Tilting against Windmills !

At a time when the world economy is on a knife edge because of a tariff war between the United States and China we have a strike on the Australian waterfront that looks likely to delay the flow of imported goods and leave our exports of dairy products, meat and wine sitting on the docks for the next ninety-six hours

The Melbourne docks are idle after six hundred waterside workers walked off the job to join  1200 colleagues from  Sydney and Fremantle who are locked in an enterprise bargaining negotiation with their employers.  The issue causing the strike is a demand that jobs be protected from automation and outsourcing.

Once again we are seeing our economy being put in jeopardy by a futile fight against the inevitable.  That same fight was lost years ago when loading ships moved from slings operated by cranes and we entered the shipping container age.  The march of automation is relentless and while automation brings fewer manual jobs, it increases higher paid employment needed to service the machines that will speed up the loading and unloading process.

Few people now remember the epic battle of 1949 when coal mining machinery was overturning the old ways of mining coal in the world.  Australian miners went on strike on the basis that the only coal in Australia would be mined by men working with picks and shovels.   The mines were silent for seven weeks in an age of steam trains and coal firing our electricity industry.  It had the potential for an economic disaster as 23,000 miners dug in their heels and refused to compromise.

Labor was in office at that time and prime minister Ben Chifley took the courageous decision to order Australian troops to work the open cut coal mines and get the nation moving.  It took just two weeks for the strike to be broken and the strikers return to work and it would be unimaginable to contemplate Australian industry today if that issue had insulated coal mining to the methods of the horse and cart age,

Innovation is now constant and the countries of the world move in tandem.  It is economically impossible for a single country to stand out against the progress that reduces costs and speeds the move of goods.  Just as the waterfront today is vastly different from that of the 1950's, it will be changed again in the near future and the people who work in that sector will need to change with it.

The trade union movement has a role to play in guarding the working conditions of its members, but it does them a disservice if it blindly opposes all forms of improvement coming online.  All types of work is facing change in this innovative age and the clever people are those who change with it and gain the better jobs that are created by that change.

This strike is going to cost many union households a pay packet until it ends.  What is inevitable is that the coming change will not be delayed.  Unfortunately, that only becomes clear to those involved long after the damage has been done  !