By Steve Painter
Waterfront unions became the first to settle an Accord Mark VI deal outside the centralised wage fixing system when they agreed to a $12 rise from May 16 and a further 6% rise in three instalments between July 1991 and July 1992.
Industrial Relations Commission approval for the May 2 agreement will be sought under the 1989 wage case guidelines, bypassing the recent national wage decision rejected by the ACTU.
The deal will clear the way for continuing negotiations on waterfront productivity.
In these negotiations waterfront employers, led by Conaust (P&O), are using calls for reform to push measures that would permanently weaken waterfront unionism. Backed by an intensive propaganda campaign in the media, they are pushing for wider use of contract labour and a range of other concessions.
Contrary to the media image, the Waterside Workers Federation recognises the need for reform. "From the outset we've been prepared to be in the reform process", says WWF Sydney branch secretary Jim Donovan.
"We've agreed to 2000 people leaving the industry and people becoming multiskilled and prepared to perform more than one function. Then there's got to be some remuneration for the people remaining in the industry.
"That would come about by the new classification structures, and we've been talking in terms of $20-$40 increases for those who are performing the work, that is to say the people driving heavy machinery, who've been the lesser paid within the industry for many years."
Wharfies are angry about the media's treatment of them, says Donovan. "There's a reason for the publicity: P&O think they're on another winner. Their chief, Lord Sterling, was out here recently and no doubt issued some orders to take us on like they did in Britain and in New Zealand, where they defeated the trade union movement and the wharfies' unions.
"They're getting a lot of publicity. Our blokes are incensed at the inaccuracy of the stuff that's coming out."
P&O is on the crest of a wave after getting a favourable decision from the IRC earlier this year, says Donovan. "They're one of the biggest shipping companies in the English-speaking countries and they've got their finger in everything that's going. They're in catering, they're in cleaning, they're in land, and of course their shipping and stevedoring avenues aren't realising the money that they want.
"Their managing director, Richard Setchell, keeps reminding us of the conditions that apply in Singapore and Penang. Their main thing is to destroy our union. We're going to retain it." n