By Allen Myers
As part of its effort to smash the MUA, the government has claimed that the situation on the docks is exceptional. With absurd stories about wharfies making huge salaries for doing nothing, it tries to convince workers in other industries that the dispute has no bearing on their own situation.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The fight on the docks will have immediate and longer term effects on all workers in Australia.
This government is out to roll back the wages and conditions of all workers, not just the wharfies. You only have to look at two of the bills that the government now has available as double dissolution "triggers".
One of the bills would exempt small businesses from the unfair dismissal legislation — giving employers an extra stick against workers who are already less protected than most.
The second is its Public Service Bill, on which the government has twice rejected Senate amendments that would strengthen protection of conditions in awards and certified agreements, strengthen protection against unfair dismissal, provide protection against arbitrary transfer, preserve appeal rights and require consistent handling of accusations of misconduct. In the eyes of the government, public service workers are part of the "enemy".
Weapons directed against the MUA are also being tested for use against other workers.
Although the Federal Court ruling is a setback for them, employers have been looking at imitating Patrick's use of dodgy shell companies to sack workers at will or avoid paying entitlements. Speaking on the SBS Insight program on April 16, Mark Paterson, chief executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, was asked, "If Patrick is successful, do you expect other businesses to use the same tactics?"
Paterson began by repeating the government line that the situation on the wharves is "unique". But pressed by the interviewer, he admitted, "You can't say that that won't occur, but I think that you have a particular set of circumstances and we shouldn't divert the debate".
The interviewer persisted: "Are you saying that you wouldn't like it to flow through to other Â鶹´«Ã½ of the economy though?"
Paterson replied: "What we want is to see unproductive workplaces changed so that they embrace reform in the way that the rest of the economy has done so. The waterfront has been unwilling to do it, and if there are other sectors of the Australian economy unwilling to embrace reform, then this is a lesson for them."
Paterson here gave away the real position of the government and the employers: any workers who don't "embrace" workplace "reform" — code for working harder for less money — can expect to be treated as savagely and dishonestly as the MUA members have been.
This is all the more certain because the Howard government actively encouraged Patrick's strategy of finding a way to sack its entire work force.
This was demonstrated by a departmental minute addressed to workplace relations minister Peter Reith on March 10, 1997. The document was reported in the Financial Review in December by Pamela Williams and has been taken up again by Alan Ramsey in the Sydney Morning Herald.
The minute's purpose, Ramsey wrote on April 18, "was to brief Reith on a meeting he was to have in Sydney two days later with executives of ... Patrick and P&O Ports".
The document pointed out: "... both stevedores appear to have it in mind that they might achieve wholesale change of their respective work forces. Our discussions with them, however, do not suggest that they have given careful consideration to how this might be achieved, or to the means by which responses to such a step might be managed ..."
After warning that "a dispute would not, of itself, remove or alter MUA coverage, remove or suspend registration, or cancel the award or terminate any agreement", the paper went on to specify:
"Stevedore [companies] would need to activate well-prepared strategies to dismiss their workforce and replace them with another, quickly, in a way that limited the prospect of, for example, the [Industrial Relations] commission ordering reinstatement."
In short, more than a year ago the Howard government was actively promoting the present attack on the wharfies. How many other workers is it currently preparing, in secret, to attack?
The outlawing of "secondary boycotts" — i.e. union solidarity — by the Workplace Relations Act indicates that Howard and Reith have many more targets in mind. The act would hardly have been necessary if they only intended to take on the "elite" and "unique" MUA.
Looking at the events of the last nine months or so, it is not difficult to figure out that coalminers are another group of workers whom the government has been working behind the scenes to undermine. In fact, interviewed on Channel 9 on April 21, Reith as much as admitted it, adding that the government had been "discussing" with meat processing employers too.
Why is the government so determined to smash well-organised Â鶹´«Ã½ of the labour force? There are several overlapping reasons.
First, better organised workers are able to resist the intensified exploitation the government and employers are implementing. Unorganised workers and those in weaker unions can have their wages and conditions driven down by a combination of legislation and fear of being sacked; they are in a weak situation for mounting any fight back.
In the past, the industrial awards system meant that improvements won by strongly organised workers tended to flow on, even to workers who were not members of any union.
This situation will be legally abolished on July 1, when awards are limited to the "20 allowable matters". Un-unionised workers will be hit immediately, but it will still be possible for workers in strong unions to win gains in enterprise contracts. Hence the need to break strong unions.
Secondly, unorganised or poorly organised workers attempting to defend their interests need to rely on solidarity from stronger unions. While such solidarity is illegal under the Workplace Relations Act, militant unions may defy the ban or find legal ways around it. So attacking unions like the MUA is a means of ensuring that relatively defenceless workers stay that way.
Finally, the mere possibility of unions like the MUA or CFMEU fighting and winning improvements is a danger for the employer-government strategy of exploiting the poorly organised. The example of a militant union making gains for its members would encourage more exploited workers to organise and fight back.
Howard and Reith's next target, then, might well be another relatively strong union — unless they suffer such a bad defeat on the wharves that they have to find a quick and easy victory.
But whoever they take on next, they have us all in their sights. That's why it's in all our interests to back the wharfies.