What was the “victory” on the Australian waterfront?
This week marks 12 months since Patrick Stevedoring, Australia’s second largest stevedoring company, sacked its entire 1,427 strong workforce and replaced it with scab labour recruited by the National Farmers Federation. In the middle of the night of April 7 1998, an army of black-hooded security guards, armed and accompanied by attack dogs, swept through Patrick’s terminals across the country, herding waterfront workers from the premises. The multimillion-dollar operation, backed by major sections of big business and the banks, and organised at the highest levels of the Howard government, sparked a bitter month-long dispute on the Australian waterfront. The outcome of the dispute and the formal agreement that ultimately emerged were claimed by the union movement’s peak body, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) and the Labor Party, as a decisive victory for waterfront workers and the working class. These claims were supported by all the
