The power of mass action
* Australia The Australian "wharfies" have shown that strong, internationalist trade unionism can win against armies of cops, the political establishment and the media. John Tully looks at the lessons of this exemplary struggle on Australia's docks.
The evidence shows that the bosses and the government had become so complacent that they thought the wharfies could be crushed within a matter of days. First they would be evicted by the dogs and goons. Secondly, scabs would move in to carry out their work and sow demoralisation. Thirdly, the wharfies would respond in blind anger, and their union would suffer massive damages under the terms of the draconian Workplace Relations Act (modelled on Margaret Thatcher's anti-union laws in Britain). Fourthly, civil law would be invoked to force the lifting of mass picketing.
And finally, softened up by massive doses of propaganda in the bosses press, which has cast the wharfies as overpaid "bludgers' (Australian slang for shirkers or lazy people), public opinion would applaud the death of trade unionism on the waterfront.
The conspirators began plotting some
SCAB SCAB SCAB time ago - possibly even before the last federal elections - and they might still have some tricks up their sleeves yet. The conspiracy involved the training of scab labour in Dubai and the use of corporate law to set up bogus shell companies to deal with employment on the wharves. These companies were then asset-stripped by the parent company, Patricks.
The plotters assembled armies of black-clad and hooded security goons. The goons, sometimes clad in full riot gear, and toting batons, mace gas and savage dogs, descended on the wharves in the dead of night from launches and helicopters to evict the wharfies from their legitimate employment.
And all of this in the name of 'waterfront reform'!
It was all a massive miscalculation. The goons and scabs did move in, but the scabs were plainly incompetent and the tremendous discipline of the wharfies'
Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) ensured that any violence that occurred came from the other side.
Patricks terminals were shut down in every port around the nation, with hardly a container moving in or out. The union also resisted the urge to close down the operations of Patricks' rivals, thus cleverly splitting the employers' ranks. As a result P&O's tonnage increased by over 30% whilst Patricks' cargoes were rotting on the wharves.
Overseas unions also rallied to the wharfies. Maritime unions in North America, Europe, South Africa and Japan "blacked' ships coming from Patricks operations and in some cases even called for a boycott of Australian goods. Ships loaded by scabs, they said, could sail around the world "until their bottoms rusted out."
Nor did the MUA listen to the shrill advice of the various self-appointed 'workers' leaders' in the ultra-left sects, who claimed that any use of the courts was tantamount to high treason. The courts were seen as one avenue of action, at all times subservient to the weapons of class solidarity: the picket line, the demonstration, the strike and the boycott.
The level of support from other unions and from the general community must have astounded the bosses. For many working and middle class people, this dispute was where we had to draw a line in the sand and say you go no further? For many of those who swelled the picket lines, this was their first experience of struggle and they were clear about the
Impact on the labour movement
Although the Australian working class before the recession of the early 90s, has a long history of militancy, the union and the dole queues lengthened as the movement entered 1998 in a consider- government encouraged 'downsizing' ably weakened state. Union membership has plummeted. After World War lI over 65% of workers were in unions, compared with under 30% today - and these mostly concentrated in the public sector. The inspiring victory of the wharfies may well have the power to turn this situation around.
Paradoxically, many workers drifted out of the movement during the 1980s, a decade when the Australian Labor Party
(ALP) was in office. The ALP years were marked by the 'accord' - close, corporatist collusion between the government and the top union leaders. This was supposed to ensure that the restructuring of industry did not result in undue hardship for the workers - indeed that they would benefit via an increased social wage and improved job security and reskilling
The accord failed to deliver. On the contrary, real wages tell constantly even
6 International Viewpoint #300 and 'outplacing'. The traditional award structure, which had allowed the wage increases of stronger unions to 'flow on' to the less well-organised, was jettisoned in favour of 'enterprise bargaining', which cut across solidarity and left the weakest to their fate - including contracts between individual workers and employers.
Throughout this period, profits have skyrocketed, and Australia now has the greatest disparity of wealth and poverty in any of the OECD countries. For example, the personal wealth of Australia's richest man, Kerry Packer, grew from $100m in 1983, to $4500m in 1993
Hopefully the wharfies' victory wit inspire other sections of workers to throw a spanner into the works of ti "economic rationalist steamroller that resistance to date. [UT) * reasons that had impelled them into action.
