Australian dockers battle union busting
By Greg Butterfield
Australian dock workers are fighting a
government/big-business conspiracy to bust their union.
At midnight April 8, Patrick Stevedores Holdings fired all
1,500 of its dock workers. Security guards armed with pistols
and attack dogs stormed 17 docks and forced the workers out
with no warning.
Some workers were beaten, gassed or bitten by dogs. At some
ports police backed up company thugs.
The company brought in scabs at several ports. The bosses
are enforcing the lock-out with armed thugs, despite a federal
court injunction that was supposed to halt the company's union
busting for at least seven days.
The mass firings brought a long-running dispute to crisis.
The turning point came after Australian Labor Minister Peter
Reith called on Patrick Stevedores and other companies to break
the union's power over hiring, firing and work conditions.
Reith offered Patrick a $250 million line of government
credit to aid its fight against the Maritime Union of
Australia.
Since last year, the government has taken former soldiers
out of the country and trained them to scab on the docks. The
National Farmers Federation, a bosses' group, promised to bring
in scabs after Patrick fired its union employees.
Patrick President Charles Corrigan calls it "a strike by
capital." It is comparable to the all-out anti-union attacks by
U.S. President Ronald Reagan against the air-traffic
controllers or British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher against
the mine workers.
The Australian "wharfies," as they are widely known, their
union and the labor movement are fighting back.
On April 8-just hours after the firings-over 3,000 people
marched in Sydney in solidarity with the dockers. They included
construction and metal-trades workers, plumbers, finance,
communications and public-service workers, miners, nurses and
teachers.
The same day 1,000 construction workers walked off the job
in Melbourne. At the Melbourne port, some 300 workers and
supporters linked arms and blocked railroad tracks leading to
the dock. They stopped a loaded train from entering a Patrick
facility.
On April 14, according to Dow Jones News Service, "some 400
jubilant dock workers and their allies at the Sydney docks
stopped three trucks from entering Patrick terminals to move
cargo unloaded from ships by non-union labor."
Recent anti-union legislation blocks unions from staging
solidarity strikes or boycotts, with fines of up to $50 million
for such actions. Because of these laws, the MUA leadership has
not called its members out on strike. Instead the union is
pursuing legal action in the courts. But unions have pledged to
join the wharfies in strike actions if the legal strategy is
unsuccessful.
Dockers say international solidarity is crucial. Holland's
biggest union, FNV Bondgenoten, plans solidarity actions
against ships handled by Patrick. In the United States, the
Longshore and Warehouse union staged a protest in San Francisco
April 9.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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