Boeing

No right to bargain collectively under Australian law

It's is one of the longest-running industrial disputes in Australia's history. The 27 workers have parked three caravans outside the gates and become the frontline of the nation's industrial war. Overhead the F18 hornet fighter planes buzz.

Boeing, the world's biggest airline maker, refuses to negotiate a collective agreement with the workers or allow them union representation. PM John Howard has publicly backed the company and is arming them with even more ammunition with his new IR laws.

The Boeing dispute is the shape of things to come. It proves there are no work choices under a Howard Government.

C-stamp aircraft maintenance technician Douglas Fernandez is one of the 27 striking workers on the picket line at Williamtown. It is his job to keep the Hornets combat ready. But because he refused to sign an individual contract he and his workmates are out the gates.

"We are the past, present and the future of industrial relations in this country," he told ABC Radio (Background Briefing) "We are trying to negotiate a union EBA which we can't get. We have no choice. We have no choice for a 38 hour week."

Doug's workmate, aircraft maintenance engineer Adam Burgoyne, also warns that his predicament will soon be the lot of most Australian workers:

"What we've been working under for the last 3 1/2 years of these common-law individual contracts is a prime example of the government reforms that are coming," he said. "They're going to be played out in every workplace across the nation. We're examples of how that situation corrodes and diminishes you over a period of time. And you've got to look into the future. These things might not happen to you this year or next year, but what's going to happen to you in five years' time when the workload changes, or your work environment changes?"

Most of the workers were happy enough with their contracts for the first year or so. But then things changed.

Engineer Luke Reeves told ABC Radio they were forced to breach safe work practices. Like having to climb into the fuel tanks of fighter jets and work inside them exposed to fuel, residues and other contaminants with bare minimum breathing apparatus and protective clothing.

None of them were members of a union.

The workers tried to stand up for their rights, but got nowhere. That's when they called in the union and the town got behind them.

Boeing claims that the 27 men are a minority, that 90 per cent of the national company workforce choose individual contracts. Of the 81 Boeing aircraft maintenance engineers at Williamtown, 25 are taking industrial action.

The Australian Workers' Union argues that at the time the strike started, a majority of the workforce supported a collective agreement. The union wants a secret ballot. The company refuses.

Even under the old laws there's no obligation for an employer to bargain with unions, even if the majority in a particular workplace say they want a union to represent them.

The MUA has been solidly behind the workers from day one. Over $10,000 has been donated to the picket. National Secretary Paddy Crumlin when addressing Boeing workers promised the full ongoing support of the MUA in their struggle.

"Even the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada recognise your right to collectively bargain," said AWU National Secretary Bill Shorten. "We want to expose the fact that there is no right to bargain left in this country even now."

Bill Shorten said Boeing workers would not have got so far without MUA support in this struggle.

"We're proud of our support for these blokes," said Newcastle Branch Secretary Jim Boyle. "We're all going to be facing the same sort of thing before long under this government."

ACTU Secretary Greg Combet says the Boeing dispute is proof that the right to bargain collectively isn't protected.

"Under the new laws we expect there might be more disputes like this because the issues are issues of principle. There's a group of workers employed by Boeing who wish to collectively bargain with their employer and be represented by a union, and yet even under the current laws, as the Prime Minister observed in parliament recently, the company is quite entitled to just say to the employees and their union, 'Get lost, we don't care about you, we're not negotiating with you. If people want a job here, they have to work under the terms the management decide, and those terms alone.' And that's what's at issue."

But the Minister for Workplace Relations Kevin Andrews says there's no need to force employers and employees to bargain with each other through the law. In a workers' market, workers always have the choice to go elsewhere.

The workers aren't going anywhere else. They are staying put. But the union is. After discussions between the ACTU, AWU and MUA, the unions took the fight outside the country.

A delegation of Boeing workers visited their American colleagues on a picket line in Seattle in October. The US comrades are on strike over pensions, health care and job security.

The American workers were horrified to hear that Boeing in Australia refuses point blank to accept the right of its workers to be represented by a union in discussions about wages and conditions. The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which represents 18,400 Boeing machinists across Oregon and Seattle, pledged their solid support for the Newcastle workers.

The ACTU has won the support of the biggest US union group. ACTU president Sharan Burrow and her counterpart John Sweeney, president of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organisations, met in Washington in October to put Boeing on notice that the AFL-CIO was lending its support to ACTU affiliate the Australian Workers' Union and its members at Williamtown.

She told The Weekend Australian that the AFL-CIO had agreed it would "do everything it can to pressure the company to go to the bargaining table with the AWU".

The ACTU coalition with the AFL-CIO will also establish a shareholder activist campaign to try to up the pressure on Boeing.

Meanwhile, on the home front the NSW government has used special ministerial powers to drag Boeing before the state industrial umpire.

Boeing Australia is chaired by former Liberal leader Andrew Peacock.