Unions respond to manufacuring crisis

Union leaders visited Canberra yesterday to brief Labor MPs on what they described as a crisis in manufacturing, highlighted earlier this week when BlueScope announced it would sack 1000 workers and 400 contractors in NSW and Victoria.

They said resources companies should be required to call tenders for any project worth more than $100 million and for greater transparency to ensure that local manufacturers were given an opportunity to win contracts.

The unions, backed by the Australian Steel Institute, welcomed the government's appointment of former Queensland premier Peter Beattie to champion Australian manufacturing, but said more must be done.

"If people want to accuse me of protectionism when I'm standing up saying that Australian manufacturing jobs need to be protected, so be it," Australian Manufacturing Workers Union national secretary Dave Oliver said.

Saying the union movement would pursue its cause at Labor's national conference in Sydney in December, Mr Oliver said the governments of Canada and Norway would not issue mining leases until proponents demonstrated how they would support local industry.

Unions and steel makers want extra tax concessions to encourage miners to use steel made in Australia. Stephen Jones, the Labor MP for Throsby in the Illawarra agrees, saying the Government could be doing more to help manufacturers.

"One of the concrete proposals that has been put forward by the steel institute is that any development worth over $100 million must have an Australian participation plan in it," he said.

"And that Australian participation plan should go to the amount of local content that would be or could be included in that project. Now I think that is a proposal that has merit."

Senator Doug Cameron has suggested the Government go further.

"If you look at some of our competitors in the mineral industry, Canada and Brazil, they don't sit back and allow the mining industry there to simply send jobs offshore and destroy the manufacturing sector," he said.

"And the Government in my view's got a responsibility to look at what we can do to actually dampen the rise in the dollar as Brazil has done."