The company is trying to eliminate the workers' paid rostered day off (RDO) once every two weeks and extend the normal working hours each week from 35 to 38.75 hours. Currently, all workers in the paint industry work an extra 45 minutes every regular workday to accumulate the paid time off. A shorter workweek with rostered days off was the result of a national campaign of industrial action and rolling strikes by many unions starting in 1982. In recent years, this gain for workers has been increasingly eroded or lost.

The rally for the Mirotone workers followed a paid stop-work meeting of paint industry workers who are members of the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union (LHMU), attended by up to 500 people from plants throughout Sydney. As well as solidarity for the Mirotone workers, the meeting discussed and adopted proposals to campaign against the growing practice of companies instituting casual (temporary) jobs in the industry.

This follows a recent ruling by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) against casualization in the metal and manufacturing industries. The main changes were to compensate for casual workers not receiving holiday pay or other benefits by increasing the minimum additional wages they receive from 20 percent to 25 percent above that of permanent workers. The other is that workers must be offered a permanent job after six months of continuous work. The LHMU meeting resolved to pursue these conditions for the paint industry to protect both casual and permanent workers.

The meeting was hosted by representatives of the National Union of Students at the Bankstown campus of the University of Western Sydney, near Mirotone. Ben Donnelly, the community liaison officer for the students association, explained to the Militant that he had spotted the Mirotone workers' picket line the day after it began. Student activists put out a support leaflet, got details into the local media, and brought fellow students to support the pickets. Donnelly said that when Bankstown students had occupied the campus offices for two weeks in 1999 against cuts in education funding, several unions supported them, "so we understand the importance of solidarity."

During contract negotiations begun last November, Mirotone showed it was determined to end the 35-hour week, calling for a secret ballot on the issue. At one stage, the company tried to intimidate the senior delegate into taking redundancy (layoff). As a result, the Mirotone workers held some brief protest stoppages.

Steve Bateman, an operator at Mirotone for 10 years, explained that when workers returned from holidays January 8, the unionists discovered that staff had been trained in their jobs. "We held a meeting and decided that we wouldn't go back to work until the company removed the staff from the floor." The company complied, but on January 22 withdrew from negotiations, signaling a showdown.

The lockout began when the company served all the workers with written notices telling them they couldn't enter the factory for two weeks. The workers responded with a sit-in on the site until police were called to remove them. The LHMU workers then set up an official union picket. On March 5, and again on March 15, the company extended its lockout by two weeks.

Mirotone is trying to keep up some production with staff and contract labor. However, several truck drivers have refused to cross the picket line, and customers are reported to be dissatisfied with color quality of the scab-produced paints and stains.

The company called for a meeting March 13 with the unionists, raising many workers' hopes that this would lead to a resolution. But only two hours before the scheduled mass meeting, the senior union delegate, Ken Phillips, a Mirotone worker for 16 years, together with a union organizer, was summoned to a meeting with management. He was told he had been made redundant. The unionists immediately responded to this provocation by canceling the later meeting.

According to John Shanahan, a color matcher who has worked at Mirotone "off and on" for more than 14 years, company management has been lying in press interviews that the lockout was over workers' industrial sabotage. Shanahan told the Militant, "We just want our jobs back the way it was. Why would we want to sabotage our own jobs?"

As part of its drive to weaken the union before the lockout, Mirotone "offered" individual contracts. After some curious workers went upstairs to look at the details, management boasted at negotiating meetings that several workers were interested in these union-busting individual deals. However, the union vote for picket action in response to the lockout was unanimous.

Michael Roddick, who has worked for more than 27 years in the paint industry, said in an interview that he started as a casual at Mirotone in 1996. "The AWAs [Australian Workplace Agreements or individual contracts] have gone off the burner." The company appears to be backing off on demanding longer hours outside the paint services division and is instead pushing for the extended hours to be applied to new hires. But "if we give in there, it'll move through the whole factory and then the whole industry," he pointed out. Garry Pippin, with 13 years at Mirotone and now a leading hand in the mill section, voiced the widespread sentiment that "it doesn't matter how long it takes, we won't budge on the 35-hour week."

Ron Poulsen is a member of the Maritime Union of Australia.  
 
 
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