Workers at BHP’s ports in Port Hedland, in Western Australia’s Pilbara, will down tools for eight hours tomorrow. Around 200 electricians, boilermakers, fitters and shiploaders will strike from 2pm to 10pm. Iron ore will not be loaded. The ports will grind to a halt. They will reportedly cost the largest company on the Australian stock exchange $50 million.
If this kind of strike action is unusual today, it’s even rarer in the Pilbara iron ore industry. This will be the first legal industrial action since Rio Tinto train drivers struck a handful of times in 2008. At BHP, the last time was a series of short strikes in December 1999 and January 2000, after union power had been smashed and individual contracts introduced.
Throughout the Pilbara iron ore industry, most workers are on above-award individual contracts (BHP and Rio Tinto train drivers are an exception). This means that their regular pay, yearly increase and any bonuses are pretty much completely determined by management. Two workers working side by side can be paid differently—to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars a year.
Management can also—and does—change crucial conditions, such as sick leave or rosters, as it sees fit. According to unions, BHP is proposing a “minimum rates agreement” that keeps these fundamentals intact. Essentially, this would be an enterprise agreement in name only.
Electrical Trades’ Union Western Australia Secretary Adam Woodage told a press conference last week that union members have “had enough of the glacial speed that BHP are moving in negotiations. We do not need a minimum rates agreement for Port Hedland”.
“We want a real rates agreement, reflecting real terms and conditions, and reflecting what they currently get paid there today. We’re not going to accept anything less”, he continued.
When the votes in favour of going on strike came in, they were overwhelming: 90 percent “yes” from Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union members, 97 percent from Western Mineworkers’ Alliance members (an alliance of the Australian Workers’ Union and Mining and Energy Union) and 100 percent from Electrical Trades’ Union members.
Port Hedland is the largest bulk export port in the world, and a few hundred workers can bring one of the world’s largest mining companies to a standstill. As the ETU wrote on social media:
“The profits aren’t made in the boardroom. They are made on the ground by the electricians, maintainers and operators who keep the ports running every single day. If these workers don’t turn up, the shiploaders stop and the iron ore stays grounded. Without workers, BHP has nothing.”
The Pilbara mines were not always so tightly controlled by capitalist managers. The region was once a bastion of militant unionism. Throughout the 1970s, workers struck for an average of twelve days a year.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, workers unionised and civilised an industry notorious for “wild west” safety standards, low pay, low hours and terrible food. Union organisers travelled up from Perth for weeks at a time to sign up members. All manner of safety measures, such as strict isolation lock procedures when machinery was being maintained, were opposed by bosses but won through strikes.
Through collective action, workers in the 1970s and 1980s won decent pay and conditions and solid safety standards. In the process, they wrested power back from bosses. This power was exercised from the grassroots—union mass meetings decided whether to strike and for how long. Site structures were strong. Combined union committees coordinated between the different unions, and membership was 100 percent of the workforce. Unions influenced staffing levels, overtime and safety. The bosses hated it.
Company towns near mine sites were turned into union towns, with good facilities and a sense of community. The eight-hour day—not a twelve-hour day—was the standard. Many workers played sport every night of the week. The contrast to the fly-in-fly-out (FIFO) work so common today couldn’t be greater. This work is characterised by often long periods away from home, and high rates of mental distress.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the companies fought back. In the Robe River dispute of 1986-87, the dominant union strategy against a vicious anti-union offensive was to avoid strike action at all costs, relying instead on industrial tribunals and Labor governments. This failed dismally. Union power was smashed.
Mount Newman Mining (part of BHP) tried its luck at de-unionisation in 1988 but was defeated after weeks of strike action. In 1999, however, the company moved most of the workforce onto individual contracts and gutted union strength.
The mining lobby calls the days of union power “the bad old days”, a trope repeated frequently in the press. Bad for the bosses, definitely. But the militancy of those days is exactly what needs reviving.
