BY ANTHONY BENBOW
AND MELANIE SJOBERG 
Workers employed at BHP operations in WA's Pilbara region must be feeling a bad sense of dj vu. In January last year, they were forced to fight to defend their jobs and hard-won conditions when the company attacked without warning. One year later, another round in the battle is looming and the potential consequences extend far beyond the Pilbara. The wages and conditions of workers at BHP sites around the country are at risk, as is the future of the Pilbara community.
In 1999, BHP had experienced record losses, due largely to bad management. However, it was the workers, not new CEO Paul Anderson, who suffered.
In September that year, the unions approached BHP to begin negotiating a new collective agreement. BHP stalled for two months, then without warning announced that individual contracts (Australian Workplace Agreements AWAs) were available for workers to sign. Union offers to negotiate a collective agreement were refused.
The AWAs included paltry improvements and financial inducements, but working conditions were not spelt out. The contracts stated: This document is to be read in conjunction with BHP company policy. In other words, conditions were to be set at the discretion of management. Workers' unions would have no right to challenge decisions and the Industrial Relations Commission could not be involved.
BHP claimed it needed to save $80 million by introducing the contracts. The workers responded with a 24-hour strike on December 6 1999. A wave of solidarity stoppages swept BHP operations across WA, South Australia, NSW and Victoria.
Baton-wielding police broke a picket line. More than 4000 BHP workers walked off the job in protest at this brutality. The WA Trades and Labor Council held a massive solidarity rally and thousands of workers sent solidarity messages to the strikers in the Pilbara.
Pressure on workers to sign contracts was extreme. Some were told sign, or your future with BHP is going nowhere. The company claimed to have 45% of its workforce signed to the contracts by February, when unions won a court injunction preventing further contracts from being offered.
In the 12 months since the injunction, there has been a cold war in the Pilbara heat. Workers who stuck with the union report that everyday life on the job has become much harder but not for their colleagues on individual contracts.
ACTU Pilbara industrial officer Will Tracey told Green Left Weekly that be believed at least half of those on the contracts would like to return to a collective agreement, and those still on the award are even stronger in their support for collective bargaining.
The Pilbara is also home to Robe and Hamersley Iron, where individual contracts have created poorer conditions. This is hardly likely to improve now that both those companies are owned by Rio Tinto.
BHP is attempting to remove the unions from its operations. Tracey reports that since his arrival in November, BHP has persistently hounded him and other unionists from its sites. First they used the WA industrial laws to block us. We are currently allowed access under the federal act, but they are challenging that too. They have also distributed material targetting myself.
BHP's goal of a flexible workforce includes the use of fly-in, fly- out contractors. This will be a severe blow to Pilbara communities. As populations fall in Port Hedland and Newman, jobs will be lost and schools, health centres and other services will be cut or close. Fewer opportunities will cuase more young people to move away.
On January 10, the Federal Court upheld BHP's right to offer individual contracts at a unionised workplace. The unions have vowed to appeal. The court ruled that BHP was not discriminating against union members by offering AWAs even though they include a clause dissuading union membership.
While the court's ruling is a blow, Tracey remains optimistic: A favourable legal outcome would have been good, but we were never putting all our hopes into a court decision. The task for us is to achieve a collective agreement for the workers at BHP. We have to bring BHP to the negotiating table, campaigning at both the local and national level to achieve this.
The BHP Pilbara workers were more than geographically isolated in the past 12 months. The ACTU, under secretary in waiting Greg Combet, assumed responsibility for the campaign against BHP and concentrated on the court challenge. At a meeting of national union leaders on January 24 last year, Combet resisted the call from Perth unionists for an immediate 24-hour stoppage of all BHP workers.
The ACTU has pursued its usual strategy of discouraging militant industrial mobilisations in favour of a responsible legal approach. The futility of the ACTU method is evident in the outcome delivered by the Federal Court in favour of BHP.
The lessons should have been drawn from the 1998 maritime dispute when tens of thousands joined peaceful pickets, cross-union delegates committees were formed and massive public support was built through speaking tours and public meetings. The best form of working-class defence is the mobilisation of the largest number of people.
The protests outside the World Economic Forum in Melbourne last September showed what is possible when activist and workers break from the legalistic and defeatist approach of most union officials.
Activists building the May 1 global strike against corporate tyranny are keen to link up with the BHP workers.
Meetings of BHP workers across the country should be held to discuss an alternative industrial and community campaign.
BHP reaped a massive $2 billion profit in 1999-2000 while carrying out its attack on the Pilbara workers and coal miners in NSW, and closing the Newcastle shipyards and slashing hundreds of jobs in Wollongong.
BHP has made its intentions clear: workers will be forced to sacrifice to meet the company's goals. If one of Australia's biggest companies goes to individual contracts it will be all the harder for collective agreements and hard-won conditions to survive anywhere. This is a fight we all must support.
[Anthony Benbow is the Democratic Socialist candidate for the seat of Fremantle in the February 10 state election. Melanie Sjoberg is the Democratic Socialist Party's national trade union coordinator.]