The following articles were published in "The Guardian", newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday, August 15TH, 2001. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. Sydney. 2010 Australia. Phone: (612) 9212 6855 Fax: (612) 9281 5795. CPA Central Committee: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "The Guardian": <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Webpage: http://www.cpa.org.au> Subscription rates on request. ****************************** BHP AND TRANSFIELD. THE JOB DESTROYERS Unions and workers at BHP's steel works in Port Kembla on the NSW South Coast are fighting to save the jobs of 436 workers who are threatened by the company's plans to contract out maintenance work to Transfield Services and Fluor Gonian. BHP claims it will save $150 million over 10 years by contracting out the work. by Anna Pha The outsourcing will involve a considerable reduction in the size of the maintenance workforce. Transfield and Fluor Goninan plan to pick and choose which workers they will hire. The workers whose jobs are at stake are not impressed by BHP's promises of voluntary redundancies and alternative job offers within BHP. The unions involved, the Australian Workers' Union (AWU), the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) and Electrical Trades Union (CEPU), are fighting it out with management. A decision is still to be made as to what work will be contracted out. The unions oppose any contracting out. At present all the workers are covered by the job security provisions of the national Steel Industry Agreement and cannot be retrenched, regardless of whether their work is contracted out. Judge Walton of the NSW Industrial Relations Commission issued an interim order on July 17 this year preventing jobs being contracted out. The unions are due to re-appear before the Commission on August 20. They will be seeking an extension of the order which is due to expire on August 21. They are also arguing for an extension of the Steel Industry Agreement which is due to expire in September, just before Transfield Services intends to move in. BHP continues to act as though the contracting out is a fait accompli, and is using scare tactics to make worker and their families feel insecure. BHP has organised meetings of maintenance workers to hear a representative of Transfield spin promises of their golden future as contracted out labour. This is despite the Services Commission's decision. In a slick speech, Kiehl Quinn, from Transfield's Operations and Maintenance Power, painted the workers a rosy picture of how good life would be with their new employer. Workers left feeling as though they had been promised the world. They were given the opportunity to ask questions, but received vague answers -- particularly to questions about how the projected $150 million of savings would be made. Transfield Services is 45 percent owned by the private (i.e. not listed on the stock exchange) Transfield Holdings. It was created out of the Transfield group earlier this year when the Belgiorno-Nettis family (two of whom are on the board) decided to raise capital to clear Transfield's debts. It has maintenance and other contracts with both the private and public sectors. It provides maintenance, cleaning and other services to the oil, petrochemical, gas, communications, and power industries. It also has contracts for service provision to the defence forces, the South Australian rail freight network BHP workers have good reason to oppose the contracting out of their jobs to Transfield Services and to question how the company intends to make its huge savings. Transfield's track record is a shocker. For example, it boasts that costs were reduced by nearly 50 per cent when it won a maintenance contract with the Mobil oil refinery at Altona, in Victoria and recorded "no industrial disputes in five years". It went into Mobil promising maintenance workers the world, even though all the workers had to re-apply for their own jobs. They were given training in new areas so that they could be riggers, crane drivers, scaffolders, dogman etc. But once they were multi-skilled the next part of the plan was revealed -- a reduction in the work force from 350 to 70 over three to four years. The multi-skilling and massive reduction in the work force created new problems. Highly skilled and specialised work was being carried out by less experienced workers, in a dangerous work environment, raising safety concerns. At the Shell oil refinery in Geelong, Transfield reduced the maintenance work force from 275 to 45. Even Shell could no longer cope with the company's aggressive style, and terminated it contract with Transfield two months ago. Transfield sacked the remaining 45 workers with no notice when they were on their rostered day off. Shell has divided up the work and contracted it out to a number of small companies. The workers are now casuals, on call, day-to-day, hoping for some work. And let's not forget it designed and constructed the disastrous Melbourne City Link toll way with its leaking tunnel under the Yarra River. Robert Nichols, Victorian Branch Organiser with the AWU told "The Guardian" that there have been a number of oil spills at Shell over the last few months, some hidden from the public. The Communications Division of the CEPU has had dealings with Transfield in its provision of property management services (including cleaning) to 14,500 Telstra Network sites across Australia. "Not a nice mob" was how one union member described Transfield who said the maintenance and cleaning of Telstra exchanges and depots was "a disgrace". The cleaning has been run down, the toilets are filthy. Telstra employees, on the road all day, looking for somewhere to sit and eat a meal have seen their amenities ripped out - microwave ovens and fridges disappear. The contract work is done by casual labour employed on inferior conditions instead of by permanent staff on award conditions. These few examples form Mobil, Shell and Telstra illustrate some of the problems associated with the outsourcing of work. These include: * Permanent award staff replaced casual labour; * Lower wages and inferior working conditions; * Massive job losses; * Inferior services; * Decline in standard; * Safety put at risk; * Increase in work load pressures; * De-unionisation of the workplace; * Introduction of individual work contracts (Australian Workplace Agreements). This is why BHP plans to out-source its maintenance work, and why the unions and workers must be supported in their struggle to retain in-house maintenance by a permanent, unionised workforce under the Steel Industry Agreement. ********************************************************** -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
