Chips On Shoulders, Loggers Lay Siege
The Age
Saturday January 21, 1995
Hundreds of timber workers stood in drizzling city rain yesterday to blockade the office of their enemy in the battle about export woodchips, the Wilderness Society.
They came prepared. Bags of sausages and bread were stacked against the office wall. At lunchtime the foresters set up a sausage sizzle, while city workers sipped cappuccino in the cafe across the lane.
Upstairs five staff and four police officers were barricaded in the Wilderness Society office. The staff called the police after the timber workers had threatened to occupy the third-floor office.
Mr Tony White, an organiser with the forest division of the Construction, Forestry, Mining, and Energy Union, said the union would continue to blockade the office today.
He said timber workers from the central highlands, East Gippsland and Geelong had blockaded the office to protest against similar tactics used by the Wilderness Society to prevent foresters from working.
``The Wilderness Society hasn't protested at (Resources Minister) Beddall's office at Parliament House or at the offices of the multi- national companies because they're gutless and they think timber workers are soft targets," Mr White said. ``Maybe they've learnt a salutory lesson today."
One of the Wilderness Society staff barricaded in the office said the union's tactic was counter-productive.
Mr Faruk Avdi said the union should concentrate on protecting the long-term employment prospects of timber workers by helping to develop strategies to move the industry out of old-growth forests and into plantations.
Mr Avdi said the blockade had not disrupted the work of the office.
But Mr White said the timber workers had turned away a dozen people who had intended going into the office. There were no arrests.
Mr White said the union would hold more protests next week before the CFMEU's logging truck blockade of Federal Parliament when it resumes on 31 January.
The Wilderness Society plans a protest rally on 26 January, with a march from the National Gallery to the Treasury Gardens.
© 1995 The Age