The Stanley and Bart bailout

by Marcus Browning

The deal by which the 342 National Textile workers will receive their 
entitlements has rightly been labelled "policy on the run" by the Textile, 
Clothing and Footwear Union. The Government has no policy for protecting 
workers' entitlements because company bankruptcies, with the resultant job 
losses and directors skipping out with the cash, is an outcome of the 
government's deregulation of the economy.

This was made clear by Prime Minister Howard when he described the National 
Textile workers — and by extension the thousands of other workers being 
hit in the same way — as "victims of economic change".

Textile workers and their union are especially aware of the free market, 
deregulation drive by the Government, their industry having had its tariffs 
reduced, with manufacturers such as Bonds closing down in Australia and 
heading off-shore to Indonesia, Thailand and other cheap labour havens.

There have also been many less high profile closures, such as the most 
recent one at Braybrook Textiles in Victoria, where workers have received 
none of their entitlements and have no prospect of ever receiving them.

The payout to the National Textile workers is to be made up of $2 million 
from the Federal Government, $2 million from the NSW Government and $7.2 
million from a deal sorted out with the company's secured creditors.

The deal will result in the major shareholder in National Textiles, Phillip 
Bart, taking control of the company's Australian Weaving Mills operations 
in Tasmania.

There are also the many unsecured creditors — small businesses and 
contractors — who are owed a total of $12 million by National Textiles. 
According to the company's administrators they will be lucky to get two 
cents in the dollar.

Meanwhile, National Textile's major shareholders, including Bart and the 
PM's brother Stanley, the company chairman, remain snug and safe in their 
mountains of money.

This is in part due to manoeuvres by PM Howard who met with the company's 
directors last year and tried at that time to organise government 
assistance: John and Stanley clearly knew what was coming a long way off.

After John's bit of intrigue failed to get a government bailout, two of the 
directors gave themselves a pay rises totally $103,000 and the board 
increased its insurance premiums in anticipation of a legal battle with the 
unions for ditching the workforce and ducking payment of entitlements.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission is now looking into 
National Textiles' activities, including Bart's other operations, to see if 
the company has broken corporations law in its business dealings.

The Commission will concern itself with matters of business and not the 
fundamentally immoral and criminal behaviour of company directors and of 
John Howard.

They will in all likelihood escape punishment, although Howard's days as PM 
are numbered.

An equally vicious adherent of economic rationalism and long time union 
basher, Treasurer Peter Costello, is waiting for the moment to slip the 
knife in and take the throne.

The Government is on a path that will bring greater economic hardship for 
workers and record corporate profits, protected whenever necessary by the 
taxpayers. That, and not brotherly love, is behind the bailout of Stanley 
and Bart.