They knew that if the wharfies were picked off, they would be next, and they could quote Prime Minister John Howard, who admitted that what he had done on the wharf was a blueprint for the rest of industry.
Perhaps the employers' final miscalculation was to obtain an injunction from Victoria Supreme Court judge Barry Beach ruling that the pickets were illegal and that anyone who participated was guilty of 'serious criminal behaviour and would be removed.
Beach's name will go down in history as that of a petulant ruling class fool. His ruling could not be enforced due to the enormous numbers of outraged people who came to show their support for the wharfies even if it meant breaking the law
The one time that the police did mpt do clear the pickets at Melbourne's
La Dock, they had to be escorted nion officials when the pickets len by the arrival of thousands
[construction workers.
Among those who came to defy the courts were a number of Labor Party poli-
----- photo credits and running heads -----
SC
ticians, various musicians and TV celebrities, and even footballers, who are revered in Australia. But we should not single out these people. More important were the tens of thousands of 'ordinary' men and women without whom this struggle could not have been won.
This struggle has been a vindication of the old slogan 'if you don't fight, you lose'. Those reactionaries who have smugly opined that unions are dinosaurs and that the class struggle is dead, had
The very future of trade unionism was at stake, and the ramifications of victory or defeat cannot but spill over into the international maritime industry. The Maritime Union of Australia (MUA), which covers seafarers and wharfies (dockers) occupies a strategically powerful position in an island-continent nation. Almost all lian beef to Japanese consumers. The bulk of the slashed wages would be transferred directly to stevedoring company profits.
Reith is well aware of this. His hidden agenda has always been to crush the power of the MUA. Now, after a huge upsurge of working class solidarity, he has been decisively rebuffed. The repercussions will be massive, as other workers gain confidence that they too can fight and win against a ruling class that has had things its own way for far too long.
Recent opinion polls show that in the space of one week, as a direct result of the MUA struggle, support for government
Key dates...
plummeted 6% to 46.5%, whilst that of the opposition Labor Party rose to 53.5%.
The government is already locked into holding a double dissolution election later this year as a result of its racist legislation being rejected by the Senate. Although the Labor Party, which ruled for over a decade throughout the 1980s and early '90s, has no solutions for working people, the downfall of the conservative coalition would mark a new era for Australian politics. Workers would be in no mood to cop any more attacks and would expect a 'Labor' government to govern in their imports and exports pass through its December 1997: Former SAS commando pickets are guilty of 'serious criminall members' hands and it can thus bring tremendous leverage against the bosses. But its significance does not end there. The MUA and its predecessor organisations have always been militant, and have never shied away from lending a hand to workers with less industrial muscle than themselves - including workers in other countries. (See article on previous page.)
The employers and the Australian government know that to break the wharfies would be to open up an immense crack in the union movement as a whole. Weaker unions would be a pushover in
Justice North, of the Federal Court was only restating the obvious when he ruled that the wharfies had been illegally sacked and that there was clear evidence to suggest that Patrick Stevedores and the federal government had conspired with the reactionary agrarians of the National
Federation to sack their workforce and crush the MUA.
