Manufacturing workers march on parliament

By Graham Matthews

BRISBANE — Two thousand manufacturing workers rallied in the city on March 15 — with the support of their bosses. The rally was organised to protest against the loss of manufacturing jobs from Queensland, and specifically the Queensland government's decision to contract the building of major infrastructure to foreign companies.

Doug Cameron, national secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, told the rally that failure by governments of either side to protect manufacturing jobs would lead to punishment at the ballot box. Cameron's strategy to defend manufacturing jobs was to protect manufacturing bosses' profits. His two key demands were that tariffs on manufactured items be increased to 10% and that company tax for manufacturing companies be reduced to 10%.

Cameron claimed that it was impossible for Australian industry to compete with "workers in Indonesia or Cambodia being paid $US30 per month", yet said that he did not advocate "German or Australian level of wages for workers in developing countries."

Cameron did demand that the Australian government seek to have a caveat forbidding slave or child labour inserted into the World Trade Organisation's rules and praised protests against the WTO in Seattle in December.

Workers then assembled by company name and marched on state parliament, chanting for job security. A delegation of workers met with Labor premier Peter Beattie to present their demands.

From GLW issue 398