Labor News from Green Left Weekly #292 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Labor News from Green Left Weekly #292 9/28/97 Hunter Valley miners continue the fight By Jane Beckmann HUNTER VALLEY - Last week the dispute at the Hunter Valley No. 1 coal mine near Singleton escalated. Unable to defeat the miners, Rio Tinto has applied to the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) to be allowed to seek Supreme Court injunctions or damages against the union for pickets that have prevented coal trains reaching the mine. The IRC deputy president, Justice Alan Boulton, issued Rio Tinto a certificate allowing it to seek injunctions or damages. The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union then sought a stay of proceedings against the IRC, but this was refused by Justice Tony McIntyre. A second appeal by the CFMEU will be heard in the IRC this week. The state government has intervened in the IRC hearing to support the miners, arguing that Boulton had not taken the necessary legal steps before issuing the certificate. As the CFMEU has pointed out, the certificates should not have been issued because the pickets were part of a legal enterprise bargaining strike at the mine and did not constitute a secondary boycott. Around 15 union officials have been named by Rio Tinto in the application and, if it is allowed to go a the company could sue them for millions of dollars in lost coal sales. The federal industrial relations minister, Peter Reith, has encouraged the company to seek common law damages against the unionists. Rio Tinto has now also applied to the IRC for orders to force train drivers from the NSW government's FreightCorp to cross the picket lines; until now the drivers have refused to cross on safety grounds. A supplier to Rio Tinto is also taking action against its workers, who have refused to cross the picket to repair machinery at the mine. After Boulton's decision, the ACTU called a meeting in Sydney of the maritime, rail and road transport union leaders and pledged to support the 430 miners involved in the strike. The next day, meetings of union delegates around the country unanimously supported the strike. This gave the CFMEU a mandate to continue the fight with national support. The union's district vice-president, Mick Kelly, has stated publicly that this might include a national miners' strike. * Cairns wharfies win `for all unions' By Bill Mason BRISBANE - The victory of the waterside workers in Cairns in the week ending September 19 was a win ``for the Maritime Union of Australia and for all unions'', MUA spokesperson Col Davies told a forum at the Paddington Workers Club here on September 25. The forum was sponsored by the united transport unions, the MUA, the Public Transport Union and the Transport Workers Union. Davies led the MUA campaign in Cairns, which defeated the US shipping company International Purveyors' move to sack unionised wharfies and replace them with non-union labour. Davies told the meeting of around 40 people that this was ``a resounding defeat for the Howard government'', which had provoked the dispute as a test case for its union-busting Workplace Relations Act. However, this is ``only round one'' of a long struggle to defeat the government's drive to smash the MUA, Davies warned. Davies quoted the letter of support from the International Transport Federation of unions, which was decisive in halting International Purveyors' attack. The letter promised a ``worldwide campaign'' of solidarity with the MUA. He also reported that unions from around Australia sent messages of support, and that the Cairns community had assisted the struggle. This campaign shows the ``urgent need for unity'' of all workers, Davies said. * International action for Liverpool dockers By James Vassilopoulos From Los Angeles to Fremantle, Copenhagen to Durban, actions in solidarity with sacked Liverpool dockers were held on September 8. September is the second anniversary of the dockers' struggle to keep their jobs. The action was most powerfully supported in ports in Sweden, Denmark, Portugal, South Africa and on the US west coast, where workers struck for 8-24 hours. The call for an international day of action came from the Montreal international dockers' conference in May. This was the second such day of action, the first one occurring on January 20 at 105 ports in 27 countries. The latest action took various forms, from 24-hour stoppages like that at Gothenburg in Sweden, to stop-work meetings and showings of Ken Loach's documentary, The Flickering Flame. In Sweden, all ports organised by the Swedish Dockworkers Union stopped the containers of ACL and CAST, companies that still use the Liverpool docks, for 24 hours. Ongoing actions are to follow. After listening to speeches from Liverpool dockers and Women of the Waterfront, workers at the port of Copenhagen walked off the job. In Amsterdam, all day stop-work meetings were held. These dockers say they supported the English workers because they too are facing privatisation, job losses and casualisation. In Australia, all major ports stopped for five hours. P&O ports took a complaint to the Industrial Relations Commission. There was an eight-hour shutdown an all ports on the US coast from San Diego, California, to Dutch Harbour, Alaska. In San Francisco, members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union rallied outside the British consulate to demand that the Blair government re-hire the fired workers. They were joined by striking Bay Area Rapid Transport workers. In South Africa a national port day of action was held demanding a national dock labour scheme and supporting the struggles in Liverpool and in Western Australia against the ``third wave'' of industrial legislation. A mass rally was held in Durban. The South African dock workers are boycotting all trade involving the Mersey Dock and Harbour Company. Other actions were held in Spain, Portugal, New Zealand, India, Japan, France, Canada and, for the first time, Ireland. Some unions closely aligned to the International Transport Federation chose to do nothing. A rally in Liverpool was held on September 27 with the theme ``Two years on ... time to win it!''. As well, a conference has been proposed by Spanish unions to plan a Europe-wide campaign. Because many union leaders in England, including their own Transport and General Workers Union, are not supporting the dockers, they have been forced to concentrate on international support. PM Tony Blair's Labour government is one the biggest shareholders in the Merseyside Dock and Harbour Company, which sacked the Liverpool dockers. So far, however, Labour has refused to intervene to reinstate the workers and repeal the Tory anti-union laws. -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-10.04.97-15:41:48-8413