Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 10:58:08 +0200
From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se>
Subject: M-NEWS: Re: War on transportation unions


Here are some news reports fielded by Rob Schaap on Marxism-Thaxis.


Cheers,

Hugh

_______________________



Dow Jones Newswires -- April 15, 1998
U.S. Dockworkers Considering
Response To Australia Layoffs

By DANIEL ROSENBERG
Dow Jones Newswires

CHICAGO -- U.S. dockworkers are considering a response
to the dismissal of 1,400 unionized longshoremen in
Australia last week, a spokesman for an international union
told Dow Jones Newswires Wednesday.

Last week, Patrick Stevedore Holdings Pty. Ltd. dismissed
its entire unionized work force following a series of strikes
against the company. Australia's government indicated it
supported the move.

Now, the dismissed employees' U.S. counterparts are
examining their options, which include refusing to unload
Australian boats that were handled by replacement
workers.

'Targeting ships that were loaded by scabs is under
discussion,' said Steve Stallone, spokesman for the
International Longshore and Warehouse Union in San
=46rancisco.

Asked whether dockworkers are considering a full-scale
work stoppage, Stallone, whose organization represents
about 10,000 U.S. longshoremen, said he had no
comment. He added that a decision on a protest will be
reached by early next week.

If dockworkers refuse to unload boats from Australia, U.S.
imports of beef, fish, sugar and alcoholic beverages could
be delayed, analysts said. U.S. exports to Australia, which
include soybean meal, fruit and vegetables and forest
products, may also be affected.

Although no ships loaded by Australian replacement
workers have arrived in the U.S., dockworkers in San
=46rancisco and up and down the West Coast already are
displaying their anger at the layoffs across the Pacific.
Last week, Stallone said, eight ILWU officers were
arrested and charged with trespassing after they blocked
the door to Australia's consulate in San Francisco.

'We have long had a close relationship with the Maritime
Union of Australia,' the ILWU's Stallone said, referring to
the union that represents the dismissed workers. 'We
understand that what's happening to them there is part of
an international movement by shipping companies and
governments to bust dockworkers' unions, and we
understand we have to stand up for them.'

Irate U.S. dockworkers have posted their thoughts on
various Internet sites, referring to the Australian labor
battle as 'war on the waterfront.' Other Internet messages
tell readers 'An injury to one is an injury to all,' and 'We
support MUA.'

A general strike by West Coast dockworkers, which at this
point is merely speculation, would spike prices of affected
goods for a brief time, but would hurt prices in the long
run, said Joe Victor, an agricultural analyst with brokerage
Allendale Inc. in McHenry, Ill.

Victor said 'it's possible' U.S. dockworkers would take such
an action.

'When they say there's a brotherhood, they're not joking,'
Victor said. 'They'd die for each other. If they had a
general strike, we'd have a problem.'

In that case, he said, prices for affected goods would rise
on fears of possible shortages. Eventually, though, prices
would drop. 'Eventually, people would say, if we can't
unload it, why bid up for it?' Victor said. 'But anything that
slows or impedes efficiency tends to tighten prices, so it
could be friendly to the markets in the near term.'

In 1997, the U.S. imported $956 million in agricultural
products from Australia, according to the U.S.
Department of Commerce. About $448 million of those
imports were for red meat, mainly beef.

Other agricultural imports from 'down under' included $57
million of raw beet and cane sugar and $124 million of
wine and beer. Imports of fish and seafood totaled $54
million, and imports of forest products totaled $8 million,
the Commerce Department said.

The U.S. is a big exporter of soybean meal and forest
products to Australia, but it's unclear if exports would be
affected by the dockworkers' protests.

One U.S. analyst, Roger Norem of consultants AgriVisor
Services in Bloomington, Ill., said he doesn't think that U.S.
cattle futures prices would be at all affected by delayed
beef imports resulting from any action by dockworkers.

'This isn't a major concern of the market,' Norem said. 'I'd
be surprised if 10% of the traders have even heard of it.'

