James Vassilopoulos
"What you've got on the waterfront are people who are earning $100,000 a year ... it's a bit like the reverse Robin Hood, the rich stealing from the poor and keeping it for themselves", John Sharp, minister of transport, said on a recent current affairs program when asked about the government's restructuring plans for the waterfront.
Sharp went on to launch a full-scale attack on maritime workers and the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA). He claimed that waterfront strikes were costing Australia exports and jobs.
According to the Strikers Club — an international group of insurance companies — Australian ports make up 22.7% of world maritime strikes.
These claims were refuted by John Coombs, the joint national secretary of the 10,000-strong MUA in an article in the February 17 Financial Review. According to figures from the Bureau of Transport and Communications Economics, in 1995 wharfies were involved in only three days of stoppages. This was a 60% decrease on the previous year.
Sharp said he was determined to use the new industrial legislation to "reform" the waterfront. The government did not want to provoke a strike, he said, but "We don't want to sit back and leave Australia with an inefficient, costly and unreliable waterfront".
Tony Papaconstuntinos, MUA joint national secretary, told the Australian on February 17 that these attacks are "all part of the ideological push to take us on ... Sharp is trying to wind up the Australian public and have them believe we're a bunch of shysters and crooks and layabouts so that when he takes us on there's no support or sympathy for our cause."
The MUA's national office says that the union has already accepted significant trade-offs, which have lowered costs for employers.
For example, between 1989 and 1992 labour productivity at container terminals doubled, and cargo handling rates improved by 50%. The stevedoring work force more than halved, 4900 workers leaving the industry.
Australian grain ports became the most efficient in the world — loading times have halved, labour declined by 70% and costs by 50%.
Papaconstuntinos accused Sharp of urging new stevedoring companies in Victoria not to use union labour.
In Melbourne, Orient Overseas Container Line has won a tender to build and operate a container terminal at Appleton Dock. This will break the current duopoly of P&O Ports and Patrick Stevedoring. The new company has reached an agreement with the MUA to use union labour.
Coombs suggested that the government would use its new industrial relations legislation for "massive" litigation against the MUA. He stated the union would not be so "stupid" as to engage in illegal industrial action.