Service Technicians at the scale-making company Wedderburn have won their first enterprise agreement after 11 days on the grass. The agreement secures a wage rise, improved on-call and overtime allowances and long service and redundancy entitlements. The rank and file union organising that got the workers to this point has been a new experience for most involved.
Until January, Wedderburn’s Thomastown site was almost entirely non-union. “In 119 years of Wedderburn history, there has never been a need for a union”, explained shop steward Humphrey Caspersz. “There has been a good relationship with the employer, but in the last three years we’ve noticed a change”, he told Red Flag.
The company started to restrict conditions that had long been enjoyed. Some people were denied overtime payments, and there was general concern that their on-call allowance hadn’t been increased in eight years.
Simmering unhappiness led to a core group of workers calling a meeting off site. An organiser from the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union was invited to attend. All 13 attendees walked out of that meeting as union members. Within a month, everyone else was on board too.
United, the workers were convinced of the need to win an enterprise agreement to protect their conditions from the company’s whims. But management didn’t make it easy, first ignoring their claims and then hiring industrial relations lawyers to deal with the dispute. The lawyers gave no impression of being interested in a resolution.
“There were delays with emails, and they bogged things down with paperwork and red tape”, Humphrey said. Other workers on the picket line expressed similar frustrations. A negotiator would fly down from Sydney for a meeting. On hearing the workers’ claims, the negotiator would feign offence at their temerity, break off negotiations, fly home and not make themselves available again for weeks.
The breaking point came when the company added an extra claim in the middle of negotiations, demanding the introduction of GPS tracking equipment in all the technicians’ vehicles. That’s when the workers decided they’d had enough.
Humphrey recalls the look on the face of the company’s regional manager as the results of their strike action ballot were read out at the Fair Work Commission. “You could see the blood drain from his face as he saw each way people voted”, he said. The vote in favour of an unlimited number of work stoppages of indefinite duration was carried 16 to one. 
One of the most staunch on the picket line was Ian Millar, a Wedderburn employee of 11 years and one of the first union stewards. Ian’s career finished up shortly before the dispute started but he came back to help with the picket and “see things through”, as he put it.
The Wedderburn workers’ hard fought for enterprise agreement is now in the final drafting process. They hope to have it signed off at the commission before Christmas.

Seb Evans

Striking Wedderburn workers win

Members of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union working at Wedderburn in Thomastown, in Melbourne’s north, have walked off the job in pursuit of their first enterprise agreement.
They started a week-long strike on 7 September after around four months of frustrated attempts to negotiate an agreement. Wedderburn manufacture weighing, labelling, packaging and point of sale equipment for businesses in Australia and New Zealand.
Many of the 17 workers on strike spend much of their time on the road responding to maintenance call-outs for equipment all across Victoria. They want an increase to their on-call allowance, which hasn’t changed in eight years, and a wage increase which is close to CPI. Their claims are modest by any standard. 
The company has now responded with its own set of claims. After a pause in protected action, the workers plan to walk off the job again while negotiations continue. They are determined to head off any more of the company’s delaying tactics.

Wedderburn workers strike for first enterprise agreement

The streets of Melbourne echoed with the low rumble of engines on Sunday 1 December. Close to a thousand motorcyclists from around the state converged on the Victorian parliament to protest against the introduction of so called ‘anti-bikie’ laws in Queensland.
An unprecedented attack on civil liberties, the laws restrict the freedom to associate, assemble and travel. Melbourne’s protest was part of a series of coordinated Freedom Rides across the country. The black leather clad crowd heard speeches from John Smith of the God Squad, renegade priest Father Bob Maguire and Heather Ellis from the Independent Riders Group.
Smith made the connection between the Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment (VLAD) laws in Queensland and anti-association laws used by the Nazis to round up Jews, opponents and trade unionists.
Ellis voiced concerns about the laws spreading. “We are already seeing groups of motorcyclists stopped and searched by police and pubs banning us,” she said.
Anti-bikie hysteria has hit Victoria in recent months. Police have raided some bikie groups’ headquarters and established a new anti-bikie “strike team.” Authorities can now also rely on newly proclaimed “anti-fortification laws” that allow them to vandalise and assault during raids.
Not content with these powers, high ranking police are now whining about the difficulty of proving in court that an organisation is criminal under the law, unlike in Queensland under Newman’s new laws.
State governments everywhere are looking to the Queensland example as a guide. Victorian Premier Denis Napthine recently warned: “We’ll watch what happens in Queensland and … we’ll be early adopters of anything that works.”
When asked why people should protest these laws, Damien Codognotto, organiser of Melbourne’s Freedom Ride, told Red Flag: “It is the responsibility of everyone in a free society to protect their freedoms. Doing nothing to protect democracy leads to rule by an exclusive elite.”

Striking Wedderburn workers win

Wedderburn workers strike for first enterprise agreement

Freedom riders converge on parliament

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