29 August, 2011
Australian union members of three trade union organisations are livid with the announcement that BlueScope Steel will lop 1,400 jobs in New South Wales and Victoria. Members of the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU), the Australian Workers Union (AWU), and the Electrical Trades Union of the Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union (ETU-CEPU) met in Wollongong on 25 August and sternly moved to resist all restructuring until further labour-management consultations can occur.
Today in Canberra, the unions met with Prime Minister Julia Gillard and urged her Labour Government to launch an inquiry into Australia’s manufacturing crisis.
BlueScope, formed in 2002 when BHP Steel was spun off in the BHP and Billiton merger, announced on 22 August that it was shedding nearly half of its Port Kembla Steelworks staff of 3,100 and another 200 jobs at a hot-strip steel mill in Hastings, Victoria.
AMWU’s Dave Oliver (left), AWU’s Paul Howes, ETU National Secretary Peter Tighe (right) at Port Kembla Steelworks, 22 August
Photo: Illawarra Mercury
Last Thursday’s heated union meeting came when workers also learned that senior managers of the troubled company are awarding themselves A$3.05 million in bonuses, including A$721,000 for CEO Paul O’Malley. The company recently posted an operating loss of A$118 million plus an asset write-down of A$900 million, mainly from a rising Australian dollar, high raw material costs, and depressed order books.
The BlueScope job cuts come at a time when booming Australian resource exports are driving up currency exchange rates to the detriment of Australia goods and product manufacturing. BlueScope is chopping 1,200 full-time and contract labour jobs by idling a blast furnace, coking battery, slab caster, and oxygen-based steelmaking vessel at Port Kembla south of Sydney, and the 200 steel-rolling jobs on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula.
Speaking at Port Kembla the day BlueScope made the announcement, AMWU National Secretary Dave Oliver said, “The benefits of the mining boom come with very big downsides and 1,400 families have learnt today the hard way about the downsides. “Today is a massive wake-up call for to state and federal governments to take more action on this issue.”
In news interview yesterday, 28 August, before today’s meeting with Gillard, Oliver said the federal government must take immediate action to bolster manufacturing. “I don’t think it’s acceptable that 90% of the gear that goes into a resource project is imported from overseas,” he said.
AWU National Secretary Paul Howes called on the federal government and the Reserve Bank Australia (RBA) also to kick into action. Howes said the Labour government must impose “robust” anti-dumping measures, pressure China to stop currency manipulation of the Yuan, and he called on the RBA to lower interest rates in order to promote Australian manufacturing.
“We’ve got to face the reality of the manufacturing crisis that’s before us,” said Howes. “We can’t accept job losses as the norm and we can’t rely on imported goods in our strategic sectors.”
The announcement of BlueScope’s job losses in Australia last week came a week after steelworkers, members of New Zealand’s Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU), downed tools for 24 hours in a protest over outsourcing at New Zealand Steel, a wholly owned subsidiary of BlueScope. Over 850 EPMU members engaged in the industrial action on 15 August at a steel roll mill at Glenbrook, south of Auckland, and at company iron mines at Waikato North Head and Taharoa.