Lessons from the Weipa struggle

By Sue Bull The Industrial Relations Commission arbitration hearing on the Weipa dispute has exposed how the Labor government's industrial relations legislation is being used by employers to dismantle the award system and erode union coverage. CRA offered a big (but temporary) pay rise to its workers who abandoned their unions. This was a largely successful CRA strategy until it hit serious worker resistance at Weipa (see GLW #213, #214). The IRC says it cannot offer the workers an award which gives Weipa's union members the same paid rates as the workers on individual staff contracts because, under Labor's enterprise bargaining legislation, awards have become "safety nets" rather than a comprehensive guide to workers' wages and working conditions. Award rates are now just minimum rates. So Commissioner Anne Harrison has suggested that the dispute go back to negotiations between CRA and the Weipa workers with the proviso that CRA observe the "principle of equal pay for work of equal value". However the whole idea of the enterprise bargaining legislation is to allow some workers to be paid more than others. IRC president Deirdre O'Connor also suggested changing the individual staff contracts to allow union representation for workers on contracts. But while contract workers should have the right to be represented by a union in any dispute with the boss, as workers in CRA's Hamersley Iron mine have learnt, the object of these individual contracts is to rob workers of the source of their strength — the ability to act collectively in a union. How did the union movement get into this terrible situation? Peter Gahan gave the answer in an opinion piece in the December 5 Financial Review: "A decade ago, the proposition that a federal Labor government would preside over an era of union decline would have been laughable. Even more preposterous would have been the prediction that a central policy platform of Labor, the Prices and Incomes Accord, would contribute significantly to this decline. Yet it is increasingly apparent that this is exactly what is happening." The Accord, explains Gahan, was about making unions take economic "responsibility" for their actions. Union "responsibility" means not fighting back and enterprise bargaining was the next logical step. After 12 years of ACTU collaboration in the transfer of $400 billion from wages to profits, worker disillusionment with unions — reflected in a falling rate of unionisation — has reached an all-time high. It should come as no surprise that the imposition of enterprise bargaining threatens to take more workers out of unions. The ACTU made a great show of backing the Weipa workers. Its president-elect Jennie George was moved to affirm on television that defending workers' interests was the primary role for unions. But she spent the rest of the Channel 7 Face to Face program explaining that the CRA dispute was an "aberration" in an otherwise "harmonious" industrial environment created by a "responsible" union movement in the supportive framework of the Accord. If the workers at Weipa succeed, they will show all workers that there is a point to belonging to a union. But the union movement won't grow stronger until it is willing to fight to replace enterprise bargaining with collective bargaining which involves the whole union movement. If the union movement is to take this course, it will have to fight the ALP. That is why we need a new workers' party, committed to the interests of the majority of society, democratically organised and fully supportive of the struggle for a decent living standard and a livable environment.
[Sue Bull is the Democratic Socialists' spokesperson for industrial relations.]