Chris Slee, Melbourne
The August 3 meeting of Australia-Asia Worker Links discussed how unions should respond to "offshoring" — the transfer of work from Australia to other countries.
The feature speaker was Steve Cilia, a former IBM worker now employed as a temporary organiser with the Community and Public Sector Union (to which some IBM employees belong).
Cilia told how Telstra had outsourced its entire information technology department to IBM in 1995. Subsequently, Telstra took two contracts away from IBM and awarded them to Infosys, an Indian company. IBM responded by bidding for other Telstra contracts in the name of "IBM India". Indian workers are being trained to do jobs currently done by IBM's Australian employees. So far 16 Australian workers have been made redundant, while another 450 Australian jobs are threatened.
The CPSU initially responded with nationalist rhetoric about defending "Aussie jobs" and the "Australian national interest", leading to racist sentiments in the workplace. After debate within the union, the campaign was reorganised to focus on demands aimed at defending the jobs of Australian workers while also building solidarity with Indian workers.
The CPSU demanded that there be no job losses due to offshoring; that if certain tasks are transferred overseas, workers be retrained for other work; that voluntary redundancies and job swapping be used rather than compulsory redundancies; that Indian workers being trained in Australia receive Australian wages and conditions; and that work done in India should be subject to International Labor Organisation conditions.
A letter to the CEO of IBM putting forward these ideas was signed by 320 workers. Management, while not agreeing to all the demands, did make the limited concession of agreeing to job swaps for workers threatened with redundancy.
The IBM workers have also made contact with unions representing IBM workers in the US, France and Britain, with the aim of bringing about coordinated action. As far as Cilia knows, IBM workers in India are not unionised, but the CPSU intends to make contact with Indian unions.
The meeting was also addressed by AAWL project officer Manrico Moro, who spoke about the growth of contracting on an international scale. The meeting discussed ideas for joint action by unions in different countries around common demands.
From Green Left Weekly, August 11, 2004.
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