Caltex moves against 35-hour week

Wednesday, June 22, 1994 - 10:00

By Dave Mizon

MELBOURNE — Delegates and officials from the main unions in the oil industry met with ACTU secretary Bill Kelty on June 14 to discuss a campaign in response to the massive attack by Caltex on the wages and conditions of Kurnell workers.

The meeting decided that Caltex management could be halted only by a concerted campaign by workers at all refineries around Australia. Delegates said that Caltex's attack was not an isolated incident but the opening round of an industry-wide assault on the 35-hour work week.

Core working conditions are under threat, and more than 100 jobs are to go. These will be forced redundancies, with the company nominating who is to go and who is to stay. The major items that the company is seeking to win are:

a 42-hour week on a four-shift, 12-hour roster. This would mean one whole shift (64 people) could be sacked. The extra two hours over a 40-hour week would be offered back as annual leave. Operators would be expected to spend three to five of their rostered days off per year training as front-line fire fighting crews for no extra pay.

annualised salaries, which would not contain any identifiable components (eg overtime allowances). This all-up rate would be different for each skill grade but would be fixed. Operators would be obligated to respond to call-ins when they were on their rostered days off. The salaries offered do not reflect current earning capacity but what Caltex thinks each skill capacity is worth. Wages would be paid monthly.

cuts in staffing. Management is proposing that 119 jobs be cut just from operator ranks. These come on top of the 104 sackings that occurred in 1990, yet production rates have remained the same and no new labour-saving technology has been introduced. The company has already advised the union covering the laboratory staff, the AWU, that the lab workers are not qualified to carry out their work, even though some of them have been doing it for 29 years.

company-controlled individual performance assessments to ensure that the threat of the sack is hanging above workers' heads.

Management's crash through or crash mentality has hardened the resolve of unionists. The stage is now set for a decisive showdown in the oil industry.