Maritime Union of Australia
| Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) |
|
|---|---|
| purpose | labor union |
| Chair: | Paddy Crumlin |
| Establishment date: | 1993 |
| Number of members: | 13,000 (2011) |
| Seat : | Sydney |
| Website: | www.mua.org.au |
In the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) (German: Australian Maritime Union ) in 2011 - according to its own information - around 13,000 dock workers , seafarers , professional divers and office workers from Australia are unionized. Both the two predecessor organizations of the MUA, the Seaman's Union of Australia (SUA) and the Waterside Workers Federation (WWF) are considered political unions.
The MUA, which merged in 1993, is one of Australia's unions that is considered extremely combative, both in the past in Australia and to this day, a left-wing union in Australia.
The MUA is a member of the International Transport Workers' Federation .
history
Both Seaman's Union of Australia and the Waterside Workers Federation were involved in one of the largest early dockworkers' strikes, the 1890 Maritime Strike .
Seamen's Union of Australia
The Federated Seaman's Union of Australasia was formed in 1872 from the union of the Sydney Seamen's Union and Melbourne Seamen's Union . On June 5, 1925, the Federated Seaman's Union of Australasia was deregistered from the Australian Arbitration Court and thus it was no longer bound by the legal regulations of arbitration and also lost the ability to conclude national tariffs. Many members of these unionists took part in the formation of a new union from 1930, the Seamen's Union of Australia, founded in 1943 .
When the SUA failed to prevail in a strike for higher wages and poor working conditions from December 1935 to February 1936, it developed into a politicized union.
The Australian government of Harold Holt used in a 1967 strike of the SUA naval forces against the strikers to end it.
The SUA merged with the Marine Cooks 'Bakers' & Butchers 'Association of Australia in 1983 , the Federated Marine Stewards' & Pantrymens 'Association of Australasia in 1988, and Professional Divers' Association in 1991.
Waterside Workers Federation
The Sydney Wharf Laborers' Union , later the Waterside Workers Federation , came into being in 1872 - a few months later - as the Federated Seaman's Union . It was led as Secretary General from 1902 by Billy Hughes , who later became Prime Minister of the Australian Labor Party . With the establishment of the state of Australia in 1901, national arbitration was established for disputes between wage labor and capital. Billy Hughes was excluded from this union as Prime Minister in 1916 - mainly because of his change of political position from an opponent of conscription in Australia to a supporter.
When the Australian unions joined the 1917 general strike in solidarity because of a strike by the railroad workers' union in 1917, the WWF boycotted seven of Australia's most important ports, whereupon the Australian government of Hughes broke the strike under the War Precautions Act 1914 .
In 1919 the WWF carried out a particularly violent strike in the port of Fremantle , in which the strikers blocked the port with barricades and non-union workers, including the later Prime Minister of Western Australia, Hal Colebatch , used iron bars and throwing stones at the strikers a striker to death.
In the 1920s there was high unemployment in Australia and under the government of Prime Minister Stanley Bruce , a member of the Conservative Nationalist Party of Australia , there was severe interference with the previously applicable rules of the labor market in 1927, resulting in violent resistance and strikes led by the Australian trade unions. In 1928 the Australian government enacted the Transport Workers Act in 1928 , which by the union as a Dog Collar Act (German: Dog Collar-law ) was called. This law worsened their working conditions, lowered wages, and also allowed overseas companies to employ Australian non-union dockers to unload ships. As a result of this regulation, there was fierce resistance from the WWF, particularly in Melbourne . To weaken the WWF, the government- loyal Permanent and Casual Wharf Laborers' Union of Australia was set up, which divided the port workers. The WWF leadership then negotiated a compromise with the government that further worsened the work situation and wages of WWF dock workers. As a result of this new regulation, there were numerous resignations of the union members and the WWF was threatened with dissolution.
When a member of the Communist Party of Australia Jim Healy was elected Secretary General of the WWF in 1937 , this development was halted. WWF was committed to peace and human rights during World War II and became the opinion-leading Australian trade union. For example, Healy waged a public campaign from 1937 to 1938 against both the delivery and the loading of iron in Port Kembla in Japan, which was in the Second Sino-Japanese War .
Towards the end of the 1940s, at the beginning of the Cold War and after the fierce strike clashes with the deployment of the Australian military during the coal workers' strike in 1949, efforts were made to ban the Communist Party of Australia ; this was attempted by the Liberal Party government of Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies , which was prevented. The WWF showed solidarity with this strike and Healy himself stood before the court as union chairman after the coal mine strike in 1949 because he had raised money for the strikers in the coal mines.
In 1954, the Menzies Australian government enacted the Stevedoring Industry Act , which allowed employers to employ non-union dockers. The WWF then only struck for two weeks, as long strikes in recent years taught this union that this form did not lead to success. The law failed as a friend of Healy's compromise Minister for Labor and National Service, Harold Holt , introduced a new rule in the Menzies administration that restored union workers' prior rights to employment in 1955.
In the 1950s, the WWF shot a multi-part documentary about the working life of dock workers, of which the film The Hungry Mile is a classic documentary film, in which Roy Dalgarno plays.
From the 1990s
In 1998 there was a 43-day dispute between the MUA and the Australian transport company, Patrick Corporation , which has existed since 1919, which laid off 1,400 organized dock workers and employed unorganized dock workers for it. The case was taken as a waterfront dispute by the MUA to the Federal Court of Australia , where Patrick lost the argument.
In April 2008, the MUA released ten-year-old Howard government strategic documents identifying a relationship between the Howard government and the Patrick Corporation aimed at breaking up the union. The union deliberately publicized this information at a time when incumbent Prime Minister Julia Gillard was in talks with Australian shipping companies, discussing concepts similar to the waterfront dispute.
Political past
The MUA and its predecessor organizations are still regarded in Australia as the politicized trade unions of Australia.
In the past you have actively campaigned for the rights of the Aborigines , against apartheid in South Africa , for the liberation movements in Vietnam, Indonesia and Timor. They supported the democratic movement in Chile and Fiji and were against the military junta in Greece.
The members of the MUA blocked Dutch ships in the 1940s when the government of the Netherlands turned against the freedom struggle in Indonesia.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Maritime Union of Australia ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . A Proud History , accessed March 3, 2011
- ^ Ewin Hannan: Unions at war over ACTU leadership . The Australian dated December 8, 2008
- ↑ www.emarldinsight.com Internationalizing industrial disputes: the case of the Maritime Union of Australia, in English, accessed on March 3, 2011
- ↑ Australian Trade unions Archives : Federated Seamens Union of Australasia (1906-1925) , in English, accessed on March 3, 2011
- ^ A b Workers Online Margo Beasley: A History of Struggle on the Wharves , in English, accessed March 3, 2011
- ↑ www.skffekt.com.au ( Memento of the original from December 22, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Introduction: A Reprise of Unions, Workers and the Government , accessed March 3, 2011
- ↑ Ray Markey, Stuart Svensen, Healy, James (1898 - 1961) , Australian Dictionary of Biography, pp 421-423 Volume 14, Melbourne University Press, 1996. Online at Australian Dictionary of Biography , in English, accessed March 3 2011
- ↑ Patrick ( Memento of the original from February 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. : History , accessed March 3, 2011
- ↑ The Australian : Brad Norington: Julia Gillard has raised hopes within the Maritime Union of Australia that it could win access to secret Howard government documents for use in a revived conspiracy case over the waterfront dispute a decade ago, April 10, 2008, in English language, accessed March 3, 2011
