BOUGAINVILLE ISLAND is ostensibly part of Papua-New Guinea and so under Australian administration. But where the action is, on the $350 million copper mine project at Panguna, the accent is heavily American.
The projected copper mine itself has a parentage that reaches back to the City of London, Melbourne's Collins House and the international Conzlnc Riotinto empire. But American companies and American companies' ways dominate the construction work.
A talk with an Australian worker who has been on Bougainville brought out some of the things that go on there, mostly without mention by the Australian press.
For instance, last month there was a protest march through the town of Kieta by about 800 striking project workers. This month, a strike was planned by indigenous workers to demand a rise in the scandalous pay rate of about 13 cents an hour, or $6 a week.
Among the 3000 or so "expatriate" workers (those recruited in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere outside Papua-New Guinea) there has been a succession of strikes.
When such strikes occur, employers have in some cases stood down indigenous workers, thus avoiding having to pay them even their miserable pittance for that period.
The set-up on the project is that US-based Bechtel WKE is in overall charge. Under it are 20 or more big contractors, many of which also are of US origin. These include Dillinghams, Dumez, Kennedy-Brambles (from Adelaide), O'Neill, Barclay Bros., two divisions of Hornibrooks (regarded as about the best of the employers), Page Communications, Browns (catering), MKF and others.
Pending the negotiations now by the Australian Council of Trade Unions of a new and improved industrial agreement, conditions under which all workers are employed have been laid down by Bechtel WKE in its Project Industrial Rules (PIRs). Contractors may not vary these in workers' favor.
Base rates are set for an ordinary working week. But the PIRs say that "the scheduled hours of work shall be 60 per week," in six ten-hour days. The only break provided by the PIRs in the 10-hour working day is one meal break of half an hour, which does not count towards the ten hours.
Expatriate workers are all skilled. The unskilled work-force is made up of indigenous workers, but there also are skilled workers among the indigenous workers.
Expatriate workers' pay includes $12 a week construction allowance ("deemed to contain compensation for all disabilities . . . including, but not limited to, travelling time, dirty work, confined spaces and handling of obnoxious materials": a lot of disabilities to be sopped up by a mere $12).
There also is $3.50 a day attendance allowance, and $6 a week which is paid on condition that the full 60 hours are worked. If there is a stoppage, or if a worker is even a little late for any reason at all, he loses the $3.50 for that day and the $6 for the week.
Pay can go high. A tradesman who works on the Sunday, as well as the 60 hours in the other six days, may get around $200 for that week.
But pays like that are not for the indigenous workers, even skilled ones. A recent Post Courier advertisement, seeking an indigenous bulldozer driver, offered $16 a week. The unskilled indigenous workers get a $1.60 a week camping allowance on top of their munificent $6 wage. But then $2 for board is deducted from their $7.60.
It is clear that (as already reported in Tribune) lurid press reports recently of a "wild brawl" between expatriates and indigenous workers were false. But it is also clear that expatriate workers are largely unconcerned that their indigenous fellow-workers are so shamelessly exploited.
It is a matter of serious concern that indigenous workers are not even allowed to attend the expatriates mass meetings (though the indigenous workers are then privileged to share the consequences of a mass meeting's strike by being stood down).
The man from Bougainville summed up the attitude of expatriate workers this way: "The indigenous workers are just people who just happen to be there. If they can get a better deal for themselves, then good luck to them, but it's not our worry. They can't help us, so they're no concern of ours."
He was telling it the way it is.
There are no indigenous workers on the site committee. This is made up of a delegate elected by workers of each contractor.
It operates in a situation in which many of the expatriate workers would no longer be financial members of any union. There is talk of setting up a new union there based on this project. This, again, would be a case of expatriates only.
Indigenous workers are covered by the Lae Workers' Union which has indigenous leadership. But with no full-time organiser on the project, this union's coverage can scarcely be more than remote.
For that matter, a lot of expatriate workers have been feeling that they have not been doing much better than this from the Australian Council of Trades Unions and its secretary Mr. Souter.
This feeling goes back to the fact that they were led to believe that ACTU negotiations were being pressed for improved conditions as far back as last October, when Mr Monk was president, but later were disillusioned on this.
Whatever the rights or wrongs of this criticism (and union officials, for their part, may point to the abandonment by many of the workers of their union membership) the fact is that slogans against the ACTU figured in the recent Kieta march by strikers.
This sort of situation, both as between expatriates and indigenes and as between expatriates and the ACTU, is meat and drink to the employers.
It has other, and deeper, significance also.
The Bougainville project is among the first to present the challenge of relationships between expatriate and indigenous workers, engaged in common work and for common employers.
The only relationship that will benefit the workers is one of solidarity against those who exploit both groups of workers and try to play one off against the other.
The more experienced expatriate workers have a working class responsibility to give special help to the indigenous workers. Leaders and activists of the trade union movement, and other Australian progressives, have a responsibility to discover and use ways of promoting this. Above all, this responsibility must be accepted at the top levels of the ACTU and of Federal unions involved.
Such an approach is necessary to help build an internationalist understanding and mutual confidence between Australian and island peoples that will be needed in the future struggles against imperialism in this whole region.
