WA metalworkers: $28,600 fines for 15 minutes : Melbourne Indymedia

WA metalworkers: $28,600 fines for 15 minutes

Western Australian-based Total Corrosion Control (TCC), one of the contractors engaged by ALCOA in Pinjarra to erect scaffolding has served writs on the 40 metalworkers it employs. The workers face $28,600 in fines plus unspecified damages — for a union meeting that allegedly went 15 minutes over time. The workers’ union, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU), also faces fines, totalling $220,000 plus unspecified damages.

On July 28, all 40 workers and the union were served with applications to the federal court for fines under both the Building and Construction Industry Improvement (BCII) legislation and the Workplace Relations Act (WRA), plus unspecified damages for the loss of production. The employer’s application also says that money paid to cover any fines imposed will be passed directly on to them.

The 40 workers and the WA branch of the AMWU appear in court on August 29, the same day as the 107 WA construction workers facing similar fines. more details

Messages of support can be emailed to amwuwa@amwu.asn.au

Backgound:
Some employers are salivating for an opportunity to try out the parts of the federal government’s new industrial laws that fine workers for taking industrial action. Leading the charge is the Western Australian-based Total Corrosion Control, one of the contractors engaged by ALCOA in Pinjarra to erect scaffolding.

TCC has served writs on the 40 metalworkers it employs — for $28,600 in fines plus unspecified damages — for a union meeting that allegedly went over time. The workers’ union, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU), also faces fines, totalling $220,000 plus unspecified damages.

According to WA AMWU secretary Jock Ferguson, there has been an ongoing dispute with TCC over wage rates. A memorandum of understanding with all of the contractors at ALCOA’s Pinjarra plant stated that, because the workers crossed between maintenance and construction jobs, they would be paid construction rates. All the contractors except TCC agreed to pay the construction rates, which are higher than maintenance rates.

On July 21, TCC’s employees took strike action for six hours. The company rushed to the Australian Industrial Relations Commission and succeeded in getting a S496 order at 7.30pm that day for the workers to return to work.

Ferguson told Green Left Weekly that the workers returned to work on that night shift. There might have been two or three workers who didn’t turn up on the Saturday or the Sunday because these were overtime shifts, he added, but “as far as we [the union] were concerned, we carried out our obligations in regards to the S496 order as best we could, taking into consideration the time constraints. There was certainly a return to work by an overwhelming number of the work force.”

On July 26, the union organised a meeting to inform the workers of their rights and obligations under the S496 order. “This was necessary”, Ferguson said, “because John Howard’s new legislation is deliberately complex. It takes officials and industrial lawyers quite a considerable time to get our heads around, let alone a normal working person.”

TCC alleges that the union meeting ran 15 minutes over time and is using that to prosecute the workers and the union for tens of thousands of dollars.

As well, the company docked the workers for four hours’ pay. That means the employees worked for 3.75 hours for no pay. “The boss just put the workers’ money in his pocket”, Ferguson told GLW.

On July 28, all 40 workers and the union were served with applications to the federal court for fines under both the Building and Construction Industry Improvement (BCII) legislation and the Workplace Relations Act (WRA), plus unspecified damages for the loss of production. The employer’s application also says that money paid to cover any fines imposed will be passed directly on to them.

Ferguson said that since receiving the writs the union has told TCC that the federal court application is “causing the workers a lot of stress because they are facing huge fines. They may not be able to concentrate on what they are doing ... and that could have an impact on their occupational health and safety, especially as their work is very dangerous.

“The boss has a duty of care. We wanted to know what the company’s plan is to protect these workers from this health issue that it has created.”

Ferguson added: “There’s a growing number of employers who are demonstrating that they are prepared to use in a ruthless manner all of the resources that this government has given them, such as the BCII act and the WRA, to destroy workers’ capacity to collectively bargain. Workers are not being treated with the appropriate dignity while at work.

“It is an absolutely aggressive attack on the legitimacy of the union movement and we are going to fight this vigorously. It is a huge overkill.

