BY SHANE BENTLEY
A five-day dispute between Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) maintenance staff employed by Patrick Stevedores at Port Botany in Sydney and Fisherman's Island in Brisbane ended on the afternoon of November 21 after union members accepted a compromise negotiated between the MUA and the notoriously anti-union Skilled Engineering labour-hire company.
After Skilled Engineering won the Patrick maintenance contract from Transfield, its management refused to offer jobs to a handful of around 40 former Transfield permanent employees at Patrick's Port Botany and the Fisherman's Island terminals. Half of the permanent workers refused jobs were delegates.
All former Transfield employees, both permanent and casual, who were offered work with Skilled Engineering refused to accept until the company employed all former workers — including the delegates.
On November 17, MUA maintenance workers in Sydney and Brisbane picketed the maintenance departments at the two ports' Patrick terminals.
The compromise outcome at Port Botany will see the three formerly permanently employed electricians (who Skilled Engineering had initially refused to hire) employed on a casual basis, as well as the loss of one storeperson's position. One or more of the electricians were also MUA delegates.
The MUA leadership believes that it can win permanency back for the three electricians in the future and has vowed to "drive Skilled absolutely mad" over the life of the two-year contract.
Mark Szegedi, one of the sacked workers at Patrick's Brisbane terminal, told Green Left Weekly that the maintenance workers had decided to return to work to await the outcome of a court hearing on their case. This meant that the workers employed by Skilled Engineering would commence work without the two sacked workers, himself and union delegate Sean Dalton, who will remain out of work, but on full pay, while the case is being decided.
[Shane Bentley is an MUA member employed at P&O White Bay and a member of the Socialist Alliance.]
From Green Left Weekly, December 3, 2003.
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