History repeats in airline stoush

UNION leaders claim history is repeating itself as Qantas adopts "Patrick-style" tactics in training non-union workers. 

UNION leaders claim history is repeating itself as Qantas adopts "Patrick-style" tactics in training non-union workers.

In fact, the real reprise is on the other side, as the unions call in the International Transport Workers Federation to support their case.
 

In 1997, during the Patrick dispute on the docks, the Maritime Union of Australia cleverly played the global card to disrupt Chris Corrigan's best-laid plans.

On December 3 that year, federal parliament was rocked by revelations that non-union workers, many of them former and serving army personnel, were about to fly out of Melbourne's Tullamarine airport to a secret docks training centre in Dubai. Over the next 10 days, three separate groups of Australian workers would leave for the United Arab Emirates -- the first step in Patrick's plan to finally take on the might of the MUA.

The training plan was completely legal and the wharfies' union, of which Paddy Crumlin was a national official, looked powerless to stop it. But then, in what turned out to be a masterstroke, the MUA's national secretary, John Coombs, made a dash to London, arriving there -- on a Qantas flight, no less -- about 6am on December 10. He went almost immediately to the ITF's head office near London Bridge. On December 12, as Australia slept, Mr Coombs and ITF general secretary David Cockcroft paid a visit to the UAE embassy. They laid it out: Dubai might be a non-union port but there were still plenty of ways to run a boycott on shipping into the port. Within 48 hours, it was all over. Dubai withdrew the groups' visas; the training was aborted; the men straggled back to Australia and Mr Corrigan, then chief executive of Patrick, had to rethink his plans.

But within weeks, training was back on track -- this time at Webb Dock in Melbourne, and the MUA could do nothing.

On April 7, the battle was joined as Mr Corrigan sacked his union workforce. No wonder Mr Crumlin is interested in talking to the ITF this time around.