The fastest growing maritime terminal operator in the world, ICTSI, is waging an assault on the wages and conditions of workers. The company operates 29 container terminals across six continents, including Australia, where it owns VICT at Webb Dock East in Melbourne. It is Australia’s first fully automated terminal. 
Across ICTSI’s operations, the International Transport Federation has found serious safety breaches and a pattern of aggressive anti-union activity. The company is bringing the same approach to its Australian operations. Workers are being forced to work through their meal breaks, undertake training in their own time and work extended and unsafe hours. In some cases workers have been forced to work shifts as long as 19 hours. 
In an increasingly common tactic to undercut industry standards, the workplace agreement that sets the pay and conditions of VICT workers was voted on by five hand-picked staff, before most workers were even employed by the company. The agreement slashes penalty rates and the casual loading. The company has been aided by former deputy national secretary of the MUA, Mick O’Leary. O’Leary represented the MUA for 27 years before going on to advise stevedoring companies on port privatisations and workplace restructuring. 
Maritime workers at VICT have been victimised for speaking up about their rights. Failure to meet productivity targets has led to threats that jobs will be outsourced and offshored. 
The MUA has staged some resistance to ICTSI’s union busting. On 14 November it held a rally at VICT, drawing in solidarity from the construction and rail unions, with 200 workers and trade union officials present. Will Tracey, the current deputy national secretary of the MUA, addressed the rally. “This is the start of the campaign. This is the first rally about a cancer we will see spread if we don’t stop the likes of Mick O’Leary”, he said. 
The Maritime Union of Australia has been seeking to establish minimum standards for wages and conditions, but the company has refused to negotiate with the union. It is also trying to have its stevedores reclassified as “auxiliary automation employees” to exclude the union from coverage.
Speaking to Red Flag, Victorian state secretary Joe Italia said: “VICT have sought to open up a third terminal that is fully automated. We are unhappy at this situation. VICT has chosen to have our workers work under an agreement that they are not signatories to. The challenge is for us to get the company to sit down with our membership to work out an agreement that meets the basic standards of the industry.” 
May Kotsakis, co-chairperson of the Philippines Australia Solidarity Association spoke about the importance of international workers’ solidarity. “Workers in the Philippines would be lucky to earn A$5,000 a year. They are really exploited. It is not surprising businesses want to outsource there”, she said. “We are here in Australia to build solidarity. We understand the global nature of capitalism, that capital moves to where labour regulations are the most lax. We need to unite with all unions.”

Anthony Marlin

Waterfront wages and conditions dragged backwards

Pacific National (PN), Australia’s largest rail freight company, continues its assault on the wages and conditions of train drivers in its Victorian Rural and Bulk division, which hauls grain, mineral sands and other primary commodities. 
The company and the union representing locomotive drivers, the Rail, Tram and Bus Union, have been bargaining for more than a year and are now entrenched in dispute. According to the minutes of negotiation meetings dating back to February, PN sought to have the union removed as a party from any future agreement. The company also wants drivers to accept a pay cut of up to $19,000 a year and the loss of existing travel entitlements. Under PN’s proposal, drivers would be expected to sign on to work at multiple locations, up to 120 km apart, without reimbursement for their travel. It also wants to remove conversion rights for casual workers. 
Pacific National has also engaged a Western Australian-based labour hire agency, Railtrain, to provide what it’s calling “a contingent” labour force on cut-price wages. The RTBU is in negotiations with Railtrain and is seeking to represent labour hire workers. The union is pushing for the alignment of the labour hire base rates of pay with the industry standard and greater provision for permanency. Railtrain is ignoring the union. 
PN locomotive drivers have initiated various work stoppages and go-slows since April. Over the course of the dispute, more than 30 trains have been cancelled and more than 60 have not completed their journeys on time. In early May, PN responded to workers’ industrial action by announcing a seven-day lockout. 
Around 3 million tonnes of grain are moved by PN in Victoria each year. As it is now missing freight loads, the Victorian Farmers’ Federation says that grain growers are struggling to get the product of a bumper crop to buyers. Farmers are instead contracting trucking companies to haul their grain to market, but trucks alone will not be enough to move all the state’s grain on time. 
The urgency surrounding the farmers’ push to get grain to market gives the locomotive drivers a significant advantage in the dispute. Even though Pacific National is one of the most combative companies in Australia, the industrial strength of the locomotive drivers could yet bring it to heel.

Rail freight dispute threatens Vic grain harvest

The largest rail freight company in Australia is waging an all-out assault on the wages and conditions of its locomotive drivers in Victoria.
Negotiations with the union, the Rail, Tram and Bus Union (RTBU), were initiated by Pacific National’s Rural and Bulk (R&amp;B) division in April last year, even though the drivers’ enterprise agreement was not to expire until December 2016.
The company began bargaining early to exploit a tactical advantage gained after a round of forced redundancies and changes to rostering practices left the workforce demoralised. PN’s “blank line” rostering system means that workers are not rostered for set hours each week. Instead, they receive orders to work via text message.
Across the rail freight industry, workers have been under sustained attack for years. Competition in the industry has ratcheted up since the privatisation of Queensland Rail (now Aurizon) in 2010. Last year, Aurizon snatched PN’s contract to haul 8.7 million tonnes of coal annually from the Hunter Valley. More than 100 train drivers were retrenched by PN in NSW.
PN changed hands last year when its parent company, Asciano, was sold for $9 billion. It is now owned by an international consortium of investors. The sale was part of a complex deal involving Brookfields, a Canadian firm that already owns most rail line in WA, and Qube, a logistics company with stakes in port and rail.
Rail freight is a major industry in Australia, with rail accounting for around half of all freight movements. But prices of bulk commodities, particularly iron ore and coal, have slumped globally. For Australian workers, this carve-up makes their lives even more uncertain as these corporate giants seek to maintain the rates of profit that the boom period made possible.
This is evident in Victoria, where PN is seeking pay cuts of up to $10 an hour. The current hourly rate for experienced drivers is $52.74. This is an aggregate wage incorporating shift penalties, weekend penalties and various allowances. PN is also seeking to cut guaranteed hours from 40 to 38 a week.
It wants to remove all penalties, shift loadings and annual leave loading from the aggregate wage. The union has calculated that this would reduce the wage to $42.58 an hour. The company also wants to implement multiple sign on and off locations across Victoria. In the north of Victoria this could mean a variability of as much as 166km. The company proposes that travel time to and from these locations be unpaid and no allowances be paid for workers’ use of their own vehicles.
The RTBU is also concerned about the use of labour hire to undermine wages and conditions. PN R&amp;B has been using the Western Australian labour hire firm Railtrain to increase the “flexibility” of the workforce. It has recruited a number of people in Victoria in order to train them as driver’s assistants. Much of the training is unpaid, with participants travelling to Geelong from all over the country just for the promise of a job opportunity.
The RTBU has responded to PN’s attacks with industrial action. The first action is a ban on training labour hire workers, which began on March 22 and continues indefinitely. The union has also organised work stoppages.

Waterfront wages and conditions dragged backwards

Rail freight dispute threatens Vic grain harvest

Pacific National wages war on locomotive drivers

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