Sixteen sacked over safety issue
By Elle Morrell
MELBOURNE — Sixteen steel fixers and carpenters have been sacked from a construction site at St Vincents Hospital for taking a stand over a safety issue.
When a three-metre iron jackrod fell from a slip on the building site in early August, there was naturally concern among the builders labourers, but shop stewards refused to take the issue up with the boss.
That same night there was a workplace union meeting to elect shop stewards. There was concern from many workers that the two current shop stewards had been hand-picked by the bosses. But when steel fixer and active unionist John Smith was put up as an alternative, many workers were too intimidated to vote for him without a secret ballot.
The next day three workers were told that they no longer had a job. To pick off these three workers, who had been active unionists, the company, K-Crete, had to sack 13 other workers around them.
K-Crete is infamous for supplying scabs to break pickets such as the 1991 picket at 417 St Kilda Road.
Before the jackrod incident, some workers had complained because they were being forced to work in the rain. Many believe these complaints were noted by the shop stewards and used against them in this latest incident. The high level of unemployment in Victoria makes it very easy for companies to threaten workers' jobs.
The sacked workers have the support of the Builders Workers Industrial Union (BWIU) and the Electrical Trades Union (ETU). On August 27 the ETU placed bans on tools that were found on the site and deemed them unsafe. The BWIU called a workplace meeting to discuss the sackings and further campaigns against them, but this was undercut by shop stewards who approached the remaining workers personally and told them not to attend. There is now an atmosphere of wariness among all the workers on the site.
Anyone wishing to lend support to the sacked workers should contact the BWIU in Melbourne.