Union win to Australian Federal Court blow to government plan

ICEM Update, No. 89, 6 November 1998

The Federal Court of Australia today quashed a decision of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) which denied the workers at Rio Tinto's Hunter Valley No. 1 Coal Mine in New South Wales access to arbitration to resolve a long running enterprise bargaining dispute. The Federal Court commanded that the case be reconsidered by the AIRC and determined in accordance with the law. Workers at the Hunter Valley No. 1 Mine now have access to arbitration for resolution of the dispute. John Mait land, General Secretary of the CFMEU and vice-president of the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), hailed the decision as being important for all Australian workers. Maitland is currently visiting London as part of the ICEM's international campaign on Rio Tinto, the dual-listed UK-Australian mining company.

He will then be travelling to Cork, Ireland, where he will be joining some 300 energy union leaders of all continents for the ICEM's World Energy Conference (9-11 November).

The CFMEU's win comes as a major blow to the Federal Government in Australia, which has enacted the anti-union Workplace Relations Act (WRC) similar to legislation passed by Conservative governments in the UK. The CFMEU, one of Australia's leading unions, has been instrumental in mounting major challenges to the Government's legislation.

Maitland said the court's decision is A great win for the union and a great win for Australian workers generally. This gives hope to workers that industrial disputes can be resolved by the independent umpire and that they are not at the mercy of aggress ive transnationals like Rio Tinto.

It is vital that the right to arbitration, a process which has been used for over a century in industrial relations in Australia, be upheld and maintained. Without this, companies like Rio Tinto refuse to enter into fair collective agreements and use th eir power and resources to bludgeon embattled workers into accepting unfair individual contracts. Let's hope this decision is the beginning of the end to the 'knock them down', drag them out' approach to industrial relations which Howard's government has introduced, said Maitland.

The avoidance of arbitration is the cornerstone of the Federal Government workplace reform. For Rio Tinto, a key part of the company's anti-union strategy was the removal of the right to arbitration from industrial relations law. Rio Tinto has been at t he vanguard of the corporate sector in giving support to the right-wing Coalition government's moves to weaken the power of trade unions. In 1997 the company allowed one of its senior executives officers, Mike Angwin, to be seconded to the Government to help draft the WRA. Earlier this year the International Labour Organisation of the UN stated that the WRA did not promote collective bargaining as required under Article 4 of the ILO Convention 98 and that it was contrary to the principle of voluntary bargaining.

Maitland said ICEM and its affiliated unions, would continue in their international campaign on Rio Tinto. The days when a company can behave like a colonial power and use the government of the day to run its anti-worker agenda are over. Rio Tinto has a miserable record on human rights, workers rights and environmental protection. The Court's decision, on leglistation the company helped draft is yet one more example of just how wrong Rio Tinto is in pursuing the company's financial interests at the ex pense of everything else.