A Fair Day’s Work for no Pay – No Way!

When you here that people have worked for a week and then their employer has refused to pay their wages because they wouldn’t work overtime, the immediate response is – “No! They can’t do that! That’s illegal!” But it had been done and the legal representatives of both employer and worker were of the opinion that in the complex industrial world of legal interpretation – they probably could. It meant that the fight had to be an industrial one. Heinemann Dogs is an account of that fight.

The Heinemann workers at the switchboard manufacturers in Mulgrave weren’t militant troublemakers but ordinary people simply going through the proper process of negotiating an EBA. Then their employer, looking for advantage, chose to use the IR legislation in a way that Sharon Burrow described as reprehensible. The workers and their dispute were suddenly thrust onto the national stage. Their issues became no longer just a small, suburban EBA negotiation but a major focus on the extent to which the Howard Government IR legislation could be used to oppress working people and strip them of their rights.

It became a choice for those 46 process workers with little industrial muscle; should they fight or to cower down and be made to feel like dogs. They chose to fight and were immediately thrust into the national industrial and political limelight to be scrutinised and reported on for all to see.

Witnessing, like I did, the way these workers fought against the attacks on their rights and basic decencies, and the way the ETU, the union movement as a whole and, indeed, the community came to support them, left me in no doubt why I wear my heart and unionism on my sleeve. It was a privilege to stand in support of them on their picket line and to be able to document their fight and their victory in Heinemann Dogs.