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On May 10, 1989 the Cockatoo
Island Dockyard shop committee, representing 13 unions, announced the
occupation of the island in response to a decision by the Hawke Labor
government to sell off the site. The dispute would last for 14 weeks.
Nearly a quarter of a century later after the strike
was defeated, it is worth looking at this struggle against the background of
the ALP-ACTU Accord years.
In the 1983 federal election,
federal Labor leader and former ACTU president Bob Hawke campaigned against
Malcolm Fraser's Coalition government at Cockatoo Island. Within a few months
of Labor's election win, a thousand dockyard workers marched on the Australian
Parliament in Canberra because Hawke had broken his promise to have a second
18,000-tonne naval supply ship built at Cockatoo after constuction of HMAS
Success was completed in 1984.
Bob Galleghan, the federal
secretary of the Ship Painters and Dockers Union said at this rally:
"There won't be a second ship built unless you're going to do something
about it." Hawke's decision would cost 1600 workers their jobs.
Galleghan was again in the
thick of it during the 1989 strike-occupation. His leadership of the painters
and dockers was in sharp contrast to most of the other union officials,
including Pat Johnson, the organiser from the metalworkers' union, now part of
Australian Manufacturing Workers Union. Galleghan was committed to saving the
jobs and the dockyard, Johnson just wanted a decent redundancy package, which
to me has always appeared to be a contradiction in terms.
A key factor in our ability to
maintain the occupation for the length of time we did was that a large number
of shipyard workers lived on the island for three months. They were from all
the jobs in the dockyard — painters and dockers, electricians, riggers,
metalworkers, clerks, firefighters. Some were fifth generation shipyard
workers.
Support from the ACTU and the
NSW Labor Council was token for a couple of weeks, and then turned into
outright opposition to the struggle of the Cockatoo Island Dockyard workers to
save their jobs.
Dockyard workers stormed a
Labor Council meeting that voted down a motion for a 24-hour general strike to
save the dockyard.
During a protest by the
Cockatoo Island workers toward the end of the dispute the Labor Council
officials locked themselves on the top floor of their building in Sussex
Street. The dockyard workers had gathered outside. After hearing speakers
condemning Hawke, defence minister Kim Beazley, the ACTU and the Labor Council,
the workers found an open door up the firestairs and marched up to the floor
below the Labor Council officials. While this was going on, the police attacked
those remaining in Sussex Street, arresting six people who later faced trial.
After this, there was the last
mass meeting, which had union leaders telling strikers on their 93rd day
"on the grass" that they would be open to fines under section 45D of
the Trade Practices Act. Bob Galleghan said: "Anyone with a 45D fine could
stand on the end of the line with the other creditors to the union."
Isolated and ignored by the
broader union movement, largely as a result of the hostility of the ACTU and
the NSW Labor Council to the strike, the dockyard workers were forced to return
to work. In June 1990, the federal Labor government reaffirmed its decision to
sell the island.
The ALP and the ACTU don't
like this historical period being discussed — it takes the spin-doctor gloss
off the Hawke-Keating years. The bulk of the trade union leaderships preferred
working against their memberships as Hawke and Keating Labor governments
decimated large traditional blue-collar workplaces in the name of opening up
the Australian economy to the rigours of the global marketplace. Britain had Margaret Thatcher
and the United States had Ronald Reagan do this to its workers. We had the ALP.
We should never forget this.Click here to go to the film.
John Tognolini 4-4-2015
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