The CFMEU and other construction unions are under enormous pressure from the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner (ABCC). Approximately 90 investigations leading to possible prosecution, fines and or jail terms is currently running Australia wide with approximately 56 of them affecting Victorian building workers and unions.

Recently construction workers in Port Campbell building the Woodside gas plant who attended a mass meeting in defence of a sack shop steward have been summered to appear before the ABCC (Australian Building and Construction Commissioner). If the workers refuse to attend they face heavy fines and a jail term.

Construction union members are afforded less rights than accused criminals (they are denied the right to silence), at least if you rob a bank you have the right to remain silent in court. Even discussing matters raised in the commission with partners and family could result in fines and a jail term.

These outrages must stop. Behind the recent hysteria in the media about what certain union officials have said is the reality that employers in the building industry (and in general) want to smash some of the most militant and effective unions in Australia. Government backed and funded agencies like the ABCC are merely a tool to allow employers to get their way, deny working people basic democratic rights and increase the employer’s massive profit margins.

You can make a difference, please add your name to the Union Solidarity SMS alert list. Sooner rather than later we may need to demonstrate our support for workers in construction industry.

more info: SMS alert list | abcc.misery.com | CFMEU Video about ABCC

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by GARY STEVENS

ONE of the Latrobe Valley's longest running industrial protests has ended.
Former employees at Mechanical Engineering Corporation's (MEC) Yallourn workshop left the site at the weekend after a 277 day protest.

The protest ended when the AMWU and 32 former MEC workers last week commenced legal action against their employer, Mechanical Engineering Services (MES), to secure their full redundancy entitlements.

The union and former workers filed a statement of claims in the Federal Court, seeking redundancy entitlements as well as penalties and damages for a breach of employment contract. Former employee John Scholtes said workers could now get on with their lives while their case is fought out in court.

"They're happy that they can get on with their lives again and find new work," he said. "They can work for somebody that they can enjoy working for and not put up with this type of stuff again."

Most of the workers have gone onto other employment. Workers set up a 24 hour a day protest at the gates of MEC when they were locked out of the Yallourn workshop by the company during a dispute over a new enterprise bargaining agreement in September last year.

MEC was placed into administration in January and employees who refused to return to work under Australian workplace agreements (AWAs) were later sacked.

MEC tried to ban the workers from protesting at the gates but failed in its court bid. Mr Scholtes last week praised his fellow former workers for their resilience during the 40 week protest.

"It's easy to walk away but it takes strength and guts to stand up for your rights and do something like that," he said.

"I think they've become stronger and wiser for it and have learnt from what happened here that solidarity works."

Protesters stayed on site throughout Christmas, Easter, the summer bushfires and the start of winter. Gippsland Trades and Labour Council (GTLC) secretary John Parker said it was a "big effort" to protest for so long.

"You only have to stay in a motel room for a few weeks and you can imagine, these aren't motel rooms," he said.

"They had to stay until such time as we were able to get them into the courts. The workers have to show an incredible amount of determination to get into the courts now because there isn't the arbitration system which allows these matters to be resolved."

Mr Parker said the 40 week dispute would have gone for no longer than four weeks if it was dealt with via arbitration under the old industrial relations laws.

"Because of the nature of IR laws today you've actually got to have a continual presence. These workers have had to actually sit on the line for 40 weeks. They went without working, every night and every day."

AMWU organiser Steve Dodd said the workers were seeking the entitlements they would have received under employment with the workshop's former owner, Skilled Engineering.

"They were guaranteed through a contract of employment (with MES when it took over the workshop) that their terms and conditions would be maintained, we're chasing the entitlements they would have received under their contract of employment," he said. "It is a significant amount of money that's owed to these guys."

more info: http://gippslandtlc.com.au/MECUPdate.htm

Two and a half thousand teachers, parents and students crowded on to the steps of Parliament House yesterday to oppose the State Labor Government's latest cuts to public education.

AEU President Andrew Gohl compared the huge reductions in payroll tax demanded by big business with what the government was taking away from schools, and declared that Labor Premier Rann had forfeited the right to be called the Education Premier€.

Similar rallies were held in regional centres throughout the State. Two hundred rallied in Port Lincoln. A similar number, representing some 30 Riverland schools, rallied in Berri. There were large turnouts in other centres as well.

Despite the Parliament House rally being large enough to block eastbound traffic along North Terrace, it was completely ignored by the Murdoch-owned sole local daily, the aptly-named Advertiser.

Gohl told the crowd that Education Department bureaucrats had said that there was to be no negotiation over the cuts when they met with Principal organizations, yet the Minister had only just stated on radio that the matter hadn't been decided€ and the WorkCover issue the major source of the cuts is yet to be resolved€.

He said this was testimony to the pressure already applied by the decision to hold an after-hours rally, but that if the matter was not properly resolved in the bext week or so, teachers would be balloted for a strike.

more info: http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com

IT HAS been a long time since industrial relations was so obviously central to a federal election. The debate is heated but not very illuminating. Voters must have lots of questions and lots of worries.

• Does the mining sector face ruin without Australian Workplace Agreements?
• How popular are AWAs?
• Will workers be better or worse off without them?

