File spoon-archives/aut-op-sy.archive/aut-op-sy_1997/aut-op-sy.9712, message 48


From: "Price" <price-AT-aljan.com.au>
Subject: AUT: Re: War on the wharfies
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 1997 19:17:46 +1100


Well, just because they have been removed from Dubai does not mean that it
is the end of this saga, with this current government I don't know when it
will end. The next election, if it comes down to that!
 
The Sydney Morning Herald Monday, December 15, 1997

    "Dubai expels wharf force 

    Maritime Union of Australia national secretary Mr John Coombs
    yesterday .... he says that if the backers of the waterfront scheme
    persist, he will pursue them "from one end of the world to the next".

    By DEBORAH SNOW and HELEN TRINCA

    The controversial operation to train non-union workers for
    Australian wharves was aborted last night after Dubai
    authorities withdrew the men's visas in the face of
    threatened international action against users of the port.

    One of the men behind the scheme, Mr Mike Wells, told the Herald he was
pulling the
    men out over the next few days and that they would be returning to
Australia for two
    weeks.

    But he insisted that they would continue their training at a new
location, which he
    refused to name.

    The Minister for Workplace Relations, Mr Reith, said the Federal
Government had
    confirmed that the visas had been withdrawn by Dubai authorities.

    Mr Wells said the scheme's backers were angry about the threats against
Dubai by the
    International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF), but said that "no
way will it give
    them cold feet".

    The company backing the project, Container Terminal Management
Services, would
    request termination of the $1 million contract.

    The end to the scheme came after Dubai authorities, responding to
direct pleas, and
    threats, from the ITF's headquarters in London, announced on Saturday
that training
    would be suspended pending further investigation.

    But there was no announcement that the Australians would be deported.
In a statement
    announcing suspension of training, Dubai authorities indicated they did
not want to
    damage relations between Australia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). 

    In London, the national secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia,
Mr John
    Coombs, who organised international opposition to the scheme, welcomed
the pullout
    but said the union would continue to fight any effort to resume the
training.

    If the backers did not see sense and drop the scheme, he would "pursue
them from one
    end of the world to the next". 

    But there were not many "safe havens" - non-unionised ports - like
Dubai where such
    training could take place. 

    Mr Reith said he had no information as to what motivated the withdrawal
of the visas
    but he understood the contact between the Australian Government and the
UAE was
    limited to confirmation of the withdrawal. 

    He said the issue had been "beaten up out of all possible proportion"
and he rejected
    calls for an inquiry, saying there was no suggestion that anything
illegal had been done.

    Mr Wells described Mr Coombs as "Australia's unelected president" and
added: "It
    just amazes me that the unions are calling the shots not just for this
country, but for the
    United Arab Emirates as well." 

    In a statement released on Saturday, the Dubai Government said it was
not aware that
    the Australians were soldiers as claimed in media reports.

    "The agreement concluded with the firm is restricted to technical
training relating to
    port management, handling of containers and other technical matters,"
it said.

    The managing director of the Dubai Ports Authority, Sultan Bin Sulayem,
told the
    Herald he would not have entered into a contract had he been told of
any secret
    mission to break the power of unions on the Australian waterfront.

    Labor's foreign affairs spokesman, Mr Laurie Brereton, said yesterday
that moves to
    suspend the training had followed his lobbying of the UAE Ambassador.

    He gave the impression of having warned the UAE Government of a
"potentially
    adverse consequences" if it continued to support the training."


----------
From: Steve Wright <sjwright-AT-vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au>
To: aut-op-sy-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Subject: AUT: War on the wharfies
Date: Saturday, 13 December 1997 9:05

The Age (Melbourne),  Saturday 13  December 1997

                       War on the wharfies - David Elias

                       The Howard Government wants to break the might
                       of the maritime union, the militant frontline
                       troops of Australian trade unionism. This
                       fierce determination has inspired a provocative
                       scheme to deploy strike-breaking "mercenaries''
                       in an election year showdown on Australia's
                       waterfront. David Elias reports.

