Wharfies seek solidarity
By Graham Mathews
BRISBANE -- Wharfies here are ready to defend their wages and conditions. With small victories over the Liberal government last year in the Cairns dispute and over the Dubai fiasco, their morale is high.
After speaking to waterside workers, it is clear they have a real sense of what they are fighting for. “If the [government and companies] manage to beat us then everyone else is fucked”, one young wharfie told Green Left Weekly. “The federal government is aiming its attack at the strongest unions first, but everyone else will be in its sights if they lose.”
On claims of “inefficiency”, wharfies point out that not all factors are fairly considered by the big-business media. “In Singapore, the workers have a seat bolted to the spreader [the attachment at the end of the crane that attaches to containers]. They ride the container into place cowboy style. There are lots of deaths as a result”, a wharfie explained.
Years of bitter struggle have won waterside workers the right to a safe workplace. They are not going to give that up easily. “Some of these forklifts are twice my age!”, declared a wharfie in his 20s. The lack of competitiveness of the Australian industry is due to the age and inefficiency of the equipment retained by stevedoring companies, not the “laziness” of workers. The better container rates achieved by south-east Asian ports results from equipment being updated every 18 months.
There is a rumour that the National Farmers Federation is training scabs in New Zealand bound for Brisbane. The wharfies told Green Left Weekly they are determined to defend their jobs and win. They added that to win they will need solidarity: “We need the ACTU to show its hand”. As strong as the Maritime Union of Australia is, the workers emphasised, they cannot defeat the government's attacks without the support of other workers.
