On May 28, about 400 members of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) at East Swanson Dock terminal met for eight hours and discussed the enterprise bargaining offer by P&O Ports, which is designed to match the changes implemented by Patrick Stevedores last year. GRANT HOLDEN, a delegate at the terminal and a candidate for national assistant secretary in the MUA elections, spoke to radio 3CR's SUSAN PRICE about why the workers rejected the deal by a margin of three to one.
Question: Why the members reject the enterprise agreement?
There were three main sticking points. Straddle drivers are the majority of workers at East Swanson. At the moment, we have an arrangement of three men and two machines, so you drive for the morning session, do something else around lunchtime and drive in the afternoon session again.
Now they want to bring in one man, one machine. These straddles are three storeys high and you sit sideways looking down. It is an unnatural position. A lot of people have arthritis and neck and back problems; the straddles vibrate a lot and affect people's health.
The second concern is we can't see how our penalty rates have all been rolled into an aggregate wage. At the moment, straddle drivers at East Swanson working for Patrick are on about $57,000 a year. This includes pay for shiftwork and weekend work. I think we have to work more weekends under the proposed agreement at P&O and our aggregate wage comes to about $62,000 annually.
The third point is the roster itself. It's the worst roster I've seen. We are expected to work 11 days straight and then have three days off. Then we get a period of some light work, day shift for a couple of weeks, then evening shift, then seven night shifts, a couple of days off and do seven more irregular, most likely, night shifts before going back to day work. In my opinion, this roster system is a licence to kill. It is an accident waiting to happen.
Question: Will management at P&O accept the outcome of this vote, particularly as this agreement was accepted in other parts of the country?
In Brisbane, members are forklift operators, not straddle drivers, so it's different. Sydney is still negotiating. They have come to a tacit agreement. They have agreed on rosters and money, but they haven't agreed completely.
It will probably boil down to what happens in Sydney. If they have come to an agreement, we'll probably be able to accept something similar.
Question: How do you think the union leadership has approached this P&O deal?
If I'd been a union official and was negotiating this agreement — with an election in the middle of it — I wouldn't conclude an agreement like this that will leave a bitter taste in everyone's mouth. I'd be stretching it out as long as I can, so that people will realise all the nasties in it, until everyone has voted in the elections.
Question: Do you think this election campaign, and rank and file members' participation in it, have influenced MUA members' discussion and knowledge of the detail of the agreement?
I was a bit worried that if we spoke out against enterprise agreements and on political issues we'd be seen as negative. But because both the agreement process and the election process have dragged out for so long, it's been positive for us.
After the meeting, workers employed as supplementary labour who have not voted came up to us and said they'd vote for us. I think it's backfired on certain people in the MUA.
Question: Will bosses have another go at getting workers to accept this deal?
They will, but we also want to go back to them with a better roster and with proper rates of pay included. We still want to negotiate the one man, one machine item, and we don't like all the subclauses for the "permanent part-time" workers.
The rejection was so overwhelming, that they won't come back straight away. P&O has a lot of work to do to get us to accept it.