Adam Maclean, Sydney
At nationally coordinated meetings on September 14, Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) and Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) members at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation voted in favour of a campaign of stoppages in support of their pay claim. The stoppages are designed to inflict maximum damage on television, radio and podcast schedules.
The members also pledged to contribute at least one day's pay each month to a fund to compensate those workers who have the ability to interrupt programming and therefore take strike action. Under Howard's new workplace laws, workers must be docked a minimum of four hours' pay if they strike.
A 24-hour national strike on September 21 will kick off the campaign. In Sydney, unions will form picket lines outside the ABC's Ultimo headquarters at 8.30am.
About 300 CPSU-MEAA members at the meeting in the Ultimo centre discussed the tactics workers used at newspaper publisher Fairfax to secure a new enterprise agreement in 2001, when ABC managing director Mark Scott was a senior executive there. CPSU ABC section secretary Graeme Thomson said that staff who can have "maximum on-air impact" should be part of the rolling stoppages, while other staff should support them by contributing to the campaign fund.
Most of the stop-work activity will fall to technicians, television crews and workers in newsrooms with daily production schedules. The CPSU and MEAA strategy may see workers subsidising members of the other union.
Staff are pressing for a three-year agreement and have rejected management's offer of an annual 3.5% pay rise, which would cause wages to fall behind inflation. They are demanding an initial 16% rise, plus two additional increases of 5%. Even ABC management data acknowledges that the drop in salaries is more pronounced now than ever.
While workers' salaries have been eroded, management has created new programs and services, so staff are working harder and longer. The unions say that ABC management is asking for too many compromises on working conditions, such as changes to shift work and meal allowances, which amount to a drop in real wages.
By September 8, more than 1600 ABC unionists had voted in two secret ballots — compulsory under the new Work Choices laws — resulting in 1577 votes in favour of industrial action and only 117 votes against.