On 24 November 1995 Ellen J. Dannin wrote: > >I seem to recall that CRA owned / owns Tiwai, an aluminium plant in New >Zealand. The company engaged in a similar -- but successful -- strategy of >deunionising there immediately after the ECA was enacted in 1991. According >to reports, it learned deunionising techniques after a visit to and >consultations with consultants in the United States in the late 1980's. > >Does anyone know, if my recollection is correct, whether the methods used >have, in fact, been transported from one site to the other and what were >similarities and dissimilarities? > The brief answer is that CRA does own the Tiwai smelter in New Zealand, which was de-unionised after the NZ government introduced the Empoyment Contracts Act which abolished the legal status of trade unions overnight. Trade unions can only exist in NZ as voluntary associations like sports clubs. CRA cites Tiwai as an example of the success of its strategy, and claims that productivity and the like have improved enormously. There are two aspects to such claims: 1. They are never independently verified. We all know how shonky the OHS statistics are from transnationals operating in third world countries where such statistics are never independently scrutinised. CRA makes similar spurious claims with regard to producticity in mines in unionised mines here compared to non-unionised mines in the USA. 2. It is often the case that some unions have left themselves vulnerable to attack through doggedly resisting all work place change. I am not saying this is/was necessarily the case at Tiwai. In Australia the historical tradition of skill or trade based unions rather than industry unions has meant that unions sometimes resisted workplace change because where such change affected job classifications it threatened their legal coverage rights. With the move to larger and industry-based unions (which is still regarded by some here as divorcing the rank-and-file from their unions) the problem of demarcation and inherent opposition to workplace change has been lessened. The person whom it is claimed that CRA has drawn on for its inspiration is Elliot Jacques from the USA. However, most of his work has been done with CRA, so I am not sure how well known he would be in the USA. Elliot has claimed here that he is not anti-union, and that CRA's tactics at Weipa cannot be sourced from his advice. He just claims to about reducing layers of management and about creating absolute bonds of loyalty between the individual worker and the company. However, it is clear that there is no room for collective representation of workers in such a framework. Peter Colley National Industrial / Research Officer Construction, Forestry, Mining & Energy Union (Mining & Energy Division) Sydney, Australia [EMAIL PROTECTED]