By Peter Annear
SYDNEY — Employment discrimination against the Catholic population of Northern Ireland will be the focus of an international campaign to boycott the National Australia Bank, launched here on August 24. Irish Civil rights campaigner Oliver Kearney, representing the Campaign for Economic Equality, is visiting Australia at the invitation of the Australian Irish Congress to initiate the campaign.
Together with prominent civil rights activists such as Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey and Father Des Wilson, Kearney has fought for many years for affirmative action in the employment of Catholics.
Northern Ireland Catholics have long been underrepresented in employment, particularly in senior positions. They are more than twice as likely as Protestants to be unemployed, and emigration rates for Catholics are more than twice what they are for Protestants due to the lack of job availability.
The civil rights movement has challenged this "economic apartheid" at least since 1969. Government "fair employment" laws are toothless and have made no impact on the problem.
The Northern Bank has been singled out as one of the prime examples of job discrimination in Northern Ireland, where it is the largest financial institution. National Australia Bank is the sole owner of Northern, which it purchased in 1987. Northern's notoriously bad employment practices have improved little since that time.
Kearney said that he had "encountered unequivocal and unapologetic intransigence on the part of the National Australia Bank" in discussions with NAB management in Sydney.
Catholics, who make up 42% of the population of Northern Ireland, in 1986 constituted only 16% of the staff of the Northern Bank and only 8% of its management personnel. Today, five years after the acquisition of Northern by the NAB, still only 18.5% of all employees are Catholic.
"That represents a proportionate increase in Catholic representation in the bank's employment of 0.5% per annum, which does not seem to represent a particularly vigorous affirmative action program.
"In official figures published for the number of appointees recruited to the bank's employment structures last year, the number of appointees representing 4% of the work force, 74% of all new appointees were of the Protestant Unionist community and only 26% of the Catholic nationalist community.
"At such a rate of progress it is difficult to conceive of any equitable representation in employment emerging within the next 50-60 years. The National Australia Bank in correspondence as late as last ed that it has no timetable and is unable to provide a timetable for the achievement of its stated objective for producing equitable community representation in the Northern Bank's employment structures."
The NAB received $97.5 million in after-tax profits from the Northern bank in 1991.
The Australian Irish Congress is asking individuals and institutions to close their accounts with the National. The boycott campaign will also include the presentation of shareholders' resolutions to the NAB for the implementation of the MacBride principles for affirmative action in the north of Ireland, named after Nobel Prize winner, the late Sean MacBride, a co-founder of Amnesty International.
The comptroller of the city of New York has authorised the Australian Irish Congress to act as the City's nominee at the NAB's annual shareholders' meeting early next year and to vote the City's half-million dollar shareholding in support of a resolution for the adoption of the MacBride principles.
The NSW Trades and Labor Council agreed on August 27, after hearing from Oliver Kearney, to back the boycott campaign and withdraw its accounts from the NAB if satisfactory measures are not instituted.
Supporters of the boycott are asked to write to Mr D.E. Argus, managing director, National Australia Bank, GPO Box 84A Melbourne 3001 to express their concern, or phone the bank on 008 802 1122; to approach their trade union, local MP or credit union to write to the NAB; to close their NAB accounts if no satisfactory measures are taken by the bank.