Although the government never tires of beating the drum of waterfront its arguments are threadbare. The Australian waterfront already has world's best practice in the bulk handling of agricultural and mineral exports, and any inefficiency in the container ports can be put firmly at the door of incompetent managers and antiquated machinery
Industrial relations Minister Peter Reith repeatedly claimed that wharfies are over-paid. Leaving aside the enormous salaries paid to stevedoring executives (Patrick boss Chris Corrigan owns a $5m villain Italy with its own private chapel attached), and the profits paid to shareholders who sit on their bums and never do a day's work, one must question
He claims that wharfies are paid between A$70,000 and A$90,000 per year, but this is a lie. Such sums are theoretically possible, but only on the basıs of working massive amounts of overtime Economist Alan Davidson also calculates that even if wharfies' earnings were cut by half, this would result in a saving of only half a cent per kilo on the cost of Austra-
Mike Wells assembles a secret team of serving and former soldiers to train as non-union waterside workers in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. This was in direct collusion with Patrick Stevedores and the Australian Federal Government, particularly Industrial Relations Minister Peter Reith. The UAE government is warned of the risk of international union bans on their port and the scheme is cancelled February 1998: Nevertheless, scab workers are trained and hired by the reactionary National Farmers' Federation, and appear at Webb Dock in Melbourne. Supreme Court action by Patrick Stevedores prevents a strike by MUA members at the dock. Union begins a site by site industrial campaign, including bans on overtime and March 18: Patrick refuses to pay workers respecting these bans, citing the Workplace April 7: Patrick Stevedores sacks its union workforce and sends in security goons and dogs to clear docks in the middle of the night. The company and government had previously claimed that the union was lying when it warned that the sackings were imminent. April 8: Mass picketing of Patrick Stevedores sites around the country. Federal Court Justice Tony North grants an interim order preventing the sackings, but wharfies are barred entrance to the docks. Patrick Stevedores appeals immediately, and the interim order is suspended
In the following days, Patrick Stevedores are shut down by pickets across Australia. Over the weekend of 17-19 April, mass pickets force police to retreat at Melbourne's April 20: Justice Barry Beach of Victoria Supreme Court grants an injunction barring the union and its supporters from a 200 metre radius of Patrick Stevedores' operations; ordering the lifting of the blockade; forbidding people from taking photographs; and forbidding pickets from trying to persuade people not to scab. The judge warns that
In the following days, unions ignore Beach's order. Right-wing politicians, Patrick Stevedores, and the National Farmers Federation call for pickets to be dragged of the docks'. Some warn of bloodshed on the wharves'. Police in Victoria refuse to move against pickets. Elsewhere there are mass arrests and police violence, particularly in
Nevertheless, the blockade holds firm. The entrance to East Swanson dock, in Melbourne, Victoria, is barricaded behind a pile of welded railway lines and sleepers. A tent city mushrooms outside, and a massive stage is erected by members of the construction union. Michelle Shocked is just one of the bands which entertain the pickets.
Church leaders declare their support for the union and services are held in an improvised chapel at the picket. Maori workers host a huge traditional hungi and Vietnamese restauranteurs donate thousands of spring April 21: Justice North finds that "there is an arguable case" that the MUA has been subjected to an unlawful conspiracy and that Patricks illegally dismissed the union workforce. He orders that the workers be reinstated, but Patricks appeals immediately, and the order is suspended. April 23: A Full Bench upholds North's decision. But Patrick applies for a delay in the High Court. The reinstatement order is susApril 26: The High Court warns that Patricks might be liable to pay enormous damages -up to $1million per wharfie, or over $2billion For the latest developments: If you have Internet access, consult the apc.labr.global conference, or the website
Takver/soapbox/index.hat. Or contact the MUA directly at 46 Ireland Street, West Melbourne, Victoria 3003, Australia. Fax: +613-9328 1682.
http://mua.tcp.net.au/Pages/war.html
The Maritime Union of Australia
A proud history of internationalism
* Australia By John Tully
In The Enemy Within, his book on the 1984 British Miners' strike, Seamus Milne why the British miners have been viewed with loathing and horror -almost as 'morlocks' - terrible creatures from underground - by the British ruling
They were the symbol of everything the Tories hated: militant, internationalist, socialist, and capable even of bringing down governments, as they did in the early 1970s to Ted Heath. For Margaret Thatcher, it was axiomatic that they must be crushed.
The Australian ruling class has the same relationship towards dockers or trial Relations Minister Peter SCAB Reith is always boring people with his father's tales of how wharfies allegedly refused to load tanks for Allied soldiers in Borneo during World WarIl.
The mere mention of the word 'wharfie is likely to cause apoplexy in right-wing circles. My own school principal would suddenly burst into wild invective against wharfies during school assemblies in the 1960s. They were 'reds', he ranted. They got fabulous wages for doing next to nothing, the 'bludgers'. They were always 'holding the country to ransom', they had refused to load supplies for our boys' in Vietnam, and they were daring to tell the government of South Africa how to run its affairs!
What is it about this section of the working class that inspires such hatred?
At the beginning of this century, the countries wharf labourers were organised in a myriad of local unions. Gradually, they were welded together into a national union, the Waterside Workers' Federation (WWF). In those days the work was physically arduous and often dangerous. Ships were unloaded and loaded by hand. Cargoes were shovelled or loaded onto skips or pallets and winched out of the holds. Deaths and injury from shifting cargo were commonplace, particularly when ships discharged or loaded onto lighters in the open sea
Wages for wharfies were low and employment was on a casual basis. Conditions worsened drastically after 1928 when the WWF lost a bitter strike. Scabs gained a permanent place on the waterfront and many good unionists were either blacklisted out, or else took years to get back into the industry. The union 8 International Viewpoint #300 remembered, too, its members who were bludgeoned by the police, or thrown into gaol. Most of all, they remembered those who were shot in the back by the cops at Station Pier in Port Melbourne.
