The recent deal between the Australian Democrats and the Howard government to include provisions banning secondary boycotts in the new Workplace Relations Act is a serious threat to unions. BERNIE BRIAN explains the example of the 1985 Mudginberri dispute, when the Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union (AMIEU) was charged under Section 45D (secondary boycott provisions) of the Trade Practices Act for picketing a small export abattoir in the Northern Territory.
Mudginberri abattoir was located inside Kakadu National Park, 250 km east of Darwin. The four-month picket line was considered by the Federal Court to be a secondary boycott because none of the picketers worked at the abattoir. The union was fined $144,000 plus costs, had its funds sequestered when it refused to pay the fine and was forced to pay $1.5 million in damages to the employer, Jay Pendarvis, for lost export earnings.
At the time, the AMIEU was insisting that it be involved in negotiations over wages and conditions at the abattoir. The Mudginberri workers had negotiated their own agreements or "contracts" with Pendarvis without any union involvement.
The union was concerned that wages and conditions at Mudginberri did not comply with standard award entitlements such as minimum pay, sick pay, annual leave and workers' compensation. But the Mudginberri workers claimed they were happy with their contracts and refused to support the picket. Production ceased only when Commonwealth meat inspectors refused to cross the picket line.
Anti-union alliance
Before June 1985, most Australians would not have heard of Mudginberri, but after the union's assets were frozen and the ACTU organised three national strikes in support of the AMIEU, it was front-page news. The AMIEU was demonised by the media, the Murdoch-owned Northern Territory News calling picketers "layabouts and gangsters". Another Murdoch mouthpiece, the Australian, named Jay Pendarvis "Australian of the Year".
Mudginberri became a symbol for all the forces wanting to reduce the power of trade unions. The current defence minister in the Howard government, Ian Mclachlan, who was president of the National Farmers Federation (NFF) during the dispute, has written that Mudginberri "turned the tide" against union power and "changed the nature of industrial relations in Australia". John Howard, who was opposition leader at the time, called for the creation of many more Mudginberris. Mudginberri's barrister was Peter Costello, the present federal treasurer.
All of Pendarvis' legal expenses were met by the NFF. Ten years after the event, Pendarvis told a Sydney journalist that he became a tool of the NFF. Repeating the same sentiment in an interview with this writer, he said: "It became a power thing — we're going to destroy the unions".
The Northern Territory government went guarantor for a $2 million loan to Mudginberri from the Westpac Bank. A condition of this loan was that Pendarvis would sue the AMIEU for damages.
Katherine meatworkers
The Mudginberri abattoir was built in the early 1970s to take advantage of the large numbers of feral buffalo in the area. Conditions at the abattoir were in fact quite good relative to some of the other contract abattoirs operating in the NT. Free accommodation, a social club and an epic location made it a good life for most.
It was a small abattoir, and the workers had an unusually close relationship with Pendarvis, although there was no defence available for any worker who dared challenge his authority. Most of the work force, while members of the AMIEU, had very little contact with the union and were ignorant of the traditions of the union in the territory.
Most of the picketers at Mudginberri were from the Katherine meatworks, 300 km south of Darwin. Katherine was a strong union abattoir from its opening in 1963. Workers there enjoyed some of the best wages and conditions of meatworkers in the territory, but they had fought hard for them. In 1976, the management at Katherine bulldozed the meatworks caravan park in order to fragment the workers. In 1981, the owners tried to introduce non-union contracts like those operating at Mudginberri, but the workers responded with a picket line and a march of 500 people through the town.
In 1983, the AMIEU applied to the Arbitration Commission to have the conditions at Katherine extended to meatworks across the territory. The employers opposed the union's application. Specifically, the employers were opposed to the flow-on of production bonuses to unskilled labourers and the payment of workers if there was no stock available for processing.
Contract abattoirs
Neither of these conditions applied in the contract abattoirs. In one case reported to the Arbitration Commission, workers at Mudginberri had to wait five weeks without pay till the slaughtering season began.
At the Point Stuart contract abattoir, about 150km east of Darwin, unskilled labourers were earning between $50 and $60 a day, regardless of the hours worked or number of beasts slaughtered. At the same time, a skilled slaughterer could earn up to $350 per day. By increasing the number of unskilled meatworkers in proportion to skilled, the contract abattoirs were able to slash labour costs.
The Katherine workers were also opposed to the contract system because it meant fewer jobs. Contract abattoirs sometimes employed less than half the number of workers at Katherine but were often able to slaughter the same number of animals.
Contract meatworkers also received less money per beast slaughtered than at the union abattoirs. Pay packets could still be large, but workers would often have to work long and hard because there was no union presence to monitor the hours worked. The federal secretary of the AMIEU during the Mudginberri dispute, Jack O'Toole, told the Arbitration Commission that with a contract system workers had the choice either to accept the employer's terms or to go on the dole.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the number of contract abattoirs operating in the territory had increased. The manager of the Alice Springs abattoir described them as a "fresh new approach without the benefit of union involvement".
Katherine itself failed to open in 1985 because pastoralists had voted to boycott the abattoir due to the presence of the AMIEU. The Katherine workers clearly saw the spread of contract abattoirs as an attempt to destroy the union's presence in the territory and to undermine their conditions. The industrial officer for the NFF, Paul Houlihan (one of the architects of Howard's industrial relations legislation), told the media at the time that Mudginberri was the first step in a campaign to spread non-union contract employment throughout Australia.
Picket line
The pickets in 1985 lasted four months during the hot and dusty conditions of the dry season, when the nights are cold and daytime temperatures over 30 degrees.
The AMIEU organiser, Trevor Surplice, however, called it the "Hilton of picket lines". At the start it consisted of a caravan, some tents and a blue plastic sheet tied to trees as a canopy, with a Eureka flag flying above. By the end of the picket, Surplice says, it had a "circus atmosphere" with "coloured lights ... whipper snippers and lawn mowers, and we'd just have everything trimmed down looking neat ... and well organised". The picket line became a new site of interest for tourists visiting Kakadu.
The pickets were removed only in early September, when the dispute was placed in the hands of the full bench of the Arbitration Commission. The commission was not prepared to oppose the contract system, but in a small concession to the union it ruled that the union should be given notification of new contracts and that the decision was applicable only in the territory. At least the NFF could not use the outcome as a precedent for the meat industry in the rest of Australia.
During the dispute, the ACTU gave half-hearted support to the AMIEU, and the Hawke Labor government argued that the dispute should be resolved in the Arbitration Commission. The ALP had made a promise in 1983 to remove Section 45D from the statute books, but claimed it was blocked from doing so by the Australian Democrats.
While this was true, many observers thought the ALP was not really trying. This was confirmed in December 1993, when the Labor Party combined with the Liberal-National Coalition and to defeat a Western Australian Greens motion to remove the secondary boycott clause from the Labor government's Industrial Relations Bill.
While, nationally, the meatworkers' union survived the legal onslaught, the same cannot be said of the Katherine workers. In 1987, the Katherine abattoir reopened and began operating on a contract system with about half the previous work force. All known union activists were blacklisted. The strongest union abattoir in the Northern Territory had been broken.