Tim Gooden, Geelong
An important test case for the federal government's new industrial relations laws, which aim to destroy organised labour, has arisen involving all building unions on an isolated construction site in Victoria's west.
The Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC), the Howard government's new task force to police the building unions, has launched an investigation into an industrial dispute at Mineral Sands, a large sand mine and processing plant in construction just outside Hamilton.
The dispute involves the development company Illuka and the Roche building company. The task force interviewed the builder for a day and a half. It claims that illegal industrial action took place in September that has damaged their business.
The project is worth about $250 million and will run until 2008. It is currently about five months behind schedule and the project contract requires the builder to pay the developer a set amount for every day the project is delayed.
On September 23, a mini bus containing 12 of the workers was nearly hit by a train at a level crossing located between the construction site and the workers' camp site. The crossing was uncontrolled, had no warning lights, is used more than 1000 times per day and has poor visibility in one direction due to a high embankment.
Immediately after the September 23 incident, the site workers called a stop-work meeting to discuss the number of near misses and the delays in fixing the problem. Previously, the workers had been fobbed off by Roche's claim that fixing the crossing was the responsibility of the Grampians Shire Council. The council blamed VicTrack, which owns the track. VicTrack said it was private property and up to Westinghouse, which makes the warning lights, and Illuka to fix the crossing. All these parties had refused to meet to resolve the problem.
The workers believed that sooner or later someone was going to be killed and decided that the only way to force the company to take the issue seriously was to withdraw their labour for 10 days.
The project employs workers in the Australian Workers Union; the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union; the Electrical Trade Union; the plumbers union; and the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union.
The company took these unions to the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, where an agreement was reached that if all the organisations responsible for the rail crossing met to resolve the safety issues the workers would return to work, which they did.
Immediate improvements were made to the crossing. Large, continuously flashing signs were installed and two metres was scrapped off the embankment to give a better view of the tracks. Permanent rail crossing lights, warning both car and train drivers, will be installed by Christmas.
The ABCC task force has now interviewed all the safety representatives and union delegates on the site, and has demanded that the unions hand over all paperwork, including diaries, relating to the dispute. Under the new laws, anyone refusing to comply with the task force's demands could face six months' jail.
The task force will be trying to prove that the unions took illegal industrial action and therefore should pay damages and fines totalling millions of dollars under the new laws. The task force has been looking for this type of scenario — a multi-million dollar project miles from anywhere with all of the militant unions on the one site.
The task force has paid no attention to date to the fact that 12 construction workers nearly lost their lives because the boss failed to provide safe access to and from the work site.
The unions will meet shortly to discuss how to respond to the task force's demands.
[Tim Gooden is the secretary of Geelong and Region Trades Hall Council.]
From Green Left Weekly, December 7, 2005.
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