By the early 1980s, hopes of economic recovery in Australia had turned all eyes towards a promising mining, energy and resources boom. ‘If even a small portion of the government’s much-touted $29 billion worth of development projects’ got underway, Bob Carr argued, Australia would be ‘hit with a desperate shortage of skilled tradesmen’ and that, he suggested, ‘would give the tradesmen’s unions much greater bargaining power’.1 Implicit in Carr’s statement was that unions would have an opportunity to break free of the wage constraints that had heavily damaged their members’ pay packets from 1975 onwards.2 Also implicit in Carr’s assertion was the opportunity that increased employment would provide for union growth, not only for tradesmen’s unions, but for those covering labourers as well. Since much of the mining and energy boom was to be centred on NSW and the Hunter Valley in particular, there would be, moreover, an opportunity for the BLF to claw back some of the membership losses that it had suffered in NSW in the early to mid-1970s. During that time, the focus of the NSW branch had been so intensely upon Sydney, Green Bans, and power struggles with Gallagher and the federal office of the BLF, that recruiting and servicing members in other areas of the state had all but stopped.3
In the Hunter Valley, construction unions, including the BLF and the AWU, engaged in a ‘battle to the death’.4 At Eraring, on the shores of Lake Macquarie, Dillingham Australia, which had been contracted to build the chimney stack for a coal-fired power station, were caught in the crossfire. The BLF threatened to disrupt other Dillingham projects around Australia, unless there was a significant increase in the number (38) of its members employed onsite. The AWU, which had more than 400 Eraring workers on its books, also threatened to sever concrete supplies should any such increase in BLF presence occur at its expense.5 ‘“We’re sick to the back teeth of you weak-kneed employers backing down before BLF blackmail and thuggery at the expense of
1Bulletin, 5 August 1980, p.52. 2 See Chapter Seven, this thesis.
3 Whilst it is acknowledged that BLF membership grew overall during the 1974-1976 period of deregistration, the union nevertheless claimed that membership in NSW had, in the period 1972-1975, declined from 9000 members to 4000 members. ‘On Expelled Persons, ABLF Rank and File Dossier, 1981, Brian Boyd papers, Box 2, January 1981 folder. See also, Business Review, 30 November – 6 December 1980, p.12.
4Business Review, 30 November – 6 December 1980, p.12. 5 Ibid.
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our members and the community generally”’, Charlie Oliver allegedly informed Dillinghams.6 It was a predictable response from a union leader whose members’ pay and conditions always lagged behind those of their BLF counterparts.7 And, as journalist Ross Greenwood implied, it
was a response that was also calculated to mask the empire building that Oliver and the AWU had been engaging in across rural NSW, particularly when the BLF had been preoccupied with internal conflict.8
At Eraring, as elsewhere, occupational health and safety became not only an issue around which builders’ labourers could agitate for an increased presence, but also one which was, given the appalling record of that particular site – eight workers dead and scores injured in a three year period – totally legitimate.9 What might present itself as a demarcation dispute or an attempt at ‘body-snatching’, Stewart Harris argued, also had to be understood as ‘a serious attempt to make sure that Australian workers were protected from injury and exploitation by a tough union’ that insisted upon ‘the highest safety standards and the highest rewards for the skill and labour of its members’.10 When the BLF sought to impose itself on mining and resource-related construction sites, it sent a message, both to Australians and to employers, whether foreign or locally owned, ‘that the interests of Australian workers and their families must be considered by their strongest
trade-union representatives as the prime component in all initial planning’.11 Yet the struggle for membership and the need or desire to lock the BLF out of the growing mining and resources sector was clearly more important to unions such as the AWU and the BWIU which, together with six other unions, formed an anti-BLF bloc centred round Trades Hall in Sydney.12 The alliance existed, Carr contended, ‘specifically to combat BLF influence’ and ‘Plans for a merger of the NSW AWU and the BWIU’, that fed into the formation of the eight union alliance, were
6Bulletin, 12 August 1980, p.33.
7 Creigh et al, suggested that in the early 1980s, for example, AWU members were ‘generally paid about $50 a week less than the BLF for similar unskilled work on civil engineering projects.’ Creigh et al, Aspects of industrial relations, p.22.
8Business Review, 30 November – 6 December 1980, p.12.
