Steelworkers not ready to give up the fight

Nine months ago, steelworkers at Port Kembla, on the NSW South Coast, accepted a historic compromise: a three-year wage freeze and 500 job losses to ensure that BlueScope Steel profits remain high enough that management would stop threatening to close down local production and move the operation overseas.

But it wasn’t enough. Workers have had conditions slashed and been under pressure to increase production. Tensions boiled over on 24 May, when workers at Spring Hill, against the advice of their union, walked off the job for 24 hours.

“You know these people had enough because the bosses always bullshit to them. The union couldn’t even fuckin’ stop it. Things just spilled over. Enough was enough and that was it”, Jerry (not his real name), a worker at Spring Hill, told Red Flag.

Now BlueScope is taking the Australian Workers Union (AWU) to the Federal Court for compensation or punitive damages. The union expects this to amount to $2.4 million.

“Our boss checked out which lot of people were [in the union] and docked their pay. Originally, they wanted to fine everyone who was on site for $8,000. Now, they’re going after the union instead”, Jerry said.

Workers are under pressure to work more overtime as the workforce shrinks and the company refuses to hire anyone else. Jerry said that it doesn’t want to pay the $6,000 insurance plus training costs to hire someone new.

“They expect you to do at least one a week, maybe two a week”, he said.

But the overtime is not enough to cover the work that needs to be done. People who have taken voluntary redundancies (VR) are being called back to work, but as casuals with fewer entitlements.

“They’re giving people VR and then they’re calling them back on contract for a single time to work, at least three days in a week but a single time – because people need to take holidays and that but they don’t want to employ anyone else.”

But workers who want voluntary redundancies have been waiting months for the company to upgrade machinery so that their position will not have to be replaced.

“They upgrade machinery and put [in] robots so they can cut one man here and one man there”, Jerry said.

Management has also monitored workers very closely in the hope of finding an infraction that can be grounds for dismissal.

“Any time you make a mistake, you drop a coil or something, they take you for a blood test. You got no choice. Before, they used to give you a bit of leeway. But now, nothing. Get a drug test”, he said.

Workers are angry that they appear to be the only ones sacrificing, while the company continues to post millions in profits.

“They don’t want to give us nothing, but they’re all still treating themselves with all the extras. They still get their bonuses. They even took our meal dockets. We used to get three in a 12-hour shift, now we get two. But they’re still feathering their own nests”, Jerry said.

And expectations remain high for quantity and quality of output. “They want the best product but they’re skimming everyone to the bone. They don’t want the workforce to be there. The bosses want the best quality, but they’re still taking everyone’s entitlements.”

Jerry is frustrated that legal requirements surrounding strikes can sap momentum and that, despite workers giving a militant lead, the union has failed to back them.

“When you want to go on strike now, you have to apply, you have to do this, [then] the attention is gone. People are disappointed because nothing happened [after the strike]. I would love to change it, but they’re governed by the government now. The union got no balls. They got not much power now”, he said.