“This is a time when Australian workers must stand shoulder to shoulder under this huge attack by the federal government and a number of maverick employers. John Howard’s legislation is again being used in an attempt to batter workers into submission, to make them subservient.”

The 40 workers and the WA branch of the AMWU appear in court on August 29, the same day as the 107 WA construction workers facing similar fines. Messages of support can be emailed to <amwuwa@amwu.asn.au>.

From Green Left Weekly, August 9, 2006.

July 5 is now a significant day in the history of Australia’s labour movement. It was the day on which 107 Western Australian construction workers began being served with writs for taking strike action in February on the Leighton Kumagai-run Perth to Mandurah rail construction project.

The writs were initiated by the Howard government’s Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) and could result in fines of $28,600 for each worker. The workers’ union, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), is not being sued.

These workers weren’t involved in any violent conduct. They weren’t involved in any fraud. All they did was take strike action to have their union delegate, Peter Ballard, reinstated. Ballard had earned the wrath of the Leighton Kumagai management by standing up for workers who were being subjected to many unsafe practices on the job.
A landmark dispute

State secretary of the NSW CFMEU Andrew Ferguson told Green Left Weekly: “This is a landmark dispute for the labour movement. We’re now seeing very oppressive laws being used to intimidate and bully rank-and-file workers and break union organisation.

“We’re seeing the threat of massive fines being used, the threat of interrogation by the ABCC, and the threat of fines and jail sentences for workers who won’t participate in this interrogation. These are the types of laws that many of us in this country have protested against when they’ve been used in Third World countries to undermine labour standards.”

Ferguson said there are now more than 150 officers employed by the ABCC and it is engaging many more to increase its attacks on building industry unions, and on the wages and conditions of building workers. When one of the 107 WA construction workers, Mal Peters, accompanied by his wife, Bernadette, visited the eastern states last month to publicise the dispute, ABCC officers tried to establish whether union officials in Sydney gave a right of entry notice to bring the Peters to a work site and whether the meetings extended beyond the specified lunch break.

The ABCC has numerous cases against the union movement pending and many investigations in progress, and its predecessor, the Building Industry Taskforce, still has litigation underway.

“There will be a lot more action against the CFMEU and other building unions in future”, Ferguson said.

“The immediate task is to ensure that building workers are educated about these oppressive laws”, he explained. “That’s our first and most immediate responsibility, to work in our own backyard, then to work with the other building unions to educate the whole building industry work force, then to work with progressives, and then with all wings of the trade union movement and peak bodies to educate the labour force.

“Many people in the union movement outside the building industry are unaware of these laws. The main focus has so far been on Work Choices. We haven’t had the opportunity to get any traction amongst the broader union movement about the very serious laws that are being used to attack workers and civil liberties.”

The organisation of mass protests is very important, Ferguson said. “We are hoping that [the laws targeting building workers] will be on the agenda of the November 30 [union protests] across the country.
Building solidarity

“We’re not expecting instant results, but we are building up considerable solidarity for this campaign. We are going to organise more national tours of workers from WA and the issue has been raised with the union movement internationally to broaden the attack on the Howard government.”

A couple of CFMEU officials will travel to Germany to talk with the German construction unions and with Leighton’s parent company Hochtief, which owns a huge slab of the Australian construction industry, including Leighton Holdings, John Holland and Theiss. Hochtief has signed an agreement with the German construction union committing all the companies it owns to observe core International Labour Organisation standards, such as collective bargaining. The ILO has said that Australia’s industrial laws are in contravention of these standards.

Ferguson told GLW that the CFMEU has met with the Council for Civil Liberties to better understand the civil liberties dimension to their campaign. “Many of the laws being used in the building industry represent a very serious threat to civil liberties”, he said. “The coercive powers are greater than those available to police enforcement agencies dealing with serious crime. Inevitably there will be some sort of confrontation with people refusing to be intimidated or interrogated in these secret sessions and the ABCC will be facing the issue of whether or not to jail those unionists.”

The 107 construction workers have their first appearance in court on August 29. They will be joined by 40 metalworkers also facing fines of $28,600 over an unrelated dispute.

