BY GEORGINA DAVIES
MELBOURNE — A 24-hour stop work meeting by 250 members of the Latrobe Valley branch of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) caused power blackouts and restrictions across Victoria.
The workers voted to shut down generators at three power stations — Yallourn, Hazelwood and Loy Yang — and walked off the job at 9.30pm on November 2. It was the second strike by power workers this year. Within two hours, Victorian Labor Premier Steve Bracks had invoked the reactionary Emergency Services Act.
The striking workers were attacked by the mainstream press because of their "wild cat" action. The truth is that the workers have been struggling in vain for 18 months to reach an acceptable enterprise agreement with Yallourn Energy.
Over the past year and a half, Yallourn Energy has been attempting to force workers to abandon their existing enterprise agreement for one that would allow greater rationalisation of the workforce and greater use of contract labour.
As Luke van der Muelen of the Latrobe Valley CFMEU explained, the Australian Industrial Relations Commission's decision to end the bargaining process between Yallourn Energy and the workers "forced the hand of the workers".
The leaking of a secret Yallourn Energy document convinced the workers that their suspicions were well founded. It revealed Yallourn Energy's plans to sack 262 workers, lock the remaining workforce out for 6 months, de-unionise the plant and hire contract labour through a company linked to transport magnate Lindsay Fox.
Concerned not only about saving their own jobs, the workers and their families are also trying to halt the decimation of their community. In the past decade, some 17,500 jobs in the Latrobe Valley have disappeared, and in the power industry — traditionally the backbone of the area — employment has fallen from 11,000 to less than 3000 in the same period.
Despite previously condemning the workers' strike action and refusing to intervene in the deadlock, Bracks has agreed to meet with the CFMEU's van der Meulen. In an interview on 3CR radio in Melbourne, van der Meulen expressed his hope that the government would work to establish a genuinely fair negotiating process.