Industrial Workers of the World

The collapse of global financial markets in late 2008 has given Mining companies in Australia a welcome gift for 2009. The rejection of the anti-worker ‘Work Choices’ legislation by the Rudd government in 2008 had kick started feelings of optimism and solidarity amongst mine workers in the conspicuously un-unionised mines of Western Australia.

The future looked bright for these workers to once again stand up for their rights and reinstitute collective bargaining within the industry. Presently, however, the tentative mine workers movements of Western Australia have been challenged by the much hyped decline in demand for their products. This instability has played directly into the hands of employers who can plead ‘poor me’ to governments, unions and the media, to turn public opinion against workers solidarity, and to use the fear of job losses against workers who are seeking to organise and defend their rights.

To get a sense of the current situation one only needs to look at the struggle by Rio Tinto Train Drivers in the Pilbara. At issue is a battle to get Rio Tinto to simply negotiate with workers collectively, an aspiration that Rio has stone walled at all junctures. This dispute predated and spanned the initial months of the financial collapse. Fortunately for Rio Tinto their ability to ignore the intensifying collective actions of these workers was bolstered by the financial collapse in the closing months of 2008, which allowed the media, state and federal governments and the company to write off the movement as at best greedy, and at worst treasonous against state, nation, industry and company.

Fast forward the tape to January 2009 and we find Alcoa workers agreeing to drop wage increases that they had already won in 2008 negotiations. In the media the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, who devised the deferral in wage increases, are portrayed as ‘mature and sensible’, while the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union has been described as ‘Militant’ for continuing with wage demands. The mainstream media even falsely aggregated wage claims to come to a headline figure of an immediate 33% pay increase to discredit the CFMEU, when the actual figure behind the anti-union headline was 5-10%.

This is how the clampdown on collective action is progressing; it is a conscious attack on mine workers rights, under the pretext of immanent financial collapse, and to add extra force to employer distain for workers Rio went further and sacked 14,000 employees across the globe in the blink of an eye, a move blamed on the financial crisis. This is how the employing classes operate when they need to reduce costs and discipline their remaining workforce with fear; yet we, the workers, are asked to act honourably in our places of work and remain loyal to the company. What’s more, these plea’s of ‘hard times’ by Rio are even harder to swallow, when we consider that the lay-offs came at the same time that Rio Tinto’s Coal and Allied profits had surged 731%, to a new record $804 million by Feb 2009.

On the propaganda front, many workers, who are not employed in the mining sector, are encouraged by the media, governments, and business activist groups to dismiss, out of hand, any conflicts between mine workers and their employers. The old story goes something like, “bloody whining miners, they make too much money anyway! Who cares about their problems?”Employer groups used the same tactics against the Maritime Union of Australia in their dispute with Patricks Stevedores in 1998; it’s the old divide and conquer routine, and we have to be smarter than that.

Wages are inconsistent between industries partially because some commodities attract more value than others and the supply of skills in the labour market varies. However, while workers receive the price they can get for selling their skills on the labour market, no worker receives the full value of the product of their labour, because surplus labour time is where companies get their profits from. Regardless of the unevenness of wages, it is to the benefit of all oppressed people to have workers organised in solidarity with each other. This is the only way to counteract, and begin to democratize, a system which allows employers to do as they please with us, and to waste the product of our labours on their own excesses. I say to fellow workers, resist the media poison about wage disparity and see the struggle as a common one of those who labour against those who take the products of our labour.

These tragic symphonies of pro-employer media have had the net effect of inferring that any collective activity by workers in the mining sector is against the national interest, and therefore Joe and Jane Public should see these scoundrels as cutting the throat of the Australian economy. This vilification of unions is a familiar tactic used by employer classes in most industrial disputes, but mining in Western Australia has even more of a ‘life or death’ aura surrounding it in the depths of the current financial crisis, because it was the engine of the economic boom. Behind closed doors we miners are considered almost seditious if we suggest an entitlement to personal safety, let alone a right to collectively bargain; if we were to openly organise then we would surely be accused of sabotaging the national interest, and sacked, by one means or another.

The real danger of the present clampdown on collective action in W.A. mining isn’t wages however, it is health and safety. I work for a major mining company and through my own experience and from accounts of other workers at different sites in the Pilbara, it seems to me that we are being put into unsafe situations by managers who know full well that the workforce will be compliant under the fear of sackings. They can do this safe in the knowledge that government, and media will be reluctant to publicly scrutinize methods when the future of Australia apparently depends on these mining projects. Situations such as continuing to work when weather conditions, gear, or job set-ups are blatantly unsafe.

Workers comply because, unlike six months ago when their skills were in demand, they know that they can be replaced tomorrow. Undoubtedly, workers have a natural instinct to close ranks and organise in the face of safety breaches and broken promises by management, however these instincts are being circumvented by self-censorship, as anti-union paranoia goes up a few notches.

There is resistance in all of this however, and this unspoken clampdown is not entirely a one way event. A number of unions with support from the ACTU are holding employers to account to a certain degree and some continue to press for pay demands, despite being slated in the media.

BHP, after closing Ravensthorpe mine and leaving that community of workers with houses worth next to nothing, has suffered a massive backlash from local communities and the general public. Nobody thinks that calling the workforce in for a safety meeting and sacking the lot of them on the spot is acceptable behaviour for a company as big as BHP.

Regardless of the job we do, we all feel for those 2100 sacked workers in W.A., and the other 4-5000 worldwide because the same is true in all industries; employers would rather sack 10 workers to save $10 of profit, or lay-off 2 productive workers to preserve their own overpaid jobs.

Sadly the proof is always in the puddling, with BHP only weeks after the sackings posting a record $22 Billion profit for the 6 months spanning the crisis; that’s nearly $1 Billion a week! The ‘crisis’ is proving to be a blank check for mining giants to crack down on workers and mothball poorly managed mines. That is the nature of this rotten system, and we are all the victims. This type of behaviour does companies like BHP no favours in the eyes of working people across the globe, and hopefully disgust will turn to education, solidarity and agitation across the board.

As well as this laying bare of capitalisms treachery, mine workers have continued to subvert the company and its psychological clampdowns, through stealing back time from the boss, leaking all manner of safety and legal breaches to regulators, or interested media organs; and by continuing to discuss indirectly, and behind closed doors the need for collective action.

We must all take hope, because the instinct to resist attacks from above is always just simmering under the surface, and although the financial crisis has given employers in W.A. mines an extra dose of chloroform for their mighty workforce, that ploy will lose effectiveness with overexposure, and the time for mine workers to organise for their own defence will begin again with a renewed urgency.