http://www.theage.com.au/breaking/0004/11/A63445-2000Apr11.shtml Company used 'whatever-it-takes' tactics against unions Source: AAP | Published: Tuesday April 11, 4:40 PM Hamersley Iron embarked on a deliberate strategy to eliminate unions from its Pilbara sites from February 1992 onwards and used legal action against union organisers to help achieve it, a Perth court heard today. The company is suing organisers from four unions - the AWU, the AMWU, the CEPU and the CFMEU - for $41.5 million in damages, to compensate for lost revenue during a two-week strike in June, 1992. However, the CEPU is fighting to have the action struck out, with the other unions likely to follow suit if the action succeeds. CEPU lawyer Carmel McClure, QC, told the West Australian Supreme Court that Hamersley had engineered the two-week strike and pursued legal action against the unions so it could introduce individual workplace contracts. The strike was called by the four unions when Hamersley mechanical fitter Phillip Beales refused to join the AMWU. Ms McClure read from a series of internal memorandums and other documents issued by Hamersley Iron management detailing the company's plans to eliminate unions from its Pilbara sites. 'If we can successfully demonstrate to our employees that they don't need to belong to a union to be employed by us, the next logical step is individual contracts,' Ms McClure read from one memo. Another memo spoke of 'generating employee dissatisfaction with the union' by withdrawing a proposal to offer a 4.5 per cent wage increase. 'This will lead to a confrontation which could lead to individual contracts,' the memo stated. Ms McClure said Hamersley had been planning to provoke a strike since at least February, 1992. 'From February, 1992, management from the highest echelons down are all stating as their objective that Hamersley was to make unions irrelevant and go to a single-status workforce,' she said. However, the unions had no advance warning that industrial action was likely, she said, because as far as they knew, Hamersley's workforce was 100 per cent unionised. Ms McClure said documents indicated Mr Beales was originally a union member but had spoke with Hamersley management in March 1992 about not paying his union levies. She said Hamersley had arranged for him to be flown to Cable Beach in Broome for the duration of the strike, while not allowing him to return to the company's Tom Price mine until it was over. 'Mr Beales, of course, never crosses the picket line - he's well out of the fray,' Ms McClure said. She said Hamersley planned to begin downsizing its operations after the strike was over and while the unions were caught up defending themselves against the writs issued against them by the company. Handwritten memos from managers had identified union members the company wanted to get rid of, but official lists were not kept because this would have contravened industrial relation legislation. Ms McClure said company documents showed Hamersley had deliberately prolonged its legal action against the unions in order to maintain pressure on them and divert union resources from fighting the introduction of workplace agreements. 'We have got the unions where we want them. We can bleed them dry,' Ms McClure read from an internal memorandum. 'We will drag the process out for years. 'They haven't got the resources to oppose workplace agreements in other sites across the country. It's best to drag it out.' Ms McClure said Hamersley's use of the courts in this manner was manipulative and dishonest. 'Hamersley was using the proceedings as an instrument of oppression of the defendants,' she said. The hearing, before Justice Kevin Parker, is continuing. ************************************************************************* 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