Page: 17625
Mr JOHN BARTLETT (Port Stephens) [5.31 p.m.]: I would like to speak today on the Boeing strike taking place outside the Royal Australian Air Force base at Williamtown. Last Friday, 9 September, a meeting was held outside the electorate office of the Federal member for Paterson. It marked the 100 days that these people have been on strike. When I was a child I lived in South Wales, which had a history of coalmining and of police and military being used against miners who were striking for better pay or conditions. My father, who was in the military, said that the military were very uncomfortable with the job that they were asked to do—not that my father was asked to do it. He was very uncomfortable with the fact that the military and police were used to break strikes.
Then we came to Australia. When I grew up a little bit my father said that this country had the best industrial relations system in the world. We had had the harvester case, the boilermakers case, and so on through the ages, and if there was disagreement between the bosses and the workers, the workers would be out for a little while and then the arbitration system, either Federal or State, would bring the parties in and they would sit down and have a discussion. The workers might not get everything they wanted, and the bosses might not get everything they wanted, but at the end of the day there was a settlement and things moved on.
The problem we have with the Boeing strike now taking place outside the RAAF base at Williamtown relates to the 1996 changes to the Federal arbitration system. Unless Boeing, the boss, wants to go into the Federal arbitration system, that does not happen. So there is no conduit by which to resolve this issue. If those workers were under a State award in New South Wales, they would have been called in under the industrial relations system of this State and the matter would have been resolved. As workers felt they could not achieve their goals, they went out on strike. They are still on strike.
The history of the current strike is quite important. Many of the workers had been on Australian workplace agreements and had been working on FA18s for quite some time, perhaps four or five years. They were mostly ex-military, and did not belong to unions. However, they became completely fed up with the Australian workplace agreements that they had been forced into. The first clause in their agreements reads something like, "You are employed under Boeing policies. Boeing can change its policies at any time." Basically, that has cast them at the forefront of the industrial relations debate that is going on in this country. These people, who did not want to continue on under their workplace agreements, went to the Australian Workers Union and asked, "Can you represent us so that we can get enterprise bargaining agreements?" Boeing will not recognise the union, and will not go to the Federal arbitration system. So the workers have been outside the RAAF base at Williamtown, in all weather, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for the past 100 days.
What is the position with this dispute? We have Boeing, the ugly American company, being used by John Howard to reduce the wages and conditions of Australians. This will become one of those cases like the harvester case and the boilermakers case. How can an individual at Williamtown negotiate with Boeing, which has about 159,000 workers in 67 different countries? In Victoria Boeing has collective agreements with its workers. It even has collective agreements with employees in New South Wales and certainly in the United States of America. At the present time 18,400 machinists in the United States are taking strike action after 86 per cent of those workers voted to reject their contracts. At Williamtown we cannot get Boeing to talk to our members. Lastly, can I saw how proud of the Labor Party caucus I was today when an additional $100 per member of caucus was donated to this cause, duplicating what happened some 50 days ago.
Mr GRANT McBRIDE (The Entrance—Minister for Gaming and Racing, and Minister for the Central Coast) [5.36 p.m.]: I congratulate the honourable member for Port Stephens on raising this very important issue in the House, and also for his continued support for the Boeing workers in that area. The industrial relations position there is a shame for everyone concerned. I am pleased that the honourable member has brought this matter to the notice of the Chamber. Hopefully, by this and other actions, with the support of caucus, we will have a resolution of this dispute in favour of the workers.