By Melanie Sjoberg
Imagine how you would feel if your boss called you into an office and presented you with a contract outlining your new working conditions. "This is a special contract just for you", s/he might say, but you know that your work colleagues have been offered contracts of their own.
The contract takes away a large chunk of your working conditions and will make your work life harder. But your boss offers you an "incentive" — if you sign up straight away you'll get a few-thousand dollar bonus.
This is what has been happening to workers at BHP's iron ore mine in the Pilbara.
The collective agreement negotiated by the unions at the site expired last September. Rather than sit down to talk to the unions about a new agreement, BHP management offered individual contracts (officially called Australian Workplace Agreements, or AWAs) to the entire work force. It was especially hard for apprentices to refuse, as their training and future were on the line.
Many union members complained and the unions objected on their behalf.
Why AWAs?
Companies' push to get their employees onto individual contracts has increased since the 1980s. At that time, the rise of economic rationalism and a willing Labor government helped lay the groundwork for contracts by introducing enterprise bargaining, which weakened awards and gave more negotiating power to the employer.
Since the establishment of the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission in 1901, wages and working conditions in Australia have been controlled by awards. These came about through workers' collective struggles against the employers, who had previously used a divided work force to hold wages down.
An award sets out common rates of pay, working hours, leave conditions, various penalties and limitations for all workers in a specific industry. With the introduction of the 1996 Workplace Relations Act, John Howard's Coalition government reduced awards to include only 20 "allowable" matters and greatly boosted the rules enabling employers to impose contracts.
According to the Australian Centre for Industrial Relations, Research and Training, the provisions in AWAs which are most popular with employers are those for more "flexible" working hours, especially those removing penalty rates and allowances. ACIRRT reports, however, that by the end of 1999 there were only 86,000 AWAs registered and most applied to managers, professionals, senior executives and sales officers.
Companies like BHP and Rio Tinto view AWAs as a mechanism to bypass unions and introduce unilateral change. That's why the capitalists and their politicians describe collective agreements as "restrictive work practices" and "monopoly control" by unions.
Most workers know that, on our own, we are not in a position to bargain effectively for our pay and conditions. Contracts are often written in legal jargon or use such vague terminology that the conditions can change at the boss's whim. It is clear where the real power lies at the bargaining table.
BHP executives think that individual contracts are so important to the long-term profitability of the company that they are offering significant incentives to encourage workers in the Pilbara to sign on. BHP stated that it would spend up to $10 million getting workers onto AWAs, and it has predicted that contracts will boost its profits by $80 million.
Bit by bit
The position that workers find themselves in didn't come about all at once — the heat has been raised gradually. Bit by bit over the last 15 to 20 years, working conditions, and workers' ability to defend them, have been chipped away, and their confidence in collective action has been eroded.
Since taking office in 1996, the Coalition government has been intent on cutting unions out of the workplace. This government took up from where the previous ALP government left off.
In its early years, the Bob Hawke Labor government began holding down wages, as a trade-off for supposed improvements in the standard of living. This social contract, the Prices and Incomes Accord, was happily agreed to by the ACTU.
Each new version of the Accord extracted greater sacrifices from workers, but the benefits never seemed to arrive. By 1987, the ACTU had agreed to the ALP government's demand for a wages system that eliminated cost-of-living pay increases and introduced a scheme whereby workers bargained for a pay rise based on productivity increases or "structural efficiency" trade-offs. From that point on, workers would only get a pay rise if they gave something back — working longer hours, for example, or giving up certain penalty rates.
Then, in 1991, enterprise bargaining was introduced, again with ACTU agreement. It further reduced collective action by isolating groups of workers, who now had to bargain with their boss in the individual workplace. Strong union work sites staved off the worst attacks, but now, improvements won in the stronger sectors did not automatically flow on to less organised areas.
With the benefit of hindsight, some supporters of the Accord have publicly acknowledged that it disaffected and demobilised union members. Many workers have questioned why they didn't benefit from the huge profits the Accord helped generate.
In contrast, the Australian Financial Review summed up the view of business in 1991: the Accord "has delivered its two major achievements — an attitudinal shift amongst union officialdom and moderation in aggregate wage outcomes".
ACTU complicity
During the ACTU-ALP Accord years, the rules were changed in the industrial scene, but it was not merely a matter of top-down control of wage arrangements. In spite of the more militant attitude of the union ranks, ACTU leaders capitulated to the right-wing ideology of "responsible unionism". You can see this in the big industrial disputes that did occur in the 1980s and 1990s.
