In the wake of the Qantas battle between management and unions, the country’s waterfront could stand to become the next front in the increasingly tense relationship between employers and their workers’ unions, according to a report by the Australian Financial Review.
With dock worker strikes at three locations and negotiations deadlocked at two others, the waterfront is joining aviation, via the Qantas dispute, and coal mining, via strikes and overtime bans at BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance coal mines in Queensland, as the latest fronts in the union battles for greater job security, disputes over the use of contractors and rostering and staffing levels, with pay demand falling further down the list of union priorities.