9 BLF leaflet, ‘Dig Deep – To Support BLF Pickets’, 29 September 1981, Boyd Papers, Box 2, 1/13-1/24.
10 Stewart Harris, ‘The BLF – A Personal View, 2’, Canberra Times, 28 July 1982, p.28. This was the second of three articles that Harris wrote about the BLF, and which were published in the Canberra Times on 27, 28, and 29 July 1982. The three articles were later published in booklet form by the NSW branch of the BLF. ‘From the
Canberra Times: The BLF, a personal view’, Sydney: ABCE&BLF NSW Branch. A copy of the booklet is located in the Brian Boyd collection at the University of Melbourne Archives. Boyd papers, Box 66, 15/12-15/15.
11 Ibid. (Emphasis added)
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‘specifically directed at elbowing the BLF out of NSW building sites’.13 Taken to their final conclusion, the Bulletin suggested, these developments could result in the destruction of the BLF as an industrial force.14 It was, in retrospect, a chillingly prescient remark.
The struggle for supremacy at Eraring was repeated again and again across not only NSW, but the whole of Australia.15 Gallagher claimed through a Federal Management Committee leaflet that the AWU and the FIA in particular were conspiring with multinational corporations, the federal government and the Arbitration Court to lock his union out of the resources boom. In NSW alone, the AWU was complicit in anti-BLF activities at Tomago, Koorangang Island, Bayswater Power Station, the Saxonvale coal washing facility at Singleton, and the ICI petrochemical plant in Sydney.16
At Tomago on the northern shores of the Hunter River near the city of Newcastle, companies such as Dravo, Citra, and White Industries (all USA) were, together with the Australian company, Hornibrook, engaged in building an aluminium smelter. Workers starting at that site were told that membership of the AWU was non-negotiable.17 Indeed, the lead company, Dravo, refused – contrary to Arbitration Commission recommendations – even to meet with, talk to or afford BLF officials entry to the site.18 The attitude of the Dravo corporation was
entirely consistent with what Melbourne activist and BLF stalwart, Dave Kerin, suggests was the arrival of a new paradigm: a situation in which international capital began to look beyond the opportunities for growth that imperialist adventures such as that in Vietnam had erroneously promised; a set of circumstances in which the protection of profits entailed waging war on the post-World War II gains that the international working classes had made.19 In Australia, this meant taking on those organisations which most successfully represented working class interests and advances. Since the BLF was, on any number of levels, one of the most successful trade unions in Australia, it was, Kerin argues, logical that it would be among the first to be attacked.20
13Bulletin, 17 February 1981, p.22. 14Bulletin, 12 August 1980, p.33.
15 BLF literature suggested that during 1981 alone, the union was involved in 30 demarcation disputes involving either or both the FIA and the AWU. ‘Your Union and You’, Butlin Archives, Z398/50.
16 ‘Dig Deep – To Support BLF Pickets’. 17 Ibid.
18 ‘Tomago Dispute: Allegations of “poaching” cop well-earned roast’, BLF flyer, October 1981, NBAC Z398/50. 19 Personal conversation with Dave Kerin, 1 August 2011.
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Upon recognising that they had indeed signed on with what the BLF pejoratively referred to as Australia’s Weakest Union21 – and that because ‘bosses men’ were appointed rather than
elected union delegates, there would be no possibility of onsite action overcoming that weakness – dozens of Tomago workers, including Len Brown and Duke Eketone, tore up their AWU tickets and switched their allegiance to the BLF. They were sacked on the spot and pickets were immediately established.22 The AWU, Eketone and Brown suggested, was ‘more concerned with keeping the BLF out [of Tomago and the resources sector] than with winning things for its members’. Indeed, the picketers argued, the BLF rival was willing to keep its members’ pay and conditions at levels acceptable to the employers, and was willing to overlook safety concerns because demanding improvements in that area would pose a threat to the profits of companies such as the Dravo corporation.23 The parallels that could be drawn between the AWU and unions such as the FIA – if only on the basis of arguments that the Ironworkers mounted during the struggle for coverage of steel workers at Loy Yang in Victoria – were all too obvious.
