I spent 11 years in the Oil industry, when in 1976 Royal Dutch Shell financed the closure of refining operations in both Shell and Caltex refineries with millions of dollars from the Royal Dutch Shell Head office.
The Dutch were attempting to undermine the first term Wran government by provoking an industrial dispute and forcing a strike by the FEDFA and the AWU; this led to the shutting down of the Granville refinery.
They also paid the projected operating losses for Caltex to shut down the Kurnell refinery. This was designed to have the Labor government go to the polls with the voting population totally offside having empty petrol tanks.
At this time I was a part-time union secretary but still a middle manager for Shell and was therefore privy to the management briefings of all salaried officers in the staff canteen where Shell outlined their strategy and tactics.
These bastards were going to interfere in my country to bring down a democratically elected government. Accordingly I became angry enough to pass all this detail onto Barrie Unsworth who was Secretary of the Labor Council of NSW in Sussex street.
I spent the next two weeks sitting in Pat Hills Offices in the room next to the Minister’s office providing the Government with answers each time the Shell managers tried to prolong the stoppage they had provoked.
The workers voted to go back to work after their union secretary Jack Cambourne, alerted them to what the game was, and were then told by management to stay in the meal rooms until called, but not to start up any plant.
The management then ordered key parts of the refinery dismantled. The Government used its authority to order them to reverse that process. They raised “Technical matters” and the government rebutted those with answers provided by Shell’s own salaried employees in the next room (unknown to Shell). These employees had the knowledge and skills to start up and shut down refineries (a complex and difficult process taking days) as the need arose. Unlike the head office political operators.
Shell finally ordered operators to deliberately poison huge tanks of fuel with far too much Tetra Ethyl Lead (that should have been a crime).
To make sure the refinery would stay off-line, the company had arranged a workforce of South Korean construction workers who normally worked as refinery task force in the Arab oil countries.
The AMWU led an industrial dispute objecting to these workers coming into the country via New Zealand on tourist visas to circumvent immigration laws. The Korean workforce was housed in Wollongong and bussed up to the refinery early one morning in a military style operation. The proverbial then hit the fan.
The Labor Council called an emergency meeting chaired by Barrie Unsworth, in its board meeting of all affected unions and invited the Australian Government Immigration Minister Ian McPhee to attend. To his credit he came and listened to people’s concerns without putting any politics into the mix.
However, Barrie Unsworth gave him a bit of a harangue when Ian McPhee read a report from his department claiming “there are only 70 South Korean trades men registered with the department with special visas to do this type of work” to which Barry retorted, “well we have something like 700 out there at Granville refinery so there is something wrong in your department”. He went on to say in an exasperated tone, “If people are able to come in under the radar like this, pretty soon we’ll have drugs, stand over merchants, corruption and prostitution all over Sydney”.
I responded to this from the other end of the table with a smart arsed quip “but Barrie, that’s how we got the country started”. Other representatives around the table had a chuckle, but Barry was not amused. He pulled me to one side after the meeting and said roughly, “what was that? The empire striking ******* back?”
I liked Unsworth in lots of ways in those days, because he allowed the mongrel in him to be on display and he pushed the agenda of working people without let.
Later when he was Premier his minders had him take on a softer face, had him wear a cardigan and the voters saw that as false. He should have stuck to being a driving leader and the bastard he often showed when he was the Trade Union leader.
The next day when Unsworth came to the refinery on an inspection with the NSW Industrial Arbitration Commission relating to the Amalgamated Metal Workers Union dispute.
He asked me about the contents of the huge petrol storage tanks. He said, “ Shell is telling Pat Hills that they don’t have petrol available for sale, so these tanks must be empty, right?”
I informed him that the tanks were full of perfectly good ‘On Grade’ petrol that had been deliberately poisoned the night before to make it impossible to distribute this so called, ‘country petrol’ as fuel in urban environments under the State Governments health regulations. I thought Barrie was going to have a stroke; he was absolutely livid.
That was when Pat Hills forced them (Shell) to put “Country petrol” onto Sydney streets, and fuel began to flow after an historic internationally inspired two week corporate strike. Shell finally caved in when it became apparent to them that the population was awake to them.
Knowing the lengths an international corporation will go to, the voters delivered their verdict and returned the Wran government for a second term.
Don’t be bluffed by these sociopathic bullies. They will still get their pound of flesh, “don’t you worry about that”!
This is an extract of a biography by John Ward