                       THE CONTAINER terminals in Jebel Ali Port, the
                       world's largest man-made harbor, were built to
                       accommodate sea-going monsters that are 900
                       metres long, 60 metres wide and 14 metres deep.
                       At the crossroads of the world's major shipping
                       lanes, Dubai's modern port is tucked away in
                       the Arabian Gulf 200 kilometres from its
                       entrance. It is both a free-trade zone and an
                       industrial free-for-all where foreign workers
                       predominate and trade unions so intolerable
                       that deportation awaits those who dare to
                       organise one.

                       Some would say it is the ideal training ground
                       for a showdown next year on the Australian
                       waterfront.

                       For $1 million, the Dubai port authority has
                       made available a facility where the hurriedly
                       recruited mixture of adventurers and
                       soon-to-be-superannuated soldiers can gain
                       experience on equipment that no unionist would
                       let them touch on an Australian wharf.

                       And so Mike Wells, a highly decorated Vietnam
                       war veteran, and his partner Peter Kilfoyle, a
                       crowd control security guard, have recruited
                       and dispatched their men to Dubai. The coming
                       war against the Maritime Union of Australia has
                       been a long time in the making.

                       The method, however, lends itself to what is
                       either a great conspiracy theory or a
                       compelling circumstantial case against the
                       Federal Government and, by association, the
                       National Farmers Federation.

                       The NFF and other groups representing import
                       and export oriented businesses have long sought
                       to break the Maritime Union's grip on the
                       docks, and the Howard coalition has long known
                       that it has to deliver on its waterfront reform
                       program to retain the support of the business
                       community.

                       The Workplace Relations Act with its tough
                       secondary boycott provisions and the moves to
                       build new cargo terminals and find operators
                       who will employ non-union labor were
                       anticipated. But it was the inclusion of
                       soldiers among the Dubai group that was the
                       unexpected element, one that threatens to
                       develop into a battle of boycotts and blockades
                       across the world.

                       If many a true word is said in jest then
                       Defence Minister, Ian McLachlan, was only
                       partly talking with tongue in cheek when, as a
                       former NFF president, he said: "The National
                       Farmers Federation never loses anyone, it just
                       relocates them.''

                       It was 1988 and Andrew Robb was leaving the NFF
                       for a new job at Liberal Party headquarters
                       where he rose to become national director. The
                       words could have applied just as easily to
                       David Trebeck and Paul Houlihan, Sydney
                       consultants who have been doing their bit for
                       the Federal Government's industrial reform
                       program in the past 18 months.

                       Mr Trebeck was the NFF deputy director who
                       helped form the organisation's economic
                       policies in 1977 and led it down the reform
                       road until 1985. He then moved to the Liberal
                       Party's federal policy unit as director, but
                       stayed only two years until the party's third
                       successive defeat in the 1987 federal election.

                       In a 1986 newspaper guide to the new right he
                       was listed as a supporter of the

                       H. R. Nicholls society and the author of a
                       Liberal document that, once leaked to
                       government, was tabled in Parliament to the
                       embarrassment of John Howard, who was then
                       Opposition Leader. It named prominent
                       businessmen and journalists who would have to
                       be "neutralised'' if the Opposition was to
                       successfully market its new and radical
                       industrial relations policy.

                       Mr Houlihan, a former industrial director of
                       the NFF, was credited as the architect of the
                       defeat of the Australian Meat Industry
                       Employees Union during the landmark Mudginberri
                       meat workers dispute in 1985. Before his switch
                       to the employer ranks he had been Tasmanian
                       state secretary of the right-leaning Federated
                       Clerks Union, so he came to the NFF with a
                       strategic insight to union politics.

                       As the organiser of a December 1995 conference
                       on waterfront reform, Mr Houlihan urged
                       management to strengthen its resolve and not
                       panic at the prospect of a fight. He told
                       managers at all levels of stevedoring to keep
                       their eyes open for potential confrontation.
                       "You have to walk straight through a work ban
                       ... You've got to stand there and say, 'When
                       push turns to shove, we can look after you'.''

                       The NFF has even gone so far as to say it is
                       not averse to confrontation, although it has
                       this week denied any prior knowledge of or
                       involvement in the Dubai mission.

                       Four months ago the NFF industrial director
                       James Ferguson said the organisation regarded
                       waterfront reform as an absolute priority, and
                       had canvassed a range of options with the
                       Government, including the use of servicemen to
                       keep the docks operating during a strike.

