Greed rules for Cardboard King The following article was published in "The Guardian", newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday, July 14th, 1999. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. Sydney. 2010 Australia. Phone: (612) 9212 6855 Fax: (612) 9281 5795. Email: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Webpage: http://www.peg.apc.org/~guardian Subscription rates on request. ****************************** By Anna Pha The Printing Division of the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union had been in negotiations on behalf of its members for an enterprise bargaining agreement over a long and difficult period with "Cardboard King" Richard Pratt's Visy Industries. Using delays and disrupting tactics the company caused the talks to break down, giving the union no choice but to respond with with industrial action. That's when Pratt began to carry out his ruthless anti-union agenda. The company was offering a lousy eight percent wage rise over two years and demanding a lot of take-backs and trade-offs. The union's claim is 16 percent -- a 12 per cent pay increase plus four percent on implementation of the GST next year. "Every time the union tries to negotiate decent pay increases for our members, every single boss cries poor", Amanda Perkins, State Organiser for the Printing Division of the AMWU, told <MI>The Guardian". "Well you just can't take it seriously from Richard Pratt. He's the third richest man in Australia, and when he cries poor in enterprise bargaining negotiations it is absolutely laughable. "He is flying in scabs in helicopters. There's money for helicopters, there's money for his daughter to have a lavish wedding, there's money for all this. But the people who've created that money ... he's kicked them in the guts and all they are asking for is a decent return." Visy has five sites in Sydney: Visy Mills, Visy Recycling, a packaging company, a graphic design company, and a plant Warwick Farm in Sydney's west where they make corrugated board. On Wednesday afternoon last week mass meetings of members at the different sites decided to take various forms of industrial action. At the Warwick Farm site workers implemented union bans on flatboard leaving the site. The company responded by standing down workers, beginning with two fork-lift drivers who refused to disobey the union bans. All the supervisors were called in and when two of them requested union representation they were stood down as well. Everyone else at Warwick Farm then walked out the gate. The next day the whole of Visy in NSW, except the packaging company, was out. As "The Guardian" went to press, the 400 or so workers were still out on indefinite strike. The union attempted to talk to the company last Saturday July 10, but management refused to budge. "A lot of these workers have been at Visy for a long time. He [Pratt] built his fortune off these workers. He absolutely refuses to even give them decent protection against a regressive tax [GST]", said Ms Perkins. "The union is not prepared to trade off award conditions, not for 16 percent, not for eight percent. We could not stand by and let fork-lift drivers, or foremen who are also our members, be treated like that by the company and not do something about it." The company has treated its workers badly for a long time and they have become angrier and angrier, said Ms Perkins. Pratt the rich rat Richard Pratt has a big, fat cheque book: he's worth an estimated $2.4 billion. It is no wonder he can afford to fly scabs in by helicopter. Last October he hosted a party for 2,500 people beside the banks of Melbourne's Yarra River to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Visy. He has been accumulating wealth at an incredible rate; worth $1.3 billion two years ago, and almost double that now. In 1996 he opened a US$150 million recycling plant in New York, another for $90 million in Brisbane, a $60 million box plant at Dandenong in Victoria and a $25 million corrugator in Auckland. He became well known as a high flying entrepreneur in the 1980s, involved with former Elders and Liberal Party chief John Elliot, speculator Abe Goldberg, fugitive Christopher Skase, and two other capitalists who were actually caught red handed and jailed -- Alan Bond and Laurie Connell. Some of his more speculative activities almost sent him broke in 1989, but he survived largely due to his box and cardboard businesses and especially due to the workers he employed, the very ones he is now using his wealth and power to avoid giving a decent pay rise. "Pratt is ruthless in business", said the "Business Review Weekly" (26-5-97), as the workers on the round-the-clock picket lines outside Visy sites can confirm. ********************** Messages of support can be sent to the Printing Division of the AMWU, 133 Parramatta Rd, Granville, 2142 or fax (612) 9897 2219. The Guardian 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. 2010 Australia. Email: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Website: http://www.peg.apc.org/~guardian -- 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
