Imported Steel Threatens Aussie Jobs

Date: 29 June 2000

ACTU Congress meeting in Wollongong this week was told that 200,000 tonnes of imported fabricated steel is planned to hit the local market.

AWU Victorian Branch Secretary Bill Shorten said, "Over the past two years, Australia's major steel fabricators have slashed their local workforce by over 80 per cent. This is yet another scandal of global free trade that the Federal Government deliberately chooses to ignore. Over the past decade, imported fabricated steel has risen from a negligible level to a projected 25 per cent this coming financial year."

"Local manufacturers might as well just surrender. Their own national government has sold them out," Mr. Shorten said.

The AWU was responding to a single, belated finding by the Federal Customs Department last week that imported steel from Thailand had been dumped on the Australian market.

"One swallow does not make a spring. The sad reality is that for every foreign dump that's caught, another dozen get past our incompetent Federal bureaucracy."

"Two years ago, about 10 per cent of transmission line steelwork was imported. An independent assessment (TradeData) forecasts that in five years 50% will be imports. That's thousands of Australian jobs being lost, and Canberra does nothing."

The AWU is participating in a joint worker-employer alliance, including the Australian Institute of Steel Construction and the Steel Institute of Australia, to press all Australian political parties for effective import replacement policies."

"Imported fabricated steel threatens the viability of Australian fabrication shops, and flow-ons to steel suppliers, steel detailers, galvanisers, painters and distributors, as well as structural engineers. This is deadly serious," Mr. Shorten said.

For further information

Contact:	Bill Shorten
Union:	Labor Council of NSW
Phone:	0419-105-263

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