THAT IRA STOP ORDER

Prime Minister Patrick Manning’s warning that Government would take action if it felt that the national interest was being jeopardised by the industrial situation re the construction of Atlantic LNG’s Train Four is the Administration’s first hint that it may be planning to amend the IRA to permit it to obtain a Court order restraining the workers from continuing with their strike action.

It will allow for an invoking of a suitably amended Section 65(1) of the Industrial Relations Act 1972, as well as to have the Industrial Court, under Sub Section 2 order the workers to “refrain from, or discontinue,” their industrial action. It will be a “stop order in the national interest”, and if pursued would be the second time in recent years that Government would be taking Industrial Court action to have striking workers engaged in the construction of a plant in an Essential Industry to return to their jobs. Section 65(1), as it exists, specifically states: “Where industrial action is threatened or taken, whether in conformity with the provisions of this Act, or otherwise, and the Minister considers that the national interest is threatened or affected thereby, he may make application to the Court ex parte for an injunction restraining the parties from commencing or from continuing such action; and the Court may make such order thereon as it considers fit having regard to the national interest.”

But there is a catch, as unlike the first occasion the workers are not represented by a trade union, neither do they belong to a bargaining unit to which any such order by the Court can apply. When Government intervened with respect to the work stoppage by workers constructing an earlier Atlantic LNG train the workers belonged to the Oilfield Workers’ Trade Union [OWTU] and the union was a party to the dispute. Since the workers at the Atlantic LNG Train Four construction site are not represented by a trade union, nor are they within a bargaining unit, the provisions of the IRA do not apply. What this means is that the present Administration may have to amend the Industrial Relations Act to allow for a “stop order in the national interest” to be applicable in their case.

The question arises: Will Government do this by adding to Category 7 of Essential Industries, under Schedule 1 of the Act, “Oil, Gas, Petrochemicals (Exploration, Exploitation, Refining, Manufacture, Distribution, Marketing), the word Construction, and shifting it (Category 7) to Essential Services (Schedule 2 of the IRA, 1972)? And will the People’s National Movement Administration be willing to risk the political fallout from this, particularly as the Minister of Labour’s (Larry Achong) support for the workers involved had, as Prime Minister Manning declared, compromised the Government? And, in turn, will this pose a threat to Achong’s position in Cabinet?