Employers and employees must be hoping that the stand-off at Mount Isa Mines is not a sign of things to come under enterprise bargaining in a climate of falling unemployment. To date the new industrial relations regime has not had much of a test run in a climate of level or falling unemployment. Employees facing the dole queue tend to be more ruly than those in a more buoyant economy. It is true that the Mount Isa dispute arose over an enterprise-bargaining offer. However, the dispute is by no means confined to that issue.
It appears that a power struggle between unions is as much a cause of the stand-off as a power struggle between employer and union. An enterprise deal with MIM was brokered by the Australian Workers Union and the Australian Metal Workers Union. However, key members of the workforce who are members of the rival Construction, Forestry and Mining Employees’ Union rejected the deal. This led to the company imposing a lock-out. There are some other elements to the dispute. Workers at Mount Isa see the better pay and conditions at coalfields elsewhere in Queensland for less dangerous work and want more for themselves. Further, unions and management are playing out the dispute, at least in part, hundreds of kilometres away in Brisbane. The dispute is showing that all the old bogies of Australian industrial relations are still with us. Demarcation, relativities, quick resort to strike and lock-out, attempts by national or state-based unions to deal with a local dispute from afar, bloody-mindedness and a failure of some employees to recognise that the company’s economic health and their own co-incide.
Far from showing that enterprise bargaining in theory is flawed, the dispute is showing that merely changing the formal rules is not enough. There is a need to change the culture and thinking of both management and workers. Unfortunately, that mentality has been built up over many decades and will take a long time to put aside. This dispute aside, that is happening. Earlier this month, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry reported that there had been an increase in the number and length of enterprise agreements and that they were becoming more effective. Both sides of those successful agreements will be hoping that the Mount Isa dispute is a one-off restricted to the peculiar circumstances of Mount Isa.