Date: Sat, 18 Apr 1998 10:27:57 +0200
From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se>
Subject: M-I: Docks battle becoming more general


Here's an AFP report on the Australian situation up to yesterday.

Given the scope of resistance by the working-class and the intensity of the
battles, Dave B's remarks on the necessity of a strategy of a general
strike seem absolutely correct. What is needed is a leadership of the
unions and communities involved that raises the call for a general strike
to bring down the government and throw out all the anti-union legislation
that has accumulated during the years of the reactionary Thatcherite
offensive.

Cheers,

Hugh
__________________________

   SYDNEY, April 17 (AFP) - Police dragged protesters from a
600-strong picket line in another failed bid Friday to reach
stranded cargo as Australia reeled from its most crippling
industrial conflict for decades.
   Amid wild scenes, an articulated truck was able to move only 30
metres (yards) into the human blockade besieging Sydney's Port
Botany terminal run by Patrick Stevedores, the company which sacked
its 1,400 dockers last week.
   But the driver could get no closer than 150 metres from the gate
before abandoning his attempt to thunderous applause by the pickets,
mostly members of other unions rallying behind dockers fighting for
their jobs.
   About 40 protesters were later released without being arrested,
police said.
   Another attempt by three trucks to force their way into a
Patrick terminal at Sydney's Darling Harbour left one man injured in
hospital but failed to breach the blockade.
   Large contingents of police also failed in ports all over
Australia on Friday to force a path through the pickets in what has
become a nationwide union uprising against Australia's conservative
government.
   With possibly hundreds of millions of dollars of cargo stranded
in docks around the country, industries such as automobiles were
running critically short of essential components and threatening
mass standdowns from next week.
   Temporary injunctions obtained by Patrick from courts in Sydney,
Perth and Melbourne to restrain the Maritime Union of Australia
(MUA) have so far failed to ease the nationwide blockade or to force
entry for container trucks.
   The Supreme Court rejected an application by the company Friday
for an injunction to restrain another union covering construction
workers and miners, which has spearheaded picketing in support of
the dockers.
   At Port Melbourne in Victoria, a large contingent of police
prepared to confront a picket of 1,000 men and women following a
Victorian Supreme Court injunction late Thursday declaring the union
protest illegal.
   At Melbourne's East Swanson Dock, union officials said they had
been warned in talks with the police that they would be given half
an hour's notice before an offensive was launched against them.
   But they were not told when the offensive would begin at the
dock, where car maker Toyota Australia has failed to gain acccess to
stranded components without which it will be forced to suspend
production Tuesday.
   Victorian state police minister Bill McGrath earlier suggested
officers could use force to remove the pickets and warned that the
row could escalate into a "bloody battle" which he said police,
employers and farmers must win.
   "Hopefully there will be some movement of containers through the
port but it will be in very difficult and trying circumstances,"
McGrath told a National Party conference. "I believe it will be a
bloody battle, but at the end of the day we must win."
   The Labor premier of New South Wales, Bob Carr, urged Prime
Minister John Howard on Friday to accept a negotiated settlement
before blood is shed. Carr proposed a five-point plan in which the
dockers would be reinstated in return for productivity
improvements.
   "It won't be settled by police going in and cracking open
skulls, that's not the Australian way," he said.
   Howard, who faced 400 chanting jeering demonstrators and dodged
flying eggs during a tour of marginal electorates in the Hunter
Valley north of here, refused to compromise and blamed militant
unions for expected job losses.
   He stood by his government's waterfront labour reforms, saying:
"We are doing this because we think it is in Australia's interests
to do it."






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