The Australian Dockworkers’ Struggle Against International Capital

As of February 2nd, 2024, after an announcement the day prior for the strike’s extension until February 10th, the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) reached an in-principal agreement with the international logistics company, Dubai Ports World (DPW).

The in-principal agreement concluded the months-long pay dispute against one of Australia’s largest privately-owned port-operators of Brisbane, Fremantle, Melbourne, and Sydney terminals. This agreement, which will be in effect for four more years, will replace an earlier agreement that had expired in September 2023. The MUA says it is a ‘four-year term [that] delivers fair pay, safety and fatigue management measures, and provides job security and a fair work-life balance for Australian wharfies.’

They celebrated this win by saying ‘wharfies perform hard, physical work on a 24-hour, seven day working week, in all conditions and all seasons. They are amongst the hardest working, most productive, and most flexible workforces in the Australian economic landscape.’ The end of this strike has ensured that the ‘industrial action has been withdrawn and [union members] will return to work.’

Although the end of this dispute will not be the last (at least not in the foreseeable future), the stand-off, and its success for the workers, is the latest and longest sign of rising workers’ power in Australia. In fact, the Australian Bureau of Statistics claims that the country has seen the number of industrial disputes rise steadily since 2020, a trend which has been reflected in other nations.

The agreement for the 1,800 dock workers will provide a four year plan for annual salary increases of: 8%, 7%, 4% and 4.5%, plus an additional AUD2,000 bonus.

The planned industrial actions, involving about 1,500 dockworkers from DPW, were ‘overwhelmingly’ supported by workers in September 2023. This response was a reaction to the ongoing ‘wage-cutting’ measures implemented by DPW, which occurred alongside doleful pay increases and significantly higher workloads.

The federal Fair Work Commission, in support of the workers, dismissed DPW’s bid at attempting to suspend the union’s legally-protected industrial action. This, in conjunction with the company’s supposed ‘No, No, No’ stance to ‘non-contentious clauses’ is the expected response from the bourgeois system. Even when the union presented more lenient proposals, DPW would dismiss them, showcasing their disregard for the very workers upon whom the company relies upon to make their billions in profits!

This attitude on the part of the government is certainly not due to the goodwill of those in political power. If anything, it is merely an expedient to try to guarantee social peace, and perpetuate the current capitalist relations of production. Our party already wrote in the Theses of the Communist Abstentionist Fraction (1920), ‘Capitalist relations of production cannot be modified by the intervention of the organs of bourgeois power.’ With our relentless effort to stand on the plane of materialist analysis, we know that the defence of the working class through state organs, which represent bourgeois class dominance, has not and will never represent the proletariat. This will not change, even with legislative or reformist actions taken by the current political institutions. In short, living and working conditions will become more and more intolerable to the workers.

Let’s take at a look at Rassegna Comunista, No. 2 of 1921. We discussed the devaluation of the party’s role by revolutionary syndicalism, which exalted the role of workers’ coalitions under the pretext that they encompassed a greater number of workers. We stated that such an attitude was ‘an unconscious respect for that self-same democratic lie which the bourgeoisie relies on to secure its power by the means of inviting the majority of the people to choose their government.’ Over a hundred years later, the bourgeois state assumes the function of defending the unions in order to dampen labour disputes and prevent them from escalating into open class struggle.

As expected, Dubai pushed their losses from the ‘inefficient ports’ onto the consumer. ‘Dubai Ports… is putting up prices [by] 52% for Australian businesses and wants a 14% pay cut for Australian workers’ said the secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions. In fact, thanks to the months-long union strike forcing its hand, the country’s cargo backlog had risen to more than 50,000 containers even several months after.

From a historical point of view, international trade, dominated in recent decades by multinational corporations, has shaped the economic, social, and labour landscape of Australia. The country’s economic and cultural development has been necessarily tied to its major port cities, which have acted as vital hubs for foreign capital and trade. Due to its relatively small domestic market and vast geographic extent, Australia has historically relied on foreign investment to fuel its economic growth. This reliance is particularly important given the prevalence of capital-intensive sectors vital to the economy, such as agriculture, mining, and manufacturing. This dependence on maritime trade has fundamentally influenced various sectors of the economy. However, it has also led to challenges for Australian maritime workers. Because of their vital role in maintaining the flow of international trade, these workers often face harsh exploitative conditions. They are subjected to extremely long working hours, receive low wages, and operate in unsafe working environments where serious, often fatal, accidents frequently occur. The Australian economy’s dependence on maritime trade has traditionally placed these workers in a particularly disadvantageous position, as the ruling class has had little difficulty justifying the maintenance of the national social order. All they have to do is point out the need for the efficient and continuous functioning of the port infrastructure of coastal cities. Consequently, the historical dependence on maritime trade has been a key element in the intense exploitation of maritime workers.

The union states that they ‘will also not allow them to tell us what Australian workers should accept for wages and conditions when their track record overseas is so poor,’ and, ‘… [we] will not tolerate this blatant mistreatment of our members by this international, multi-billion-dollar company.’ It should be noted in this context, DPW is a multinational corporation based in the United Arab Emirates, which in 2023 had a revenue of 18.25 billion dollars and employs more than 100,000 people. The history of this company, which was founded in 2005, characterises it as a central instrument of the foreign policy of the UAE. The DPW plays a significant role in supporting the aggressive capitalist militarism of the Gulf countries. This makes it available to support the most adventurous turns of other imperialist powers. Further, DPW has never hidden, beyond its blatantly anti-union stances, its intent to break the workers’ spirit by subjecting them to hellish working conditions. Particularly telling is the company’s position on free trade agreements in the United Kingdom, especially in the wake of Brexit. DPW lobbied the UK government for the establishment of ‘free ports,’ designed as ‘special economic zones’ exempt from labour rights, regulations, and taxes.

The negotiation process between the wharfies and the company has always been purposefully prolonged and an arduous chore for the workers. The last contract negotiations, which began after the expiration of the contracts prior, lasted two and a half years. The workers finally voted in favour of the new enterprise bargaining agreements in February 2021, following a previous in-principle deal reached in October 2020. Negotiations had been gradually winding down since late August 2020 when both sides reached an agreement on part of the bargaining agreement.

The MUA led the negotiations on behalf of the workers. Representing 14,000 maritime and related industry workers, the MUA is part of the Construction, Forestry, and Maritime Employees Union (CFMEU), which boasts 120,000 members in total. The MUA is also affiliated with the Australian Council of Trade Unions, with 1.5 million members, and the International Transport Workers’ Federation. Although firmly rooted as a bourgeois union hiding amongst the ranks of the Australian labour movement, it could not help itself but to indulge. Supporting certain worker-led initiatives, ‘proving’ itself to be somewhat effective. This was the case with the recent strike by Australian dock workers.