BY GRAHAM WILLIAMS
Still in the early stages of their pattern bargaining campaign, Victorian metal workers have already made major advances towards winning a 36-hour work week. Around 100 companies have now signed the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union's pattern agreement, which includes the claim. Victorian AMWU metal division secretary STEVE DARGAVEL spoke to 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly about the campaign.
More than 1000 metal industry agreements were set as part of the Victorian AMWU's metal division's Campaign 2000. They will all expire on March 31, to be replaced by agreements won through Campaign 2003.
This tactic, of lining up the end date of industrial agreements so that workers can campaign collectively for common wages and conditions, is called pattern bargaining. It is loathed by the Coalition government because it undermines the push for individual workplace or worker agreements.
Through Campaign 2003, the AMWU is once again fighting for another three-year pattern agreement. The key elements of the proposed agreement include: a 36-hour work week; protection of workers' entitlements; a 13% pay increase over three years; more apprentices; and the automatic conversion of casual workers into permanent employees.
Success
Contractors and companies in the west Melbourne industrial area were among the first to sign up to the pattern agreement, in what Dargavel called a "breakthrough". They joined a range of fabrication workplaces and structural steel companies. In Geelong, companies caved in to the pattern agreement just the day before a mass meeting of AMWU members was to vote on industrial action for the campaign.
Workers in the power-generation industry in the La Trobe Valley, principally from maintenance contracting companies, won improvements on top of the pattern agreement. These included an 18.5% wage increase over three years, and the immediate implementation of a 36-hour work week. Most importantly, Dargavel said, "they clawed back much of the demarcation losses over recent years."
"In an area with high unemployment, it's crazy that demarcation has been relaxed to the extent that it has been in the La Trobe Valley", Dargavel pointed out. Widespread "multi-skilling" has led to fitters doing welding work, boilermakers doing trades assistants' work and trades assistants doing some trades work, as well as electricians wanting to do some metalwork, and thinking they could do some wiring.
A number of significant manufacturers — big auto parts manufacturers CMI (on most of its work sites) and Unidrive — have now agreed either to the full agreement or to the most difficult elements such as the 36-hour work week. Some companies that initially dismissed the claim are now considering it.
Labour hire
Dargavel pointed out that while this was promising, "we have had a lot of difficulty in labour hire. There's a campaign of rolling stoppages by labour-hire workers at the moment, they're taking a day off every fortnight."
Dargavel outlined the difficulties of industrial campaigns by labour-hire workers. "Labour-hire companies are not conventional employers. They don't have plant and equipment or infrastructure and they don't employ apprentices. All they do is hire bodies for other employers. When there's a strike in a general manufacturing company, the company is losing the margin on what they should be producing on that day. All that labour-hire companies lose is the margin on their labour. So if the margin is 1% on the labour, a labour-hire company can stick out a strike if they've got 4000 workers on their books and they've got 100 out of the 4000 on strike for the month."
Despite these difficulties, a couple of labour hire companies are prepared to sign up to the pattern agreement, including the clause regarding employing new apprentices.
Dargavel described the 36-hour work week claim as the " most contentious issue in the campaign". The union is suggesting the shortened week is phased in gradually, so that by the end of the three-year agreement, metalworkers will have the full 36-hour work week, with a nine-day fortnight.
The nominal hourly wage rate will increase, because the weekly wage will be divided by 36 hours instead of 38. This automatically increases penalty rates, shift loading and overtime.
Workers' entitlements
The agreement also protects workers' entitlements, by forcing employers to put long-service entitlements in a union-nominated trust. It also specifies that before a business changes hands, all accrued entitlements, from redundancy to sick leave, transferred to such a fund.
Dargavel explained that the Victorian AMWU's "objective is that over a series of campaigns it will progressively get entitlements which are on the employers' books, out of the employers' cash flow and into a separate trust so that in the event of a company collapse the members' entitlement is secured." Employers in the Australian Industries Group are strongly resisting this campaign and are putting a lot of coercive pressure onto smaller employers not to sign up.
"The campaign to protect entitlements is a big agenda", said Dargavel. "It's not going to be wholly achieved in one hit. In the construction industry there are a range of entitlements which are in separate funds — severance pay is in Incolink, long-service pay is in COINVEST, and so on. But the construction unions have developed and built this up over decades, not in a one-hit wonder campaign."
Job security
AMWU members are particularly keen to lock employers into hiring more apprentices. The claim will commit companies to employ one mechanical apprentice if they have six tradespeople, and two apprentices if they have 20 tradespeople. If they have more than 20 tradespeople, there will be negotiations about extra apprentices.
Dargavel calls this "a step forward in industry training", pointing out that, if they are successful, "there'll be quite a few more apprentices".
With increased levels of casualisation and decreased levels of job security for most Australian workers, the Campaign 2003 pattern agreement also is a step towards increased job security. There is a clause built into the agreement which automatically converts casual employees into permanent employees where they have been continuously working for more than 12 weeks.
Under the agreement, a company can only use a contractor by agreement with the union, and only if the contractor has a certified agreement with the union. "This clause is critical for job security and maintaining rights and conditions in workplaces", said Dargavel "because it's so easy for employers to undercut hard-won wages and conditions by getting a contractor out of the phone book who's got people on Australian Workplace Agreements."
The agreement will also ensure that the 25% casual loading will be based on the certified agreement wage, not a lower award rate.
Pattern bargaining
Dargavel said: "The legacy of Campaign 2000 in Victoria gives us a very good footing to move from. Becuase Campaign 2000 was as widespread as it was we can go a little bit further and be more ambitious. The value of the 2003 agreement is in excess of 19% over three years, whereas the value in dollar terms of the previous campaign was 15%."
Dargavel pointed out, however, that while pattern bargaining delivers better outcomes than enterprise bargaining, it is not as effective as industry-wide collective bargaining: "We can mobilise a group of members in a group of companies to get a common outcome, but that doesn't mean that we have a solution for all workers. There are a lot of workers who are either not in the union or who are in the union but who haven't managed to get an agreement because they haven't got active. So there are workplaces out there that don't have an agreement. At the conclusion of this campaign we need to have a good hard look at those areas that haven't been involved in these campaigns."
The metal division of the AMWU in Victoria has experienced an increase in membership over the last four or five months.
[Graham Williams is an AMWU member.]
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, May 28, 2003.
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