The following article was published in "The Guardian", newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday, August 22ND, 2001. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. Sydney. 2010 Australia. Phone: (612) 9212 6855 Fax: (612) 9281 5795. CPA Central Committee: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "The Guardian": <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Webpage: http://www.cpa.org.au> Subscription rates on request. ************************************************************************************************ Globalisation steamroller Entitlements under a cloud Some 360 workers at Bradmill Undare's Victorian operations have lost their jobs, following the sale of part of the company's operations to the British Millerian Company. At the same time about 80 waterfront workers in Brisbane are under threat of dismissal as a result of the sale to Patrick Stevedores of the CSX company. Bradmills, which is in receivership, has sold its Brella and Bradmill outdoor plants, and the new owners have decided to close the weaving plant at the rural town of Ararat, with a loss of 46 jobs. The company's manufacturing plant at Reservoir is also to be closed down, with the loss of 30 jobs. Its entire knitting and dying operations at Yarraville are to cease, thereby putting a further 285 people out of work. The union has gained an agreement that retrenched workers will be able to transfer to the company's remaining operations, but given that these plants are now to be sold off their chances are slender. The closures are particularly bad news for the small town of Ararat, already hard hit by rural recession. The Bradmill closure will end the town's 50-year history of textile manufacturing, and the former Bradmill employees will also find great difficulty finding alternative work. One employee commented: "If you're over 50 in Ararat, no one's going to employ you." Although the company receivers have stated that the sacked workers will receive their entitlements of some $8 million, this is only part of the total of $25 million in entitlements owed to former and surviving Bradmill employees. The company also owes the ANZ Bank $33 million. These and other workers are the victims of corporate globalisation. Takeovers and mergers are being ruthlessly carried out by the big international corporations to serve their global interests without regard to the consequences for workers or the economic needs of any country. Neither the Federal nor any of the State governments are resisting the globalisation steam roller or company restructurings that are being used to sack workers and avoid the payment of entitlements. The issue of entitlements has been the subject of intense industrial dispute in the last few months. The Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union is leading a campaign to introduce compulsory employer contributions for an employee entitlements fund. Although some companies have accepted the AMWU's proposals for the fund, other employers have rejected the idea in principle. Others say they want to establish their own fund, and some have proposed an arrangement in which the employees themselves would have to contribute towards the purchase of an insurance bond to secure their own entitlements! The Howard Government on the other hand, wants to establish a scheme in which the employees would only receive a maximum of two thirds of their entitlements in the event of a company collapse. State governments have also in recent times been criticised for offering lucrative enticements to multinational companies to either establish or continue operations in their state, while refusing to protect established Australian industries against "dumping". In commenting on the Bradmill closures, State Secretary of the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union (TCFU), Michele O 'Neil, criticised both the Federal and State Governments for their failure to secure the viability of textile and manufacturing industries. She described the Federal Government as having a "policy vacuum" with regard to these industries, and stated that the State Government had not done enough or acted with sufficient urgency to protect threatened industries. Ms O'Neil stated that the union would campaign to ensure that there were no further sackings, and that the company's remaining operations would be run as a going concern. Patrick in new sackings Hard on the heels of the Bradmill retrenchments comes news that some 80 Brisbane employees of the stevedoring firm CSX are to be sacked as a condition of purchase of the company by - you guessed it - Patrick Stevedores. Shocked employees were advised last week that Patrick Stevedores had bought the company, and that the services of the entire workforce, including both tradesmen and management, were no longer required. The move has raised the possibility of a renewal of the bitter Patrick dispute which racked the waterfront in Sydney, Melbourne and elsewhere in 1998. The union is meeting with Patrick's management to discuss the dismissals. At this stage the full intentions of the company are unclear. However, it is likely that the CSX takeover and subsequent sackings are a variant of their former strategy of establishing a dummy company in order to strip employees of their wage levels and entitlements and to employ non-union labour. The Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) has pledged to fight the Brisbane sackings, as they did three years ago. **************************************************************** -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
