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THE DRAMATIC SAGA OF SVITZER ’ S ENTERPRISE AGREEMENT BATTLE
The long running Svitzer Enterprise Agreement (EA) campaign finished earlier this year with the agree- ment finally being registered on July 11th, 2023, with an effective date from July 18th and an expiry date of July 11th, 2027. The agreement was a bitter dispute right to the end with the MUA running a VOTE NO campaign. The Svitzer EA, however, is an agreement across all 3 maritime Unions including the AMOU and AIMPE along with the MUA. The MUA highlighted some ma- jor issues with the new EA including the ability to contract out our work and vary the Port Operating Procedures (POP’s) as key factors driving a NO VOTE from the MUA. The EA was finally voted up though with nearly two thirds supporting it. Only time will tell whether Svitzer have the maturity to repair the relationship with their own workforce or instead use the clauses in the agreement to attack the terms and conditions of employment of our members and fur- ther harm their business.
run their own campaigns. Svitzer doubled down on their hard-line approach after the Productivity Com- mission rubbish that came out late last year which reinforced the conservatives’ pathological hatred of waterfront workers and their union. The magnitude of Svitzer’s hard-line approach was captured in the biggest industrial issue in Australia in 2022 with Svitzer’s 4-day notification of a com- plete lockout of their Australian workforce across 17 ports on Monday November 14th. This was Svitzer taking the nuclear option in the lead up to Christmas by notifying the 3 maritime unions of the lockout and holding the Australian economy to ransom in the process. In one industrial tactic, Svitzer showed the country why negotiations with them had been so difficult and protracted - ideologically driven with a complete disregard for anything other than their own self-interest. The clear aim behind this strategy though was to have their own lockout terminated and then have the agreement arbitrated by Fair Work. Svitzer effectively declared war on their own employees, their clients and Australia stating that they would shut the Australian economy and all trade prior to Christmas, unless their own lock out was terminated – extraordinary stuff.
This was an escalation of the application earlier that year to terminate the EA with their workforce under Section 225 of the Fair Work Act and put them back on the Award. If successful, this would have seen the working conditions of towage workers around Australia go back 20 years. Again, given this behaviour it should then come as no surprise that there was an inability to reach an agreement in over 4 years. Thankfully, Fair Work refused to reward this extortion attempt by Svitzer and handed down a suspension of the lock out instead, for a period of 6 months from December 2022, to give us a chance to get an agree- ment off our own steam. The 3 Maritime Unions then continued to meet through the first part of this year with Svitzer in attempts to finalise an Enterprise Agreement. This was never going to be smooth sailing with this outfit, and it appeared to be going to piss at a steady rate from the start, with no clear advance during the s240 process and a campaign by Svitzer to keep introducing new claims in an apparent attempt to set themselves up for an ‘Intractable Dispute’ arbitration. While this process rolled out, Svitzer also continued to press onwards with the EA Termination case despite no chance of winning given the new laws introduced late last year by the Federal Labor Government. The Labor Government, through Federal IR Minister Tony Burke, actually came out formally in mid-2022 and wrote to the Fair Work President stating that cancellation of EA’s in the manner that Svitzer was doing is finished and legislation will come into that effect in 2023. While this should have drawn a line through Svitzer’s only industrial strategy at that date, they nevertheless remained committed to it.
We should go back to the start though…
The Svitzer EA campaign played out well over 4 years, with January 2023 marking the 4th anniver- sary since Svitzer workers across Australia last re- ceived a pay rise. Svitzer’s IR strategy and decision making was hi- jacked from the very beginning by their team of failed in-house commercial lawyers, who were led down the garden path by Seyfarth Shaw, with no regard for the huge damage they would inflict on Svitzer’s brand and commercial reputation. Svitzer was used as an industrial relations battering ram by right wing ideologues cheered on by the rest of the piss weak waterfront employers too frightened to
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