More than 200 unionists marched on the Brisbane offices of Rio Tinto on 12 February. Called by the Maritime Union of Australia, the demonstration was organised after the crews of two bulk carriers were sacked and replaced by workers paid around $2 per day.

Pacific Aluminium, which operates the Tomago aluminium smelter in the Hunter Region of NSW, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Rio Tinto. At the end of January, it notified the crew of the CSL Melbourne – which had been carrying alumina from Gladstone to the Tomago smelter for five years – that their jobs were gone. In the weeks prior to the announcement, the company obtained a licence from the federal government enabling it to transport the alumina aboard an overseas-flagged ship crewed by workers with no legal entitlement to Australian wage rates.

The replacement of the crew of the CSL Melbourne followed a similar move, in November, against the crew of the MV Portland. Before it was scrapped, the Portland had carried alumina from Western Australia to Alcoa’s Victorian smelter for 28 years.  

“The demonstration today is about workers on the MV Portland and CSL Melbourne being removed from their place of work, and it’s about job security for the future for our children”, the MUA delegate on the Portland, Dale Eaton, told Red Flag.

“We’re under attack at the moment. They’ve already attacked manufacturing, now they’re attacking shipping, and we don’t know where they’re going to next”, he said.

Mike Barber, MUA member, said that the sackings formed part of a broad anti-union agenda. He described as “Thatcherite” the decision to send dozens of NSW police on board the CSL Melbourne to remove the crew, who had been occupying the ship in protest.

The Brisbane protest was one of a number held around the country around the issue, similar actions taking place in Newcastle and Darwin.

However, while initially responding to the sackings by setting up community assemblies where the two ships had been docked, the union’s campaign appears at the moment to be focused on a “jobs embassy” set up outside Parliament House in Canberra. 

Dale said that the support the sacked seafarers have received from the union movement has been fantastic. “They can see the bigger picture as well”, he said.