File spoon-archives/aut-op-sy.archive/aut-op-sy_1997/aut-op-sy.9712, message 44


Date: Fri, 12 Dec 1997 14:45:11 -0600 (CST)
From: "Harry M. Cleaver" <hmcleave-AT-eco.utexas.edu>
Subject: AUT: More on Mercenaries recruited to break the unions (fwd)


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 1997 05:30:59 -0500 (EST)
From: Andrew Flood <andy-AT-tao.ca>
Reply-To: a-infos-d-AT-tao.ca
To: a-infos-AT-tao.ca
Subject: (en) Mercenaries recruited to break the unions

INTERNATIONAL CONFEDERATION OF FREE TRADE UNIONS 
(ICFTU)
ICFTU OnLine?
323/971212/LD
A fifth column in Australia
(By Luc DEMARET)

Brussels,  December 12 1997 (ICFTU OnLine): 
Mercenaries recruited to break the unions, 
soldiers trained in Dubai in an undercover 
operation which, according to the ICFTU, clearly 
bears the fingertips of the conservative 
government.  Australia is facing its own Watergate 
on the waterfront. In the meantime, the London-
based International Transport Workers' Federation 
(ITF) will today launch a major international 
campaign. A ban on Australian ports and that of 
Dubai is not to be ruled out.

As he put down the telephone receiver, John Combs 
couldn't believe his ears.  As national secretary 
of the powerful Maritime Union of Australia (MUA), 
Combs had heard rumours that the government wanted 
to break his organisation, which it held 
responsible for preventing the modernisation of 
the ports by defending the dockers' rights.  But 
mercenaries?  An undercover operation, run by the 
army?  Training at a port in the United Arab 
Emirates?  It all seemed a bit far-fetched.  Yet 
the man he was later to call Friend No.1. wasn't 
making it up and, like Deep Throat in the 
Watergate story, seemed very well informed.  The 
first call from Friend No.1, was in November 1997.  
On November 13, a small ad. appeared in "The 
Army", the Australian Armed Forces (ADF) magazine, 
offering "diggers"(1) a "civilian career 
opportunity".  Given that the ADF is planning to 
cut its staff from 57,000 to 50,000 in three 
years, the offer must have been tempting.

But in re-reading the advertisement, John Combs 
got a surprise: the skills required could be 
mistaken for those of many of the higher skilled 
workers in the Australian docks, specialists in 
the use of heavy equipment, the maintenance of 
hydraulic machinery, engine repairs. Furthermore, 
the jobs offered were in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney 
and Brisbane, all the big ports along the 
Australian waterfront.  What if Friend No.1 were 
right? The name Mike Wells that appeared at the 
bottom of the ad. and the company CTMS that he 
claimed to represent meant nothing to him.  But he 
began to make inquiries, with the help of Friend 
No.1.

It seemed that Wells was not entirely unknown.  
Inquiries at the Australian Securities Commission, 
an official, public data bank, identified him as a 
director of the International Port Services 
Training Group Ltd., a training company for port 
personnel, created on 13 October 1997.  No-one 
seemed to have heard of the company, or of  
Fynwest Pty Ltd., registered ten days earlier, 
giving its director's name as?Mike Wells.  It 
seemed that Mr. Wells had spent 14 years in the 
Australian army and the time he spent in Vietnam, 
in 1966 and 1967, had earned him several medals.  
But Wells is not the only head of Fynwest and 
International Port Services Training Group.    He 
shares that privilege with a certain Peter 
Kilfoyle.

Combs found the case serious enough to refer it to 
the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU).  If 
Friend No.1 was right, the story could be 
explosive.  Kilfoyle was identified.  As a 
specialist in unarmed combat and a VIP bodyguard, 
he had worked for a private security firm before 
joining the newly created Fynwest.  Between 1975 
and 1983, he was in the Army, and spent five years 
in the elite Special Air Service, the famous SAS.

The ACTU sought further information from Friend 
No.1 and other sources, and as the picture was 
gradually put together they found that 70 people 
had been recruited by Wells and Kilfoyle, that 
they would be "trained" at the port in Dubai, in 
the United Arab Emirates, for three months, before 
coming back to Australia to train another 
contingent of 150 men at a secret location.

By then Combs was convinced that Friend No.1 had 
hit the bulls-eye: mercenaries were going to be 
trained in a Middle East port, and they would come 
back to Australia to train others for an 
undercover operation due to begin in March next 
year, with the aim of neutralising the MUA. On 
December 3, on the eve of the departure of the 
first contingent, the ACTU and the MUA published 
the first press release: they asked the government 
for clarifications and produced several documents.  
The Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, claims 
to know nothing about the whole affair, but 
refuses to answer questions from members of 
parliament who are demanding to know whether 
government funds have been used for the Fynwest 
operation. The press is talking of 10 million 
dollars. Interviewed by a journalist from the 
Financial Review, Mike Wells claims he is working 
for an international consortium that prefers to 
remain anonymous and that the recruits will be 
working in the Pacific, not in Australia.

But Friend No.1 is there and a favourable wind has 
brought the ACTU and the MUA the copy of a 
confidential contract offered by Fynwest to the 
future mercenaries.  It gives clear, military-
style instructions.  "Once operations commence 
(expected mid-March 1998) you will be returned to 
your respective City of origin/operation". Before 
that however the recruits will be required to 
conduct three weeks of "instructional training" 
for a second group "possibly 120 to 180 people".  
"This will entail you being 'locked-in' for the 
period of training" explains Fynwest.  "The 
foregoing is considered necessary to obviate 
regular movement in and out of the site of large 
groups of people, which would draw attention from 
the locals".

As the government continues to deny it, the ADF 
admits that 29 soldiers took part in the first 
expedition.  Two recruits who turned down the 
contract say that during the interview with 
Fynwest their interviewer confirmed the government 
was supporting the whole operation.  A photo from 
1994 pulled out of the archives by a local 
newspaper shows Peter Kilfoyle  wearing a security 
badge and holding an umbrella for the Prime 
Minister of the State of Victoria, Jeff Kennett.   
He claims they've got the story all wrong, but 
thinks that introducing order into the ports would 
be no bad thing.

Alerted by the Australian trade unions, the ICFTU 
and the International Transport Workers' 
Federation (ITF) have rallied to their side.  An 
international campaign has been launched.  And 
John Combs is going to preparatory meetings in 
London and Brussels.  The identity of Friend No.1 
will not be disclosed for security reasons.  On 
the waterfront, the MUA dockers are prepared.  
When the mercenaries leave Dubai on February 28, 
it may not be a triumphal return home.

But perhaps by then the government will have had 
to put an end to an operation which is proving a 
major embarrassment.

(1)"Digger" is the name given to Australian 
soldiers, dating back to the first world war when 
they were used on the front lines to dig the 
trenches. 
Contact: ICFTU-Press at: ++32-2 224.02.12 
(Brussels).


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