The Coalition government's industrial relations and shipping policies are particularly targeted at the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA). Howard and Reith want to reduce transport costs to business. More importantly, without the maritime union their union-busting, anti-worker agenda will be made easier.
New stevedoring companies are already being encouraged to set up with scab labour, as advertisements in the Australian for non-union labour reveal.
The union — like all other powerful left-wing unions — has been weakened by 13 years of the Labor/ACTU Accord. Despite this, the union still has the strength to fight the Coalition's attacks provided it has the backing from other sections of the union movement and the wider community.
The maritime union's origins were in last century's fight to establish the rights of workers. Waterfront employers at the time preferred convict slave labour to paying workers a living wage. The industry remained dangerous and exploitative until the union won the right to give union members jobs over non-unionists and to a rostering system that shared work fairly among unionised workers.
Waterfront workers' history of militant and united action won them the right to union involvement in recruitment, rostering and technological change; decent wages and safe working conditions, including decent staffing levels; fair crewing standards on all domestic shipping; workers' compensation to match award income; and significant industrial clout.
However these gains didn't just benefit maritime workers. With their strategic control over the movement of goods through Australian ports, maritime unions were able to give significant assistance to other workers in struggle. Last year, a strike by maritime workers together with coal miners in response to the threat of massive damages claims against striking Weipa workers turned around their struggle for the right to collective bargaining, union representation and equal pay.
Maritime workers, both waterfront and seagoing, have long been champions of progressive campaigns — against nuclear weapons and weapons testing, against nuclear ship visits, against uranium mining and export, against the import of tropical rainforest timber, in support of Indonesian independence after the Second World War and against the Vietnam War. They have added valuable industrial muscle to these social movements.
The Coalition's deregulation of the shipping industry, particularly the abolition of cabotage (the monopoly Australian crews have on domestic routes), strikes at the heart of the maritime union's ability to protect the jobs of its seagoing members.
This "reform" will open the way for Flag of Convenience vessels — labelled "Ships of Shame" after a 1992 report detailed their dangerous and exploitative practices, particularly toward their Third World crews — to compete with domestic shipping. This will undermine both seafarers' conditions and current environmental safeguards.
The Coalition's plans also threaten the union's legal right to represent their members by giving maritime bosses the right to choose which union has the legal coverage and the ability to establish yellow "enterprise" unions.
The abolition of preference clauses for unionists will allow maritime bosses to employ non-union labour, and the stripping of awards down to 20 minimum conditions and greater restrictions on the right to strike will immediately undermine workers' conditions. Further, the proposal that secondary boycotts be outlawed represents a renewed attempt to prevent maritime workers from taking industrial action in solidarity with other workers and progressive campaigns.
The mutual self-defence compact agreed by the MUA and the Construction, Forestry, Energy and Mining Union is an important step in defending union rights. This type of agreement should be extended because an attack on the maritime union is an attack on us all.