Re: Australian Miners Resist Union Busting

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From: bghauk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Brian Hauk)
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Subject: Australian Miners Resist Union Busting
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Date: 20 Mar 1996 04:33:39 GMT
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>from the Militant, vol.60/no.12                         March 25, 1996

BY MARNIE KENNEDY
  SYDNEY, Australia - Three hundred miners from across New
South Wales rallied February 15 outside the offices here of
Novacoal, a subsidiary of CRA Ltd. The rally marked six months
on the picket line by 30 striking coal miners from the Vickery
open-cut mine near Gunnedah in northern New South Wales. The
strikers are resisting CRA's attempt to impose shifts of 12 and
a half hours.
  Late last year the Vickery miners, members of the United
Mineworkers Division of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and
Energy Union (CFMEU), rejected an agreement negotiated through
the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) that
included 12-hour shifts. The AIRC has recommended on several
occasions that they return to work.
  Bill Kelty, secretary of the Australian Council of Trade
Unions (ACTU) and John Maitland, national president of the
CFMEU, addressed the rally. Also present were CFMEU members
Alan Verzeletti and David Rutherford, who had been on strike
against CRA at its Comalco bauxite mine in Weipa in far north
Queensland. They traveled to the Vickery picket line after the
demonstration.
  In Weipa the following day, workers who are members of the
CFMEU went on strike for 48 hours after stopping work for a
meeting. The evening before the strike Nigel Gould, the CFMEU
lodge secretary at Weipa, said in a phone interview that CRA is
stalling on negotiations following a January 23 decision by the
AIRC that awarded the strikers pay increases and back pay and
ruled that CRA must recognize the workers' right to union
representation.
  For seven weeks in late 1995 some 75 workers in Weipa struck
demanding the right to union representation, and equal pay with
the majority of the workforce at the mine who are on individual
contracts.
  Over a two-year period CRA had signed up a large majority of
the workforce at Weipa to individual contracts by offering wage
increases of up to A$20,000 (US$15,300). This was part of a
company-wide union-busting drive. Some 11,000 of CRA's 16,000
employees are now on nonunion individual contracts.
  The contracts deny workers the right to strike or to be
represented by a union. Work hours, pay rates, and sick pay are
at the discretion of the company.
  Labor turnover at the Weipa mine is up to 30 percent at
times, Gould said, with these contracts imposed on all new
hires.
  Gould described the January 23 AIRC decision as "a stepping
stone." He said, "We have got to win the hearts and minds of
the majority. When we have got the numbers, we can fight for a
fair and equitable award [contract]."
  The strikers' intransigence won them widespread solidarity,
including national strikes of maritime and coal unions. During
the strike they maintained a floating picket line that
disrupted the shipping of bauxite. They defied an AIRC back-to-
work order, legal action against their picket lines, and writs
for damages against individual strikers and their unions. The
workers refused to be intimidated by arrests of pickets and
surveillance by private security cops. Strikers report that
they were supported by many of the workers on individual
contracts.
  On February 15 miners from CRA's Argyle diamond mine in the
far north of Western Australia also walked off the job for 24
hours demanding that CRA negotiate with the union. Paul Baker,
convener of the Argyle Combined Union Negotiating Committee,
and an Argyle miner for 10 years, said in a phone interview
that of the 450 workers at the mine, 150 have refused
individual contracts and are still union members covered by
collective bargaining contracts.
  Individual contracts were brought in by CRA at Argyle in
late 1994. About half the miners signed individual contracts at
that time, Baker said, and others signed under pressure later,
or quit their jobs. "The guys at Weipa have been a real
inspiration to us," he said.
  Reflecting their determination to press the fight against
CRA, Weipa miner Verzeletti told the Militant at the February
15 rally in Sydney, "Everybody's ready to go again now. The
strike is not over yet."

  Marnie Kennedy is a member of the Australian Manufacturing
Workers' Union at F. Muller in Sydney. Bob Aiken, a member of
the AWU-FIME union at the Capral aluminium sheet mill in
Sydney, contributed to the article.


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** End of text from cdp:militant.news **



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