By Anthony Benbow and Jonathan Singer
A dispute over individual contracts at a Western Australian mine has, in the last week, become a major test of strength between workers and their employers.
Workers at BHP's iron ore operations in the Pilbara region in north-west Western Australia completed a four-day strike on January 22, despite police violence against their pickets. The strike began in response to the company's refusal to negotiate a new agreement with the workers' unions and its decision to have individual contracts "made available".
On January 20, 4000 BHP coalminers struck for 24 hours in solidarity with the Pilbara workers, and 500 unionists and supporters rallied in Perth. International union federations are discussing bans on BHP iron ore exported to Japan and Korea.
BHP — the "Big Australian" — is revealed as just another big bully in industrial relations. According to the January 19 Australian, the first police attack on the picket lines, at the Mount Newman mine, occurred shortly after police spoke with BHP management.
Police violence
The police attacks, at Mount Newman on January 18 and at Port Hedland on January 19, were brutal. Police formed lines and advanced on the picketers, thrusting long batons forward at groin height to force the workers off the entry roads.
A police spokesperson said this was "controlled striking" rather than a police riot. However, a manufacturing workers' union official, John Mossenson, described the police violence as "the worst I have seen on a picket line". There are reports that some of the police violence occurred after the buses carrying strike-breakers had passed the picket.
Media reports state that up to 17 picketers were arrested. Bail conditions include bans on rejoining the picket lines. According to the January 21 Australian, an Australian Workers Union official, Paul Asplin, was rearrested when he was pacing out the 50-metre distance he must keep from BHP leases.
Police were apparently uninterested in the real violence occurring at the entries to the BHP sites — for example, scabs driving through the pickets. Mossenson was run down and required hospital treatment for his injuries.
After the police attacks, which were backed by court orders, the unions decided they could no longer block access to the Mount Newman mine or the Port Hedland processing plant. Unionists maintained 24-hour pickets, but attempted to speak to the workers crossing the line.
BHP's support for the police assault on the picketing unionists intensifies its pressure on workers to sign contracts which offer only slight improvements in pay while making work conditions subject to company policy. The contracts give no protection from unfair treatment on the job, for example.
Workers seeking to be part of a collective agreement through their union have been asked eight times or more to sign an individual contract.
According to the January 20 West Australian, Port Hedland doctor Dennis Evans said one worker he had treated had "signed a contract because he was told his career was going nowhere if he didn't". Evans also said one injured worker was not allowed to follow medical instructions to work only light duties because of his contract. He told striking workers that they shouldn't have any doubts that they are "doing the right thing — you're doing it".
The vigorous picketing at Mount Newman clearly stung BHP, which pushed forward with court actions to prevent strikers being on its lease.
The police attacks on the Pilbara picketers aroused the anger of unionists nationwide. BHP coalminers deluged the mining division of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) with phone calls demanding action, the division's general president, Tony Maher, said. Maher is quoted in the January 21 Australian Financial Review saying: "What are we going to do? Lay down and cop it? ... BHP deserve[s] everything [it] gets."
BHP coal and steel workers (the latter have already held a round of one-day stoppages) do not believe the company's soothing pronouncements, repeated on ABC radio's January 21 PM program, that "contracts are peculiar to the iron ore division" and that "sufficient flexibility is present in our current collective agreements in other operations". There has been no lack of "flexibility" in the Pilbara, as the major refit carried out almost entirely by outside contractors illustrates.
Indeed, how do BHP know what collective agreement it can get when it won't even begin discussions? Rather, the individual contracts are (a rather thick) thin end of the wedge for BHP workers everywhere, and a threat to collective agreements and hard-won conditions anywhere.
According to the January 21 Sydney Morning Herald, a statement from the CFMEU mining division's general vice-president, Reg Coates, said, "BHP is demanding unconditional surrender of mineworkers' right to industrial action". An editorial in the paper the following day complained that this "is the language of class warfare rather than an industrial relations dispute" — exactly the kind of language which is needed from the workers' point of view, regardless of the sensibilities of the newspaper's editorial staff.
Solidarity needed
The January 20 Perth rally, outside BHP's headquarters, heard from WA Trades and Labor Council secretary Tony Cooke and representatives of the Pilbara workers' unions. Demonstrators condemned BHP's actions and the police violence and passed a motion supporting national action by all BHP unionists.
The ACTU coordinated a January 24 discussion of the motion among all the unions with coverage at BHP (including in petroleum and transport). The ACTU is also taking legal action under the Workplace Relations Act, attempting to get a ruling against the individual contracts.
In the 1998 Patrick Stevedores dispute, the ACTU won its court action by showing that workers had been sacked because they were union members, which the WRA prohibits. The argument in its action against BHP is that the contracts are an inducement to cease union membership, but the legal strength of this case is not so clear because the contracts do not require workers to stop being union members.
The struggle at BHP iron ore has been tough going. Court orders against the workers and police assaults on pickets have had some effect. The workers will not win or lose in the Pilbara alone, however. The solidarity actions by BHP workers across the country, often in the face of company court actions against them, have had a real impact, and point to one of the ways forward for the campaign.
The Perth rally is only the first of the political actions by unionists and their supporters that the BHP workers need to back their struggle. Democratic Socialist Party and Resistance members are collecting, through their offices and while selling Green Left Weekly, the contact details of people who want to be informed about future solidarity actions.
The 1998 Patrick dispute showed that mass pickets and all-union stoppages and rallies can help win industrial disputes at the workplace and in the courts. Opposition to all-out campaigning against BHP, attributed to unnamed "union sources" in the January 22 Australian, threatens to leave the BHP workers without their best defence.
The ways to overcome legal obstacles must be found, so that action can be extended beyond BHP. The attack on the BHP workers is just the latest in a government and business campaign that affects all working people. Concerted public mobilisation can ensure that the government and employers cannot use their undemocratic laws.