[BITList] QANTAS Lockout.

[John Feltham]

Hugh,

On 31/10/2011, at 4:48 AM, HUGH wrote:

> He may well have lost any marbles he ever had.

He has an excuse. He's ir

<< There was a piddling one day token strike (don't ask me what "token" meant) in this area, involving the drawing offices in a local shipyard - they had a local grievance. The DO I was in had nothing to do with it, and we worked (or didn't work) as usual.  Nonetheless, on the morning after the strike, our management handed the office boy a pile of letters to hand out to those named on the envelopes, ie, all of us. We were sacked forthwith, all of us (ie, permanently locked out immediately), for having participated in the strike. "WTF?" we asked ourselves, and prepared to pack up and leave. "What's up?" asked they who had handed out the notices, on seeing a flurry of activity and hearing angry voices where before there had been calm. "Hang on," they said, on reading the letter one chap had received, "This is news to us."  "Well, you handed the ****ing things out", they were told. "Please give them back to us, we didn't read them", was the next move. But we didn't give them back.  We let the silly buggers stew for a while.  Up river a bit, the same notices had been handed out to the staff who had gone on strike, and, on reading them, they had a short meeting, then went home with their tools, not forgetting their coats. "What's the score with all this?" asked management of one chap exiting.  "You've sacked us all," he told them, and offered the sacking notice in evidence.  Management reacted as had our management, but it was next day before the staff came back. >>


During the early 70s I was the shop steward for the Instruments Fitters at an iron-ore pellet plant up in the NS of West Australia.

One of my friend (another Irish man!), was the union rep for his mechanical fitters on his shift.

Just before knock-off after the night shift, he took his shift down to the fore-man's office and told them to hang around there for a while while he went to the toilet.

A few minutes later the foreman came out and asked where Ron was. He ws told that he had gone to the toilet.

So he told the fitters to go up a flight of stairs in the plant and take a whole load of scaffolding up several flights of stairs. The guys refused, telling him that it was not their job and that he should go and get the riggers to do the job. The foreman then said the lot of you are fired.

Ron came back and was told what had happened. Ron told them that they weren't fired as he was the shop steward and if the foreman wantrd to sack anyone the shop steward had to be present.

Ron went in to see the foreman who told him that those fitters had refused a job and that he had fired them. Ron told him that they weren't sacked as he hadn't followed the correct procedure.

Ron walked out and took his men down to the workshop where the General Shop Steward was and told him what had happened.

The GS blew his whistle and then lot walked out. As did all the other unions when they heard what had happened.

No one went in to management to tell them anything.

The day went by and at 4.30 PM an Industrial Officer from the Company rolled up to the pub and asked the stewards to go back to the plant and meet with management in the Board Room.

They all got in cars and went down to the board room where the Head Honcho of the Industrial Office was sitting with his side kicks.

No-one said anything for about 5 minutes when all of a sudden the Chief SS stood up and said, "Boys come on let's go."

They all got up to leave but the Industrial guy said, "Where are you going?"

The CS said, "Apparently you have changed your mind. You asked us to come here. You don't want to talk to us."

The Industrial guy said, "Yes we do want to talk you. Why have you all gone on strike? No one has told us why."

"Ah" said the CS, "This morning you had a case of 6 men not willing to do a job that wasn't theirs. Now you have 150 men who won't work for you. Come on boys we're leaving."

And they all walked out leaving them dumbstruck!

We were out for about a week.


ooroo







  





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