9 March, 2009
Oil workers of Australia’s Construction, Forestry, Mining, and Energy Union (CFMEU) ratified a renewal three-year enterprise labour agreement on 11 March Royal Dutch Shell’s Clyde refinery and Gore Bay terminal in Sydney harbour, but it won’t take the sting from Shell’s brazen anti-union conduct over the past three months.
Shell manipulated negotiations that began in November 2008 in efforts to force aspects of the draconian WorkChoices law on to the union, seeking to break an enterprise agreement and begin individual work contracts before repeal of former Prime Minister John Howard’s anti-worker laws commence on 1 July 2009.
The company initially tabled a proposal reducing a 47-page agreement to 14 pages, stripping away such clauses as workers’ training, “Roles and Responsibilities of Operators,” and removing standard manning requirements, thus opening the way for more contractors. Managers also proposed a reduction in operators’ wages by A$12,000 per year.
The 86,000 barrel per day Clyde refinery underwent an extended maintenance shutdown beginning in November, giving the company an opportunity to deploy another union-busting move. That was a demand that its regressive proposals be approved by 30 January 2009, the expiration date of the prior three-year contract, or the CFMEU would face a lock-out.
To prepare for that, Shell’s imported managers began bringing in scabs for 18-day training periods as operators, and recruited retired workers from another Australian state. By early February, obviously frustrated with CFMEU’s rightful reluctance to accept the concessions, the company applied to the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to submit its proposals directly to workers in a secret-ballot vote.
That ballot was defeated on 20 February by a resounding 82%, which not only forced Shell back to the bargaining table, but forced it to change its agenda.
The enterprise agreement that 150 workers voted to accept on 11 March is far better than what Shell managers had sought. It calls for a 12% wage increase over the three years, and full protection of all current work language.
“Shell’s agenda was nothing but union-busting,” said Lorraine Usher, CFMEU’S New South Wales District Secretary. The company’s “actions have left a work force seething with resentment and it will be a long time before trust in the workplace is regained.”
Two British managers of Shell at Clyde and Gore Bay were responsible for bringing on the anti-worker agenda. “I believe they did everything in their power to escalate the dispute,” said Usher. The former Operations Manager at Clyde, Paul Lunt, was retained to handle negotiations. The other was Mark Stevens, who was brought in from Singapore’s Shell operations.