Car Finance Australia | Australia: PPG Paint Workers Sojourn On Set Upon As Association Pushes Two-tier Salary Cut

After 5 weeks, more than 120 workers sojourn on set upon at a Melbourne paint plant operated by the US-based transnational PPG Industries. They walked out on Mar 28 against the company's urge for a new two-tier salary system, involving new hires reception a 43 percent salary cut. PPG"a multi-billion dollar universal producer of chemicals, paint and glass, and a leading retailer for Toyota, Ford, and General Motors Holden in Australia"is moreover attempting to criticise the overtime benefits and working conditions of the existing workforce, and has mounted an assertive set upon violation operation to sustain production.

The critical strive being waged by the PPG workers right away stands at a critical branch point. The association involved, United Voice (formerly the Liquor, Miscellaneous and Hospitality Union), is conspiring with the firm to exercise the two-tier salary network and other measures directed at slicing work costs. United Voice has intentionally removed the workers via the strike. No white picket has been formed, and PPG has confirmed operations by using contractors as set upon breakers. United Voice has supposing no set upon pay, leaving many workers beneath substantial financial pressure.

As a result, final Wednesday the association was able to secure a most opinion of the charming workers on a counter-offer for an craving negotiate consent (EBA) that concedes the two-tier salary system.

PPG has offering a favoured 3 percent annual salary rise"in effect, a actual salary cut since significantly aloft cost of living increases"as good as a one-off remuneration of $1,500, in place of backdating the 3 percent way up to the expiry of the formerly EBA. The paint firm is moreover rigorous workers give up their existing guaranteed, pre-paid 5 hours of overtime any week that is currently incorporated in to the annualised salary package, and thus involves legal holiday loading and superannuation. Workers have told the World Socialist Web Site that this portion alone will descend their weekly salary by between $240 and $450, depending on specific salary brackets.

The attack being waged by PPG Industries is segment of a wider objectionable being waged against the wages and conditions of the working class, mainly in the production sector. Encouraged by the Labor supervision of Prime Minister Julia Gillard, and working hand in hand with the traffic unions, large business and finance funds are looking to speed up distinction rates and sustain "international competitiveness" by implementing unconditional restructuring measures.

In primary negotiations over the new EBA, PPG administration tabled work expenses at its Thailand and China plants"clearly indicating this was the benchmark for its Australian workforce. The firm subsequently released a matter that blatantly settled that its middle target was to "reduce our on the whole wages costs." In a thinly potential threat, PPG warned that the industrial action "can usually damage our bid to secure the long-term future of the site."

PPG Industries is the world's second largest coatings company, with sales of $13.5 billion and a $769 million distinction in 2010. This was completed by cruel cost cutting measures, inclusive the closure of plants in the US, France, Canada and Holland, that saw 2,500 workers, or 5.6 percent of PPG's universal workforce, laid off.

Even before the 2008 financial crash, PPG was scandalous in the US for slicing wages by two-tier systems targeting new hires. This resource is right away entrenched via the American automobile industry, with the United Auto Workers association grand massive salary cuts on interest of Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors. As a result, increase is to "Big Three" in 2010 skyrocketed to $11 billion, and there are skeleton to sinecure 35,000 new workers by 2015"all on reduction than $15 an hour, replacing laid off workers who had received around twice that amount.

PPG's attack at the Melbourne paint plant constitutes a pointy bell to the Australian working category of the type of measures that are right away to be imposed via the economy.

There is extensive opponent amid PPG workers to the two-tier demand, and a tiny but poignant minority voted final Wednesday against the union's draft counter-offer. One of those who voted "no" after that told the WSWS that there was substantial difficulty at the meeting, mostly due to the union's disaster to put anything in writing. There was usually a written display of the points to be enclosed in the union's supposed counter-offer.

"The association is a military force to keep the workers down," the workman said. "They have used fume and mirrors to upset us. You're choosing by casting votes on what you're verbally being told from up the front, but you should be able to read it in front of you and consider it."

He explained that a few workers felt that the two-tier salary make up could be conceded because they could free-for-all to elevate the wages and conditions of the new workforce in 3 years time, when the next EBA will be determined. But the workman mentioned he had against these positions: "The free-for-all is now"once two-tier is in, the equine has bolted."

One PPG employee circulated papers surveying the reasons for his opponent to a two-tier system. "For us to agree to a two-tier pay make up would be implicitly reprehensible," one report stated. "It would be selling our souls for a few china pieces ... if you are battered in this, companies will not end with us. I impute to other companies where your kids/grandkids etc., might one day work. This will be seen as a assessment box for them and they will watch carefully." The workman moreover referred to the "gap between the abounding and the poor"""it is getting as indecent as America's ... this is the Americanization of Australia""and indicted PPG of violating essay 23.2 of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that states, "Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to next to pay for next to work."

In looking to impel by a two-tier salary system, the association is directly melancholy the job safety of the existing workforce. If new hires are authorised in to the plant on 43 percent descend wages, PPG will have a send and evident financial inducement to obtain absolved of its gifted employees. The workers identified as potential opponents of the new system of administration inside the plant will no skepticism be amid those first targeted in the war of attrition.

United Voice and the other traffic unions casing the PPG workforce have already presided over the drop of hundreds of jobs. A decade ago there were 600 people in use at the plant"now the complete is reduction than half that.

In Australia and internationally, the unions function as the send agents of corporate management, grand whatever salary cuts, capability speedups, and pile job cuts are deemed necessary. The privileges of the upper-middle category association bureaucracy are right away wholly divorced from the amicable location of the workers they nominally represent. In the box of PPG, United Voice has ensured that it will gather automatically-deducted association impost from the second-tier workforce. Like every other leading union, United Voice moreover has remunerative investments by its superannuation fund, Hostplus, that manages $9 billion in investments.

PPG workers can usually allege their strive if they make a gritty break from the traffic unions, and organize independently, inclusive by the arrangement of an inaugurated rank-and-file committee.

The charming workers must be beat the union's siege of their strive by branch out to other sections of workers confronting identical attacks on their jobs, wages, and conditions. This includes those in auto-parts creator Bosch, whose plant directly next doorway to PPG is to cut back one-third of its workforce by 2013, Ford and Toyota, that not long ago voiced cuts to jobs and shifts, and other production workers in Australia and internationally. A gritty open promotion against PPG's provocations would immediately win extensive encouragement amid working people.

The PPG workers are sealed in a diplomatic fighting against the Labor government, that has since corporate Australia the immature light to move forward with an objectionable against the working class. The bill being released on May 10 is set to cut back spending on gratification and open infrastructure, whilst cutting taxes on corporate increase and delivering assorted other pro-business measures. Contrary to the assorted ridiculous claims that Australia someway avoided the universal mercantile crisis, the heartless purgation measures imposed in Europe and the US are right away being brought to Australia, to be able to sustain the economy's "international competitiveness."

Workers must be reply on the basement of a new internationalist and Marxist perspective, fighting to capsize the antiquated distinction network and rearrange mercantile life internationally to offer the interests of working people, not the ultra-wealthy oligarchy.