BY SUE BOLTON
MELBOURNE — On June 5, delegates from the metal division of the Victorian branch of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) voted to hold an industry-wide 24-hour strike on June 12, and an industry-wide mass meeting on July 3. Workers at around 600 companies are expected to strike on June 12.
The strike action will be taken in support of the metal workers' Campaign 2003 for a new pattern bargaining agreement which includes claims for a 36-hour work week, more apprentices, protection of entitlements, and a 13% wage rise.
AMWU metal division state secretary Steve Dargavel said that it is "clear that the different companies are negotiating along the same lines of their own pattern agreement. We've been having action in different sectors but what has been lacking has been common action. We need common action in Melbourne and its surrounds."
Dargavel used the example of the workers at the Austrim group of 10 companies. The union had been negotiating separately with the companies.
On June 4, there was an across-the-board stoppage of all workers from the Austrim companies and a rally outside the headquarters of the manufacturing bosses' Australian Industry Group (AIG). This common action "bolstered the confidence of that group of workers" said Dargavel, because once they started talking at the mass meeting, they realised that all of their different bosses were using a common approach.
After the delegates' meeting, Dargavel told Green Left Weekly that "the AIG is circulating a pattern agreement manual. AIG officials have been representing groups of employers in negotiations and it has been co-ordinating employers in pattern bargaining".
The main elements of the AIG pattern bargain are outright opposition to the protection of entitlements, and trying to buy AMWU members out by offering a slightly higher wage rise instead of protection of entitlements.
Dargavel told the delegates that an important reason for the industry-wide stoppage on June 12 and then on July 3 is because "a large number of companies have agreed to the pattern agreement in-principle but have not signed off" on the agreement. The stoppages are aimed at putting pressure on them to sign up.
The June 12 stoppage will involve workers whose enterprise bargaining agreements expired at the end of March and whose employers haven't yet signed up to the union's pattern agreement. The July 3 stoppage will involve all of these workers plus workers whose EBAs expire at the end of June.
Labour hire workers will strike for 24 hours on June 11. They've been striking for 24 hours every fortnight in their campaign for the pattern agreement.
Meanwhile, at the three Strammit sites and the ACI site at Box Hill, AMWU members are locked out and maintaining picket lines. A couple of weeks ago, the AMWU was running as many as nine picket lines across Melbourne.
A motion of solidarity with the Morris McMahon workers in Sydney was passed by the June 5 delegates meeting.
From Green Left Weekly, June 11, 2003.
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