'Greater unity and common purpose'
JOHN MAITLAND is the president of the Mining Division of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union and joint national president of the CFMEU. He spoke to Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly's DICK NICHOLS and JENNIFER THOMPSON about how the mineworkers plan to fight the Liberals' attacks. They began by asking him about the long-running dispute at Vickery coal mine, operated by CRA subsidiary Novacoal.
CRA's overall tactic has been to remove the union from the workplace. CRA can only get us out of the coal industry if the union aren't involved in recruiting people. CRA strategies aren't based on just a quick hit and miss; [US management guru] Elliot Jacques was talking about these strategies 10 years ago. They would recruit a special type of person who was ideologically opposed to trade unions.
Question: In the short term, your win at Weipa stopped CRA, but what do you think the Liberals will do?
Their policy, with these Australian workplace agreements (AWAs), is targeted to precisely what CRA is doing. They looked at the "weakness" in the legislation that Brereton brought in to cover non-union shops, the enterprise flexibility agreements. There was a bit of democracy in EFAs, even though they were non-union agreements, because over 50% of the work force had to vote for it.
These AWAs are a secret agreement between the individual employee and the company. In Weipa everyone knew how much they were given to bribe them out of the union. They're trying to make it more difficult for unions to engage in Weipas where you keep the work force on side and use the commission's principles: equal pay for work of equal value, and that people who are part of a collective agreement cannot be disadvantaged by individual agreements.
Question: The Liberals will prioritise changing the industrial relations act. They are wooing the Democrats to get it through the Senate. What should the union strategy be?
We're not going to rely on the minor parties to remove the real rough stuff in the legislation. The change in government gives us the opportunity to get back to our membership, strengthen our delegate structure and look at greater unity and common purpose.
We started with a meeting of delegates from all our bulk loading, including coal, ports. We spoke to them about what to expect and how to prepare. We've started meetings of our merger groups — groups of delegates across a corporation — which mesh with the national and district structures. We'll meet with all of the rank and file for five or six weeks.
The CFMEU national executive will meet in Canberra in the second week of parliament; during the first week [the Liberals] will probably table the bill. We'll have been out to our members, and we'll have their response for the national executive meeting.
The Democrats will support some parts of the legislation: no closed shops, no preference to unionists. This will be Reith's "freedom of choice", which will get the support of the Democrats and the Greens. The "conveniently belong" [clause] will go, but they'll have to replace it with something because taking it away opens the field up to unions like us. In places like Weipa, the company and the AWU went to lengths to keep us out.
Question: There'll be this fight about the "mandate".
That's why we are going to our members. We'll say that we've got a mandate equally strong. We'll wait, though, to see what happens with the legislation, because sometimes the judiciary puts a different interpretation on legislation than the government intended. There won't be a major confrontation between us and the government over the introduction of the legislation until we have a chance to test it out.
Other things might come up in the meantime, though. I have passed on a resolution to the Maritime Union saying that our port workers have said they'll join any industrial action that the MUA gets involved in.
The waterfront employers are looking at options. The government is saying things designed to influence them, talking about taking away some of the tax concessions. It seems strange to have a conservative government take away tax concessions from employers. It's designed to make them look at other ways of rationalising their operations like whether to continue employing Australian labour, which is more expensive.
Employers are ideologically driven, but they're not blinded by it. If their best interest is to get stuck into the maritime unions and move them off the waterfront and they can do that without suffering an enormous cost, they'll do it.
Question: Should the beginning of the Howard government mean an end to enterprise bargaining and a return to fighting for award conditions to reverse the wage deregulation?
We're proposing to our people to go back to arrangements we had before: some enterprise bargaining, a portion of people's wages worked out at the local level; there was an agreement across each company; and a national agreement. We want an industry wage outcome incorporating all these elements. That has made our organisation quite effective in the past; the style of negotiations kept everyone united.
Question: How do you think the wages and conditions of weaker Â鶹´«Ã½ of industry can be protected in the "marketplace" of IR?
Unfortunately, they can't. You need some sort of centralised system look after those in industries who are not capable of undertaking campaigns. I'm getting the message from Reith's statements that they recognise that. They're planning to be in power for a considerable period of time. They're trying to give the impression of compassion by looking at wage increases for lower income earners, safety net rises. You could bet London to a brick, though, it will be at the very lower end of the scale.
Question: How can the unions prevent further decline in membership numbers, especially amongst young people and women?
Become more relevant and do the job. Certain unions have been protected. People given free, unrestricted choice in areas where the unions have relied upon the employer to be the recruiting agent, are going to get out of unions. You have to give people a reason to be in a union; they've got to be proud of it and get services delivered to them.
If we'd had a Labor government, the decline in union membership was going to continue. Now we've got a few challenges and people can feel that they're part of what's taking place.
Question: So unions in Australia still have enough structural strength, even though we're down to 35% unionisation, to carry out tactics that will count?
I don't think you could put it any better than that.
Question: What do you think of the criticism, particularly from the Labour Council of NSW, that the strategy of the ACTU was too dependent on the ALP being in government?
Greg Kombet, the new ACTU assistant secretary, has been coming around to some of the delegates' meetings, and that's the criticism from our members as well: we got too close to Labor. That view would be held by most people involved in the trade union movement and most rank and file members, who felt excluded from participating. People heard Bill Kelty and Martin Ferguson were off to Canberra, and the next thing we had an agreement.
The NSW Labour Council has an ulterior motive. There has been a running battle between the NSW Labour Council and the ACTU, and what they're saying is not helpful. Some NSW unions may have agreed with what they have been saying, but there are some fairly good, effective right-wing unions too who are pretty concerned and want to be part of any general activity to defend trade unionism.
Question: What do you think of the comments from the National Union of Workers' Greg Sword that unions have to make a deal with the Liberals?
That's the wrong message. We'll continue to chase wages and conditions for our people, and if the federal government leaves us alone, who's worried? It's wrong to say that we've got to cooperate with them when we know we can't. Cooperating would mean embracing their policies, and those policies are designed to take away the rights of workers at their workplaces.
Question: One feature of the election in Oxley, Mt Isa and even Weipa, was the vote to the right and often to people who had openly racist policies.
That won't be repeated. There were so many people in the community pissed off about so many things. Who else did they have to vote for, really, except the candidates who were non-Labor. In Weipa in the early days, the Aborigines were driven off their land and their homes burned. That was under the Bjelke-Petersen government, and there wasn't a great hoo-ha in Queensland. After so many years of that sort of government, people tend not to believe there's too much wrong with that. That's what Bob Katter's being saying for years.
A person doesn't have to be racist, though, to accept that other groups are getting more handouts than you are. If you're in an economically deprived area and someone says this other group is getting these handouts all the time, you say shit they do and look at me. It might not necessarily be racist but related to the economic circumstances.
Question: Isn't this an indictment of the Labor government and the Accord?
The Accord started off saying it was going to deliver all these things. The first Accord was a social document that if it was delivered on was magnificent. But like every government when they get in, they said we can't afford this, and we did promise there'd be wage rises equivalent to CPI increases, but we can't afford that.
Before another accord, there's going to have to be some pretty reasonable indications that the undertakings are delivered on.
Our members are looking forward to having a bit of a punch-up with the industry; that's the mood. I've been very pleased to hear their response and yet you also have to acknowledge that many of the people who these delegates represent have just voted Liberal.