This is what all-out industrial warfare looks like
Patrick Stevedores’ sacking of 1400 workers was the start of all-out industrial warfare, backed by a government that wanted to break the Maritime Union of Australia’s waterfront power. But in the middle were ordinary workers.
For this masthead’s 60th anniversary we are celebrating the journalism of the past six decades. Today we revisit business reporting in the 1990s.
HOWARD’S ARMY: A SOLDIER, A FARMER, A BLOKE OFF THE DOLE
Patrick Stevedores’ sacking of 1400 workers was the start of all-out industrial warfare, backed by a government that wanted to break the Maritime Union of Australia’s waterfront power. But in the middle were ordinary workers. Stuart Rintoul rode in on a bus with strikebreakers.
- By Stuart Rintoul. First published April 11, 1998
The bus ride across the fault-line of Australia’s waterfront war begins at Melbourne’s showgrounds. Fifteen men standing around talking quietly, security guards watching the gate. A farmer, a soldier, a bloke who was on the dole, ordinary kinds of men who have made the decision to become John Howard and Peter Reith’s frontline troops. Scabs, in the union lexicon.
How do they feel being here, doing this? “Cool, no problem,” says one. No names, thanks.
He’s worked on the waterfront before. “It was pretty bad then,” he says. “Unless you were born to it, you couldn’t get a start.” Everyone nods. They wouldn’t be here if the waterfront hadn’t been corrupted by the unions.
“They’re saying we’re like the Germans, but who is controlling them, the union.”
The oldest man is 49, most are much younger. The “team leader” is a 42-year-old former soldier. He says he trained men in armoured warfare in Australia, the US, Canada, Germany. “Machinery, see,” he says. He was headed for Dubai to train as a waterfront worker, got as far as Singapore before it all collapsed. He talks about combating socialism and communism on the wharves, calls it “an exciting opportunity”. The farmer – young, sandy-haired with a fast smile – says he is here “purely to get our products overseas more efficiently”. “We’ll do a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay,” he says. “There’s no such thing as a workplace agreement on the farm.”
Another man, quiet, lean, tall, typically Australian, jokes that he is only here because he didn’t make it as a pro-golfer. As the laughter dies away, he says he feels sorry for the unionists, expects there are a lot of decent men among them, expects things to get more violent before it ends.
At 1pm they begin their journey to work, clambering into a big, white bus with dark curtains, a cross of white tape where a window has been broken. They throw their gear into the empty seats and the driver turns on the radio. We leave for Webb Dock to the sound of “Say a little prayer for you”.
As the bus rolls through Melbourne’s inner north, you get the feeling of a football team going off to a big match, or perhaps soldiers going out on patrol. Now and again they check to make sure the curtains are drawn.
“Does this go to Webb Dock or East Swanson?” one man, red hair, asks. “We never know where we’re going until we get there.”
Most of them believe strongly that they are the good guys in the drama unfolding on the Australian docks. How does red hair see himself? “Just a working man.”
Is he worried more by the words, or the things, the union men hurl? “Nothing,” he says. “After a couple of weeks of this nothing bothers you.”
But as the bus turns towards the dock, as jackets are lifted into cracks between the curtains, he says: “Routine, fellas – shut the windows and close the curtains … showtime.” There are not many picketers, perhaps 50 at the most.
They move slowly towards the bus, beating their fists on the sides. Above the engine noise, you can just hear the abuse: “Scabs … dogs …” Through the front window you can see the angry faces.
“Scabs, that’s the only word they know,” red hair snorts. “They’ve only got a fifth-grade vocabulary, these blokes.”
Then we are through.
“That’s it – nothing,” he says.
At Webb Dock, one of the non-union workers produces a cartoon. It shows a guard dog wagging his tail at picketers and a security guard saying: “I should never have named him Scab.” Everyone laughs, then stands around until a scud arrives to take us up the river to East Swanson.
They ask if I have been outside the gates with the unionists. “What are they like?” they ask. Like family men. They nod: “Just like us.” Team leader talks about the war on the wharves. “If they win, what happens to the country?” he asks rhetorically.
Finally, we slip down the Yarra River and into East Swanson. As we draw into the wharf, we look up to see the mouth and eyes of a rottweiler, a chain, men in black. There is a stillness on the docks and they have begun to write their own graffiti. “MUA – Nowhere to stay.”
Keating finally beholds the truth behind his claim
- By Alan Wood, economics editor. First published November 30, 1998
It seems that Paul has been on the road to Damascus again.
With the latest national accounts making official what most of us have known for months anyway — that we are in a sharp recession — the Treasurer has suddenly embraced it as the “recession that Australia had to have”.
This from the man who has spent many months castigating anyone who had the temerity to say that recession was an inevitable part of the adjustment process from the Keating policies of too rapid growth and too gradual correction of our economic problems.
As for the promised “soft landing”, the September quarter is the weakest for economic activity since the September quarter 1975.
And the last two quarters have been the weakest since 1972 (according to Andre Morony, chief economist at BT).
And the worst is still to come in the form of a further sharp rise in unemployment.
However, unemployment is a lagging indicator, so what of the latest Keating claim that in terms of output, the worst of this recession is already behind us?
The rather curious behaviour of stocks and imports could certainly be used to argue a turning point.
But these quarterly figures are too unreliable to place too much weight on.
The anecdotal evidence from Australian industry suggests that the recession has further to run, and that the Treasurer’s assertion that business investment is stabilising is simply not credible.
The challenge now is to avoid easing policy too far or too quickly, because we have made one fundamentally important gain from the pain — a falling inflation rate.
If we can consolidate this trend then good things will come of this recession, including sustainable falls in interest rates to levels we have not seen for years.
This was (Reserve Bank governor) Bernie Fraser’s message in Melbourne on Wednesday.