By Pip Hunter
The September 12 deal between the federal government, the ACTU and officials from the Maritime Union of Australia gives the go-ahead to the partial privatisation of the Australian National Line. The government has agreed to maintain a minority share while the union takes over the job of putting together a consortium to buy the national shipping line.
The agreement, which received the approval of the Australian Shipowners Association, is contingent on the ALP National Conference overturning Labor's anti-privatisation policy — something it looks set to do.
The strike was an attempt to persuade the government not to go ahead with plans to liquidate ANL. However, on September 9, transport minister Laurie Brereton announced the government had sold its 25% share in Australian Stevedores, the most profitable part of ANL.
After five days on strike MUA officials, claiming the government had given its "long-term commitment to the future of the ANL", recommended the 10,660 members return to work on September 13. According to Brereton, "The decision to allow an open tender process [for the sale of ANL] is a major breakthrough with the union movement".
The package agreed to includes: continuation of the shipping industry's restructuring begun in the 1980s; subsidies to some Australian shipping companies (they are no longer being required to pay PAYE tax on international crews); a reduction in crew sizes; a "long-term wage agreement" and an "industrial peace accord".
According to MUA central NSW branch joint secretary Jim Donovan, "There are a lot of pluses for the union" in the agreement. Besides the crew reductions ("something the seamen say they can easily manage"), he told Green Left Weekly that in the event of the union being unable to bring together the necessary capital to buy ANL, the government has agreed that the buyer will have to be committed to preserve the existing cabotage rules, which reserve most of the coastal trade for Australian-flagged and crewed ships. It is not stipulated how this would be enforced.
As for the union putting the consortium together, Donovan said this was preferable to Brereton doing it. The MUA is seeking to invest superannuation funds (a difficult, if not impossible job, considering ANL's current debt) as well as private capital. "There are a number of companies which have expressed an interest in ANL", Donovan said. Press reports indicate that Bill Kelty has approached transport group Linfox to invest in ANL.
According to Donovan, "Brereton is in the wrong party". However, the pro-privatisation agenda has the backing of the federal Labor government as a whole. Already the federal government has raised $3.3 billion from its privatisation program since 1987, and it expects to raise $6.8 billion over the next four years.
Donovan dismissed the claim that the government had to liquidate ANL because it was uncompetitive. Last month's negative valuation by the merchant bank Salomon Bros and accountants Price Waterhouse, which prompted Brereton to announce that "you couldn't give [ANL] away", was incorrect, he said.
"If the government hadn't sold its 25% share in Australian Stevedores [AS] for $28 million [last week], that money would have been returned by the end of next year", Donovan told Green Left. He said that the option of buying up AS, the alternative proposal of the new ANL board, headed by Neville Wran, would have allowed the government to raise $60-70 million over 1995-96. The decision to sell ANL's interest in AS, Donovan said, was a major "skulduggery".
Asked about the "industrial peace accord" clause of the agreement, Donovan replied that the union had many such accords with the ACTU and the government covering, as in the latest dispute for instance, passenger ships between the mainland and Tasmania. However, he said that this clause, which specifically relates to the ANL "to ensure its continued viability", did not mean that "the union would not take industrial action if deemed necessary".
While Donovan and the seafarers Green Left Weekly talked to at a Sydney anti-privatisation rally on September 16 were adamant that the union had come out on top, they did say that the union had been put in a difficult position. Danny Brady, a seafarer, said that the agreement meant job security into the future.
Asked how much one could trust the federal government, he replied: "If they renege on their commitments, we will go out again. But we were not going to end up like the pilots [whose strike for a wage rise in 1989 led to their isolation by the ACTU, government-organised scabbing and eventually mass sackings]."
The Australian shipping industry is under massive pressure to compete with Asian nations, Brady said. "They want to lower wages and cut conditions to Third World levels. We have to find the ways to resist that", he said, adding that the government had agreed to the current employment arrangements whereby ship owners employ from an industry pool of members rather than individually. This removes employers' ability to black-list militants. The government's statement of agreement, however, says that the union agreed to "consider changing the existing employment arrangements".
The editorials of the major establishment dailies, including the Sydney Morning Herald, Australian and the Financial Review, were unanimous in their criticism of what they described as a government back-down on its plan to liquidate ANL. They argue that the shipping industry should be entirely deregulated, with no subsidies to employers, and workplace wages and conditions lowered to compete with those in Asia.
This is despite the fact that, as the Financial Review's Mark Davis notes, Australian shipping has to compete with subsidised shipping lines from Japan, Norway and the countries of the former Eastern bloc, as well as "flags of convenience" vessels which are registered in tax havens such as Panama or Liberia.
The signs are already there on what is in store for a privatised ANL. In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald on September 15, the managing director of Jamison Equity and now AS chairman Chris Corrigan indicated that AS would be swift about changing work practices: "There is not enough business and too much cost — most of which is people".
According to Donovan, if Corrigan is getting ready to fight, "the MUA is ready".