The strike was in protest against a recent decision by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) that allows employers to force miners to work 10-hour shifts underground and opens the way for the introduction of 12-hour shifts. The decision also carried out the bosses' demand for a 10-year freeze on wages under the Miners Award. Awards are legal documents established by arbitration that set uniform minimum pay and working conditions in a particular industry.

On June 16 about 400 miners, construction workers, and other unionists marched through Sydney to the AIRC to protest the decision. The majority of miners came down in buses from the northern district branches, from the Hunter Valley, and around the Newcastle area, north of Sydney. A group of miners also flew in from Queensland to attend the rally. With their T-shirts and placards on the march, the miners denounced the attacks on safe working conditions through the extension of hours. They chanted slogans condemning both the AIRC and Peter Reith, the federal minister of workplace relations, who has led the attacks on unions here.

Miners were also protesting a June 15 High Court decision to reject a claim by the CFMEU that the federal government had breached the Constitution when it ordered the AIRC to strip industrial awards to just 20 conditions. In a split decision, the High Court ruled that the government had acted lawfully in 1996 when it changed the workplace relations legislation to ban rules about occupational health and safety, protective clothing, and a range of other issues from being covered by awards.

This decision overturns 100 years of constitutional law under which arbitration prevented the government from directly setting wages and conditions. Dissenting High Court Justice Michael Kirby said, "This decision involves a radical enlargement of the federal legislative power under...the constitution."

A week earlier, on June 5, some 15,000 construction workers, metal workers, and other union members marched on the Australian Democrats office in Sydney. Chanting "Hands off the workers" and "Just say No!" workers called on the Democrats to block Reith's latest round of antiunion legislation, the Workplace Relations Amendment Bill.

This bill was intended to restrict the ability of workers to take action collectively through industry-wide union campaigns. The Australian Democrats rejected the bill in the Senate on June 6.

Both marches were led off by locked-out workers from Joy Mining Machinery, a heavy mining equipment manufacturer. These workers have been organizing picket lines at the Moss Vale plant south of Sydney for three months.

Tony Maher, president of the CFMEU's mining division, said the union would continue to fight to overturn the High Court ruling. "We will defend our conditions on the job and we will intensify our political campaign to reverse these rotten laws which rob workers of their rights and conditions and victimize many of those who are prepared to fight for them."

Linda Harris is a member of the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia.  
 
 
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