To answer the questions about AWAs, we should examine the national picture first, then come back to mining. In so doing, we need to deal with some misconceptions and confusions.

First, across Australia, mining is not in fact the main site of AWAs. There are more AWAs in low-paid sectors like hospitality and retail where the official evidence shows that they have been used to cut costs still further.

This has mainly been achieved through abolishing penalty rates, reducing overtime pay, meal breaks and cutting out public holiday payments, shift-work loadings and bonuses.

Second, to argue, as the Government does, that we can tell that AWAs are popular just because there are more of them than in the past is simply untenable. Why? Because WorkChoices allows employers to offer AWAs as a pre-condition of employment. "Want the job? Sign the contract." So it is not logically possible to make any claim whatsoever about their popularity based on the number signed.

Let's come back to mining because so much of the debate about AWAs has focused on this industry, and especially on Western Australia's iron ore mines. Sometimes, the Government would have us believe that the mining boom is happening because of AWAs. The real causes of the boom of course lie elsewhere:

1. Global growth in resources,
2. Phenomenal expansion of the Chinese steel industry,
3. Huge increases in mineral prices.

This means that what is really happening is that AWAs are increasing because the industry is booming. Not the other way round.

The Government and others also talk about AWAs having delivered productivity increases. Why is it, then, that in coal-mining, with mainly union, collective agreements, productivity rates are actually better than in largely non-union iron ore?

At the very least, this reminds us of what the research from many countries tells us: that the connection between productivity and any form of regulation be it awards, enterprise agreements or individual contracts is very complicated. It is a genuinely difficult research problem, and it is not one that is solved by simple association. Just to say that an industry is booming and has lots of AWAs is not to say that there is any causal connections between those things.

As it happens, the Pilbara region in Western Australia provides a good test of these complex arguments. Since 1999, BHP-Billiton has had an iron ore workforce split between workers on the award and on individual contracts. In 2003, the unions sought wage rises to match those given to AWA workers. They told the Western Australia Industrial Relations Commission that people doing the same work should be paid the same rate.

The commission did what a lot of other people ought to do right now. It examined the evidence. The verdict was that "the productivity of award employees and their contribution to the performance of BHP, given the difference in working arrangements, is not significantly different from that of AWA employees".

This is a case that should be much more widely known. Not only does it explore in detail what happens in workplaces, it also reveals how unions and industrial relations have changed in the past few years. This award at BHP is nothing like the prescriptive and detailed, old-fashioned awards that reflected a very different world of work years ago.

If the economy is not really under threat without AWAs, then what about workers themselves? Most researchers would point to good reasons to say they are not threatened either. Quite the contrary. For a start, wages in mining are high not because of AWAs themselves. Remember: prices, demand and profits are at record levels.

There's still more to be said: AWA wage rates are high in mining because of unions. That may sound odd. But wage rates don't come out of nowhere; nor do they just come out of companies' calculations.

In iron ore, the original individual contracts had to compete with union-based rates. And those rates were far higher than average wages. Why? Because from the 1970s, the mining unions had won improvements in wages and conditions. So, even now, with low rates of union membership, the wage rates being paid are a result of previous rounds of unionisation.

This seems a world away from working life today but it is not. In research I have undertaken in the Pilbara in the past few years, there have been clear signs about what workers want from their employers and, when given a chance to have them, their unions. It is not chaos and disruption not even mainly about wages. They want safety, a say at work, and decent communities in which to work and live.

What the Federal Government and some of the companies want is not so clear given that the arguments about AWAs, productivity and high earnings just don't add up. In the east, and in low pay areas, it must be about cost reduction. In the west, in mining, it must logically be simply about keeping the union voice out.

Associate Professor Bradon Ellem (BA(Hons) MA, PhD) is from the Work and Organisational Studies, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Sydney. b.ellem@econ.usyd.edu.au | http://www.econ.usyd.edu.au/content.php?pageid=2470

“The Howard government’s trying to get rid of Australian seafarers and Australian ships. Where’s it going to stop? It’s not going to stop until we stop it.” Ormiston crew member speaking to Community Assembly, Yarraville, June 5th, 2007.

Suspicions have been raised this week that another assault on the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) and its members is underway. MUA Victorian Branch Secretary, Kevin Bracken, this morning told a Union Solidarity community assembly that “we’re watching our work go bit by bit. It’s a fight we’ve got to have everywhere”.

Last week multinational shipping company CSL International attempted to use seafaring crew to unload the Capo Noli, a vessel in Port Kembla. Port Kembla stevedores established a picket line at the wharf. After a four day stand off CSL came to an agreement with the MUA and ACTU that the ship would comply with the International Bargaining forum agreement allowing local stevedores to unload the ship. Part of the agreement struck was a commitment from CSL that the Capo Noli will be replaced with an Australian owned and crewed vessel. This replacement is currently being converted from a tanker in China and will be flagged and registered in Australia.

This week at least one foreign flagged, foreign crewed CSL boat is expected to replace an Australian owned and crewed boat. There are fears that bosses will try to replace another four Australian crewed domestic transport vessels in coming weeks.

