Weipa strikers fight for equal pay for equal work

Despite their partial victory won in the Industrial Relations Commission last week, the workers at Weipa remain on strike, determined to stay out until equal pay for equal work is the certain result of their six-week struggle. Green Left Weekly's DICK NICHOLS talked to chief electrician SIMON KUETHER, a member of the Communication, Electrical and Plumbing Union (CEPU), about what the plans of the 71 strikers. Why were the strikers so determined to stay out, when everyone was proclaiming that the ACTU, led by a newly risen Bob Hawke, had won a great victory on their behalf? Kuether pointed out how little of the gap between the contract rate and the award rate had been filled by the backdated 8% wage rise awarded by the IRC. "At least half of the people here are at level 1, 2 or 3 [the lower end of the Weipa pay scale] and an 8% rise would take them from around $25,000 a year to just over $27,000. That's still way short of the $45,000 the 'staffies' are on." Kuether explained that since the Weipa award was a minimum rates award, it had always been possible for Comalco management to grant union members a pay increase without recourse to special allowances or exemptions, or even bringing in union leaderships: the fact that they had simply refused had greatly increased bitterness. "All they had to do was talk to us, and this whole dispute need never have happened", Kuether said. While granting that the 8% rise would eliminate more of the gap at the top end of the pay scale (levels 7 and 8), Kuether stressed that the whole point of the strike would be lost if Comalco management were given the slightest chance to welsh on the equal pay principle: "We won't go back until they sign on the dotted line". "You have to understand what they're like", Kuether said. "It's taken a national stoppage to get them to even talk. And they still won't talk to us direct." How would CRA now try to wriggle out of paying equal money for equal work? How would the strikers make sure that the rest of the gap between award rates and staff rates was eliminated? "Simply by staying out", Kuether replied. "We've been through all this before. If CRA gets us back into negotiations, it'll be another 18 months of to-ing and fro-ing, endless talk, lawyers and what have you — they love that and they're very good at it. They'd drag the whole thing out in the hope of demoralising us. If we accept that our side would lose momentum and it would be hard to start it up again if CRA bogged us down in negotiations." That's why, according to Kuether, there's no talk of going back to work from any of the 71 strikers. "We're dead serious about this, and we've got the message through to Bob Hawke and Jennie George." But can they survive? "Morale's never been better. The strike fund's paying the bills and the support and solidarity has been fantastic. In fact, that's one thing I want to stress — it's not so much been the money, but the incredible wave of solidarity that's poured in. We've had messages galore, pensioners have sent us money, people have written poems, one bloke's even doing a video of himself singing a song he's written for us!" "So we feel we're not just doing it for ourselves: it's like there's hundreds of thousands of people out there who've been waiting for a long time for someone to make a stand. Now that it's been us who's done it, they're thrilled. So we're not about to let them down either", Kuether emphasised. As Kuether was speaking to Green Left Weekly the Weipa strikers were trying to prevent a kaolin-carrying ship from berthing. In a matter-of-fact voice Kuether explained that the strikers were being arrested by Queensland fisheries officials as they tried in their "tinnies" (aluminium dinghies) to stop the ship's passage. "There'll be a lot more of this", Kuether said. "We're in a real head-butting session here." According to Kuether, the striking workers are well aware that there's no way CRA will easily grant the equal pay principle. "It's the whole basis of their push to get people out of unions. Why would you leave the union if there was no money in it?" What effect had the strike had on the "staffies"? Kuether said that lots of contract workers had said they would come back into the union if the fight is won. "A lot of them are telling us that if we'd done it two years ago, they would never have left", Kuether said, but added that the unionists probably needed to have waited until today, to be sure of having a compact, disciplined group of fighters with which to confront Comalco. The Weipa strikers will be out at least until November 28, the date of the visit to Weipa of ACTU president-elect Jennie George and CFMEU Mining and Energy Division National President John Maitland. According to Kuether the strikers would have to be convinced that equal pay was guaranteed before returning to work. They don't trust Comalco in the least to deliver on that, and they expect to be "on the grass" for some time yet — they're already organising the Christmas party for the Weipa 71 and their families.