By Alex Bainbridge
NEWCASTLE — A meeting of BHP steelworkers on September 25 vowed to campaign against BHP's apparent decision to stop producing steel in Newcastle.
The meeting was prompted by BHP chairperson Brian Loton's announcement to the company's annual shareholders' meeting on September 24 that "there will be changes in Newcastle, but we want to announce them in the most sensitive way".
BHP announced last year that it would build an electric arc furnace to replace its current steel-making facilities (at a cost of two-thirds of the current jobs), which would be closed down by 2002. In July it announced that it would not guarantee to build the electric arc furnace, although the current blast furnace would still close.
While BHP is expected to keep its rod and merchant mills operating, unionists believe that these would employ, at most, 450 of the current 2900 workers (and up to 2000 additional contractors).
The mass meeting voted on several resolutions as part of a campaign of "political and public pressure" to keep the steelworks open. The resolutions direct the unions to ask the NSW Labour Council and the state government to seek further information from BHP and, more importantly, places the leadership of the campaign in the hands of the workplace delegates.
Federal ALP industrial relations spokesperson Senator Bob McMullan has been in the Hunter Valley recently promoting the ALP's 1980s "steel rescue plan" and urging that the Howard government adopt something similar. The plan involved massive government subsidies to BHP customers.
BHP rigger and AWU member Geoff Payne told Green Left, "The subsidies might have protected profits, but they did not arrest the steady decline in jobs caused by industry restructuring in the last 10 years."
"The best, maybe even the only way, to protect jobs and workers' quality of life", he said, "is to campaign for a shorter working week with no loss in pay and the establishment of new, socially useful industries in the area".
The Newcastle steelworkers are seeking support from workers at other BHP centres and are planning a petition campaign and rally.