Union Strategy and the 1998 Waterfront Dispute

Abstract

The four-month struggle between Patrick Stevedores and the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) was the most significant industrial dispute of the 1990s and one of the most important since the 1960s. At stake were not just the jobs of 1,400 wharfies but the Howard Government's entire industrial relations agenda of union-busting. In every one of its key aims, the Government failed, and a gathering employer offensive against unionism was stopped in its tracks. Nonetheless, the wharfies took some important casualties in terms of jobs and working conditions. This article looks at both the inspiring elements of the struggle by Australian wharfies, but also asks the question, why, when the Government and the employers were on the ropes, did wharfies give up so much? The article argues that the terms of the final settlement cannot be divorced from the campaign strategy pursued by the union leadership, which was highly centralised and which looked not to industrial solidarity but to the courts and the ALP for salvation. This strategy was in turn the result of the union leadership seeking not to protect wharfies' jobs and working conditions, only to ensure reinstatement and a resumption of negotiated ‘waterfront reform’.