Victory at Visy

by Anna Pha

After 13 days on the picket line 400 striking Visy workers in Sydney 
returned to work jubilant, and more united and determined than ever.

The workers, members of the Printing Division of the AMWU, had been locked 
out by their employer, Visy Board, on July 7 following the imposition of 
work bans and other forms of limited industrial action.

The action was in support of demands for a wage rise without trade-offs and 
for improved safety and better conditions at the company's four plants in 
Sydney to be included in a new enterprise agreement.

The company is owned by billionaire "Cardboard King" Richard Pratt, listed 
by the Business Review Weekly as the third richest man in Australia 
(see The Guardian July 14).

The company tried everything to break the workforce. It flew in scabs by 
helicopter. It ran to the Industrial Relations Commission and obtained a 
Section 127 order to have industrial action cease. But the workers remained 
firm until the company backed down.

The main thrust of the company's demands involved a change in the workplace 
culture favouring management and profits.

For example, it wanted to be able to force people to work on public 
holidays and religious holidays if they were rostered on.

At present workers can change their rosters to accommodate the varying 
number of religious beliefs held by workers at Visy. There has never been a 
problem covering changing rostered days off simply through consultation.

Visy also wanted to buy out accrued annual leave and long service leave 
entitlements, a move unacceptable to the union.

The company refused to listen to, let alone discuss, the concerns of 
workers over vital questions relating to safety.

Now Visy has backed down, accepting that there will not be a take-back of 
conditions.

It also realises that it will have to sit down and work through the issues 
raised by the union, otherwise it is not going to have a functioning 
workplace.

What is more, three of the striking workers the company had said would 
never be re-employed are now back on the job. Visy has also dropped its 
written "final warnings" that were hanging over the heads of six others.

And there now has been a change of culture in the workplace, but not 
the sort of change that Pratt was after.

Ray Griffiths was one of the delegates at the Smithfield site who had a 
written warning hanging over his head. He summed it up: "We walked out of 
there two weeks ago slaves, we walked back in free men".

Pratt actually showed up in the canteen at Smithfield and had a go at the 
union for breaking up his "happy family of workers".

He was loudly jeered and forced to back off, admitting they had beaten him. 
He finally apologised and said things were going to be different. The first 
test will be the negotiations of the enterprise agreement.

There is still considerable distrust of management, a history of broken 
promises and much anger that has festered for years in what was previously 
a very divided workforce.

"I have never seen a group of men gain respect and dignity so quickly", 
Printing Division State Organiser, Amanda Perkins, told The 
Guardian. "They came out of that factory, having worked alongside each 
other for decades and having decades of not being solid; they went back in 
there a united, dignified group of free men.

"The culture in that factory will never be the same again. If they never 
got another dollar out of that company they won because they went back in 
there a united group of people that had grown close together. I don't think 
they will ever be able to be divided again.

"Struggle changes people ... you can see in just two weeks of strike, the 
leaps and bounds people went through."