Victorian CFMEU state secretary Martin Kingham told GLW: “It’s absolutely important that we rally and support the 107 workers. The whole focus of the federal government’s attacks in our industry is to intimidate workers out of taking direct industrial action.

“The only way that we can support those workers when they take the action and get fines is to pay the fines for them. That means raising money so that we can show that the rest of the trade union movement is behind building workers and will not allow them to be stripped of their houses and assets as a result of being involved in union activity.”
Union alliances

Confronting such repressive legislation, some unions are investigating alliances with other unions. The Victorian executives of the CFMEU and the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) are planning a meeting to re-establish a political and industrial alliance.

Kingham explained that the construction workers’ situation is different from that of the metalworkers. The metalworkers are involved in a dispute with the company and often, when a dispute is resolved, all legal action will be dropped as part of the dispute resolution. However, the WA construction workers’ dispute with Leighton was resolved, yet the ABCC kept investigating the workers and several months later served the writs.

August 29 is starting to develop as a national day of solidarity with the WA workers facing fines. Approximately 107 building sites across Australia will hold lunch-time meetings to discuss the solidarity campaign, and a delegation of rank-and-file unionists and officials will travel from each state to Perth to join the solidarity march and rally there.

In NSW, the CFMEU is organising a solidarity rally on August 29. Unions NSW has endorsed the rally and will encourage its affiliates to attend it. “We want to see a full cross-section of union flags and workers from different industries participate”, Ferguson said. “We’re hoping to have nurses, teachers, wharfies and political activists participate in our community campaign.

“On the same day in Sydney we’ll be having 50 lunch-time meetings on building sites to engage with thousands of building workers, and to raise financial support and understanding.”

The Victorian unions are also discussing a solidarity rally on August 29, with the details to be confirmed soon. The Victorian AMWU state council passed a resolution to work with the CFMEU towards solidarity action on August 29.

For more information, visit the 107 solidarity campaign website at <http://www.cfmeuwa.com/cfmeuwa/supportthe107>.

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Construction worker sacked for speaking out

Russell Pickering, Perth

Mal Peters, the only remaining worker-elected occupational health and safety (OHS) representative on the Leighton Kumagai-run Perth-to-Mandurah rail construction project was sacked on August 8 after criticising fines that may be imposed on him and 106 fellow workers by the Australian Building Construction Commission (see article on back page).

Upon returning to work that week, after taking two weeks’ annual leave to address the Australian Council of Trade Unions; the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) national leadership; and workers and other unions in three states about the impact of the federal government’s anti-worker laws, Peters was notified by management that, for “operational reasons”, his services were no longer required.

WA state secretary of the CFMEU Kevin Reynolds told the media on August 9, “This is a case of an employer using the government’s new IR laws to intimidate and threaten any worker who wants to speak out about the government’s laws. The fact that he is the OHS officer on the site just makes this worse ... Big businesses like Leighton can use these laws to sack people at will for standing up for their civil rights.”

Peters told Green Left Weekly: “I’ve probably been singled out because I have raised a number of safety issues from day one. I’ve always gone through the right procedure and when I can’t [resolve the issue] I’ve usually gone to Work Safe ... to make sure.”

“Since these IR laws have come out, Leighton has developed a heavy-handed approach to workers”, he added. “I never expected that it would ever get to this stage and that’s why I put my hand up with my wife and my family to say this is what is happening to us here in the west and can quite easily spread like cancer to the rest of the states very shortly. We need to get the word out there that these laws need changing.”

Peters told GLW that he had been singled out by the company “because I am professional in what I do and I’ve been doing it long enough; I know construction like the back of my hand”. He believes Leighton Kumagai has undermined on-site safety by victimising other elected safety representatives also. “As soon as they brought any incidences to me or raised them with management ... they’d be severely shafted, sent to other areas and victimised because they opened their mouths. It happened to nearly every one of them.”

Peters said that Leighton has been able to victimise his workmates because of the government’s new laws, which allow Leighton Kumagai to be a law unto itself.

