The Sydney Morning Herald http://www.smh.com.au/news/9901/02/text/business7.html Union battle lost but stock price war won Date: 02/01/99 By LACHLAN JOHNSTON Lang Corp, the owner of Patrick Stevedores, started 1998 in a trough. With union skirmishes breaking out in several of its ports, and its bottom line sinking into a loss, shareholders dumped its shares for as little as $1.17. But Lang's owners, Mr Chris Corrigan and Mr Peter Scanlon, had a plan to improve the share price. This involved taking on one of Australia's most powerful unions, the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA), in a revolution to lower labour costs. The bitter battle ended with a Supreme Court decision against the company. But Lang ended 1998 at $3.50, a 192 per cent rise for the year, making it the best performer on the All Ordinaries - and leaving Mr Corrigan and Mr Scanlon with paper profits of $4 million and $39.3 million for the year. "At Port Botany we had people hauled in before the union and fined for going too fast ... driving their cranes too fast, fined!" Mr Corrigan said recently. "If an MUA official came down here today ... if they told that crane driver 'you're driving too fast, we're going to fine you', they'd go out of here with their head punched in." 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 http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html The Year 2000 Bug - An Urgent Sustainability Issue http://www.peg.apc.org/~psutton/grin-y2k.htm
