Australian union agrees to enforce ten-year strike ban at Melbourne port
Over recent weeks the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) has brokered new enterprise agreements (EAs) with major stevedoring companies across a number of Australian ports.
The agreement that most glaringly encapsulates the MUA’s decades-long drive to incorporate itself ever deeper into management structures and cement its position as an industrial police force for the stevedoring employers is the four-year deal it brokered with Victoria International Container Terminal (VICT).
Victoria International Container Terminal [Source: AECOM]
As part of the VICT agreement, the MUA has agreed to enforce a ten-year ban on “illegal” industrial action at the facility in exchange for the company dropping an $80 million damages claim against the union that arose from its picketing of the Webb Dock terminal in 2017. This action was conducted by union officials and their supporters, with no participation of the workers, in a bid to establish an MUA presence at the facility.