Editorial: Gloves off as unions muscle up in Pilbara

Is this the beginning of the return to the bad old days when cowboy unions held our country’s economy to ransom? After a decades-long freeze-out, unionism is back in the Pilbara, helped there by Albanese Government legislation allowing unions to begin collective bargaining without the majority support of the workforce they represent. And they’ve wasted no time in making their presence known. The Western Mine Workers Alliance has issued demands for a smorgasbord of extra entitlements and perks for BHP workers at the company’s Area C and South Flank mine, including guaranteed annual pay increases of the greater of either a flat 5 per cent or WA’s cost price index percentage plus one extra per cent. They also want an annual $10,000 retention bonus for employees. That’s despite the fact that iron ore prices this week dipped below $US90/t for the first time in almost two years. The plummeting price has already ripped billions from expected State revenue. It’s a worrying sign of what could be to come should the unions be successful in clawing their way back into the country’s most important economic region through other miners. BHP has been among the most strident critics of the Albanese Government’s industrial relations reform which has laid out the welcome mat for unions in the Pilbara’s red dirt. Just a fortnight ago, Resources Minister Madeleine King, a West Australian, dismissed BHP’s concerns about Labor’s wide-ranging suite of reforms as baseless whingeing. “They’ve always railed against Labor policy,” Ms King said in August. “Whether in opposition or government. . . they’re the first to go to the Murdoch press to do a story around what they don’t like about what a Labor government chooses to do and it wouldn’t matter what it is.” She also rubbished criticism from others in the industry that a return to widespread unionism in the Pilbara could drive up costs and curtail productivity in Australia’s most important economic region by increasing industrial action and divorcing wage growth from profits as “hysteria”. That pronouncement is beginning to look unwise. The move by the unions comes as new figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that the nation lost 120,000 working days to industrial action last financial year, a surge of 80 per cent. Widespread strike action on resources projects could have a devastating impact on the economy. The unfortunate reality is that the Australian economy is at a critical juncture. Growth of just 0.2 per cent in the June quarter is all that is standing between Australia and a recession. We have already been in a household recession for some time. This is a period in which governments should be working with businesses to pull all levers available to rev up stagnating productivity. Instead, the Labor Government appears intent on throwing on the handbrake.