BY MARCEL CAMERON

BRISBANE — Maintenance workers at the Caltex oil refinery won an important victory against their employer, Transfield Services, on May 21 after nine weeks of industrial action.

The dispute centred on the expiry date for the new enterprise agreement. The refinery workers, members of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU), sought an expiry date that would coincide with that of similar agreements between refinery workers and management in other states.

This would allow for a coordinated nation-wide campaign around a set of common demands to improve wages and conditions by refinery workers during the next enterprise bargaining negotiations. This is known as “pattern bargaining”.

Under the Workplace Relations Act, legal industrial action can only take place during enterprise agreement negotiations.

In an attempt to intimidate and break the resolve of the maintenance workers, Transfield refused to pay workers for work they already had done. The AMWU appealed to the Industrial Relations Commission to take action against the company for illegal industrial action. Transfield also offered workers significant pay increases if they agreed to the company's preferred expiry date.

“To our members' credit”, AMWU organiser Brett Cardinal told Green Left Weekly, “they refused to take the extra money but insisted on a common expiry date”. Cardinal said that solidarity actions by refinery workers in other states were decisive in forcing Transfield and Caltex to give in to the workers' demands.

From Green Left Weekly, June 19, 2002.
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