Workers Issues in Australia & the Pacific
Australian trade unions reject national strike against BHP
By Terry Cook, January 26, 2000
The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) ruled out a national 24-hour stoppage across all BHP's divisions after meeting on Monday with the five unions in dispute over the resource company's intro...
A lesson in the failure of syndicalism
Australian union leader Norm Gallagher dies at 67
By Terry Cook, January 6, 2000
Norm Gallagher, former federal secretary of the Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) and a founding member of the Maoist Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist), died last year in a Melbourne h...
Australian unions call strikes as BHP shifts to individual contracts
By Peter Stavropoulos, December 29, 1999
Workers employed by Australian mineral and steel company BHP have begun a campaign of stoppages against the company's attempt to shift about 1,000 workers employed at its iron ore mines in the remote ...
Australian firefighters demand better death and disability pensions
By Steve Dean, August 25, 1999
For the first time in over 15 years, firefighters in the Australian state of New South Wales have taken industrial action. Since the beginning of the month the fire services have been hit by a series ...
Australian miners strike to defend entitlements
By Terry Cook, August 13, 1999
About 20,000 coal miners walked out on a 24-hour national strike from midnight last night, halting production at 150 mines. Talks between union officials and federal government ministers in Canberra y...
Australia:
Two accidents highlight worsening coal mine safety
By Noel Holt, July 22, 1999
Two incidents have again focused attention on the deadly conditions in the mining industry in New South Wales, one of Australia's largest coal producing states. Late on Tuesday evening, 50-year-old Ke...
Australian tycoon uses police and helicopters against Visy Board strikers
By Erika Zimmer and Mike Head, July 20, 1999
One of Australia's wealthiest tycoons, Richard Pratt, has used helicopters, security guards, police and the courts against workers fighting to defend their basic rights and conditions at Visy Board fa...
Australia: Sacked Oakdale miners work without pay to recover entitlements
By Terry Cook, July 13, 1999
About 150 coal miners from the Oakdale colliery, near Sydney, Australia, are spending over $5,000 a day and working without pay in an attempt to recoup some of the $6.3 million in entitlements and red...
Sacked Australian miners given no help in Canberra
By Steve Dean, June 30, 1999
Coal miners sacked at Oakdale, near Sydney, over three weeks ago are still no closer to receiving any redundancy or entitlement money, despite staging a protest in the national capital, Canberra, on J...
Miners denounce sacking with no entitlements
By Steve Dean, June 16, 1999
In what is becoming a more common practice in Australia, 150 miners at the Oakdale Colliery, 80 kilometres southwest of Sydney, were told last week, just after finishing night shift, that their mine w...
Maritime Union of Australia determined to impose job cuts
By Terry Cook, June 5, 1999
The Maritime Union of Australia is stepping up its efforts to push through a new job-cutting agreement on the waterfront after failing to ram it through a marathon membership meeting at the P&O Ports ...
Australian manufacturing union presides over massive job losses
By Terry Cook, May 24, 1999
During the 1980s and early 1990s, the leadership of the Amalgamated Metal Workers Union (now the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union) played the key role in enforcing the prices and incomes Accord ...
