The Sydney Morning Herald http://www.smh.com.au/news/9904/05/text/national4.html Wharfies take casual approach Date: 05/04/99 Wednesday is the first anniversary of the lockout of Patrick workers on the docks. Helen Trinca reports on the fallout. A year ago, John Walton was out on his ear at Patrick, a casual with no entitlements, and locked out like everyone else in the Maritime Union of Australia. His 54-year-old father, Tony, with 33 years on the waterfront, could at least hope for good redundancy and John's brother, Garry, 21, an apprentice mechanic at Patrick, had a couple of years' service up. But at 28, John Walton had been working at Patrick for only eight months and had no security. There is still no security, but Walton has plenty of work. He is doing up to 60 hours a week at Darling Harbour, one of the increased numbers of casual stevedores soaking up the work once done largely as highly paid overtime by MUA full-timers. Walton is not complaining, although he would love some job security. But having been made redundant from his job as a Qantas ground engineer in 1997, he is well aware of the impermanence of the new world of work. He gets the work where he can. Last week, he did three 12-hour day shifts in a row after working the previous four days, including the weekend. While his father and brother took redundancy as Patrick slashed its full-time workforce by half, John Walton is part of the national trend to casualisation of the labour force. Under the new enterprise agreement between Patrick and the union, which came into force six months ago, overtime for the core full-time workers has virtually disappeared. Instead, casuals are brought in for the extra work. The trend is legal under the agreement but it is high on the MUA's hit list. "Casuals were a non-event; now, there are hundreds of them," said Mr John Coombs, the union's national secretary. "Whatever numbers were lost [in redundancies] have been replaced by people coming into the industry. There is a shift in the percentage of permanents and casuals. They are recruiting on a weekly basis." The union's goal was to have casuals in jobs with more permanency, he said. While workers have lost between $10,000 and $20,000 in overtime, some say they are happy to have more time away from the job. Mr Coombs said the priority in negotiations for a new agreement with rival stevedore P&O Ports was a "quality of life" roster with a reasonable mix of hours and shifts. Rosters have caused most pain among workers at Patrick. Under the new deal, they have periodic blocks of irregular shifts - where they can mix midnight, day and evening shifts. Many men have worked 14 or 15 midnight shifts straight. And it is the full-timers who gave away penalties in their annualised salaries who tend to score the midnights. The irregular shifts are strictly in accord with the agreement but Mr Coombs says he would not dispute the practical experience of members on the ground and that before or during the next bargaining round, the union would address the rosters problem. "There have been about 100 changes at the company level already and I don't rule out the possibility of making changes during the life of the agreement," he said. The company points out that in return for the irregular shifts, workers are off the roster for a total of three months a year. Patrick could not supply a breakdown of casual and permanent workers. A spokeswoman said Darling Harbour was particularly busy now, which would explain the high number of casuals. For the Waltons - the third and fourth generation of the family on the docks - the dispute last year was a defining moment. Tony is now working abut 35 hours a week as a casual postman in Paddington, earning somewhat less than the $75,000 a year he made at Port Botany before the dispute. Garry took redundancy and went backpacking. Frank and Gavin Bostick, another father and son on the docks, opted to hang in with Patrick after the dispute. A few weeks before the lockout, they were pictured on the front page of the Herald pledging to back the union all the way. A year later, Frank, 53, recalls the worst time as the weeks spent back at Patrick after reinstatement, working for no pay pending a settlement. "There should have been some sort of counselling," he said. "It was terrible to work there, because Chris Corrigan had locked us out. We didn't know where our money was. It was just a bad feeling." After 33 years' service, Frank Bostick came close to taking redundancy but decided it would be better financially to stay another four or five years. His pay has dropped from $75,000 to $55,000 but, having had the automatic overtime removed from his working life, he is delighted with the extra time away from work. One of the hindrances to efficiency on the wharves, he says, is that many of the experienced supervisors who had been members of the Australian Maritime Officers Union have left and many experienced MUA crane drivers also took redundancy. Gavin Bostick, 30, says he has a better quality of life because he is working fewer hours but dislikes the blocks of irregular shifts. "I would rather go back to the old system where I wasn't stuck on midnights," he said. The agreement offers spectacular bonuses for fast workers and some at East Swanson in Melbourne are earning up to $200 extra in some shifts. Port Botany has not matched those levels. This year, Gavin Bostick has earned $190 from bonuses but says some gangs at Botany have earned $3,000 in three months. Much depends on having experienced drivers, he says. "The spread of the experience that was on the wharves has gone," he said. "It is really quite amazing. They just haven't got the drivers. The experienced drivers left." This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorised use, copying or mirroring is prohibited. ************************************************************************* This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
