To enter the conference room at Newcastle's AWU headquarters is to take an unexpected step back in time. On every wall, there's memorabilia, tributes and curiosities devoted to the region's proud and passionate working-class heritage. There's even a framed ACTU T-shirt signed by four blokes going by the names of Gough, Bob, Paul, and Kevin.
Also prominent is a photographic display documenting every day of the recent Boeing dispute at Williamtown. Throughout 2005 and 2006, Boeing workers downed tools for a total of 265 days for the right to bargain collectively with their employers through the AWU.
Newcastle Branch Secretary Richard Downie still gets hot under the collar about this shameful episode in Australian industrial history. "I know it's four years down the track, but it was a very difficult time for workers and their families throughout this region," he says, mindful that Boeing employees now work under a collective agreement, albeit not a union one.
"Vast sums of money have been wasted by the company fighting us since 2004. We have members working at Boeing and we're doing everything possible to serve them," he says. "I can tell you one thing: we're not going away."
Working class and proud
A born-and-bred Novocastrian, Richard is rightly proud of his city's special relationship with the trade union movement. "Newcastle's always been a working town with working-class roots," he says. "When BHP shut up shop here in 1999, there was a fair degree of Chicken Little catching on, but look around, the sky didn't fall."
Despite the fact that BHP has skipped town, Newcastle continues to rely on its coal and steel industries, and our first stop in the Hunter Region is Waratah's OneSteel. Senior Site Delegate Bob Parkinson and OH&S officer Karen Robinson greet us at the gate and usher us into the AWU onsite van. This is one of the first stops for OneSteel employees, the company granting AWU access to all new arrivals.
"We have approximately 400 workers here and 399 are AWU members," Bob says. There's always one in every crowd...
Sign of the times
Mindful that a clumsy journo and photographer are moments away from stumbling through a high-risk work environment, Karen kits us out in the latest safety clothing and accessories:
hard hat, steel-capped boots, safety goggles, hearing protection (ear plugs), and a high-visibility jacket manufactured from a flame and burn-retardant fabric.
While lacing up the big, black boots, I spy a sign Bob has tacked to the wall of the van:
"For a worker to refuse to belong to a union is not to exercise a democratic freedom. It is to accept benefits that others have worked for without contributing to the cost." It's a message that rings true loud and clear.
Today, we're taking in a section of the steelworks where train wheels and axles are manufactured. OneSteel is the only company in the Southern Hemisphere that forges railway wheels, and the United States rail system has recently granted OneSteel an import licence. As a result, annual production is expected to increase from 80,000 to 110,000 wheels.
The sheds are huge, hundreds of metres long (the longest at 500 metres) and about 30 metres high. It's the sort of dark and gloomy industrial setting that would suit an action film like The Matrix. I half-expected two blokes in black to start catapulting through the air on a walkway up above.
Down on the floor, this is hot and heavy work. The rotary furnace used to prepare steel ingots for pressing into wheels is set at a steady 1290 degrees Celsius. When the fiery furnace door opens, the heat blasting out is overwhelming (and very dangerous). Workers are extra cautious about exposing themselves to the worst of it.
Bob walks and talks us through the process like an old pro. AWU National Secretary Paul Howes was a recent visitor to the steelworks, so Bob has his tour-guide spiel down pat. An AWU Member for 36 years, and a Delegate for the last 22, Bob's worked as a steelmaker, crane driver and labourer at this site. Away from the steelworks, he fires up his 30-foot mariner cruiser on Lake Macquarie, and drops a line for bream, dewfish, and kingfish.
On the road
Steelworks behind us, we take a detour on the way back to the city centre, catching up with a dozen or so Boral workers resealing a road on the way to Minmi, a suburb about 20 kilometres from Newcastle's CBD. When we pull over, AWU Delegate Brett Slavin is at the roadside conveying instructions to traffic control up the road.
Thankfully, for Brett's sake, the weather is mild. "The heat can get to you on a job like this. Spring and autumn are the best times of the year to work," he says.
AWU member and truck driver Phil Batchelor joins us for a chat. Today he's spraying the road with rubberised bitumen out the back end of a truck. "The truck holds around about nine and a half thousand litres of the stuff," he says. "On a good day, we can reseal a couple of kilometres of road."
All electoral matter is authorised by Paul Howes, National Secretary