From an old terrace building in Collingwood, 3CR broadcasters present more than 120 radio shows a week. The community radio station was established in 1976 to give a voice to those too often locked out of the mainstream media. Today, it broadcasts 24 hours a day, seven days a week with the same goal.
Stick Together is one of the shows recorded in Melbourne each week and broadcast nationally though the community radio station network. It is Australia’s only national radio show focusing on industrial and workplace issues.
Reporters take listeners to pickets and strikes to hear directly from workers dealing with the pointy end of the bosses’ attacks and interviews with union officials to provide an insight into the dynamics of our unions.
Recent Stick Together shows have looked into the government’s PaTH employment scheme, discussed the uses and abuses of 457 visas and reported on the long-running Fletcher Insulation strike.
<a href="http://www.3cr.org.au/"><img alt="Stick Together" src="https://cms.redflag.org.au/sites/default/files/inline-images/3cr%20ad.jpg" /></a>

Kaye Broome

Workers find a voice on community radio

<div>
Placards reading “Stop WorkChoices on Water” and chants of “Sweet FA, BMA” accompanied the occupation of BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance’s (BMA) office in Brisbane on 26 April. BMA is the largest coking coal operator in the world.
The occupation was the latest union action in response to the sacking of the entire tug workforce at the Hay Point Coal terminal (near Mackay) in June 2016. BMA replaced its previous operator and awarded the tug contract to Rivtow Marine, which has hired a new workforce on individual agreements. Under these so-called partnership agreements, Rivtow’s employees are not covered by the Fair Work Act. “BMA just introduced the partnership agreements to get the unions out of the workplace”, Lawrie, a retired seafarer, said.
Rivtow has operated non-union tug crews out of Port Hedland since November 2015, in competition with the MUA unionised contractor. In an interview with the Daily Mercury, MUA Queensland secretary Bob Carnegie explained how they work: “All workers employed by Rivtow are not employees but are considered trustees of a partnership … and so don’t get any entitlements such as long service leave, sick leave or workers compensation”.
The union says that the partnership agreements are a form of sham contracting in which the employer disguises the employment relationship by calling employees independent contractors. Rivtow’s arrangements have received support from the bosses’ court. In April 2016 the Fair Work Commission ruled that the partnership agreements were not sham contracting.
Dan, a CFMEU delegate, said he was at the BMA occupation in solidarity with MUA members because “these partnership agreements are bad for unionised industry … it’s just the start, they’ll try and introduce them into other industries”.
Shell is already looking into the Rivtow model to bring in non-union boats to service its floating liquid natural gas processor off the coast of Queensland.
</div>

Union busting at BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance

“We want jobs”, demanded seafarers at an occupation of Rio Tinto’s Brisbane offices on 27 March. About 80 union and community activists rallied outside the building to express solidarity with seafarers battling the global mining goliath.
After hearing speeches from Bob Carnegie, MUA Queensland branch secretary, and officials from other unions including the CFMEU and ETU, protesters occupied the foyer. Despite threats of arrest for trespassing, about 40 activists stood firm, refusing to leave until management agreed to meet workers’ representatives.
The occupation was in response to Rio Tinto reneging on a 2010 agreement to use Australian-flagged ships and Australian crews on 70 percent of their fleet carrying bauxite from Weipa in north Queensland to the port of Gladstone. The practice of using Australian-flagged ships on coastal shipping routes, known as cabotage, has been steadily stripped back over the years, leaving workers wide open to abuse.
The MUA estimates that around 70 percent of Rio Tinto’s fleet on the Weipa to Gladstone run operates under “flag of convenience” laws that allow ship owners to sidestep local employment standards. Crews on the ships that Rio Tinto use are from Burma, India or the Philippines and are paid $3 or $4 per hour – a fraction of the award wage for the job.
Rio Tinto and its subsidiaries have form in exploiting overseas crew. In 2015, the company chartered a ship on the Gladstone to Weipa run in which the crew were paid $2 a day and for two months not paid at all, leaving them destitute and short of food.
Bob Carnegie said that the union is protesting because “seafarers in this country demand work, not welfare … and are not going to be thrown on the scrap heap of life. … We’re not going to let the second largest mining company on this planet win this fight”.
He emphasised that the dispute was not a struggle between “Aussie workers” and overseas workers: “There is no division between an Aussie seafarer and a Burmese seafarer … or a Philippine seafarer. The enemy is Rio Tinto, the enemy is the ruling class”.
Eddie Bland, an organiser in the construction division of the CFMEU, said, “These people from overseas are being treated like slaves in our country and our waters … the overseas crew aren’t scabbing, they’re trying to make a living”.
Companies have been trying to avoid cabotage for years. In another prominent dispute that started in 2015, the Victorian branch of the MUA fought Alcoa’s decision to sack the crew of the Australian-flagged MV Portland and replace them with a crew sailing a ship under a flag of convenience.
Until it was sold for scrap, the Portland had carried alumina from Kwinana, WA, to Alcoa’s aluminium smelter in Portland, Victoria, for 28 years. For two months, the crew of the Portland refused orders to sail the vessel on a one-way journey to Singapore, where the tanker would be sold. Alcoa managed to get the tanker out of Australian waters only after the crew was hauled off in the dead of the night by dozens of security guards.
Across the country, seafarers are fighting to hold on to a vanishing industry. Harlan, a young trainee seafarer who had worked with Rio Tinto for more than two years and was promised employment at the completion of his training, has just been retrenched. Once he gained his qualifications, he was told there was no employment. Forty or fifty of his trainee colleagues have also been replaced by overseas crews being paid starvation wages.
“The industry will be dead in one to two years … and these skills are unique to the industry, so I can’t easily transfer to another industry”, Harlan said. “I’ll have to start all over again.”
The occupation was lively and vigorous, with workers chanting “The workers united will never be defeated”, emphasising the feeling of solidarity with the seafarers.
Michael Clifford, assistant secretary of the Queensland Council of Unions, told the crowd that Rio’s actions are “part of a broader agenda that we need to stand up to where the federal government is happy to sit back and let companies like Rio Tinto destroy job security and have people working for starvation wages”. Nobody disagreed.

Workers find a voice on community radio

Union busting at BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance

Resisting Rio Tinto

Other Media

Shop

Manage Your Subscription

Contact Us