Timber workers to decide on blockade

Simon Johanson, The Age Online, March 7 2002

Timber workers and logging truck operators are considering the blockade in retaliation to ongoing protests by environmentalists, Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union national assistant secretary Michael O'Connor said.  "What we're trying to do is highlight the fact that our members have been targeted week-in week-out, year-in year-out by green protesters," he said. "While we support people's right to protest, what people need to understand is that some of our members have lost a year's income out of five," he said.

Mr O'Connor said the CFMEU and Victorian Forest Harvesting and Cartage Council would meet tonight to discuss what action workers would take.
"We haven't even worked out, one, whether we're definitely doing it, two, when we're doing it and how we're doing it," he said.

The idea of blockading popular tourist destinations along the Great Ocean Road was being looked at to highlight the problems facing timber workers, he said.  "Unfortunately people might get annoyed but that's not the main purpose."

Mr O'Connor said the union was not taking lightly either the inconvenience a blockade would cause the public or safety concerns. "But there is this issue about highlighting what some people seem to be suffering year-in year-out," he said.

If approved by union members, the blockade would wreak havoc with the long weekend traffic to the popular tourist destinations - including the Twelve Apostles - along the Great Ocean Road, which follows Victoria's south-western coastline.

The possible loggers' protest comes after police and state government conservation offi cers yesterday broke up the five-year-old Goolengook forest blockade in old-growth forest in eastern Victoria yesterday.  The pre-dawn raid opened the way for the resumption of logging, stalled since 1997.

About 75 anti-logging protesters gathered outside state parliament in Melbourne yesterday to hold a day of mourning over the resumption of logging.

with AAP