So far, there are no reports of any effect on loading or
unloading activities at West Coast ports, port officials
said.

'There's been no impact here,' said Barbara Yamamoto,
spokeswoman for the Port of Los Angeles, in a telephone
interview Wednesday morning. 'We're up and running and
operating as usual.'

But once Australian ships loaded by replacement workers
begin arriving in the U.S. - probably by next week - the
situation could change.

One California port official, speaking on condition of
anonymity, said there's been scuttlebutt about a possible
slowdown of operations when ships loaded in Australia by
replacement workers arrive in the U.S.

'If there's a ship that picks up cargo in Australia loaded by
scabs, the odds of it being unloaded in a timely fashion are
extremely low,' the port official said. 'An Australian
dockworker will come out with a sign and picket, or
workers will find what they say is some sort of a health or
safety problem with the goods and refuse to work.'

Stallone of the ILWU said U.S. workers have little choice
except to support their fellow unionists overseas.

'If shipping companies get away with this there, it won't be
long before they bust us,' Stallone said.

Patrick, the shipping company that dismissed the workers,
said its move was necessary to improve productivity. It
won a temporary court victory Wednesday against the
MUA, preventing the union from stopping vehicles entering
or leaving its docks in Sydney and Newcastle, The
Associated Press reported.

U.S. protests could spread beyond the docks.

The AP on Wednesday quoted Bob Carnegie, an MUA
official, saying, 'The East and West Coast longshoremen in
the U.S. are talking about 20 million American trade
unionists and their families boycotting Australian farm
products.'

-By Daniel Rosenberg; 1-312-750-4118;
dan.rosenberg-AT-news.wsj.com

 Copyright =A9 1998 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

==============================
Australia dockers form human barricades at wharves
11:50 p.m. Apr 13, 1998 Eastern

By Michael Perry

SYDNEY, April 14 (Reuters) - The battle-lines in Australia's bitter
waterfront dispute hardened on Tuesday as picketing
dockers formed human barricades to disrupt cargo-handling and non-union
leaders pledged to keep the country's ports
running.

With non-union dockers loading and unloading ships on Australian wharves for
the first time in 50 years, the strategy of
sacked dockers is to now stop cargo leaving wharves.

Hundreds of dockers and their wives locked arms and turned around several
trucks at Sydney's Port Botany and Darling
Harbour wharves operated by Patrick Stevedores, which sacked 1,400 dockers
last week.

The Federal government says the company has hired 400 non-union workers to
replace them.

``They have not been successful anywhere with trains or trucks at any port
and I doubt they will be successful anywhere,''
said John Coombs, national secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia,
after turning around a truck at Port Botany.

But shortly after Coombs' comments, hundreds of dockers in Brisbane failed
to stop a truck entering Patrick's terminals
to move cargo handled by non-union labour. A truck also entered the small
Townsville port on the northern coast of
Queensland state.

Patrick's chairman Chris Corrigan admitted his firm could have setbacks as
well as victories against the dockers, saying
the waterfront battle would be decided at Australia's major ports.

``This dispute is going to be won or lost at the major terminals around this
country and in those terminals, I can assure
you, we are going to move cargo ...,'' Corrigan told state-run Australian
Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) radio.

The Federal government has vowed to break the dockers' monopoly on the
Australian waterfront as part of its industrial
relations reforms, which it has said will be a major issue at the next
election, expected later this year.

The ports of Sydney and Melbourne account for more than 70 percent of
national container traffic.

Patrick was expected to seek a court injunction against picketers on Tuesday
to clear the way for trucks to enter
terminals. The court action was also expected to seek compensation for any
property damage at its terminals.

The company sacked its entire workforce last Tuesday in a move it said was
necessary to improve waterfront productivity.

``The thing has gone far too far now to turn back,'' Corrigan said. ``The
union is only going to do damage to the economy
and every Australian if they prolong the fight.''

