Labor News from Australia/GL Wkly id BAA19700; Thu, 16 Oct 1997 01:20:52 -0400 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit from Green Left Weekly #293 10/15/97 Rio Tinto attacks the right to picket By James Vassilopoulos Coal & Allied, a subsidiary of Rio Tinto, has begun its attempt before the NSW Supreme Court to severely limit the right to picket in the strike against the Hunter Valley No 1 mine. The case began in the courts on October 7, after the Australian Industrial Relations Commission gave Rio Tinto the go-ato attempt to stop the picket line from being ``obstructive'' and potentially to sue 11 union officials and members. Rio Tinto is concentrating on undermining the picket line in the Hunter Valley. According to the multinational's barrister, John West QC, ``Protected action [industrial action permitted under the Workplace Relations Act] does not mean all action. It doesn't include picketing, and it certainly doesn't include illegal picketing.'' If Rio Tinto wins this case, the Hunter Valley strikers will not legally be able to picket and to stop coal from leaving the mine. A strike in that situation would be almost completely pointless. Workers' bargaining position will be severely weakened. The giant company, which is on track to make profits of $1 billion this year, will gut conditions and have free rein to sack workers. In a separate attack on the right to strike, a Victorian Court of Appeal decision makes it easier for businesses to take common law action against strikers. This court on October 6 overturned a ruling by a Supreme Court judge that the right to strike was a basic element of industrial relations. The case involved a dispute at some 40 labour-hire companies. The decision means that employers can more easily seek common law damages and other repressive measures. Rio Tinto's strategy is clear. It wants to break the coal mining union, like it has broken other unions in the metalliferous mines. By signing enterprise bargaining agreements at its other mines, it seeks to pick off one mine at a time. To break the picket line and get coal moving, Rio Tinto called on the AIRC to order train drivers in the Public Transport Union to cross the picket line, unless there are ``reasonable safety concerns'', which it did on October 7. The leadership of the PTU has left the train drivers to take their own position on whether to break the picket line. The company has built a 60-metre-long fence on either side of the railway tracks, to stop the picketers from blocking the train and to neutralise concerns of safety. Now it wants the Supreme Court to rule that the picket is illegal. On October 1, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union launched a 72-hour strike across 52 collieries, involving 8000 workers in what appeared to be major solidarity action for the embattled Hunter miners. The immediate cause of the strike was Rio Tinto issuing writs against 11 union activists and officials. The strike was called off after only a few hours. The October 3 Financial Review reported: ``CFMEU officials say they aborted the strike at the request of the NSW Premier, Mr Bob Carr''. Carr convened a meeting between the CFMEU and Rio Tinto the night the strike began. He had apparently put pressure on Rio Tinto to accept arbitration of the dispute, but it refused to do so. A meeting of the CFMEU's mining and energy national executive then decided to call off the strike after an ``intense debate'', according to the Financial Review. Another reason for calling off the strike seems to be that 20 coal companies where about to claim damages from the CFMEU under section 127 of the Workplace Relations Act. The CFMEU has now changed its demand for ``consent'' arbitration to the Carr position of compulsory arbitration. The difference is that with consent arbitration the strike can continue while the AIRC decides the case. This means the miners would be in a stronger position and that miners could not be provoked or intimidated. CFMEU national president John Maitland explained to Green Left Weekly on September 24, ``Compulsory arbitration means that the bargaining period is terminated, that the protected action is terminated. Our people will have to resume work and they will be faced with considerable intimidation and provocation.'' The ACTU is also supporting compulsory arbitration. The leadership of the CFMEU recommended to the Hunter miners that they accept compulsory arbitration at a mass meeting on October 9. It is likely that if the commission arbitrates, miners will lose significant conditions. However, Rio Tinto's tactics are for the commission not to decide the dispute, to keep the strike going, isolate the miners and extract the maximum destruction of conditions. Rio Tinto wants to be able to hire and fire workers rather than the union recruiting retrenched miners, to allocate all overtime, to have individual performance assessment and to use contractors and casual labourers. In another attack on miners, ARCO on October 1 sacked its entire work force of 312 at the Gordonstone mine, 50 kilometres west of Emerald, Queensland. ARCO wants to hire about 100 workers, all on individual contracts. BHP announced about one month go the retrenching of 800 workers from its NSW south coast coal mines. Unless the union movement as a whole develops a plan to fight the prohibition on solidarity measures, each workplace or industry will have to fend for itself, which will often result in conditions being lost and workers being sacked or casualised. A plan is required to make the penal powers of Reith's industrial legislation inoperative. A plan like in 1969, where all unions fought against the jailing of Clarrie O'Shea, the Victorian Tramways Union official. oOo Solidarity with striking Gordonstone miners By Brett Kuskopf EMERALD - Miners have entered their second week of picketing the giant underground Gordonstone coalmine in central Queensland. US mining company ARCO has closed the mine and issued dismissal notices to 312 mining and engineering workers at the mine. Miners and their partners packed out the Town Hall to discuss future strategies for the workers, including maintaining the picket line, gathering local community support and legal action by the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Engineering Union (CFMEU). To escape