All this, within a month of the Federal Government’s introduction of the new Maritime Crew Visa, on July 1st, which will cost $100 million and theoretically improves the security checks on foreign crews operating in Australian waters. It has not been clarified how seafarers born and living overseas will undergo the same level of scrutiny as Australian seafarers are subjected to.

This morning’s community assembly was held in solidarity with the crew of the Ormiston, who expected to be told this afternoon that their boat is to be decommissioned, and replaced by a ship bearing foreign flags, crewed by foreign workers. About 100 supporters assembled around 11am this morning, outside the CSR property on Lyell St, Yarraville, where the Ormiston is docked.

The crew were notified during the morning that they were expected to bring the boat to Webb Dock at 3pm this afternoon. One of the workers said: “We will probably have to strip her. Take everything off, all our personal effects, move out of our home away from home. 134 years of CSR on this coast, it’s now the end of an era.”

Later this afternoon the Port of Melbourne stepped in, apparently worried that once docked the Ormiston may become a site of protest. It has denied the Ormiston a berth, and she is currently anchored at sea. A berth at Geelong or Sydney will be sought.

It is expected that the Ormiston will be replaced by a CSL International boat. This was rumoured to be the Stadacona, an ex-Australian vessel, now registered in the Bahamas and crewed by Ukrainian seafarers, due to arrive from Port Kembla tomorrow night.

However, the Clipper Trust, registered in the Bahamas and owned by the Danish ‘Clipper Group’ is en route from Bundaberg, contracted by CSR to carry sugar, a job traditionally done by the Ormiston. The Clipper Trust is scheduled to dock at Yarraville Berth #5 at 1:30 am tomorrow. It is unclear which vessel will replace the Ormiston and for how long. There is still a commitment from CSR to replace the Ormiston with an Australian registered vessel.

MUA Victorian Branch Secretary Kevin Bracken emphasised that: “We’re not against foreign born seafarers, we have fought in recent months for their wages and conditions. The goal of bringing in foreign flagged boats is to avoid Australian wages and conditions, replacing us with low paid, unskilled foreign crews working in unsafe conditions. We want to do the right thing by foreign workers too, but we want the right to work in our own country. Foreign workers should be bound by the union agreements with good conditions as well.”

In recent months the MUA has participated as a member of the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF), in locking in nearly 5000 boats with so-called ‘Flags of Convenience’ to a minimum standard of rights and entitlements for each worker at around $1400 per month. CSL International are reportedly not abiding by these minimum conditions, instead paying workers around US$300 per month. These workers are not provided with the safety equipment and procedures necessary to avoid loss of life in this dangerous job. They are not collectively organised and do not currently have the leverage to demand safe conditions. Many work for 6-9 months without returning home to their families.

A ‘Flag of Convenience’ (FOC) is defined by the ITF as “Where beneficial ownership and control of a vessel is found to lie elsewhere than in the country of the flag the vessel is flying, the vessel is considered as sailing under a flag of convenience”. FOCs avoid labour regulations in both the country of ownership and that of operation. They characteristically pay low wages, force long hours of work and provide unsafe working conditions. Both the Capo Noli, chartered by CSL and the Stadacona, owned by CSL, are Flag of Convenience vessels. Whilst operating mainly in Australian waters, these vessels occasionally leave for international waters and thus are able to claim exemption from fuel excise, from the GST and from income taxes. This further enhances the ability of FOC vessels to outcompete Australian owned and crewed boats. In 1996 the Howard Government introduced legislation which removed the ‘accelerated depreciation’ provision. This acted as a direct disincentive for Australian companies to buy new vessels and has contributed to the lack of replacement of Australian owned vessels as they age and retire.

The replacement of Australian crewed boats with foreign crewed boats isn’t just about keeping jobs in Australia, or about the safety of workers, it’s also an environmental hazard. One seaman from the Ormiston expressed the fear that: “It’s very dangerous for our coasts. It’s unsafe both for the workers and for the environment. We’re highly qualified workers, we’ve all completed the required course over at the Maritime College in Launceston, and the period of training…we’re being replaced by untrained foreign crews. Seafarers without any local experience of the coast line of Australia and the often treacherous waters, such as Bass Straight, which they will be working on.”

It is expected that a foreign crew will be used to take the Ormiston to India or Singapore to be taken apart, or that it will be towed without a crew. The MUA will contest this, arguing that the boat’s long term crew should work this final voyage.

CSR’s other remaining Australian owned and crewed ship, the Kowulka, may have received a reprieve this week. The boat, which carries gypsum from Thevenard to Sydney and Brisbane, has approximately 5-10 years of working life remaining. Whilst it was expected that the Kowulka would be replaced by a foreign flagged vessel in about three months, the MUA has negotiated that it continue to operate.

Cement Australia has told 3 cement ships including the Goliath and the Alcem Calaca to be in port tomorrow. CSL have denied any involvement. The outcome of these meetings is significant. It remains to be seen if there will be other attempts to replace Australian owned and crewed ships with foreign flagged ships.

It is expected that further Community Assemblies will be held in support of MUA members in coming weeks.