Australia’s once mighty shipbuilding sector is experiencing a resurgence in Newcastle - bringing with it a new generation of members to the AMWU, according to two veteran metal workers.

AMWU delegate, Benny Hill, says the previously dormant Tomago shipyard has been brimming with work since local company, Forgacs, landed a major contract to build the Australian Navy’s new generation of air warfare destroyer (AWDs) three years ago.

“The site has really grown. When we started here a few years ago, there were only a handful of us. Now there are over 300 members and we’re still growing.

“Not only have we managed to sign up everyone in the workshop, but we’ve also got the engineers and supervisors joining too. We’ve really tried to go out and recruit everyone we could – we wanted to start from a position of unity.”

Mr Hill and fellow co-site delegate, Larry Crozier, have collectively clocked up nearly fifty years working in the local metals industry, as a fitter and boilermaker respectively, but they believe manufacturing in the region has never looked stronger.

“Work creates work. Having the destroyer project here, has been feeding work to a lot of smaller companies in the region,” says Mr Crozier. 

“We’ve worked hard with the company to ensure that Novacastrians are employed at Forgacs where possible. We want to look after the families and keep our young people employed here.

“Shipbuilding is one of those industries that stays with you. It’s like building a train or a car. You learn to love it. We wanted to leave that legacy of passion and skill for building ships. In our most recent union collective agreement, we won a number of training clauses to do that.”

Of the three AWDs being built for the Navy, Forgacs was originally contracted to make up to 31 hull blocks out of the 93. In April, the contract was extended to build three additional hull blocks to bring a further 70 more workers on the project - in a contract worth an extra $40 million.

Mr Hill believes a strong union presence combined with good management relations has been essential to the shipyard’s productivity. 

“We’ve built a good relationship with management. When it comes to negotiations we’ve tried to look at longevity and keeping them competitive in the marketplace.”

He says members are hopeful of gaining upcoming contracts for the Navy’s next generation of submarines and a contract to build the next generation of Sydney Ferries. 

In the meantime Mr Hill says the delegates are focused on overseeing a large, growing site.

“Your phone never stops ringing, and it’s hard to please everyone all the time! But we both get a lot of satisfaction out of it.”