Waterfront Reform & Related Issues
The slogan "waterfront reform". which was the Howard government's war-cry, cloaked the issues at stake. Throughout, public opinion favoured reform, upheld as it was not only by the government, Corrigan, and the NFF, but also by the labour movement, the MUA and the Federal Court.
Waterfront reform itself was not an issue: as in all wars, all camps claimed God was on their side. The conflict was not about 'reform', but the meanings contained within it. For the labour movement, 'reform' meant finding ways in which the docks might work better, and negotiating a civil path to the improvements.
For the government, 'reform' meant busting the MUA 'monopoly' as a totem part of its agenda to destroy workers' traditional social protections. in order to intensify individual competition in the labour market.
The heat in the conflict arose from a conviction which, in private at least, both sides agreed on: if the MUA could be busted. every union could be busted; if wharfies could be brutally, sacked and re-hired on ower paid individual contracts, no-one was safe. There was, of course, room for change on the docks, as there always is in all workplaces.
But the government, inclusion of union busting in its definition of 'reform' was an ideological sleight-of-hand that licensed intellectual dishonesty and laziness. and it meant the public reform debate never progressed past propaganda. Indeed, if anything the government, tendentious sloganeering soiled the name of 'reform' while 84 per cent of public opinion agreed that reform was important immediately after the sackings, within two weeks this had dropped to 74 per cent.
Ideology aside. the government's technical case for reform also deteriorated. Reith's repeated allegations that the waterfront was an inefficient industry which placed intolerable cost burdens on exports was only supported by decontextualised statistical comparisons with container lifts per hour at overseas ports. The figures ignored different shipping patterns, container sizes, and port layouts, volumes. equipment, management, cultures and hinterlands.
And just as it exaggerated the wharfies' conditions so the government also magnified the relatively meagre gains available to farmers from more rapid container movements, ignored the effects of the Patrick-P&O duopoly, and gave no serious commitment on where the benefits it wanted to seize from the workers would be redistributed.
The government's case was also undermined by a report from a leading shipping consultant, which showed that the Australian average number of containers handled per hour was close to the international benchmark for terminals with comparable shipping patterns.
Even the government's own Productivity Commission found dock shortcomings were due to management and government agencies, as well as work practices. The Commission singled out one small operator—Sea-Land—as the most efficient. Sea-Land had good employee relations. The accusations of 'rorting wharfies'. also rang hollow from a new government within which six frontbenchers had already been forced to resign for rorting public funds.
The casualties included John Sharp, the original leader of the attack on the MUA. Sharp resigned his ministry after being caught forting his travel allowances in September 1997, and announced his prospective retirement from the Parliament in June 1998.
Cynicism was heightened further by the government's failure to act on the concurrent fate of miners from Cobar and Woodlawn, where corporate trickery also deprived workers of their fair entitlements.
Likewise, sympathy for the NFF eroded in many areas, as its determination to deprive this section of society of its livelihood sat hypocritically next to its appeals for certain on land title for its own members in its response to the High Court's Wik decision.
Indeed, for many, the assault on the wharfies joined with the government's anti-Aboriginal policies to create a sense of an Australia being propelled to an election by a strategy premised on nothing but creating a society in perpetual pandemonium.
From War on the Wharves p. 101.
The slogan "waterfront reform". which was the Howard government's war-cry, cloaked the issues at stake. Throughout, public opinion favoured reform, upheld as it was not only by the government, Corrigan, and the NFF, but also by the labour movement, the MUA and the Federal Court.
Waterfront reform itself was not an issue: as in all wars, all camps claimed God was on their side. The conflict was not about 'reform', but the meanings contained within it. For the labour movement, 'reform' meant finding ways in which the docks might work better, and negotiating a civil path to the improvements.
For the government, 'reform' meant busting the MUA 'monopoly' as a totem part of its agenda to destroy workers' traditional social protections. in order to intensify individual competition in the labour market.
The heat in the conflict arose from a conviction which, in private at least, both sides agreed on: if the MUA could be busted. every union could be busted; if wharfies could be brutally, sacked and re-hired on ower paid individual contracts, no-one was safe. There was, of course, room for change on the docks, as there always is in all workplaces.
But the government, inclusion of union busting in its definition of 'reform' was an ideological sleight-of-hand that licensed intellectual dishonesty and laziness. and it meant the public reform debate never progressed past propaganda. Indeed, if anything the government, tendentious sloganeering soiled the name of 'reform' while 84 per cent of public opinion agreed that reform was important immediately after the sackings, within two weeks this had dropped to 74 per cent.
Ideology aside. the government's technical case for reform also deteriorated. Reith's repeated allegations that the waterfront was an inefficient industry which placed intolerable cost burdens on exports was only supported by decontextualised statistical comparisons with container lifts per hour at overseas ports. The figures ignored different shipping patterns, container sizes, and port layouts, volumes. equipment, management, cultures and hinterlands.
And just as it exaggerated the wharfies' conditions so the government also magnified the relatively meagre gains available to farmers from more rapid container movements, ignored the effects of the Patrick-P&O duopoly, and gave no serious commitment on where the benefits it wanted to seize from the workers would be redistributed.
The government's case was also undermined by a report from a leading shipping consultant, which showed that the Australian average number of containers handled per hour was close to the international benchmark for terminals with comparable shipping patterns.
Even the government's own Productivity Commission found dock shortcomings were due to management and government agencies, as well as work practices. The Commission singled out one small operator—Sea-Land—as the most efficient. Sea-Land had good employee relations. The accusations of 'rorting wharfies'. also rang hollow from a new government within which six frontbenchers had already been forced to resign for rorting public funds.
The casualties included John Sharp, the original leader of the attack on the MUA. Sharp resigned his ministry after being caught forting his travel allowances in September 1997, and announced his prospective retirement from the Parliament in June 1998.
Cynicism was heightened further by the government's failure to act on the concurrent fate of miners from Cobar and Woodlawn, where corporate trickery also deprived workers of their fair entitlements.
Likewise, sympathy for the NFF eroded in many areas, as its determination to deprive this section of society of its livelihood sat hypocritically next to its appeals for certain on land title for its own members in its response to the High Court's Wik decision.
Indeed, for many, the assault on the wharfies joined with the government's anti-Aboriginal policies to create a sense of an Australia being propelled to an election by a strategy premised on nothing but creating a society in perpetual pandemonium.
From War on the Wharves p. 101.
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