But a defiant Coombs said dockers were in for the ``long haul'' in the
waterfront war, adding that a consortium of
international ship owners was meeting to discuss setting up a new company on
the Australian docks with union labour.

Coombs said that non-union labour at Port Botany was moving only 2.5
containers an hour.

``Shipowners are not going to subscribe to this sort of nonsense. They are
contemplating doing something to relieve these
idiots from the scene and to enable a sensible process of waterfront
productivity to be assessed,'' Coombs told ABC
radio.

Some shipping lines have stuck with Patrick, despite threats by the
International Transport Workers Federation to ban
ships and lines that deal with the company.

Australia's biggest stevedore, P&O Ports, has continued to use union labour,
but has warned the maritime union it must
match Patrick's productivity.

Patrick has said its non-union workforce has achieved cargo-handling rates
-- known as crane rates -- of up to 18
containers an hour in small ports but only 10 an hour in Port Botany.
Australia's industry average under union labour is
18.5 an hour, but ranges from around 12 to 30.

The government, which is backing Patrick's move as a way of making the
Australian waterfront more efficient, says the
average rate internationally is 25 containers an hour.

But unions have charged Patrick of being involved in a union-busting
conspiracy with the conservative government of Prime
Minister John Howard. It was the government that announced the sackings and
a A$250 million (US$163 million) line of
credit to pay for docker redundancies.

(A$1 - US$0.65) ^REUTERS-AT-

Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

==================================

Australia clergy criticise Canberra over waterfron
02:01 a.m. Apr 13, 1998 Eastern

By Mark Bendeich

MELBOURNE, April 13 (Reuters) - Australian church leaders on Monday
questioned Canberra's role in the nation's
waterfront dispute as an ugly stand-off between sacked union dockers and
non-union workers went on at ports around the
country.

Two Anglican leaders said they felt uncomfortable with the conservative
government's active support of union-busting port
operators, one of which sacked all of its 1,400 union dockers last week and
replaced them with non-union labour.

In the past few days pickets had blocked railway and truck access to the
wharves, although there appeared to be an
uneasy calm on Monday and no fresh reports of violence.

``I think it's a very dangerous situation,'' Melbourne Archbishop Keith
Rayner told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio.

``On the other hand, the way the government and the stevedores have acted,
whilst possibly technically legal, I must say
morally seems to me to leave a lot to question.''

Another Anglican leader, Perth Archbishop Peter Carnley, accused the
government of ``living dangerously'' and goading
union-busting employers into action.

``I think that whole strategy was a little bit below the belt,'' Carnley
told ABC radio.

``I think governments normally should be the mediators...and it seems to me
to have the government secretly or behind
the scene goading the employers on is not a very helpful situation.''

The government, tipped to call a general election late this year, says its
push to break the Maritime Union of Australia's
monopoly on dock labour is strongly supported by voters.

The conservatives have long complained that Australian wharves are highly
inefficient. They point to the large workforce
and statistics showing that foreign ports handle cargo faster and more
cheaply.

But some opinion polls show the nation is divided over the tactics used by
the government and employers in the dispute.

Australia's second-biggest port operator, Patrick Stevedores, is leading the
charge against the Maritime Union, using new
labour laws introduced by the government last year.

The company sacked its union dockers last Wednesday, using private guards
with dogs to bundle them off the wharves at
night before bringing in hundreds of newly trailed dockers.

The government hailed the move.

Since then, around-the-clock union pickets have been set up outside
Patrick's wharves where sacked dockers routinely hurl
abuse through the locked gates at ``scabs'' on the other side.

It is the first time in about half a century that non-union dockers have
handled ships in any major Australian port.

The Maritime Union, backed the nation's trade union movement and the
International Transport Workers' Federation
(ITF), has been so far wary of flexing its industrial might.

On Monday, a government-owned ship crewed by Maritime Union seamen was being
handled by non-union dockers in
Sydney despite initial refusal by union tug crews to guide the vessel in.

