Melbourne wharfies say no to a death sentence
Three workers dead, out of a workforce of 250, in the past 10 years. Some might believe that, in Australia in 2013, a company with a track record like this might think twice about dismissing workers who strictly follow health and safety rules.That’s obviously not the thinking at Qube Logistics in Melbourne, where five workers have been unjustly dismissed in the past four weeks. Formerly known as P&O or POAGS, Qube is managed by the former Patrick Stevedores boss, the veteran anti-union campaigner Chris Corrigan.
Following pressure from the Maritime Union of Australia and a lively picket by more than a hundred unionists and supporters on Friday 14 June, four of the workers are now to be reinstated.
The dispute is centred on Port Melbourne’s Station Pier, where the TT Line runs the giant Spirit of Tasmania ferries on a shuttle service to Devonport.
Loading and unloading freight containers, in a hold originally designed for car traffic, is not a straightforward job. Bosses cutting corners on safety can have horrific results. Just three years ago, stevedore Kane Barnett was crushed on a TT Line ferry. Kane survived but lost his spleen and parts of his liver, lung and bowel. He hasn’t worked since the incident, and Qube is now looking to sack him.
A few kilometres away at Qube’s Appleton Dock facility, three workers have been killed in workplace incidents in 10 years – Jeff Gray in 2003, Peter Ross in 2007 and Steve Piper in 2010.
So it’s understandable that feelings were running high at Station Pier on 14 June, when unionists and supporters gathered to support the MUA.
The dispute started when one worker, a staunch unionist and safety rep, was set up and sacked. When four other workers were directed to fill this worker’s highly skilled role, they refused on the grounds that they weren’t properly trained for the job. Rather than de-escalate the situation, Qube management sacked the workers on the spot.
On 14 June about a hundred of us, from a variety of unions, gathered at Station Pier to show our solidarity with the workers and their union. We stood in front of the cargo entrance to the Spirit of Tasmania, turning away trucks.
Within an hour, MUA secretary Kevin Bracken got us together to announce that the company had shifted its position. Qube management had sworn that the sacked workers would never be re-employed. After talks and the threat of action, they agreed to consider reinstatement for the four, but only after retrenching them first – which meant they would lose seniority etc.
After less than an hour of picketing, the company shifted again. Management was now offering reinstatement with no black mark against the four workers’ names.
Discussions will continue over the reinstatement of the first worker sacked. The picket broke up – on the understanding that we would come back if required, to make sure all the workers were reinstated.Since the death of Steve Piper at Appleton Dock in 2010, the MUA has made a renewed push for a national code of practice for safety in the stevedoring industry, which is now in the final stages of becoming an enforceable code. As veteran unionist Dave Kerin pointed out to those assembled, health and safety laws have been won in the first place only because of workers’ direct action on the job. A lot more of this sort of action will be needed to defend and to extend our hard-won gains, against Qube and others like it.
