AWU: A union too far away
By Cameron Parker
SYDNEY — "What sort of workers movement is it when the 20 superunions in Australia only represent one group in society — the employers?", asked Bob Fuge at a Rank and File Alliance public meeting held here on July 9. Fuge is not alone in his concern: he and other Victorian shearers voted on May 1 this year in Ballarat to abandon the Australian Workers' Union and form the Shearers and Rural Workers Union.
"We were frustrated with the AWU", explained Bob, "they've forgotten their pastoral side. There hasn't been a pay rise for shearers in over three years, and in that time we've been forced to trade-off our weekends and daily rates for hourly rates of pay. Yet only recently AWU organisers in Queensland have given themselves a 5% productivity increase!"
The AWU is one of the biggest unions in Australia, the product of years of amalgamations between pastoral, mining, oil, tourism, hospitality and construction industry unions. Shearers, once the backbone of the AWU, now represent only about 6% of the union's membership.
"The SRWU is for all pastoral workers — shearers, fruit pickers, station hands, rouseabouts — anyone who works on the land, says Fuge. Currently the SRWU is based only in Victoria. Pastoral workers generally are not centred at the one workplace, so the idea of branches of the SRWU being formed in other States is having a ripple effect. Shearers from Queensland, currently working in outback Victoria, are taking the idea of starting their own branch of the SRWU back home with them. With the shearing season only just beginning, officials from the SRWU are already looking at having a branch set up in New South Wales.
Conditions in the pastoral sector are described by Bob Fuge as like living in the Third World. "There's 45 degree heat inside the [shearing] shed. Near the end of the day we have to run the water for ten minutes before we can have something resembling a cold shower. At night in our living quarters the dust blows through the walls and you can see the sky through gaps in the ceiling."
Nor are conditions any better for other pastoral workers. Poorly paid fruit pickers "have to provide their own gear, work incredibly long days then go to sleep under a tree somewhere", Fuge reports.
The AWU's dues rate for all pastoral workers, whose work is seasonal and usually lasts only six months, is $190 regardless of how much work or rate of pay a worker gets.
At the beginning of 1994 the AWU changed its system of collecting this fee from its members. Previously AWU organisers went from workplace to workplace collecting dues and renewing membership cards, called tickets. A ticket is invaluable to a shearer because it proves that they are qualified to do the work.
Some shearers waiting for an organiser to show up to renew their ticket have instead received letters in the mail from a debt collecting agency on behalf of the AWU threatening legal action if they do not pay within 14 days.
Bob Fuge views this as incredibly unfair: "The AWU sacked its last pastoral organiser and replaced him with an unticketed construction worker". To Bob and other shearers the AWU is just too out of touch and unable to properly represent the needs of pastoral workers.
[SRWU membership dues cost $100. For more information about the SRWU write to: Shearers and Rural Workers Union, PO Box 428, Ballarat Victoria 3353.]