IR Revolt

A century and a half ago working men and women were in the streets fighting for an 8-hour day. Now we are back to square one.
Under the new IR regime, an 8-hour day is no longer a right. Workers can be forced to work unpaid overtime weekends and public holidays. Many more hard won conditions like job security, the right to bargain collectively and safety training are also gone. Australian workers are back on the streets and on the airwaves fighting for their rights.
MUA National Secretary Paddy Crumlin gave the toast to May Day at the South Sydney Leagues Club on May 2, recalling the bloody riots of Chicago in the 1880s where workers gave their lives in the battle for the 8-hour day. But the origins of May Day are Australian.
“The 8-hour day is finished under Howard,” he said. “Labour tradition is so intrinsically a part of Australian culture and they are going to take it away. Our hearts weld together as we toast the blood that has been lost, the achievements of our forebears. Our determination and our struggle is their struggle.”
In Queensland, the only Australian state where May 1 is celebrated as a public holiday, a record 35,000 people took to the streets of Brisbane.
Sacking Spree
Meanwhile employers celebrated the arrival of new IR laws on Monday, March 27, with a spate of sackings nationwide.
Cowra was the first to make headlines. The employer stood down his entire workforce, then offered them individual contracts on lower pay and conditions for the same job.
The Maritime Union was not immune. A Cairns seafarer got his letter of dismissal from the Wunmna on the very Monday the legislation became law, Captain Cook delegate Maz had his hours cut back to almost zilch (again), and Diamond Offshore announced that its marine crew of 15 MUA IRs working on the Ocean Bounty offshore rig were to be dumped in favour of roustabouts on individual contracts (see p8).
Meanwhile, in Sydney, Ausport Marine, which had refused to sign off on their EBA since Christmas or pay 19 mooring workers their super, has demanded half the workforce take forced redundancies. (see box)
In the building industry, a bunch of construction workers got their pay docked for pausing to pass the bucket around for the widow and children of a fallen comrade, killed on the job; a Melbourne casual working in a photographic lab was sacked on the spot after working up to 40 hours a week for more than six months; a union delegate got done for “smirking” at Finlay Engineering, Melbourne with his 40 workmates forced onto substandard AWAs the next day; teenager Amber Oswald had her pay at the local juice joint squeezed; 70 Queensland miners were sued $20,000 each for refusing to sleep in flea and sewage infested accommodation; and a former John Howard supporter Maree Filipczuk said she’d never vote for him again after being sacked over the phone as sales assistant for asking the boss at the House of Cillini clothing chain why superannuation contributions had stopped.
Unions got most of these cases enough media attention to be overturned. But that will not put a stop to bad bosses making use of bad laws. They are just going to get better at it. And a government WorkChoices seminar “Ensuring Compliance and Managing Change in the Workplace” held in Sydney in April was all about helping them do just that.
Sydney Branch Assistant Secretary Paul Garrett and Port Botany wharfie Sean Ambrose infiltrated the conference.
“It was a sickening and gut-wrenching experience,” said Sean. “The only questions that the employers continually asked were: ‘How can we sack workers?’ ‘How can we sack workers and not have to pay their redundancies?’ and ‘How can I sack workers on compensation?’”
“The fancy name of the conference concealed its real aim, which was to ensure that Australia’s largest and most powerful corporations understand the extent of the new IR laws and how to do in unions, reduce pay and working conditions,” said Assistant Branch Secretary Paul Garrett.
“The usual suspects were in attendance — Boral, Westpac, Optus, Qantas, and the Australian Industry Group representing manufacturing employers. All in all 150 employers were represented. It was organised by the extreme right wing group — the Committee for Economic Development of Australia, one of Australia’s leading conservative think tanks that brings together government representatives, employers and right-wing academics.”
Meanwhile Workplace Minister Kevin Andrews hailed as “good news for workers” the first greenfields non-union agreement by John Holland at BHP Billiton's Pilbara port expansion. It allows people to be paid $130 a week less than colleagues on a union agreement, at the same site.
The Margins
The MUA is all too aware that “to get rid of these laws, we have to get rid of Howard” and will be jointly funding the Sky Channel coverage on the National Day of Protest scheduled for late June, with the CFMEU miners.
Assistant National Secretary Mick Doleman is co-ordinating the union campaign.
The federal elections are not due until the end of next year, but unions are already campaigning to unseat the government.
ACTU research last election determined that one in three union members voted for the Howard government and a key strategy is to contact members who reside in marginal seats in the coming weeks.
The campaign involves exposing abuse of the IR laws and their impact on working families in the marginal electorates on the ground.
As one journalist writing for The Sydney Morning Herald remarked after her 16 year old fell victim to the laws in the first week they took effect, mums and dads are finding IR issues “walk through their front doors in tears”.