Why we must defend the maritime workers
By James Vassilopoulos
Why should full-time workers (many of whom are on less than $35,000 per year) support maritime workers (some of whom receive $70,000) in their fight against the government and the maritime bosses?
The government and big business media are attempting to drive a wedge between maritime workers and the rest of the working class. Maritime workers are being portrayed as lazy and overpaid. A similar ploy was used against the pilots in their wage campaign in the late 1980s.
Last year in the US, the United Parcel Service workers scored a tremendous victory because the isolation tactic did not work; some 60% of workers supported the UPS campaign for job creation and better wages.
The tactics being used here are nothing new. Former British PM Margaret Thatcher in 1990 combined with the maritime bosses to de-unionise and casualise the ports. Nicholas Finney, then the director of the National Association of Port Employers, described in a speech to the H.R. Nicholls Society how this was done:
"We commissioned economic studies. One particularly important economic study was to try and prove that by getting rid of the dock labour scheme [a scheme which guaranteed a union presence], you actually create many more jobs than you lose.
"Benefits from this approach ... [were] to make sure we could drive a wedge home to isolate dockers and describe them as a selfish, small group of workers who were actually stopping people from gaining jobs ... "
Maritime workers, be they seafarers or wharfies, have a lot in common with other workers. In the first instance, all are workers, whether skilled or unskilled, unionised or un-unionised, or permanent or casual; all have to sell their labour power to the owners of the means of production — the boss.
All workers are subject to the same laws of capitalism which include attacks on wages and conditions. The bosses constantly seek to maximise their profits by replacing workers with machinery, deskilling the work force, and making the remaining work force work harder and for longer hours.
For this reason, workers understandably feel insecure about their jobs. The official unemployment rate is just over 8%. Just as 57% of wharfies lost their jobs between 1989 and 1992, 20,000 Commonwealth public service workers lost theirs, 15,000 Telstra workers have been made redundant and thousands of bank workers have been shown the door.
In the near future, many awards will be reduced to 20 allowable conditions under the Liberals' Workplace Relations Act. Already the hotel associations want to abolish overtime rates.
Similarly, port employers Patricks and P&O Ports are likely to try to strip the stevedoring award of overtime rates and pay an annual salary in the next round of enterprise bargaining.
The Liberals' Workplace Relations Act, which is undermining permanent work, has limited the right to strike, promoted individual contracts and increased penalties on unions if they break the rules. It is an attack on all unions and workers, highlighting the need for worker solidarity.
The wage difference between maritime and other workers does not mean they have different interests. The difference is the fact that the maritime union is organised and has struggled for its wages and conditions. To earn the high wage, a wharfie must work at least 60 hours per week — the equivalent of almost two jobs.
The difference in wage rates between workers pales into insignificance when compared to the millions of dollars of profits the transnational P&O makes.
All workers will suffer if the government defeats the maritime unions. If maritime workers are casualised, the bosses will have a renewed impetus to cut wages and conditions across the board.
History of struggle
The wharfies and seafarers have been at the forefront of winning better working conditions.
They have also taken consistent progressive stands on social and environmental issues, including uranium, racism and East Timor. For this, workers here and across the world are indebted to them.
The maritime workers should also be defended because their wages and conditions, won through union organisation and militant struggle, have often flowed onto other workers.
From the early to mid-1900s, wharfies were forced to work for up to 24 hours straight. This shift was called a "dark-un".
In early 1940, workers on the Arkaba who took industrial action against this inhuman shift and refused to work beyond midnight were sacked and fined £2. The strikers gained a lot of support from other wharfies, and within a year the "man killer" shift was abolished.
Workers then worked 12-hour shifts per day and later this was improved to eight hours. By 1948, the Federal Arbitration Court awarded a 40-hour week for all.
Today, four-weeks of annual leave is taken for granted, but annual leave has not always existed. Prior to 1946 workers on the waterfront had to pay for their annual leave.
Following a 24-hour stoppage and overtime bans, coupled with an education campaign among union members and the community, the workers scored an important victory. In 1946, the arbitration commission ordered that waterside workers could receive a maximum of 88 hours pay for annual leave.
Throughout history, the wharfies and seafarers have displayed a marked selflessness and have been generous in coming to the aid of other workers in Australia and around the world. This occurred especially when the unions were led by Communists.
Social justice
According to Margo Beasley's book Wharfies — The History of the Waterside Workers' Federation, in the 1950s the wharfies championed a range of causes: justice for Aborigines; support for the London port workers; support for Paul Robeson, world-famous black American baritone and communist; and campaigns against the Victorian government's increase in rents, hospital charges and public transport fares.
Prior to this, in September 1945 the wharfies imposed a complete ban on Dutch ships in solidarity with Indonesians fighting for their independence. This internationalism has continued: last year two Indonesian seafarers from Unison won $150,000 in back pay with the help of the Maritime Union of Australia.
Uranium mining and export has been an issue of widespread community concern. In the 1960s and '70s the Waterside Workers Federation (WWF) led protests, including leaflet campaigns, against nuclear testing. In 1972, they banned French ships and aircraft. In 1981, a shipment of uranium from Ranger was halted in Darwin for seven weeks, and in Brisbane exports from the Mary Kathleen mine were disrupted.
As early as 1954, the WWF protested the French presence in Indo-China, now known as Vietnam, and later played a key role in the moratorium movement against US and Australian intervention. During December 1972, the Seamen's Union of Australia placed bans on all US-owned ships.
The maritime workers have also been consistent promoters of anti-racism, even in the height of the racist White Australia policy. In 1971, a levy from watersiders provided a $10,000 donation to the Gurindji — who had struck against the Vesteys company in 1966 over pay, conditions and ownership of the cattle station — to fence 500 square miles of land.
A donation of £1500 was made in 1966 to assist striking Aboriginal stockmen at the Newcastle Waters Station in the Northern Territory, who were protesting the delay of full award rates of pay.
All unions and workers must defend the maritime workers. Besides a verbal commitment, unions must also be prepared to give industrial support.
Last November a national meeting of Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) members passed the following motion: "The MUA and PTU [Public Transport Union] pledge mutual support and cooperation, including manual and industrial support, where considered necessary."
A real alliance between all the transport unions, the MUA, the PTU and the Transport Workers Union, would be a good first step to counter the government's attacks.
This is how Tom Hills describes the contribution of waterfront workers in his book Under the Hook: "We told them [fellow workers] that workers have got the power to change the world. We said: 'You're not just helpless!'. After all, workers built the bloody ships, and the wharves too. They started to understand that they could win, and that they could show other workers the way to win."