Liam Mitchell
Forty-seven workers have been locked out of their jobs at the Boeing maintenance depot in Williamtown since May for campaigning for improved working conditions and against individual contracts. Australian Workers Union Newcastle organiser Richard Brownie spoke to Green Left Weekly about the campaign at the Unions NSW "Last Weekend" event in Sydney on August 7.
Brownie explained that "solidarity from the rest of the union movement is extremely important for our campaign. We've got 20,000 or 30,000 people here today and a large number didn't know anything about Boeing and why the guys have been out now for 68 days." He described the huge community reach-out campaign being carried out by the union in Newcastle and across NSW, and said he believes that "slowly but surely the general community can see through the $22 million taxpayer-funded campaign that says Howard is giving them the choice of a collective agreement. It is just not the case."
Asked about the prospects of the campaign at Boeing, Brownie said: "Boeing is adamant about staying with their individual agreement and we are adamant about getting a collective agreement for the members."
"Last week", Brownie said, "nine scab workers came down from the Amberley Air Base. The previous three weeks there were 22." Given that the company won't budge at the moment, the union's main tactic at present is to "keep targeting the scabs and reduce that. So far, it's been successful."
Brownie explained that the scabs are being drawn from the majority of ex-defence force employees at Amberley who were never in the union. "We have a very small number of members at Amberley. They only joined around March."
The scabs are "getting paid $88 per day, plus their wages and accommodation while they're down here. Their wives and partners can come down as well, so it's a nice little sweetener."
Brownie said the workers are travelling to Canberra on August 9, where they "are hoping to get into the public gallery at parliament and stand there with our T-shirts on and our backs to Howard, and take the campaign very physically to the federal government".
Commenting on the need for cross-union solidarity, he said that although the Newcastle branch of the union has its hands full fighting the Williamtown lock-out, "our moral support is there for the workers at Imperial Mushrooms [see article on page 3] and any other worker that's in a similar situation".
From Green Left Weekly, August 17, 2005.
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