provisions of industrial relations law on dismissal - last on, first off - ARCO has decided to close the mine down and then re-employ miners on new terms. It is part of a nationally coordinated campaign by ARCO with one objective - to break the CFMEU, the strongest and most militant union in Australia. The short-term strategy of the mine management is harassment and intimidation of union loyalists. Thugs and goons employed as security guards by ARCO have occupied houses vacated by departing families. In one case, guards occupied houses surrounding a miner's house after he had joked at a meeting that ARCO needn't worry about him blowing up the house because he would blow up the bridges instead. The company has made it clear that those on the picket line will not be re-employed. The dispute will heat up at the end of the month when the mine management attempts to evict workers who are not re-employed. The Gordonstone management has all the hallmarks of the ``Americanisation'' sweeping the mining industry. Union officials have been met with mine leadership teams, including solicitors, managers and directors. Members of these ``teams'' are screened by ARCO's Denver uarters and implement their orders without question. ARCO workers face some bitter and prolonged battles, and the workers of Emerald are learning the meaning of solidarity and community. The Gordonstone miners welcome support and donations. The picket line can be contacted by telephone on 0418 759 765 or 0417 742 287, or by faxing (079) 824 471. oOo ANU staff keep up the fight By David Gosling CANBERRA - National Tertiary Education and Industry Union members in the Faculty of Arts at the Australian National University held a stop-work meeting on October 8 and voted unanimously to impose a ban on the transmission of course results. The ban is in response to the administration's refusal to back down from its restructuring plan, which includes 32 sackings. The meeting also resolved to meet again on October 17 to consider further action, including a ban on teaching. A decision on a motion calling on the university to renew all contracts terminating at the end of 1998 (in order to deal with the atmosphere of insecurity and the possibility of the administration arbitrarily not renewing contracts), was deferred to the October 17 meeting. At the meeting, Doug Kelly, president of the ANU branch of the union, said that the union was using freedom of information legislation to uncover details of a pay-out the university had received from its superannuation scheme. While the arts faculty is still being told it must solve its artificial debt to the rest of the university, it appears the money received from the super scheme could pay the salaries of the 32 staff to be sacked for a number of years. As part of a NUS national week of action in defence of higher education and Abstudy, students and staff are organising a speak-out on October 16 and organising an ANU contingent for a proposed city-wide rally. oOo CPSU members debate Centrelink agreement By Jim McIlroy BRISBANE - The campaign by Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) members in Centrelink, the federal government's new ``one-stop shop'' services delivery agency, for improvements in a draft agency agreement, is coming to a crunch. Following widespread industrial action by union members on September 24, talks between Centrelink management and union officials produced some gains, but left many members still deeply unhappy. Mark Gepp, CPSU section secretary covering the Centrelink area, published a union bulletin on October 10 stating: ``Three months of negotiations between CPSU and Centrelink management have seen great improvements in the wages and conditions now on offer to you in Centrelink. The negotiators now have a draft agreement which satisfies the most important parts of our original claim.'' CPSU National Challenge - a network of union activists which speard a rank-and-file campaign to demand strong industrial action against the Howard government's assault on the public service - disagrees. A CPSU National Challenge statement d, ``Not Good Enough'' states: ``On balance, although improvements have been made on the previous draft, the agreement remains unacceptable. The pay offer is not sufficient compensation for the major concessions we are being asked to make.'' The statement cites the loss of the previous Department of Social Security and Student Assistance Centres' Wednesday afternoon office closures as a major concession to management, restricting whole-office meeting time and increasing pressure on staff. Extending office opening hours and work on public holidays is ``possibly the most significant concession staff would be making in this agreement'', the statement says. Although ``voluntary'' in the first instance, ``By accepting this agreement we are in reality opening the door to Centrelink management's stated aim of a permanent expansion of the agency's opening hours'', the statement points out. Other important issues include regulated hours of duty, restricting access to flexitime; no limits on permanent part-time work; and recruitment through private employment agencies. A particular concern for Centrelink's teleservice centre staff is the new ``productivity improvement program'' in the agreement. In return for all this, pay rises totalling some 4% for the 12-month life of the agreement, still remain subject to productivity increases, for individual offices and Centrelink as a whole. The National Challenge statement continues: ``An all-staff vote is scheduled for November 11. Without union endorsement management know they could very well lose this vote. ``We can win a better deal and further gains if we stand firm. Moreover, once this agreement is certified, the Workplace Relations Act prohibits further action for its duration. We must make sure we get the best possible deal now ... Vote No to this draft.'' [Jim McIlroy is a CPSU delegate at a Centrelink Teleservice Centre in Brisbane.] -30- Six-month airmail subscriptions (22 issues) to Green Left Weekly are available for A$80 (North America) and A$90 (South America, Europe & Africa) from PO Box 394, Broadway NSW 2007, Australia http://www.peg.apc.org/~greenleft/ e-mail: greenleft@peg.apc.org ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytlab-10.16.97-01:20:54-15159