The dispute gained national coverage after the company started using helicopters and then cops on horseback and in riot gear to try to breach the picket lines as the loss of steel supplies threatened to halt the car industry.

"We got as many people as possible the next night [after the cop attack]. That’s what helped win it for us," Thomas, the senior plant delegate for the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU), told the Militant in a phone interview June 17. As many as a thousand people converged on the three main picket lines as "unionists like the victorious Tycab strikers and concerned citizens" from the local community and from Melbourne rallied in solidarity, he said. Local butchers, bakers, and other small businesspeople kept the "tent embassy" for the 24-hour picket lines well provisioned.

The 280 maintenance workers, members of the Electrical Trades Union (ETU) and the AMWU had been on strike since May 21. More than 700 production workers at the steel mill, members of the Australian Workers’ Union (AWU), had been given company assurances on job security in a separate agreement and were not on strike. However, AWU national secretary Bill Shorten said his union was withholding ratification of the agreement to support the other unions.

As Thomas explained, "we only stopped trucks [at the main gates], we didn’t try to picket the car parks." However, "the worst part" was that the trucks that got through were loaded by some AWU workers. This caused "some bitter feelings."

At 1:00 a.m. on June 12, in "a precision military style attack," 140 police in full riot gear, including 20 mounted cops and police helicopters, were used to escort a small convoy of trucks through the picket lines. No union drivers would cross the line so BHP brought in Bruce Townsend, a scab organizer notorious for his role in the government’s attempt to bust the Maritime Union during the 1998 national waterfront dispute. Townshend drove the first truck through.

Earlier, the company had used the Federal Court to issue injunctions to keep 75 strikers away from the picket lines. Twelve were then threatened with severe legal action but, as Thomas explained, "we basically disobeyed and kept going." Later, as part of the dispute settlement, legal action against the 12 was dropped.

Two weeks into the strike, BHP Steel used helicopters to begin airlifting product over the picket lines. Despite dramatic press coverage, the helicopters could lift only the lightest coils of steel. In three weeks 3,000 metric tons were shipped compared to the normal daily output of about 2,500. Even after police breached the picket lines, only 400 tons of steel were moved out by truck.

In response to the police action, ETU state secretary Dean Mighell said that work on the construction site of the new BHP Billiton headquarters could be hit by industrial action. "Members are outraged by BHP’s behavior," he said.

Mighell said that while it was not an outright victory for the union, there had been "significant movement" on the key issues of job security and the use and control of contractors, casual and part-time labor. A maintenance review of the plant with union involvement was agreed to.

In the last week of the strike, vehicle manufacturers Toyota, Ford, Holden, and Mitsubishi, the BHP steel mill’s biggest customers, warned that the dispute could leave them without supplies. Stand-downs among Australia’s 12,000 car industry workers were threatened.

In the strike’s aftermath, both Holden and Ford warned they would review commitments to the $5 billion national vehicle component industry.  
 
Bosses’ threats
Ford Australia president Gregory Polites said the company’s Geelong plant came close to shutting down in the last week of the strike at BHP Steel. Polites has threatened that Ford would buy parts overseas if industrial action made the supply of locally sourced goods unreliable. "We have placed the unions on notice as part of an industry initiative," he said.

Holden managing director Peter Hanenberger backed a summit on workplace relations in the car industry, but has also threatened to switch to imported components in response to union industrial action. "If you go from one strike to another and just take into account the figures we lost in the two other strikes you’re losing $320 million--all in six months," he said.

In April, a strike at Walker in Adelaide, the major muffler supplier for the car industry, stopped assembly at Holden and Ford. This came six months after the 11-day Tristar dispute in Sydney brought the whole vehicle industry to a halt.

Federal Workplace Relations Minister Anthony Abbott lashed out at deals that end industrial actions like the dispute at BHP Steel. "When you give in to intimidation you do not protect a business, you damage an industry," he fumed.

Abbott chastised businesses for not following through on legal action to curb the power of unions to disrupt operations. "If actions are always dropped . . . in the end the rule of law evaporates," he said, warning that the result would be "industrial anarchy." He signaled that the federal government was looking for ways to resume legal actions dropped by companies in dispute settlements.

On the first day back at work since the end of the dispute, BHP bosses have been giving "debriefing meetings" to individual strikers. "They’re trying to demoralize us," said Thomas, but he affirmed his confidence that the maintenance workers have emerged "strengthened" from the strike.

Linda Harris is a member of the Australasian Meat Industry Employees’ Union. Ron Poulsen is a member of the Maritime Union of Australia.  
 
 
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