University, submarine, sugar and dairy workers strike – Solidarity Online

MELBOURNE: On 13 and 14 June, NTEU members at RMIT University went on their fifth strike during the current bargaining period, which has already lasted 13 months.

At the walkout and strike rally, staff from the vocational training institutions gave speeches and personally delivered a vote of no confidence signed by several hundred RMIT employees to the Vice-Chancellor’s office.

It has been three years since the last collective agreement expired and RMIT staff are fighting for more permanent opportunities for casual staff, a rejection of teaching-related roles and joint clauses for higher education and vocational education, while management works to further divide the workforce.

There has been no fair wage offer and salaries at RMIT have fallen from the middle to the second lowest of any university in Australia. Vocational education leaders have rejected a single collective bargaining meeting since mid-March and are now preparing another in a long series of votes that do not include union representation. RMIT management has not accepted a percentage for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment that reflects the wider population.

The permanent teachers are fighting for a 10 percent increase in the minimum time for research and a 10 percent reduction in their maximum teaching time. After the last strike in March, management has expressed its willingness to agree to this new working model. According to the management’s latest update on the negotiations, they are “close to an agreement”, although nothing final has been put in writing yet.

Participants in the strike rally unanimously voted in favour of another strike on RMIT’s open day in August, in addition to indefinite bans on entering final grades into online systems and using various of the university’s internal human resources, financial and administrative systems. The open day strike is likely to become a public relations and administrative nightmare for RMIT management.

ADELAIDE: In early May, about 300 submarine shipyard workers began a strike demanding a 17 percent pay increase to achieve pay parity with shipyard workers in Western Australia.

The shipyard in Osborne is operated by the state-owned Australian Submarine Corporation (ASC) and is to build nuclear-powered submarines of the AUKUS type.

The strike contradicts the Albanian government’s promises of an employment boom and high wages that prompted South African unions to support AUKUS.

SA workers earn about 17 percent less than their counterparts in WA.

Stuart Gordon, deputy secretary of the South African branch of the AMWU, said the ASC had only offered a salary increase of 6.75 percent for the duration of the EBA, which was below the rate of inflation.

Negotiations between the union and the ASC have been ongoing for six months.

CAIRNS – MACKAY: About 2,000 Wilmar sugar cane workers, members of the AWU, held their third one-day strike for a fair wage increase in late May.

The workers had originally demanded a 25 percent wage increase and reduced that demand by 3 percent to get Wilmar Sugar to comply. Wilmar rejected the offer and proposed 13.75 percent over four years, a wage cut averaging 3.43 percent per year.

In response to the company’s delaying tactics, workers at all eight Wilmar sugar factories in far north Queensland, from Cairns to Mackay, staged their third strike.

Jim Wilson, AWU Queensland Northern District Secretary, said: “We just want our members to be fairly rewarded for their work at a time when Wilmar is making record profits.”

In 2010, Singapore-based Wilmar International acquired the sugar company Sucrogen, which was spun off from the Australian conglomerate CSR.

BRISBANE: The crew of a fuel bunker (tanker) Master 63represented by three maritime unions, are launching a protected industrial action against their employer BP to demand a pay rise and scheduled holidays.

Members of the Australian Maritime Officers Union (AMOU), the Australian Institute of Marine and Power Engineers and the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) have decided to strike against BP’s trading subsidiary ASP on June 11.

Since bunkering operations on the Brisbane River – refuelling cruise ships – began in February 2023, crews have been trying to formalise their employment.

They advocated an unlimited number of work interruptions lasting between one and 48 hours.

BP has made global profits of over $40 billion over the past two years.

Paul Gallagher, deputy branch manager of the MUA’s Queensland branch, said BP had “decided that they cannot pay industry standards in Brisbane and want to keep their workers’ wages low”.

Tracey Ellis, AMOU’s industrial officer, said: “Having to work every weekend because ASP does not have suitable casual arrangements is unacceptable.”

BURNIE: Ongoing strikes by dozens of Saputo Dairy maintenance workers, members of the AMWU and CEPU, took a sharp turn in June when the company flew in strikebreakers from Germany.

In response, union members went on a full-scale strike on June 10. After a week solidarity went to print. There is no current date for the resumption of work.

The first strike began on April 23, when Saputo workers walked off the job demanding equal pay with mainland workers.

Workers at Saputo’s sister sites in Victoria earn 21 percent more than workers in Burnie.

Saputo offers 9.5 percent in the first year, less than 21 percent overall.

AMWU members had gone on strike four times since April.

Negotiations with Saputo regarding a salary increase have been ongoing since August 2023.

The Tasmanian AMWU noted that the Saputo strikers are “the youngest group of workers in Tasmania fighting for industry and mainland wages… (They) are no longer the mainland’s poor relations.”

Saputo tries to end the strike by scheduling a meeting with the national leaders of the AMWU and CEPU.

MELBOURNE: At a mass meeting of the Australian Nursing and Midwives Federation (ANMF) at the end of May, three thousand nurses rejected an EBA deal that had been cut by their officials and the Allan Labor government.

The unprecedented rejection by the nurses saw The Old summarise the meeting with the headline “Victoria nurses and midwives reject new pay offer in surprise decision”.

The last major industrial dispute in Victoria between nurses and the state government took place in 2012 and was a major victory for nurses.

On the Friday before the mass meeting, the ANMF had begun industrial action in hospitals, but these were suspended following a last-minute agreement between officials and the Allan government.

Lisa Fitzpatrick, secretary of the Victoria branch, was initially welcomed like a “rock star” by the union members.

The subject of the agreement was a salary increase of 23 percent over a period of four years, i.e. a wage increase above the rate of inflation, which broke the state government’s “wage cap” of 3.5 percent.

However, the nursing staff rejected the deal because the same conditions were not immediately offered to nursing staff and they had to wait for an arbitration decision.

When a number of rank-and-file care workers argued against the deal in solidarity with the elderly care workers, they prevailed at the mass meeting and voted “no”.

Fitzpatrick was described by The age as “visibly unsettled” by the rejection.

She told the newspaper condescendingly: “Despite our best attempts to explain over a long period of time, our members have not understood the concept of elderly care wages. So unfortunately this is a misunderstanding.”

To ensure that their demands are fully enforced, ordinary care workers must organize themselves.

MELBOURNE: Four thousand members of the CFMEU Construction Division accepted the recent EBA salary increase of 21.5 percent over four years.

Their EBA expired in August 2023, but the Master Builders were only willing to agree to a back payment from March 2024.

Meanwhile, the CFMEU in NSW has achieved a salary increase of over 22 percent within four years.

PERTH: About 18,000 WA state school teachers, members of the State School Teachers Union of WA (SSTUWA), began voting online on June 17 on whether they would accept the third offer from Cook’s Labor government, following its first half-day strike in a decade in late April.

The collective agreement is below the 12 percent over two years originally demanded by the union. It is now 12 percent over three years – 5, 4 and 3 percent – which is effectively a wage cut.

By Tami Gadir and Tom Orsag