BY SUE BULL
MELBOURNE — The metalworkers at Tiemans couldn't remember the last time they had been on strike. The older ones had hazy memories of the 35-hour week campaign 21 years ago. But on February 1, when the boss sacked three young workers who had just completed their apprenticeships, most felt there was no option but to strike.
The 100 workers at the Keon Park plant, who build stainless steel tanks for trucks, stayed out until February 14, a monumental effort considering that most had never taken industrial action. As one older worker told Green Left Weekly, "It's the principle of the thing. This company has never sacked [apprenticed] workers as they have come out of their time... You just can't let them get away with it."
One of the sacked workers, 20-year-old Daniel Newlands, explained what happened: "The manager walked into a union meeting and sacked me in front of 100 blokes, as we were discussing the sacking of one of the others. He was given 15 minutes to leave. They're changing protocols and procedures without any consultation. But the unity out here is pretty good, although it's a hard lesson to learn as all these blokes have lost a lot of pay just to fight for my job and to stop more of this happening."
Under the Workplace Relations Act, the workers' strike action — which to the Tiemans workers was perfectly reasonable — was illegal. The Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) could have ordered the workers straight back to work.
However, Tiemans had already agreed to give all apprentices coming out of their time a three-month probationary period, so the sacking of the three workers was clearly unfair.
The IRC commissioner made a recommendation that the workers return to work when Tiemans offered each of the sacked workers seven and a half weeks' pay at tradesperson's rates. The workers decided that was as good as they could get and returned to work on February 14.
Although their struggle wasn't entirely successful, most workers felt that it wasn't a bad outcome. They knew that nothing would have been achieved if they hadn't taken such strong, united action.
As Australian Manufacturing Workers Union organiser Chris Spindler told GLW, "It has changed Tiemans forever in terms of industrial relations. During the state enterprise agreement campaign in 2000, these blokes took no action and achieved an inferior agreement. Now they're already planning their next enterprise agreement campaign and intend to win gains."
From Green Left Weekly, February 20, 2002.
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