It might be tempting to suggest that contentions put forward by picketers such as Eketone and Brown were little more than BLF propaganda. They appeared, after all, in leaflets that Gallagher authorised for publication. Yet it was recognised, even in the business press, that if the AWU failed to hold its line in the Hunter Valley, its membership across Australia would ‘almost certainly dwindle’.24 Pointing to the role that personality could and did play in struggles between
unions such as the AWU and the BLF, Ross Greenwood of Business Review argued that AWU
state secretary, Charlie Oliver, would ‘not... give an inch’, because all he had worked for over many long, hard years was at stake. Conversely, for Gallagher, victory in the Hunter would see him become general secretary of the most powerful building and construction union in Australia.25
Events in NSW mirrored those in Victoria, where the BLF clashed heavily with federal and state governments, statutory authorities and employers, as well as with unions such as the FIA. Front and centre of the war in Victoria was, as the previous chapter demonstrated, a battle for coverage of steel workers building the Loy Yang power station. Construction of the Omega
21 ‘Dig Deep – To Support BLF Pickets’. 22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
24Business Review, 30 November – 6 December 1980, p.12. 25 Ibid.
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navigational tower in South Gippsland became another locus of battle and, once again, it was the FIA that provided the opposition.
Omega
Mooted shortly after Malcolm Fraser came to power, the Omega facility was to be the eighth and final link in an international navigational system.26 To begin with, Gallagher and the BLF had declared the project ‘black’. At that time, Alan Reid suggested, ‘the US was No.1 hate for all three of Australia’s Communist parties’, and Omega represented ‘another manifestation of US imperialism, structured to service US atomic submarines and hence likely to turn Australia into a nuclear target in any outbreak of hostilities’.27 But for the Peking-aligned Gallagher in particular, Reid suggested, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on Christmas Eve, 1979, changed everything. Suddenly, there was a need for American protection – the Russians were coming and all that could be done to stop them had to be done. To that end, Reid implied, not only did Gallagher no longer object to Omega, but in keeping with the political line in Peking, he insisted on doing his bit to ensure that BLF members contributed to Australia’s defence.28 It was colourful stuff, and it provided the media with opportunities to put an international twist on what otherwise might have been a relatively small demarcation dispute involving the BLF and the FIA. But emphasising Gallagher’s volte-face on the project and tying it to international events also provided a smokescreen behind which the true implications of the Omega dispute could be concealed. The
26Age, 6 January 1981, p.1. The tower at Woodside was to form part of a chain that included towers in Norway, Liberia, Réunion island in the Indian Ocean, Argentina, Japan and the United States. International Maritime Organization, ‘Information on the Omega Radionavigation System’, Ref. T2/6.01, 14 January 1993, available at
http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/pdf/marcomms/imo/SN_Circulars/SN%20Circ158.pdf Accessed 10 April 2012. 27 Alan Reid, ‘Tough test for Peacock as Omega fight looms’, Bulletin, 27 January 1981, p.20. Arguments mounted against Omega and carried in BLF literature were not quite as simplistic as Reid implied. The 1977 edition of The Federation, for example, contained a two-page article in which the possibility of America and the Soviet Union exchanging tit-for-tat strikes against ‘remote’ installations was discussed. Rather than launch direct strikes against each other, The Federation suggested, the Americans and the Soviets might, in an escalating conflict, opt to demonstrate their respective capabilities by attacking installations and allies such as Omega and Australia, or, where Soviet bases were concerned, parts of Africa or Cuba. The Federation, 1977, pp.45-6, NBAC N130/2036, Folder S319.
28 The National Times, for example, suggested that ‘the attitude of the BLF and other Australian Maoists changed… when Peking revised its assessment of the world situation. Adopting the Chinese line that the Soviet Union, not the US, was the main imperialist aggressor, they accepted the necessity for Omega.’ National Times, 25-31 January 1981, p.12. This actually ran counter to Gallagher’s explanation, included in a later edition of the same newspaper that whilst the union had initially opposed the tower on principle, it had changed course because the majority of BLF members were against withholding labour from the site. National Times, 8-14 February 1981, p.26.
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real question to be answered was whether erection of a steel tower constituted building work.29 The response would help determine whether Gallagher’s union had a role to play in the promised mining and energy resources boom.
