BY MELANIE SJOBERG
AND BRONWEN POWELL
WOLLONGONG — Four thousand BHP Port Kembla workers voted for a 24-hour strike after an angry debate at a stopwork meeting here on November 9.
"This is about job security", Graham Roberts, Australian Workers Union (AWU) branch secretary, told the packed stadium. Roberts described how management's tactic was to spread rumours by telling various workers that their jobs would not be needed in the future. He pointed out that agreements on job security between the unions and BHP had existed since 1983 and management's action violated these.
Roberts explained that in recent months BHP management had flagged its intention to outsource "non-core" operations and a combined delegates meeting had decided to enter into negotiations over the issue. The talks produced an "8-point plan" for reviewing operations. Management was now breaching this.
No-one at the meeting was provided with a copy or even a printed summary of the agreement but Roberts' verbal outline mentioned a "statement of shared commitment" to consider all options to help BHP meet "world's best practice". Outsourcing was to happen only if it were proven to be more efficient, workers provided with full information, a forum set up to consider contentious issues, and no predetermined "outcomes" arrived at. There was to be a jointly determined timetable for implementation.
It emerged that BHP management had been negotiating with Asea Brown-Boveri to take over maintenance work in breach of provision for no predetermined outcomes. This sparked the stopwork meeting. The union officials argued that action was necessary to "force BHP to abide by the agreement".
Union members from the floor lambasted the officials for not calling a mass meeting in February when the outsourcing of maintenance had been announced and the workers had demanded a meeting. BHP's threat to close the maintenance operation if it were not sold by Christmas made the workers angrier.
One delegate pointed out that two weeks into the negotiations they had "realised it was a snow job". Another worker argued that the process was flawed and should be rejected because it was designed by management in their own interests. He called for a process that was developed and controlled by the workers themselves.
Despite the anger, AWU officials pushed on with their prepared motion to condemn BHP for its failure to support the community and to reaffirm the union's commitment to the eight-point plan. The AWU motion included a call for a public campaign and further mass meetings if there was no satisfactory progress.
The vote for the 24-hour strike was close, with many members calling for a longer action. Clearly the mood was for a sustained battle against BHP, with most workers realising that it was not only their jobs at stake, but the fate of the whole community.
BHP made a massive $2 billion profit for 1999-2000. BHP CEO Paul Anderson described it as a tremendous result based upon improved performance across the company. In the July 27 Australian Financial Review, Anderson said that the result "was the sum of thousands of individual actions, taken by thousands of employees, all working toward a common objective".
Now those same employees at Port Kembla are being offered redundancy for their efforts.
The August 17 Financial Review reported cost-cutting in steel and a 5% productivity boost will lift the "return on capital invested in steel by 10% to 12% over the next 3 years". Steel president Kirby Adams claimed BHP had saved $100 million over the previous 12 months and identified the flat products operation at Port Kembla as its next cost cutting focus. Kirby went on to suggest that BHP would "spin off" its $1.9 billion long products business and close or sell other non-core assets.
On November 2 BHP announced a $715 million record quarter profit — after tax!
The AWU and its members can draw upon the lessons of earlier successful campaigns against BHP. In 1991, BHP was forced to back down on its plans to sack 1100 workers and use contractors at its Port Kembla sheet and coil division. This was the result of sustained industrial action, a week-long strike and support from the South Coast Labor Council.
At the time, Graham Roberts, then branch secretary of the Federation of Industrial Manufacturing and Engineering Employees (FIMEE), told Green Left Weekly that the victory "re-established the principle that workers really have got the power to change decisions if they take appropriate action ... it's a lesson for all workers in Australia."