
Issue No 32		24 September 1999

Unions

Woolscour Workers say No to Peter Reith

By Mark Hearn

Workers at Canobolas Wooltopping - a woolscour plant near Orange, in central west New South Wales, have just sent a message to Workplace Relations Minister Peter Reith: thanks, but no thanks.


	AWU delegate Kim Crossman (left) with fellow workers Roy Finch and Clarrie Tudor. The proposed individual contracts became a collective enterprise agreement, with a 3.5% pay increase. A win-win outcome, but perhaps not one that Peter Reith would gloat about.

The 25 workers, members of the Australian Workers Union, were offered individual contracts, or Australian Workplace Agreements, as Mr. Reith likes to call them, earlier this year. Management was dead keen: win-win situation. More dollars. No unwanted third parties, etc., - you know the spiel.

Kim Crossman, the local AWU delegate, remained suspicious. "Management only gave us a booklet and said: take it home and read it." But in the way delegates do, he didn't just read the booklet telling them what a great idea the individual contracts were. Kim started thinking.

Kim has worked with the company 23 years. His workplace looks - and smells - like something straight out of the late nineteenth century. Ancient machinery groans, burps and fumes as raw shorn fleece, dag-stained and crusted with seeds and grass, is massaged - none too gently - along the shaking production line, transformed almost miraculously into top export grade wool, so white it gleams from the loom.

While the routines of work went on, Kim talked to his fellow workers, and to his local AWU Organisers Mick Madden and Anne Kelly. After they all talked to the company, the proposed individual contracts became a collective enterprise agreement, with a 3.5% pay increase. A win-win outcome, but perhaps not one that Peter Reith would gloat about.

Mick Madden and Anne Kelly picked all the pit-falls in the individual contracts like they were plucking burrs from a filthy fleece. 39 burrs, in fact, that would only start to itch and scratch after those few extra dollars had been spent. Like cutting penalty rates and overtime. Taking annual leave when it suited the company. Accepting personal liability for damaged tools or equipment.

Russ Collison, the Secretary of the AWU's Greater NSW Branch believes "the company wanted unfettered control over its employees". Mr. Collison noted that while Canobolas Wooltopping was advised by Australian Business (the employers manufacturing industry peak council), the workers were expected to look after themselves - individually, with no professional guidance.

As Kim Crossman says, "we were going to lose the conditions that unions have fought years to achieve." Kim would rather have been getting on with his job than fighting to protect basic entitlements. "It's all been new to us, we didn't know which way it was going to go." He's grateful for the help he received from the AWU, and the loyalty of his work mates. Kim says quietly and smiles, "Management realised, we're not going to win this one."

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Issue 32 contents

Interview: His Daily Fix
Graham Richardson talks of his transition from national politics to talkback radio and his ongoing jobs as a fixer.

Politics: Requiem to the Third Way
The swing to Labor in Victoria shows clearly that once again Australian voters have rejected economic rationalism. The result, and the reasons for it, should worry John Howard.

International: A Common Struggle for Freedom
It may not get the headlines, but Western Sahara has some chilling similarities with East Timor.

Unions: Woolscour Workers say No to Peter Reith
Workers at Canobolas Wooltopping - a woolscour plant near Orange, in central west New South Wales, have just sent a message to Workplace Relations Minister Peter Reith: thanks, but no thanks.

Legal: Outlawed Acts of Consicence
The recent boycotts in support of East Timorese indepndence highlights the extremism of Reith's second wave.

History: Was Manning Clark A True Believer
A Canberra history conference shines the spotlight on Australia's most famous historian.

Review: Paranoid Echoes
The calls to examine the Australian–Soviet documents in the Moscow Literary archives have grown in volume over the past year.

Labour Review: What's New at the Information Centre
The latest issue of Labour Review - a resource for officals and students.

Satire: Kennett Boosts Chances: Two More Independents Dead
Caretaker Premier Jeff Kennett today admitted that voters perceived him as arrogant and out of touch, but insisted that they were wrong.

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» ACTU Pushes On With Privatised Portal

» Powerful New Years Eve Deal for TransGrid

» Banks Grill Staff on New Fees

» Off the Rails - Workers Gagged

» Staff Frustration Boils Over at Sydney Water

» Kennett Nose-Dive: Botsman Picks It

» Academics Fail Non-Union Deal

» Nike in Indonesia: Military Employed to Intimidate Workers

» The Laugh’s On Barry