Around 300 pulp and paper workers at the Opal Paper mill in Maryvale, Victoria have been locked out since mid-January.
Hundreds of workers protested at Opal’s corporate headquarters in Melbourne on 6 February.
Their crime? Seven members of the Manufacturing Division of the CFMEU took a six-hour stopwork action to demand a pay rise. The company then locked out the 300 production workers with just one hour’s notice.
It was the first industrial action in two decades at the plant.
The workers have been in enterprise bargaining with Opal since October last year.
Opal wants to cut wages and attack workplace rights. It is trying to increase ordinary working hours per week to deny workers overtime pay. The union estimates this could mean workers face an effective 10 per cent pay cut.
The company, owned by one of the world’s largest paper makers, Nippon Paper, is crying poor despite making a worldwide profit of $180 million last year.
Opal is offering pay rises of just 3 per cent a year, after workers have suffered large effective pay cuts, due to the cost of living far outpacing pay increases of just 2 per cent a year for the last three years. The union is demanding pay rises of 5 per cent, 4.5 per cent and 4 per cent over a three-year agreement.
In 2016, workers accepted a 5 per cent pay cut to “keep the mill afloat”, while management gave themselves a pay rise.
The workers believe the company will drag the lockout into a long and protracted battle against them, as the company has stockpiled plenty of product in Melbourne warehouses.
Opal is also ramping up production internationally so it has a steady ongoing supply.
Proportionate
ACTU Secretary Sally McManus attended a mass meeting of Manufacturing Division members in Morwell at the end of January.
However, her less-than-fighting speech called on Labor to “change the laws” to stop bosses from being able to lock out workers. She even suggested companies’ use of lockouts could be allowed if “proportionate” to the level of strike action.
All that Murray Watt, Labor’s Workplace Relations Minister, could say was that he “encouraged” Opal to negotiate with its workers.
The law is stacked against workers. The ACTU, Victorian Trades Hall Council, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and the Mining and Energy Union have all pledged verbal and some financial support to the locked-out workers.
But there was no talk from McManus that the ACTU would mobilise the solidarity action needed to win—either through industrial action at the three other Opal plants in Melbourne, Sydney or Wodonga or from other unions.
A strike fund for the workers has raised almost $65,000 so far, including a collection by fellow rank-and-file CFMEU members in the Construction Division and in the Defend the Union—Defend the CFMEU campaign, which raised over $1300.
The lockout comes as the Manufacturing Division is set to ballot its members on breaking away from the rest of the CFMEU, signalling its support for the Labor government’s attack on the CFMEU Construction Division.
Rank-and-file CFMEU Construction Division members have been supporting the locked-out workers and campaigning for a vote against the demerger.
But it will take union solidarity action to break Opal’s ruthless attack.
By Tom Orsag
