The postal division of the Victorian communications union has been under left-wing leadership since a sweeping victory for the members Reform ticket in July 2003. The division's secretary, Joan Doyle, discussed the state of her union's struggle at a union seminar run by the Socialist Alliance in Geelong on July 31.
My union is a very small union, and for 20 years has been a very conservative union. We've taken up the challenge to build a fighting union and the first fight we had was to clean up our union. For the last 20 years, [it was like] the boss was running our union. The people who were then in the union leadership have now shown their true colours and gone back to be management in Australia Post. The union is now in the hands of people who've come straight from the workplace floor.
What's been amazing to me is the level of corruption in the union movement and I think it's behove on us all as working people to wrest back the leadership of the movement. A lot of the leadership were time servers, filling their own pocket, living off the backs of workers.
Now we're in charge and we're having a dash.
Over the years, Australia Post has come under the control of the Coalition government. It's done substantial restructuring; it's put in a lot of automation and it's looking at cheap labour.
Australia Post has all sorts of time-and-motion procedures whereby the posties have to sort 18 small letters a minute and 13 large letters a minute. Now you might think that's pretty easy, but what you have to remember is that posties have a frame that represents 1200 letterboxes and you've got approximately three seconds to get your letter and stick it in the right spot. And you do that hour after hour, and then you go outside and you've got a computer on you the whole time.
It's real pressure cooker stuff. They tie workers to performance management and the disciplinary code. People have gone from having one of the best jobs in the world to something where people are under pressure from the minute they start work. They start work early. They don't have their breaks and they speed. People have been clocked on the footpath in every state in Australia doing 60 kilometres an hour. They're supposed to do 7km/h on the footpath.
And it's not just the posties. The parcel sorters suffer as well. You look at the new parcel centre at Ardeer [in Melbourne] and it's a prison. They've got this new large parcel machine that sorts 10,000 parcels an hour and the facer-uppers who place the parcels on the machine are supposed to do 1000 an hour. The coders, who code the postcodes in, have to do 1000 an hour. Everyone is chained to the machine to keep it going very fast. And anyone who doesn't go fast enough gets replaced with someone faster.
And the people who get the worst job in the parcel centre are the taker-offs. They're supposed to do 500 parcels an hour. Now these are large parcels, and sometimes they're crates of wine.
These are Third World labour conditions being brought in by Australia Post.
The worst part of the system is that the people driving the system are on huge salaries and bonuses. We have [Australia Post CEO] Graham John on $2 million a year, and all the managers underneath him are on this great whack and get more for telling workers they can have less.
The last straw for me came about a week ago. A NSW shop steward had been getting a lot of pressure to meet his time — 18 large letters and 13 small letters a minute. He was resisting because he was the shop steward, so corporate security started fishing around to get something on him. And they came up with an allegation that he'd put in two vouchers for shoe allowances. We get a $56 a year shoe allowance and the posties get a receipt for the shoes.
The poor chap went home and committed suicide. He hanged himself because he was sure he was going to get sacked. They told him he would be sacked, he would be charged with fraud, perhaps end up in jail, and also that he'd lose his superannuation. He'd been a postie for 40 years. He pulled out all his superannuation receipts and hanged himself. We're convinced that Australia Post was out to get him because gradually, posties are being given a package and pushed out the door and replaced with people who start work at 6.30am on a non-penalty shift for 15% less [pay]. That's the human face of Australia Post.
When we went in, the union was a bit of a basket case. We've elected hundreds of new shop stewards and health and safety representatives. We now have proper communications where we have newsletters, a radio program, workplace meetings and telephone conferences of the shop stewards.
But the most important thing we do is to get across the message that this is the do-it-yourself union. Unions didn't start off as a bureaucracy with fancy cars. They were mutual self-help organisations. The leadership isn't there to service the membership. We can't. Australia Post doesn't give a rat's arse about five or six people in the union office. They've got $500 million profit each year and thousands of managers. So they don't care less about us, but they are absolutely terrified when the members at the workplace say this is our workplace and we're going to run it decently. We're going to have equality and democracy in our workplace and management is going to have to live with that.
Whenever you go forward, you have to be prepared for the reaction. Australia Post has divested me of my permit to visit workplaces. And Australia Post is suing me for prohibitive picketing.
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, August 25, 2004.
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