                       A few weeks later, after the disastrous failure
                       of the first attempt to replace the MUA on the
                       Cairns wharf with a non-union labor force, Mr
                       Ferguson said the NFF was preparing a guide for
                       farmers and businesses detailing ways they
                       could redress a dock strike, including legal
                       action against the MUA.

                       Until his fall from grace in the travel rorts
                       affair, the former Transport Minister John
                       Sharp was the farmers' political torchbearer.
                       As the local National Party member in the
                       fine-wool growing area around Goulburn, NSW, Mr
                       Sharp has an electoral as well as an
                       ideological commitment to waterfront reform.

                       In the run-up to the federal election last year
                       the coalition promised to deliver a 25 per cent
                       cut in port costs and, as soon-to-be transport
                       minister, Sharp said: "We will break the grip
                       that the Maritime Union of Australia has on the
                       waterfront."

                       The farmers were elated. It signalled tough
                       action and the end of what they saw as the
                       Labor government's half-hearted attempts at
                       micro-economic reform.

                       There were two sub-plots: the destruction of
                       the MUA, which the Government regards as the
                       ACTU's most militant storm troopers, and the
                       break up of the dockside duopoly of stevedoring
                       companies, the Australian-controlled Patrick
                       Partners and the overseas owned P & O Shipping.

                       The business and export groups blame both for
                       waterfront inefficiencies, high costs and lack
                       of competition.

                       They see a cosy arrangement in which the
                       wharfies get away with low productivity because
                       they have guaranteed jobs for the rest of their
                       working lives at disputedly high wages.

                       Under the original plan of action, the Federal
                       Government undertook the destruction of the MUA
                       while it left the Victorian Government to
                       reform the stevedore industry. To Canberra's
                       annoyance the anointed third terminal
                       operators, Orient Overseas Container Line
                       (OOCL), forged a "groundbreaking" agreement
                       with the union.

                       Victoria blew its negotiations with the Hong
                       Kong shipping group out of the water, and OOCL
                       opened negotiations with New South Wales, where
                       the Carr Government has no objections to the
                       MUA.

                       The Industrial Relations Minister, Peter Reith,
                       in one of his first moves in office in March
                       last year, appointed Houlihan to a small
                       taskforce to draft the Workplace Relations Act,
                       the legislative implement promoting the use of
                       non-union labor that the Government hopes to
                       use.

                       Sharp, by then Transport Minister, brought over
                       Greg Bondar, executive director of the
                       Australian Chamber of Shipping, as his maritime
                       and shipping adviser.

                       Two months into the new government, Sharp's
                       department let the first of a series of
                       contracts worth more than $1 million to provide
                       secret and wide-ranging advice on waterfront
                       reform.

                       Most of the reports have only recently been
                       handed in, but their classification as either
                       confidential Cabinet documents or subject to
                       public interest immunity leads to speculation
                       that turned to suspicion when the MUA and the
                       Labor Party exposed the Dubai mission.

                       Opposition Senator Kerry O'Brien says the
                       secrecy suggests these reports might have
                       raised the possibility of a strike-breaking
                       workforce as the one being recruited and
                       trained by Wells and Kilfoyle.

                       Sharp says there was nothing particularly
                       secret about what the consultants were doing,
                       but they were contracted to produce industry
                       background reports that had to be confidential.
                       Otherwise, companies and other figures on the
                       waterfront would have clammed up.

                       In evidence to a Senate expenditure review
                       committee, Kym Bills, first assistant secretary
                       at the marine division of the Transport
                       Department, denied the consultants had produced
                       a plan that identified legal provisions to
                       force strikers to return to work.

                       The first of the outside projects was a $60,000
                       contract that overran to $80,000. It was let to
                       Trebeck's Acil Economics, with a sub-contract
                       awarded to Houlihan, to ask key industry groups
                       for their views on waterfront reform and
                       provide Sharp with a strategy for
                       implementation.

                       A second contract with a $600,000 ceiling was
                       awarded to Acil in June without going through
                       the normal tendering procedures. Bills told the
                       Senate committee that Sharp ordered the
                       contract without tender on advice from the
                       department that Acil would be further
                       developing its previous task.

                       At this point an interesting cast of Liberal
                       Party connected characters enters the scene.

