Shop stewards endorse Campaign 2000 settlement
BY CHRIS SPINDLER
MELBOURNE — Meetings of Metal Trades Federation of Unions shop stewards here on June 21 and 22 have endorsed a deal brokered between the MTFU and a group of breakaway employers which will give their employees substantial gains in pay and conditions.
The employers brokered the deal after their federation, the Australian Industry Group (AIG), refused to discuss Campaign 2000 with unions, a campaign by metal unions to get a single agreement covering the entire industry in Victoria.
The settlement will give workers a 15% pay rise over 33 months and an extra rostered day off each year. Access to long-service leave will be available after 10 years, rather than 15, and on a pro-rata basis after seven years. Casual employees will have to be made permanent after three months in the job and employers' contractors will have to have agreements with the unions.
The employers have also agreed to discuss a 35-hour week during the lifetime of the agreement, which will expire on March 31, 2003.
The deal exceeds the national average wage increase in the manufacturing industry of about 4% per year. Even more importantly, it creates the prospect of uniting the whole industry behind a common set of wages and conditions.
The settlement presently covers only 100 employers but will set a precedent for the 1000 manufacturing companies yet to sign up. As companies sign, they become exempt from industrial action.
The shop stewards' meetings authorised further mass meetings and industrial action, thereby sending a message to those companies holding out that they should accept the settlement. Legal industrial action can commence when the current agreements run out on June 30.
The settlement snubs all those predicting failure for Campaign 2000, including the bosses, government and even some unionists, and is a major victory for the militant approach taken by Victoria's Workers First leadership of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, the key component of the MTFU.
Encouraged by federal minister for industrial relations Peter Reith, whose own attempt to legislate against Campaign 2000 failed, sections of the media have viciously condemned Campaign 2000 and MFTU secretary Craig Johnston, the Victorian AMWU secretary. In the July 17-18 Australian Financial Review, reporter Nina Field said that Johnston's "reputation as a lawless and mindless militant is so pervasive he has become a shorthand reference for union-inspired mayhem" and that he is "holding an unprecedented industrial dagger over the head of the state's manufacturing sector".
The AIG and Reith have attempted to claim that Campaign 2000 will cut flexibility and lead to industrial mayhem. Yet the winners from the "flexibility" brought about by enterprise bargaining in the industry have been the employers; workers in many hundreds of industrially weaker work sites have been left behind.
Campaign 2000's strength has come from the sense it makes to manufacturing workers, to whom it is obvious that a united industry is far better than one split into many different units.
While some in the stronger shops have worried that Campaign 2000 may hold them back, the settlement is a gain for all workers in the industry. The blows to casualisation and contracting out, in particular, will protect jobs and standards in both weak and strong shops.