Mandurah union-community solidarity group launched

November 17, 1993
Issue 

Annolies Truman, Perth

On July 26, a union community solidarity group was launched in Mandurah, a city with 50,000 residents situated 60 kilometres south of Perth. Attended by 26 people, the meeting was organised by Ian Bray, assistant secretary of the Western Australian branch of the Maritime Union of Australia, and Will Tracey, an organiser for the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union.

Others attending included AMWU state president Steve McCartney, Victorian MUA secretary Kevin Bracken, Mandurah Uniting Church minister Coral Richards, two local councillors and community development workers.

Also participating were Dave Kerin, a Victorian community union solidarity organiser and Wilson Baldonaza, president of the Philippines' KMU union federation, both of whom had come to WA for the MUA's second biennial state conference.

Those attending pledged to support unions under attack by employers and their governments, and to offer solidarity to trade unions in underdeveloped countries.

The meeting also discussed pressing community concerns of youth homelessness and unemployment, the need for a women's crisis centre and inadequate apprenticeships offered by Alcoa, the largest employer in the area with two aluminium refineries.

"Unions and the community need to stand together as a class. Union solidarity provides us with the ability to hit back without being hit", Kerin told the meeting.

Kerin is employed full-time as a union-community solidarity organiser by a number of Victorian unions pooling their resources. There are now 12 such groups in the Melbourne area, which meet regularly to discuss how to help unions in struggle.

Using telephone trees, the network is able to provide 300 community activists at any given time to help out on picket lines. It was this support that won the reinstatement of three workers at Finlay Engineering in Melbourne earlier this year, Kerin said.

Bray told Green Left Weekly he was pleased with the meeting. "The MUA has long recognised the need for high community involvement in the defence of workers' rights. This was never more apparent than in the Patrick dispute in 1998. The MUA will always be there for the community because the community was there for us when we needed it most."

Members of the MUA have expressed an interest in setting up a similar solidarity group in Fremantle.

The next meeting of the Mandurah group will be at 5.30pm on August 23 at the Uniting Church Hall, Pinjarra Road, Mandurah. For more information, phone Will on 0419 464 282.


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