The Maritime Union's global ally, the ITF, has threatened to ban ships and
shipping companies that do business with
Patrick, but the alliance of 500 transport unions has been slapped with an
injunction preventing it carrying out the bans.

The London-based ITF said the English court injunction applied to the ITF
but not its members. ``They are autonomous
organisations and they're free to do whatever they choose to do,'' ITF
general secretary David Cockroft told ABC radio.

The Maritime Union has also threatened to stop trucks and trains from
delivering or collecting cargo from Patrick's
wharves, but such sympathy strikes are illegal in Australia.

Australia's competition and trade-practices watchdog on Monday said it had
deployed officers at picket lines to look out
for sympathy strikes, which are punishable by heavy fines.

A spokeswoman for Patrick told Reuters on Monday the company's new workforce
had so far handled, or was still working
on, a total of nine ships in five major ports nation-wide.

Industrial Relations Minister Peter Reith on Monday shrugged off church
criticism of the government and said church
leaders should question the morality of the Maritime Union.

``When the union set out to destroy the company (Patrick), then the actions
of the union clearly undermined the job
security of all those employees,'' he said. ^REUTERS-AT-

Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

==================================
Australian union-buster says workers up to speed
04:44 a.m. Apr 13, 1998 Eastern

By Mark Bendeich

MELBOURNE, April 13 (Reuters) - Australia's second-biggest port operator,
Patrick Stevedores, on Monday boasted its
new union-busting workforce was already up to speed with the rest of the
industry.

Patrick, which sacked all its union dockers last week and replaced them with
freshly trained non-union workers, said its
recruits were now working as fast as veteran union dockers.

Patrick sacked its 1,400 union dockers last Wednesday, saying it had been
crippled by industrial action, and vowed to
boost port efficiency using non-union labour.

Patrick said on Monday its five-day-old workforce had achieved crane rates
of up to 18 containers an hour in smaller ports
but only 10 containers an hour in Sydney's Port Botany.

The Maritime Union of Australia, which still provides labour to Patrick's
rivals, denied this and said the new workers were
bunglers who were lifting fewer than three containers an hour.

Australia's industry average under union dock labour is 18.5 containers an
hour, though actual rates are said to range
>from around 12 to 30.

The conservative government, which is backing Patrick's move as a way of
making the Australian waterfront more efficient,
says the average rate internationally is 25 containers an hour.

Patrick on Monday forecast higher crane rates as its recruits gained more
experience, and said it was using far fewer
workers than it did when the Maritime Union provided its labour.

Patrick chairman Chris Corrigan told reporters at the northern port of
Brisbane that the company would emerge from the
waterfront dispute with less than half its original workforce.

On Monday, it was operating out of five cities -- including the biggest
ports of Melbourne and Sydney -- with hundreds of
recruits. It declined to say how many it had hired so far.

The Maritime Union said on Monday video evidence showed Patrick's recruits
were actually six times less efficient than
union dockers and cited several mishaps involving cranes.

``They are not beating us at our own game...The performance is abysmal,''
Maritime Union national secretary John
Coombs said.

Shipping lines could not be contacted on Monday to verify the claims of
Patrick and the Maritime Union.

Australia's container trade is at the centre of the battle for control of
waterfront labour.

The Maritime Union has traditionally been in complete control of the
container trade, which carries such valuable
Australian exports as cotton, wool, meat and wine.

The union has much less influence over trade in bulk commodities like coal
and iron ore, which are often shipped out of
private ports using far smaller workforces and other unions.

Sydney and Melbourne are the main battlegrounds, accounting for over 70
percent of national container traffic, said
Sydney Ports Corporation chief executive Greg Martin.

Some shipping lines have stuck with Patrick, despite threats by the union's
global ally, the International Transport Workers
=46ederation, to ban ships and lines that deal with Patrick.

Australia's biggest stevedore, P&O Ports, has continued to use union dock
labour, but has put the Maritime Union on
notice that it will need to match the productivity of Patrick's workforce.
^REUTERS-AT-

Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.




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