By Sarah Lantz
MELBOURNE — One of the bitterest disputes in the history of the Textiles, Clothing and Footwear Union was resolved on February 5. Victory for the union members at Australian Dyeing Company (ADC) came after 67 days on the picket line. Michelle O'Neil, TCFUA Victorian branch assistant secretary, spoke to Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly about the outcome of the dispute, the lessons learnt and the battles still to come.
"We were victorious because we organised a broad-based campaign", O'Neil said. "The use of the legal system was a strategic decision we employed throughout the dispute, but it was a means rather than an ends in itself.
"Through these actions, we highlighted company breaches of the Workplace Relations Act and stopped the company from going into liquidation, which prevented the company from sacking its workers. This two-pronged strategy meant we were able to make immediate gains for workers, but, more importantly, sustain a political campaign which was going to see us through to the end."
After ADC locked out 80 TCFUA workers without pay from December 1 and refused to negotiate, the union initiated legal action to recover workers' annual and accrued sick leave. The company was forced to back down and pay workers their entitlements. The union then obtained a one-month order from the Industrial Relations Commission, which prevented the company from sacking its locked-out workers.
"It was never going to be these acts alone that were going to sustain and eventually win the campaign", O'Neil stated. "It was the mobilisations of local residents, the political and moral support from other unions and the solidarity from students and community activists at the picket line every day that won the campaign."
ADC has been forced to agree to a 10% wage rise over two years, $200 back pay and no victimisation or harassment of workers who took industrial action during the dispute. All award conditions will also be protected for the life of the agreement. "But what goes even more beyond the details of the agreement", O'Neil explained, "is that it is a union agreement and there are no individual contracts".
Leading up to the dispute, ADC had offered to give workers a pay increase if they resigned from the union and signed individual contracts. It also threatened workers with job losses and during the dispute used untrained, non-unionised labour recruited from local universities, including RMIT and Melbourne University, to take on the TCFUA jobs.
According to O'Neil, "Leaving untrained and unskilled labour to run dye houses is just asking for injury. The hazards of dye houses are very serious. Many of the dye colours and chemicals prepared are known to be cancer-causing agents and extremely volatile. There is also an increased risk of environmental damage."
A chemical spill from the factory occurred on January 18.
O'Neil's only comment on the role of the Victorian government during the dispute was to remark, "It was definitely no coincidence that the ADC hired Peter Reith's personal lawyer to represent the company". Indeed, the same legal team was at the centre of the Maritime Union dispute in April last year representing Patrick Stevedore in its fight to sack more than 2000 waterfront workers.
In a late entry into the dispute, the state minister for industry, science and technology, Mark Birrell, described the dispute as "simply an old fashioned union cash grab, a tactic that ... most Australians thought had finished a decade ago". He denounced the union as "brutal" and continually compromising workers.
These comments came after the ADC refused to negotiate with the union during December, instead spending well over $100,000 on surveillance cameras and thousands more on 24-hour security guards to keep workers out of the factory. To settle the dispute would have cost a fraction of this amount.
O'Neil took up the question of whether the ALP would provide a real opposition to the anti-union, anti-worker politics of the new wave of industrial legislation introduced by the federal coalition government: "TCFUA members know the difference between a hollow promise and a real commitment. So far we have only seen the former rather than the later. The ALP, at both state and federal levels, has been far too quiet on industrial relations."
O'Neil also commented critically on the state of the union movement. She believes, "Unions are often too precious about controlling disputes far beyond their capacity to do so". The strength of the union movement lies in collective struggle, she says, which means opening up potential for others to be actively involved as well as making links with potential allies.
O'Neil suspects further attacks on workers in the textile, clothing and footwear sector will occur sooner rather than later. "It's always those already hardest hit that companies such as ADC continue to target."
Indeed, the textile, clothing and footwear industry workers are among the lowest paid, and well over 75% are migrants. All workers in the ADC were from non-English-speaking backgrounds. "We can expect continued threats of job losses in the future, more attempts at substandard deals and tactics that aim to break the unity of union membership", O'Neil warned.