For those of you that can't be bothered, here is the text:
"FOR a glimpse of John Howard's rosy future of industrial sweet reason, let us look at the strike by Boeing aircraft maintenance workers at the air force base at Williamtown, near Newcastle.
On June 1, 35 of them downed tools because they were unhappy with individual work contracts the Boeing company wanted them to sign.
The nuts and bolts of the dispute are complex but, in short, they suspected they were being dudded on pay, penalty rates, skill allowances and the like.
With some reluctance, they asked the Australian Workers' Union to go through the figures; reluctance because, before they worked for Boeing, many of them had been in the Defence Force, the sort of loyal service personnel who felt, instinctively, that trade unions were a bit bolshie.
Not any more. The union discovered they were being paid up to $20,000 a year less than technicians doing a comparable job for a competing company, British Aerospace, working across the other side of the Williamtown tarmac. So the Boeing people joined the union and, as is their right, asked it to represent them in collective bargaining with the boss. That is as far as they got. The company refused to talk."