WITH one entirely legal decision - to move to lock out its workforce - tug operator Svitzer achieved something quite out of the ordinary; it made itself as unpopular in the public mind as the Maritime Union of Australia, one of the perpetual targets of those who rail against "union thuggery".
Between them, the MUA and their ideological sibling in the coal industry, the Mining and Energy Union, have historically represented everything that is either good, or bad, about unionism, depending on which of the three broad camps the observer sits in.