As part of his job, Peters liaised regularly with the company’s own safety advisors, “but [Leighton] has gone through so many of them. Anyone who has been deemed to be doing anything to help my side of things usually had their contract terminated. Safety doesn’t come first any more. It’s production and that’s it.”

Reynolds committed the CFMEU to “stand by Mal and his family. We believe this is clearly a case of Mal being sacked for carrying out his legislated duties as a WA OHS representative and for just speaking out about the federal

government’s work laws.”

The state government has ordered an inquiry, to be undertaken by Work Safe, into Peters’ sacking.

From Green Left Weekly, August 16, 2006.
..........
OVERSEAS - CHILE
"AUSTRALIAN" BOSSES of BHP-Billiton ....

CHILE: Strike against Australian mining giant

Some 2000 workers at the world’s largest copper mine — Escondida, majority-owned by Australian mining giant BHP Billiton — have been on strike since August 7 to demand a 13% pay rise. BHP Billiton, despite increased profits from high copper prices, is offering just 3%. Copper prices have increased fivefold since workers negotiated their last wage agreement three years ago. After strikers camped at the mine’s sports complex clashed with police on August 8, they took to the streets of Antogagasta in protest, cancelling planned negotiations with the company. Some 300 scabs were brought in to work at the mine — which produces 8% of global copper output — during the strike, yet production was dramatically reduced. Unionists said their strike derived inspiration from the 1 million students who went on strike and successfully demonstrated in demand of increased education funding in June.

From Green Left Weekly, August 16, 2006.

Herald-Sun slanders peace actvist

Tony Iltis, Melbourne

Peace activist and socialist David Glanz has received messages of solidarity from the National Tertiary Education Union, the RMIT Student Union and various left activists following a slanderous attack on him in the August 4 Herald-Sun.

Under the headline “S11 protest leader takes up new career”, the News Ltd tabloid reported that “The leader of the violent S11 protest that left police and horses injured has been made the public voice of RMIT”. In fact, Glanz has been working for the RMIT media office for four months.

The Herald-Sun has had a private vendetta against Glanz since he was president of the Australian Journalists Association at the paper, before being sacked for his role in a 1991 strike.

Glanz was a member of the organising committee for the 20,000-strong three-day protest outside the September 11-13, 2000, World Economic Forum in Melbourne. The article on Glanz’s “new career” was an opportunity for the Herald-Sun to rehash its slanderous claims made at the time about protesters pelting police with urine-filled balloons and other missiles, claims made to disguise the appalling police violence that marred the anti-WEF demonstrations.

At the time of the S11 protests, the Herald-Sun also ran a campaign against RMIT’s Community Advocacy Unit for allegedly supporting the protests. Since then the Murdoch daily has waged campaigns about alleged radicalism at RMIT.

In April, RMIT lecturer Robert Austin was sacked after the Herald-Sun ran a campaign against him for rescheduling a class to allow students to attend a protest in defence of student unionism.

Apart from pursuing old vendettas, a clue as to why the Herald-Sun published the article can be found in its second sentence: “David Glanz ... at the weekend also declared his support for the Arab militant organisations Hamas and Hezbollah.”

At the 5000-strong anti-war rally on July 30, Glanz did declare his support for the resistance of the Lebanese and Palestinian people to attacks of the Israeli “Defence” Forces (IDF), as did the other 11 speakers.

For the Murdoch media, solidarity with those resisting Israeli aggression is equated with terrorism. This may explain the most scurrilous accusation in the article — that the International Socialist Organisation (ISO), of which Glanz is a leading member, has “advocated assassinations, blowing up military targets and tearing up the roots of the capitalist system”.

While the ISO is indeed anti-capitalist, it has not advocated that its members or anyone else in Australia carry out “assassinations” or “the blowing up of military targets”. Perhaps the Herald-Sun has confused the ISO with the IDF and its actions in Gaza and Lebanon, which also extend to the massacring of civilians and the blowing up of civilian targets.

From Green Left Weekly, August 16, 2006.