Australian Financial Review http://www.afr.com.au/content/000128/news/news5.html Friday 28 January, 2000 BHP 'offered $10 million bribes' By Nina Field BHP offered "bribes" worth $10 million to induce workers to sign contracts that would ultimately lead to the demise of unionism in the resources giant's iron ore division, the Federal Court heard yesterday. The submission by union lawyers' came as the five unions at the centre of the dispute sought court injunctions against any further offer of the contracts in the Pilbara, pending the outcome of a wider case on the legality of the workplace reform. Mr Julian Burnside QC, for the unions, said BHP had offered "sweeteners" to get people onto contracts while refusing to collectively bargain in an "insidious" bid to deunionise the workforce. "The thrust of our complaint is that these contracts are a bribe to get people away from union activities," Mr Burnside said. He said workers who had not signed the contracts had been "singled out for worse treatment" by BHP. There was a causal link between signing the contracts and resigning from the unions, Mr Burnside said, pointing to similar workplace changes at Robe River and Hamersley as proof of the inevitable slide away from unions. He warned that if the process was not halted by a Federal Court injunction it would be irreversible by the time the full case had been heard. The unions' case has several aspects. Mr Burnside said the $10 million inducement, which indirectly resulted in people resigning from unions, was the strongest aspect of the alleged breaches of the Workplace Relations Act. It is also alleged that the company breached the Act by discriminating against workers who did not sign the contracts and by refusing to collectively bargain. It had also allegedly breached its contract with workers who did not sign the deal because of a clause in the award prohibiting the use of individual agreements that conflict with award conditions. Mr Robert Buchanan QC, for BHP, said the unions had not made a direct connection between union membership and the incentives offered by BHP. They had also failed to show that BHP had explicitly or implicitly made resigning from the union a condition of signing the contracts. He asked the court to dismiss the injunction application, claiming it would unfairly assist one side of the argument in an industrial dispute at the expense of the other. The unions had asked the court to believe that everything said publicly by BHP management was false and should be disregarded, with another "carefully hidden" motivation to be substituted in its place. He said there was a productivity trade-off for the generous incentives offered for those signing the contracts, with BHP benefiting from the removal of "a swag of restrictions" that applied under the award. Mr Buchanan said the act did not compel companies to bargain collectively. Justice Peter Gray reserved his decision on the injunction, saying he expected to deliver his judgement in the next few days. He refused an application by Mr Burnside for a holding order preventing BHP from attempting a last- minute sign-up of unions ahead of the injunction decision. Justice Gray questioned the BHP line of defence several times, arguing that improving the lot of some workers and not others amounted to "ignoring them to their detriment". 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