                       As part of the Acil project, the department
                       paid $42,000 to Australian Research Strategies,
                       a company run by Liberal Party pollster Mark
                       Textor, and then let another, as yet uncosted,
                       contract to Canberra Liaison, a company run by
                       long-standing Liberal election strategist
                       Johnathon Gaul.

                       The Government then commissioned a series of
                       predominantly Melbourne-based consultants,
                       academics and legal firms to produce "effective
                       and durable waterfront reform and provide
                       advice on how to achieve it".

                       The contracts cost the taxpayer a further
                       $480,000, which Sharp sanctioned, again without
                       putting them out for tender.

                       The project was carried out under the
                       leadership of Stephen Webster, a former adviser
                       to then Opposition Leader Andrew Peacock and to
                       former Tasmanian Premier Robin Gray. Dr Webster
                       was paid $95,000 for his work, but others he
                       recruited, also without tender, were paid even
                       more.

                       The big legal firms Minter Ellison and Corrs
                       Chambers Westgarth were paid $151,000 and
                       $90,000 respectively. Minter Ellison, it is
                       understood, provided an extensive report after
                       a legal review of the Workplace Relations Act
                       and its key anti-union weapon, the secondary
                       boycott provisions.

                       The former minister was not prepared to talk
                       about the detail, adding that he had not seen
                       the reports. He had left the ministry before
                       October when all the work was handed in.

                       The Webster contracts were concluded on 3
                       October, two days before Reith assumed
                       responsibility for waterfront reform.

                       A week later, on 13 and 14 October, the
                       partnership of Wells and Kilfoyle registered
                       two companies in Australia as part of the plan
                       to recruit and train an alternative waterside
                       workforce, but it used a third company with a
                       Nunawading post office box for its
                       advertisements and recruiting.

                       The company, CTMS Ltd, stands for the Hong
                       Kong-registered Container Terminal Management
                       Services, which appears to be the offshore
                       conduit through which funds for the $2.5
                       million project flow.

                       The Wells-Kilfoyle partnership is a curious one
                       that appears to be based mostly on their mutual
                       background as SAS commandos. They seem to have
                       little else in common.

                       Wells, in a 20-year career as a regular soldier
                       and a reservist, distinguished himself in
                       Vietnam, winning American and Australian
                       decorations for gallantry. Kilfoyle spent eight
                       years in the ranks of the regular army, mostly
                       as a commando.

                       Wells, 60, was second-in-command of his
                       company, a leader who applied his people skills
                       to a successful career in the outside world. He
                       has been a management consultant and personnel
                       recruiter for about 10 years, but started out
                       as a pharmaceutical sales representative before
                       later rising to chief executive of a light
                       engineering manufacturer.

                       Kilfoyle, 42, who claims to be an accredited
                       instructor in baton use and international
                       defensive tactics, has spent his civilian
                       career as a security guard and the proprietor
                       of a Ballarat hairdressing salon.

                       He filed for bankruptcy in Perth in 1991,
                       blaming the continual mechanical failure and
                       eventual breakdown of a truck for his inability
                       to earn a living. He owed about $25,000, mostly
                       to his bankers, Myer, the tax department, and
                       the credit companies financing the truck and a
                       car.

                       He sought his discharge three years later to
                       return as a security guard, crowd controller
                       and inquiry agent, and has again struck
                       financial difficulties. He owes $7000 to a
                       Melbourne security equipment supplier.

                       Wells is spokesman for the partnership, but he
                       has offered differing accounts on who is behind
                       the waterside training program.

                       He has denied there is a plan to use the
                       workforce in Australia to break the MUA, and
                       insists it is meant to provide job
                       opportunities in ports in the Asia-Pacific
                       region.

                       This appears inconsistent with another
                       statement that after the OOCL deal fell through
                       he and Kilfoyle had been approached by people
                       to train waterfront instructors. He does not
                       name them, nor does he say who is paying the
                       bills.

                       Wells said he had not talked to anyone in the
                       Federal Government and quite predictably there
                       was nobody in Canberra this week who was
                       prepared to admit they had ever heard of Messrs
                       Wells and Kilfoyle.

                        

                                                        
                                  ©1997 David Syme & Co Ltd
         
                  



     --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
----------



     --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005