist Workers candidate for governor of California.

Patrick Stevedores, backed by the government, had provoked the labor battle by sacking its entire workforce April 7 to try to break the MUA. After a month of maintaining solid picket lines, organizing mass rallies, and other activities, the unionists forced the bosses to back down and they returned to work.

Every worker we talked to, starting with wharfies at the CTAL company's Port Botany dock, where we spent time in the lunch room, said that while the return to work by MUA members was a victory, the fight was far from over.

Dave McElhinney, who has worked at CTAL for two years, commented on the strike, "It helped bring us all together. If we don't stick together we'll all get shafted.... This brought the old and the new blokes together."

Following the wharfies' return to work on May 7, Patrick demanded up to 750 redundancies (layoffs) and wage cuts of up to 30 percent. It proposed annual salaries to eliminate premium pay for overtime. Some 200 job cuts would come from contracting out cleaning, security, maintenance, and lashing jobs.

We met with Bobby Lee, one of the workers declared "undesirable" by the bosses. He is a delegate who is among 25 wharfies who Patrick has refused to put back to work. Patrick claims these unionists intimidated and threatened bosses during the lockout. The MUA is taking these cases to court as unfair dismissals.

"The government says they want reform on the waterfront. But what they really want to do is crush the union movement. If they knock off the MUA, the rest [of the unions] will fall like dominoes," said Lee.

These comments ring true with a number of workers, and explain the large number of workers from other industries and unions who joined the MUA in their struggle on the picket lines.

One such worker is Bram Bernie, a coal miner who works at the Howick coal mine outside of Singleton. Joining supporters of the Communist League in Australia, we talked to coal miners at Howick as they got off work. Afterward we met with Bernie and talked for several hours. Bernie reported that miners had just won a victory at the Hunter Valley No. 1 mine, where a strike last year beat back Rio Tinto's attempt to bust the union.

He explained that after miners returned to work the company demanded a secret ballot election to ask miners if they wanted to bargain through the union or sign individual contracts. The bosses claimed that the only reason miners had not signed individual contracts was that they were being intimidated by the union. Rio Tinto announced that 192 miners would be laid off at the Hunter Valley No 1 mine in July. Attempting to sway the vote, the bosses said that they would do whatever was possible to keep those who voted against the union but in the case that the layoffs reached these miners they would receive an extra $22,000 in redundancy pay. Despite the bosses' campaign, the miners voted 93 percent to stay with their union.

Two days after the discussion with Bernie, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the Australian Industrial Relations Commission ruled in favor of the coal bosses, ending the "last-on-first-off" rule giving companies the ability to retrench miners in economic downturns on "merit" rather than seniority. The ruling also ended rules giving preference of employment to union members and retrenched union members.

Bernie said that the coal companies have already begun to hire workers with no mining experience, hoping to erode the union. He said that at the Howick mine, which is also owned by Rio Tinto, the company recently spent millions of dollars trying to screen new hires through tests and interviews. Much to the disappointment of the company, the fourteen new hires all signed up to join the union on their first day at work.

Bernie had come to the MUA picket lines in Sydney with two friends of his, Tim Ireland and Steven Hawkins. Ireland and Hawkins are members of the meat workers union and work at the Fletcher meat works in Dubbo. The socialists candidates traveled to Dubbo to meet with Ireland and Hawkins and to tour the meat works.

Ireland and Hawkins felt being at the MUA picket lines had a deep impact on them. "I couldn't believe the response we got. I was a bit overwhelmed. I couldn't wait to get back to Dubbo to tell the truth," said Hawkins. "Next time we could get a bus to go with us from Dubbo to Sydney," said Ireland. Dubbo is roughly six hours north of Sydney.

Negotiations between Fletcher and the meat workers union are currently under way. Both Ireland and Hawkins feel the government is out to bust the meat workers union along with the MUA.

Many workers see the alliance between the bosses and the government in their joint attack on the working class. Workers talked often about the need to get rid of the current government led by conservative John Howard since March 1996. A number of workers believe the way to do this is by electing the Australian Labour Party (ALP) into control of the government.

Ireland, Hawkins, and Bernie are supporters of the ALP. While acknowledging the role Labour governments have played in carrying out the bosses' attacks on the working class, these workers are fighting within the ALP for a class perspective. As Ireland put it, "We're the industrial wing of the Dubbo ALP.

Tom Alter is the Socialist Workers candidate for governor of Iowa and a member of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1149.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home