Old time Melbourne wharfie Arthur Neville remembers that, when he first came to the waterfront, in the 1930s, "the labour force was divided into four different sections. The compound... resembled the Newmarket cattle yards. Members of the Federation were herded into one pen, members of the Permanent and Casual Wharf Labourers' Union' in another and the second preference men were enclosed in the third. The rest, called "brumbies", "stiffs" or "blanks", were allowed to roam in the open paddock - out on
"With the support of an anti-working class government, the shipowners had complete control. They selected their own labour in what was called the open pick-up or bull system. Every day, thousands of men were herded into the compound like slaves in a slave market. When work was scarce the pickup boss only picked up his pink-eyes or bulls? The competition for work was so keen that good unionists with family obligations often became demoralised."
During the 1930s, however, militants from the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) gained control of the union in a number of ports. Foremost among them was an English immigrant called 'Big Jim' Healy, who became General Secretary of the union in 1937 and welded it into a strong national organisation. From this time, by dint of extraordinary struggle and sacrifice, the wharfies were able to make great improvements to their pay and conditions. From being a despised and marginalised section of the workforce, they became industrial pacesetters. One of their greatest victories was permanency and the closed shop for members of the WWF.
Yet the WWF was never inwardlooking. Bonded together by common danger and the experience of struggle, they were among the most class conscious workers in the country, if not the world. Dealing as they did with maritime workers from across the globe, they needed little tuition to realise the truth of the words of Marx and Engels: Workers of the World United! You have only your chains to lose, you have a world to win!'
Nor was this a mere formal position. In 1938, for instance, wharfies in Port Kembla refused to load scrap steel onto the 'Dalfram'. The steel, pointed out the union, was headed for Japan, from whence it would be re-exported as bombs and bullets against the people of China. This action enraged the conservative government of the day and earned Prime Minister Bob Menzies the lasting and derisive sobriquet of 'Pig Iron Bob'.
During World War Il the union was in the forefront of securing decent pay and conditions for the Indonesian crews of Dutch ships which had fled to Australia before the Japanese advance. In fact, Australian wharfies and seafarers have taken action thousands of times since then to ensure decent wages and the payment of back pay to overseas maritime workers
In 1945, after the fall of Japan, the wharfies and seafarers black banned all Dutch shipping in solidarity with the Indonesian war of independence. Similarly, when Pig Iron Bob's government was supporting the United States' war of aggression against Vietnam in the 1960s and early '70s, the WWF refused to load any ships bound for Vietnam.
The pattern continued with the wharfies often taking direct industrial action in support of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. Wharfies have also taken extensive action against the export of Australian uranium and against the import of rainforest timbers from South East Asia and the Pacific. Ironically, given the role of the reactionary National Farmers' Federation in putting scabs on the wharf in the current struggle, the wharfies have also given tens of thousands of dollars to farmers for drought relief!
Small wonder, therefore, that the ruling class so loathes and fears the waterside workers. They are the symbol, for them, of everything workers should not be: class conscious and socially aware, internationalist to the bone and militant trade unionists in an age when the ideology of the market is at its zenith.
The ruling class thought that it had the wharfies by the throat, but they have been 'seen off", with the chant of tens of thousands ringing in their ears - The MUA is here to stay. * Notes 1 The present-day MUA was formed by the amalgamation of the WWF, the Seamens' Union, the Firemen and Deckhands' Union, the Ships' Painters and Dockers and a number of smaller unions in the late 1980s and early 1890s. Eventually the scabs of 1928 had to form their own union, known for short as the P & Cs. This was eventually absorbed into the WWF, although when this was done there were very few of the original scabs left in it. It is not accidental that the bosses called the company set up to hire the scabs in the current dispute the P & C! It is a calculated insult to the wharfies and testimony of the strength of ruling class collective memory. 2. "Pink-eye' is Australian slang for a "bosses man' or "crawler'. 'Bulls' are hard-workers, especially those who don't care for safety and have no solidarity with older, slower workers.