BLF members had, in fact, been working at Omega prior to the invasion of Afghanistan – the tower required a concrete base on which to sit, and coverage of that and associated anchorage work, which began early in 1979, had fallen to Gallagher’s union.30 It was only over the Christmas 1979-80 holiday period, that Electric Power Transmission Pty Ltd (EPT) – the same company responsible for building the boiler houses at Loy Yang – began moving rival FIA members on to the site.31 Work commenced on building the tower proper in February 1980 and was scheduled for completion by July of that year.32 But by early March, with BLF and Painters Union33 pickets firmly entrenched, the project began to be starved of equipment and material. Work stopped completely on 11 April with 127 metres of the 427 metre tower completed.34
It took 15 months, two Full Bench Arbitration Commission hearings and a High Court challenge for the Omega dispute to be finally resolved in favour of the BLF.35 Throughout that time, governments, sections of the media and, of course, the FIA accused Gallagher and the BLF of every conceivable sin.36 That matters were being pursued through legitimate channels – the
Arbitration Commission and the High Court – mattered not. The problem, where Gallagher’s enemies were concerned, was that neither he nor his union would accept arguments to suggest
29 Emphasising the international political dimensions of the Omega dispute and placing Gallagher’s about-face on those also conveniently ignored the fact that whatever Gallagher’s allegiances to Peking, he had, as General Secretary of the BLF, a duty to observe the wishes of his members, particularly when they opposed withholding BLF labour from construction of facilities such as Omega. This was a point made by Gallagher himself, but usually overlooked in the mainstream media. See, for example, National Times, 8-14 February 1981, p.26.
30Sun, 2 February 1981, p.3; BL, March 1981, No.3, p.4.
31 ‘Omega’, BLF notice, Age, 9 February 1981, p.9; The BL, No. 3, March 1981, p.4, Boyd papers, Box 2, 1/13- 1/24. The BL was published by the NSW branch of the ABCE&BLF.
32Bulletin, 27 January 1981, p.20. Other reports suggested that late 1980 had been the nominated completion date. See for example, Sunday Press, 11 January 1981, p.1.
33 The Painters’ Union picketed Omega because, in a deal struck before the Arbitration Commission between the FIA, the Metal Trades Industry Association, Electric Power Transmission Pty Ltd (EPT), the Ironworkers were also to have coverage of workers employed to paint the tower. ‘Building workers stand up to FIA’, 1980, NBAC Z398/50.
34National Times, 25-31 January 1981, p.12. 35Age, 24 June 1981, p.3.
36 Fraser branded the BLF “the most outrageous union” ever seen in Australia. Malcolm Fraser, cited in ‘Police put guard on site’, Age, 31 January 1981, p.4; The Bulletin magazine suggested that the establishment of BLF pickets at Omega was ‘completely contrary to trade union tradition under which picket lines are established to embarrass employers’, Bulletin, 27 January 1981, p.21; Harry Hurrell, acting FIA national secretary for much of the dispute, frequently labeled Gallagher and the BLF as thugs and extortionists. Age, 31 January 1981, p.4, Sun, 3 February 1981, p.5. Such accusations also found their way into newspaper editorials. See for example, Herald, 3 February 1981, p.4.
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that builders’ labourers had no business at Omega, once the concrete base and anchorage works had been completed.37
Whether the BLF had any right to cover workers building the Omega tower could arguably be determined by whether that union had traditionally been involved in similar projects. There was ample evidence to demonstrate that this had indeed been the case. BLF riggers had in the 1930s built two 700 foot radio masts at Sydenham, west of Melbourne, for radio stations 3LO and 3AR. And in 1963, they had been exclusively employed by EPT to erect the Channel ‘O’ (SBS) tower at Mount Dandenong.38 In addition, builders’ labourers had erected the Channel Seven television mast in Melbourne, had built a communications mast on top of the Russell Street police station, and had constructed a communications tower atop the Herald/Sun building, also in Melbourne.39 Arguing that BLF members had also built an American satellite communications disc at Watsonia army barracks, the union suggested, not unreasonably, that the ‘true position’ was that the building of communications towers had always been the work of builders’ labourers.40
Efforts to resolve the dispute initially fell to the Arbitration Commission where, in July 1980, Justice Marks declared that the tower was not, in his opinion or that of experts, ‘a building’ which would come within the scope of BLF operations. He duly awarded coverage of the site to