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BHP's Anti-Bargaining Stance Sparks Australian Protests

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15 July, 2005ICEM News Release No. 72/1999

Several hundred union members rallied in Melbourne, Australia, today outside the headquarters of BHP, the minerals, metals and oil multinational.

They were protesting over a radical policy shift in BHP's Australian iron ore operations. Management there has abandoned its traditional cooperative approach to industrial relations in favour of a hard-line policy that denies its workers the right to bargain collectively.

BHP issued its 1,000 iron ore workers in the Pilbara, Western Australia, with individual staff contracts, saying it was not prepared to negotiate a new collective agreement. The company had previously operated under a collective agreement negotiated with unions.

The individual staff contracts were delivered to workers' homes on November 11. BHP decreed that workers must either sign the contracts or stay on their expired agreement. Sticking with the expired agreement would mean forgoing wage and superannuation rises and lump-sum sick leave payouts. Under the individual contracts, BHP would be able to impose workplace changes and alter pay scales without having to negotiate with unions. BHP offered workers a bonus of three months' back pay if they signed by December 3.

The Secretary-elect of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Greg Combet, said the BHP iron ore division had moved sharply away from its successful cooperative approach to industrial relations, and was aping the hard-nosed American-style tactics that characterised its competitor, Rio Tinto.
"Not only is BHP now displaying great disregard for the right of employees to bargain collectively," Combet pointed out, "it is adopting discriminatory practices against one section of its workforce. BHP is offering these Pilbara workers 14 percent superannuation only if they sign an individual contract, and yet BHP already pays its steel workers the same amount under a collective agreement negotiated with the unions.

"If BHP Steel can work out a collective agreement," Combet asked, "why can't BHP Iron Ore do the same? Unions and their members in the Pilbara are more than willing to talk about efficiencies and flexibility to boost BHP's domestic and international competitiveness in iron ore."

BHP's individual staff contract offer came just weeks after conservative lawyers and journalists published articles in the Australian financial press urging the company to drop "its union culture". Some industrial relations experts are tipping that the move by BHP is a forerunner of similar forays into other areas, such as the coal and steel divisions.