No jobs where factories are museum pieces

July 22, 1992
Issue 

By Tracy Sorensen

Wollongong Out of Workers (WOW) was formed during the last recession in the early 80s. Many of the people it represents have not worked in the decade since. Right through the 1980s boom, the area's biggest employer, the BHP steelworks, shed thousands of jobs, at first through mass sackings and then by not replacing injured or retired workers.

The steelworks employed about 23,000 people in its heyday, attracting immigrant workers from around the world. About 7500 people work there now. BHP management is said to be aiming for a final figure of about 5000.

"We'd say the youth unemployment rate here is about one in three", WOW convener Nick Southall told Green Left. "In the working-class and migrant areas — Cringila, Port Kembla, Shellharbour — it's about 70%. In areas like that, you'd certainly stick out if you had a job."

Meanwhile, the BHP steelworks has, quite literally, become a museum piece: with the support of local trade unions, it has been cleaned up and refurbished as a tourist attraction. Dozens of families, mainly from Sydney's western suburbs, now make the tour around the rolling mills and furnaces where people once earned their wages.

But while the tourism industry is moderately successful, it has not matched the local politicians' enthusiastic talk in the late '80s of a "Leisure Coast" which would play host to international conventions. According to Southall, some of the developers who built big pastel-coloured hotels on the shoreline are now — like their counterparts elsewhere — in serious trouble.

WOW will be going to Canberra on July 22 to tell the politicians that "both the major parties have failed to address the issue of real jobs with real wages over the last decade or so. The unemployed are sick and tired of hearing of schemes and job summits with no real action taken by government or business to redress the problems."

WOW would highlight the need for a political alternative to both major parties.

"We believe that the unions should not implement the Carmichael Report, but instead look at paying young people a proper wage, creating proper jobs for them instead of Mickey Mouse training schemes and fake short-term job creation schemes.

"We think the Carmichael Report is basically there to serve the needs of business. It's about time the union movement stopped serving the needs of business and started serving the needs of the community." As an affiliate of the South Coast Labor Council, WOW has the support of most of the unions in Wollongong. "The trade union movement down here is very concerned about unemployment, although how they will address it is yet to be seen." The SCLC has called an emergency meeting of union delegates to discuss the issue.

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