Hard Ground: Unions in the Pilbara
By Bradon Ellem
Pilbara Mineworkers Union, 2004
Available from the CFMEU mining and energy division, Sydney
79 pages, $20 (pb)
REVIEW BY JIM MCILROY
As the federal Coalition government prepares to launch the biggest frontal assault on the Australian trade unions in decades, this book about the struggle to revive the union movement in one of its traditionally strong regions is timely and extremely illuminating. The story of the rise of the Pilbara Mineworkers Union (PMU), as a locally based union representing all trades in the industry, should provide inspiration and many lessons for all those workers grappling with the looming assault on their right to organise by one of the most anti-union governments in this country's history.
Bradon Ellem has written a well-researched and vivid account of the tempestuous industrial development of the Pilbara mining region of Western Australia. The book focuses on the battle for the survival and renewal of unions in the iron ore mining industry — dominated by the two largest mining corporations in the world, Rio Tinto and BHP-Billiton.
The mines owned by Rio Tinto at Hamersley and Robe River had largely driven the unions out since the defeats of the 1980s, but the BHP-owned mines had remained under union awards. In late 1999, BHP-Billiton launched a drive to de-unionise its mines. This story tells about the see-sawing struggle to maintain and build union strength at the BHP mines, and to rebuild union influence at the Rio Tinto sites.
The background to this struggle is the international mining boom, which leads to record profits for both companies, and the global offensive by big corporations to destroy the power of the union movement to ensure these massive super-profits are largely kept to themselves. For these reasons, the Pilbara conflict has major implications for the whole Australian workers' movement.
Behind a number of the longstanding problems of the union movement in the Pilbara was a bitter history of demarcation disputes and infighting, which had weakened the unions at Hamersley in particular. When BHP-Billiton commenced its push in 1999 for Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs — individual contracts) in mines at Newman and Port Hedland, the unions successfully banded together to resist.
At Hamersley, Rio Tinto suffered a blow when workers voted to reject a non-union agreement. This led to the establishment — with direct Australian Council of Trade Unions assistance — of the PMU, as "a grassroots organisation of Hamersley Iron workers that want to have a voice in their workplace and their community ... independent of, but [working] closely with industrial unions".
This new type of union organisation, based not only on the workplace, but also within the local community, and involving family members, sets an important precedent for future industrial organising around the country. A parallel development within the BHP mines led to the formation of a community-based group, Action in Support of Partners (ASP), at Port Hedland in 2000, followed by the BHP PMU in 2003.
Progress for the PMU at Hamersley was seriously set back in 2004 by the under-the-counter negotiating of a sweetheart deal between the Australian Workers Union and Rio Tinto, bringing Hamersley workers under a federal award. This treacherous move by the AWU national officialdom has led to further divisions among the Rio Tinto work force, but the struggle continues at these mine sites.
As Ellem concludes: "The irony is that through failing to win a state award in Hamersley Iron, the site where it was established, the PMU has now become the official form of unionism at BHP. It may now be that this kind of unionism, melding unions together in new ways with new tactics and methods, is a sign of things to come here and elsewhere. For all its physical isolation, the Pilbara is often at the centre of Australian industrial life. It was like this with the de-unionisation from 1986 to 1993. Today, it might be so once again, this time heralding a new kind of unionism."
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, November 23, 2005.
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