BY LINDA HARRIS AND BOB AIKEN
SYDNEY, Australia - Some 170 dock workers, members of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) on the Webb Dock in Port Melbourne, Victoria, ended a two-and- a-half-week strike February 16 against the use of nonunion labor on the wharf.

The strike began after Patrick, one of the two main stevedoring companies in Australia, announced it was leasing a wharf at its Webb Dock to Producers and Consumers Stevedoring (PCS), a company set up by the National Farmers Federation (NFF). The NFF is dominated by large capitalist farmers and has a history of union-busting operations. NFF president and PCS chairman Donald McGauchie signaled a showdown between the bosses and the union, declaring January 28 that there should be "absolutely no doubt, that we will use the full force of the law to be allowed to run a lawful business." By breaking the MUA's closed shop on the waterfront, PCS aimed to cut stevedoring costs by 50 percent, he asserted.

On January 28, 60 security guards hired by Patrick and PCS were brought on the wharf. Following a sit-in strike by 35 dock workers, known here as "wharfies," the MUA members on the Webb Dock were locked out. A picket line was set up immediately, with angry confrontations for several days between the guards and pickets.

Once equipment was shifted onto the dock, Patrick withdrew its security guards, unlocked the gates and demanded a return to work. PCS security remained in place. The Australian Industrial Relations Commission issued a return to work order on February 13. On February 16, as Webb Dock workers returned to work, some 300 MUA members employed by Patrick on the East Swanson Dock at Port Melbourne called a snap 48-hour protest strike to protest the Patrick-PCS operation. A second 48-hour protest strike was called there February 19.

The Victorian Supreme Court granted Patrick an injunction February 23 against any further strike action by the MUA in Melbourne. Twenty strikebreakers, working under individual contracts, began training at the PCS dock February 23 after being brought to the dock "commando-style," by speedboat. This is the first nonunion labor on the Australian waterfront in decades.

Dock workers are now preparing for more "protected" - that is legal - action against the company at other ports across Australia where the MUA is negotiating new enterprise agreements (contracts) with Patrick and other stevedoring companies.

Prime Minister John Howard has backed this union-busting drive, declaring, on February 29, "The only people talking confrontation, the only people behaving like bullies, are the MUA. We are not. All we have done is to change the law and to say that it is lawful for somebody to use nonunion labor on the Australian waterfront."

An editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald January 30, reflecting big-business backing for the attack on the MUA, claimed that the "move to break the MUA's monopoly on the waterfront is a clear-cut case where Australia's national interests are at stake." Howard cites the same "national interest" as the reason for sending Australian troops to join the U.S.-led war against Iraq.

Attacks on the MUA and the coal miners in the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, another key industrial union, have been central in a broader offensive on union rights carried out by the Howard government since it came to office in March 1996. The Minister for Workplace Relations, Peter Reith, boasted February 17 that "I've been up to my neck.in promoting . waterfront reform," the bosses' code word for an attack on the MUA.

Reith has been pushing for a stevedoring company to run a nonunion operation and to take on the MUA. An attempt to do this in Cairns, Queensland, in September 1997 was pushed back by the MUA, with the backing of the International Transport Federation.

In December 1997 an attempt to secretly train - in the Persian Gulf port of Dubai -a strikebreaking force to operate on the wharves in Australia turned into a fiasco and was abandoned after being brought to light by the MUA. Drawn from ex-Australian army personnel, and from active-duty soldiers granted long-term leave from the army, some of the "Dubai strikebreakers" are reportedly among those on the Webb Dock.

As the Webb Dock strike unfolded, it became clear that talks between the NFF, Patrick, and the federal government on a union-busting campaign had been going for many months. The chairman of Patrick, Christopher Corrigan, retracted previous denials about his involvement in the Dubai scheme and also admitted that he had taken part in discussions with government consultants about sacking MUA members "en masse" in the event of a national strike.

Reith has announced that the government had offered to fund termination payments.

During the Webb Dock strike the New Zealand Waterfront Workers' Union voiced its solidarity with the MUA. It has condemned offers being made to New Zealand dock workers by PCS of A$25,000 US$16,500 for three months' work in their scab operation on the Webb Dock.

Some 3,000 wharfies and supporters rallied outside the state Parliament in Melbourne February 10, following a union stop-work meeting, to protest the NFF's union-busting operation. A rally in the Sydney Town Hall February 9, part of a series of protest stop-work meetings called by the MUA across the country that day, drew nearly 2,000, as Sydney MUA members and families were joined by busloads of dock workers from Newcastle and Port Kembla, and other unionists, who marched on the Patrick offices in downtown Sydney.

Several rank-and-file dock workers took the microphone at the end of the Sydney march to answer the bosses claims about "high-paid wharfies," pointing to the long hours they worked. Two spoke out about the common interests of workers and small farmers. One described the NFF as standing for "No Family Farms."

A contingent of about 50 miners from Rio Tinto's Mount Thorley mine in the Hunter Valley some 150 miles north of Sydney took part in the rally and march. They are on strike over Rio Tinto's provocative decision to break the enterprise agreement at the mine and ignore seniority in a layoff of 230 miners. During the protest they invited union members to visit their picket line.

Bob Aiken and Linda Harris are members of the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union.  
 
 
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