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14 March, 2011
ICEM-affiliated mineworkers’ unions know the difficulties in dealing with Rio Tinto, whether it is collective agreements or the charades the company plays to deny legitimate rights for train drivers in western Australia’s rich iron ore region. Now an Australian union has set as goal organizing the unorganized plants of Rio Tinto Alcan, the mining giant’s aluminum smelting subsidiary there.
The Australian Workers Union (AWU) is currently ramping up a recruiting drive at Alcan factories in Tasmania, Queensland, and the Northern Territory and without surprise, is meeting fierce resistance by Rio’s managers.
AWU kicked off its union campaign to deliver better wages and benefits to all workers at Alcan plants last month at its National Delegates Conference. The union intends to do that by recruiting wall-to-wall, or every worker at smelting facilities in Bell Bay, Tasmania, and Yarwun and Boyne Island, Queensland, that does not carry a union card.
AWU began the drive in earnest last week by placing advertisements in Tasmanian newspapers alerting the public and workers at Alcan’s Bell Bay smelter that Tassie staff are paid far less than at two union-represented smelters of Alcoa in Victoria. The ads, titled “Tassie Workers Deserve Better: Fair Go – Rio Tinto,” reveal that Alcoa operators earn up to A$20,000 more per year than operators at Bell Bay.
AWU Newspaper advert
Photo: AWU
It was at Bell Bay, in northern Tasmania, in late February where the AWU won a health and safety victory for the 550 workers there. Late in February, a state Justice Department of Justice secretary issued a definitive ruling that AWU representatives must be allowed access to break areas of the plant to consult with union members over safety and work issues. The company had appealed a Tasmania Supreme Court judgment giving the AWU right-of-entry.
Alcan managers at Bell Bay have undertaken vigorous litigation to block access by attempting to restrict union consultation with workers to outside conference rooms, areas where such meetings are in full view of managers. (See previous ICEM InBrief report.) Right-of-entry to lunch rooms is seen by Aussie unions as a pivotal point under Fair Work Australia in order to rid fear and intimidation as factors in workers choosing union membership.
Alcan – and Rio Tinto – resistance to unionization was also seen recently at an Alcan facility called Gove Alumina in the Northern Territory. There, members of the Australia Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) have since 2008 rejected three times in enterprise bargaining a demand from Alcan to change roster scheduling at the 403-worker refinery.
Despite enterprise bargaining talks still in effect, last week a leaked e-mail surfaced revealing that Alcan management had advised that the next set of talks not include the designated AMWU representatives. Such an attempt to circumvent the union is a serious breach of Australian federal labour law.
The anti-union bias pattern that Rio’s Alcan managers use is best summarized by a labour leader in central Queensland, where AWU is seeking worker power and workplace gains at Yarwun and Boyne Island, both sites that have low union membership. The Gladstone Branch president of the Queensland Council of Trade Unions, Craig Giddens, described the difference between construction of the Yarwun facility and commencement of production, a point when Alcan installed security cameras and heavy locked gates. “Whenever we go” to meet with workers, Giddens told newspaper reporters, “we’re locked in an office at the front (and) there’s a security camera at the front so management can watch who comes down.”