Members of the Maritime Union of Australia working at Patrick Stevedores’ Port Botany container terminal in Sydney started a 48-hour strike at 6am on 13 April. Waterside workers have lost patience with terminal owner Asciano after more than a year of failed negotiations for a new enterprise agreement.

There have already been two 72-hour strikes in Fremantle this month, and a further 48-hour strike is planned for Brisbane from Wednesday, 20 April, with more strike action in Melbourne the following day.

It was only in January this year that the first national strike at Patrick Stevedores since the historic 1998 waterfront dispute took place. Then the bosses locked out the entire workforce in an attempt to de-unionise the waterfront. They failed. This week Patrick’s bosses in Sydney once more threatened a lockout – this time to try to intimidate the Port Botany workers out of striking. They failed again.

On the first day of the strike, MUA members rallied at Malcolm Turnbull’s office in the expensive Sydney suburb of Edgecliff. Speaking to Red Flag at the rally, Paul McAleer, Sydney branch secretary of the union, linked Asciano’s intransigence to broader attacks on workers: “The policies of the Turnbull government are continuing to really destroy job security for all maritime workers, not just seafarers, and we’ve now seen an escalation on the waterfront as well”. In response, “all four terminals are deciding to take strike action”.

Alexandra Badenoch, head of human resources and corporate affairs at Asciano, blamed all problems with the negotiations on a “small, difficult group” of workers. Instead of being so troublesome, she suggested that wharfies “work to the roster properly”.

Badenoch failed to mention what the company’s real agenda is. Over the past two years it has halved the workforce by replacing workers with machines. In addition, within a week of these negotiations beginning, Patrick had already reneged on its initial salary offer. An original wage offer of 3 percent (only ever available on condition that the union refrain from strike action – at the only time it is legal to engage in it) was swiftly cut to a miserable 1 percent for the first year of the new agreement. Badenoch said this amount “reflects the damage wrought by industrial action”.

After this week’s strike the company tried further threats, demanding its ultimatum be accepted by 15 April. The MUA has rejected this “final offer”.

All of this is a clear lesson about the importance of strikes. It’s not for nothing that fear of industrial action motivates the bosses. They know where their profits come from – and it’s not the work of HR managers. Badenoch said the strikes would cost millions and hurt the Australian economy, creating “a very significant and unacceptable backlog of containerised goods that will take weeks, if not months, to clear”.

Asciano has a specific reason to be even more concerned to force through a rotten deal. They are up for a possible $9.05 billion takeover by Qube and Brookfield. A compliant workforce on such an agreement would boost the company’s value. Strike action is a fitting answer to this desire.