Mudginberri, a small abattoir in the Northern Territory, became infamous nationwide in the mid-1980s as a workplace in which the bosses tried to defeat unionism. Ian McLachlan, then the president of the National Farmers Federation and until recently a member of the Howard cabinet, proclaimed that Mudginberri "turned the tide against union power" and "changed the nature of industrial relations". The barrister for the bosses was Peter Costello.
The Australian Meat Industry Employees Union (AMIEU) had been trying to generalise the better work conditions from the more unionised abattoirs in the NT to the smaller contract sites. The work was in isolated locations, seasonal and physically hard. Workers in the smaller sites worked excessively long hours and often waited weeks to be paid. Their only choice was to take what was on offer or to find work somewhere else.
In 1985, unionists from the Katherine meatworks set up pickets, which lasted for four months, to protest against the contracts being imposed at Mudginberri. The ACTU gave token support to the AMIEU, but pushed for the dispute to be dealt with in the Arbitration Commission, an attitude taken by ACTU officials whenever they are faced with a serious industrial campaign.
The commission did not oppose the contract system and simply recommended that the AMIEU be involved in negotiating any new contracts. The employers were encouraged and kept pushing individual contracts onto workers.
Robe River
In 1986, Peko-Wallsend locked out the workers at their Pilbara iron ore mine in an all-out assault on working conditions. A picket was established and tugboat operators refused to move iron ore.
The actions forced the company into the industrial commission, but rather than challenge Peko-Wallsend, the ACTU capitulated to the company's demands and accepted all the changes to work practices. In "return", Peko-Wallsend dropped all of its legal action against the unions.
The ACTU declared it a victory, as did the Sydney Morning Herald, which praised the deal as a blow against "outdated" work practices. But the workers at Peko-Wallsend believed that they could have held out for a better deal.
In the years since, major assaults on workers' right to collective bargaining have taken place at Hamersley Iron, Weipa, and also at Rio Tinto's mines. In each case, the ACTU's tactics have helped, not hindered, the employers' victories.
And unions which have been prepared to challenge ACTU dominance, such as the Builders Labourers Federation in 1987 and the pilots' union in 1991, have been isolated from the rest of the union movement by the ACTU, and picked off by the government.
The April 1998 sacking of 1400 Patrick Stevedores dock workers again brought the issue of industrial tactics to the fore. The struggle was about more than just the jobs of those workers; it was a battle to defend the right to unionise in Australia.
Rallies of up to 100,000 people, united picket lines and a strong sentiment of working-class solidarity demonstrated that large numbers of workers, and their communities, are still willing to fight employer and government attacks. However, once again the ACTU's path was a legalistic one, and it eventually agreed to a deal which gave away many of the Patrick workers' conditions.
Secret of success
Where workers and their supporters have relied on their own strength and not been trapped by the ACTU's fear of industrial action, the introduction of individual contracts has been defeated.
For example, after 67 days on the picket line, members of the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia at the Australian Dyeing Company declared victory in their battle against individual contracts.
The ADC had offered a pay rise if workers left the union and signed up to individual contracts. It locked out 80 workers on December 1, 1998, and refused to negotiate. However, the company was eventually forced to back down, pay all entitlements to the workers and withdraw its attempted sackings. Union organiser Michelle O'Neil told 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly at that time: "It was the mobilisations of the local residents, the political and moral support from other unions, and solidarity from the community and student activists on the picket line every day that won the campaign".
So, there's no reason to despair — provided we understand what happened in the past and don't repeat the mistakes.
The idea we hear all too often today that strike action isn't needed, that the ACTU will challenge the contracts in the courts so we can all go home and wait, is a disastrous strategy.
Most working people's gut reaction to the Pilbara struggle has been positive — they understand exactly what BHP is trying to do. That sentiment needs to be organised into collective action. This has always been the most effective way for the working class to defend itself.
For nearly two decades the capitalists have targeted well-organised industries and workplaces in an effort to break down workers' solidarity. Individual contracts are now their big priority.
The ACTU leaders, in conjunction with a layer of officials in the individual unions, have been nothing short of complicit in holding back genuine mobilisations and solidarity. They cannot be relied upon to lead; we cannot afford to wait for them to one day "rediscover" militancy and collective action.
Individual contracts must be opposed by united action. That means we all must take a stand in solidarity with the Pilbara workers and demand that our unions actively oppose BHP's attack ... any of us could be next.
[Melanie Sjoberg is the Democratic Socialist Party's national industrial organiser. She has been a union activist and organiser for 20 years, in the Australian Public Service Association in Victoria and the Public Service Association in South Australia.]