By Jennifer Thompson The January 23 Australian Industrial Relations Commission's decision on the dispute between Comalco and award workers at its bauxite mine and kaolin plant at Weipa received mixed reviews from workers and big business pundits. CRA, which owns Comalco, was certainly dismayed by — and rejected — the IRC's finding that it had discriminated against workers who had chosen to remain unionised. The IRC decided that Comalco had to pay award workers who were performing the same work under the same working conditions the same rate as individual contract workers. But was the decision really the great victory that the ACTU had claimed? The major four components of the IRC decision were:
- A finding that Comalco had failed to enter collective bargaining in "good faith", and affirmation of the right to collective bargaining under the current industrial relations system.
- A comprehensive analysis of the way CRA had used the individual contracts offered to workers to systematically discriminate against workers solely on the basis of their choice to "remain a member of a union and to be represented by that union in negotiating with [Comalco].
- A finding that award workers should receive the same pay as contract workers. This includes acceptance of Comalco's annual performance reviews (PER) to determine individual pay rates, which the IRC also found to be fairly operated by the company.
- The use of staff contracts alongside the award system by Comalco would not be restricted or prohibited, except where they were found to be operating unfairly or in conflict with industrial relations law.
The IRC required Comalco to offer to each award worker the same pay and conditions as individual contract workers if those workers — who could deal with the company through their union — accepted all the requirements of the staff contracts, including the present PER system and "flexible" working conditions of individual contract workers. Jennie George said the Weipa workers had "won a great victory for the right to collectively bargain on no lesser terms than an offer under individual contracts". The decision would "stop companies buying out union membership", she said. CFMEU joint national president John Maitland said that a "more comprehensive victory could not be imagined", including the extension of the award safety net to all individual contracts at Weipa. Other views of the decision were less positive for workers. The peak employer body, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, welcomed some aspects of the decision while rejecting IRC "interference" in bargaining. The
Financial Review's pro-business pundit Alex Mitchell noted that while management retained the right to assess the performance of workers, the essential features of the CRA system were intact. Stephen Long, editor of the industrial relations newsletter
Workforce, said that the decision had delivered "almost everything the unions sought, extending the higher rates of pay enjoyed by employees on staff contracts to award workers and enshrining unionists' rights to collective bargaining". But, he said, it wouldn't prevent companies from introducing individual contracts or stop the steady decline in union membership caused by disillusionment with union bureaucracy. Weipa CFMEU lodge secretary Nigel Gould said the Weipa award workers were "really happy that finally, at long last" they'd won the same pay rates as contract workers doing the same work. They were still worried about receiving the back pay, he said, and the ACTU disputes committee would be visiting Weipa this week to go through the legalities of the decision. Gould acknowledged the worry that the performance review-based pay system would undermine the equal pay Weipa workers were fighting for, but said that the win for collective bargaining and the right to union representation provided the basis for winning people back to the union and increasing the bargaining power of the collective. "Now the main thing is to get all those people back so we can fight for a stronger award, better than the contracts, which could have been done if we'd stuck to the award system." Gould said that the workers were waiting for the arrival of the ACTU disputes committee to work out their strategy. Commenting on CRA's next move, Gould said the company had to prove it wasn't discriminatory, the charge it "categorically" denied despite the IRC finding. "I think they'll want to show what a 'good' company they are and [that] they love their workers as they say they do." Dave Mizon, a shop steward of the National Union of Workers who took Gould around to work sites during a solidarity tour late last year and Democratic Socialist industrial relations spokesperson, condemned the imposition of the performance-based pay system. "Any process forced on the work force to break the collective power will weaken the workers. While the pay rise is a moral and financial victory", Mizon said, accepting a performance assessment linked to an individual's rate of pay was "marching down the road of atomisation". It may not take just one year or two, he said, but the company's approach is to make the work force totally subservient and flexible. On the ACTU's role, Mizon said that it seemed "they'd put anything that looked like ongoing confrontation in the too hard basket, especially prior to an election". Over the longer term, the introduction of the conditions of individual contracts, including the PER, could only be a "rod for the workers' backs" and part of CRA's strategy to deunionise the work force. The problem was not only related to the weakness of the union movement, though, he said, but a political problem because both major parties' policies support eroding the award system. "We need a democratic, militant unionism and a political party to fight for the interests of workers."