wage dispute
p. 31 · Read in the full issue
Council of Trade Unions enters P-NG wage dispute
From DENIS FISK in Port Moresby The Australian Council of Trade Unions in February en
tered wage negotiations directly
in Papua-New Guinea, after
skirting around the edges for the
past decade.
The Bougainville copper project brought in Australia’s most powerful federal union body, with two strikes in January and February to spur it on, to represent Australians there, and help out native workers also.
When eight men died in January’s landslide on the four-lane highway being built from the mine site at Panguna to Kieta and the new port at Arawa, six men refused to work in the landslide area and were (un wisely) sacked.
The sackings rallied the rest of the 1,000 Australians (and a few Americans and others) handling all the big machinery and working for various contractors, and they stopped work for two days until the men were reinstated. Another 3,000 native workers could not work during that time without either supervision or follow-up work to do.
Second strike
The next strike, a bare fortnight later in mid-February, was over Bougainville Copper (the Conzinc Rio-Tinto Australia subsidiary) refus ing to recognise the men’s delegates in negotiating better wages, danger penalties and conditions.
In stepped the ACTU (months after it said it would negotiate an award for Australian workers on the site) in the form of Queensland Trades and Labor Council president, Jack Egerton, who helped smooth things over for the time being.
Earlier influence by the ACTU had been indirect. In 1960, ACTU pre sident, Albert Monk, visited Papua- New Guinea, and recommended among other things reduced wages for native labour to a level the territory could afford. The Australian Gov ernment did just that in 1964.