BY GRAHAM MATTHEWS
"It's not going to be all that easy [under the third-term of the Coalition government] but we're just going to have to fight on. I'm sure the militant unions will be up to it", Craig Johnston, Victorian state secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, told 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly soon after the November 10 federal election.
Johnston is a leader of the militant Workers First group, which won leadership of the Victorian AMWU branch in 1998. Since then, the branch membership has grown, largely due to the coordinated pattern bargaining campaign that has won significant gains in wages and conditions for manufacturing workers.
These gains, as well as Victorian union's support for social justice campaigns, have not endeared it to big business or to the Victorian Labor government. The Workers First leadership is under strident legal, industrial and political attack — from employers, the Victorian government and now from the national AMWU leadership.
Despite being under political siege, Johnston does not pull his punches. The ALP lost the election, Johnston said, because of its "me-too campaign". Continuing, he said: "On the issues of the war, racism and refugees, Labor supported the Liberals. And why would you vote for someone who's going to do exactly the same thing? Surely, if you want to be the alternative government, you should put up alternative position."
Johnston is worried about the increase in racism in the last few months. "The trade unions have to take this issue up. Certainly, our union will be. We're looking at getting speakers for all our officials and our leading activists ... because the reality is that there is so much crap coming from the capitalist class that many people are confused. There's not a flood of refugees taking our jobs, there's a flood of imported manufactured goods that are taking our jobs."
Johnston made the controversial decision to join the Socialist Alliance when it was formed early this year. "For the first time in my life I voted against the ALP", he explained. "I voted Socialist Alliance first, the Greens second and put Labor third. How could I vote for a party that was supporting racism and had very right-wing policies?
"There's got to be a movement to the left of the ALP, some combination of the Greens and the Socialist Alliance, or other progressive forces which will hopefully get parliamentary representation, because the Labor Party is moving so far away from working people, from disadvantaged people."
Johnston is cautious, however, about calling for trade unions to disaffiliate from the ALP. Emphasising that his comments do not represent union policy, he explained, "I think we need some unions to remain in the ALP. But we need some unions to break away and lead the charge for a progressive party.
"That doesn't mean that the AMWU suddenly disaffiliates from the ALP and affiliates with the Greens or the Socialist Alliance. The union shouldn't affiliate with anyone. But the AMWU can certainly support, both financially and industrially, progressive forces. I can't see why unions shouldn't stop spending massive amounts of money on a party that is basically moving further and further away from the trade union movement.
"There's a lot of union leaders, particularly at the national level, who will huff and puff [about proposals to weaken union representation in the ALP], but at the end of the day they will stay with the Labor Party."
The Victorian AMWU branch, and its Workers First leadership, has been under attack by Victorian Premier Steve Bracks, because of its targeting of a planned food processing plant, to be built by Sizerea, in Melbourne's west. According to Johnston, the government is supporting the company in the dispute and is calling the AMWU "a rogue union".
"We are particularly disappointed by the actions of the Bracks government... It seems that the Labor Party never changes it colours. It was the Labor Party that sent the troops into the mines [to break up a dispute in the 1949], it was the Labor Party that de-registered the Builders Labourers' Federation."
In late November, Bracks wrote to the national leadership of the AMWU to complain about Workers First. On December 4, the AMWU announced a national internal inquiry into the Victorian branch, to be headed by former federal ALP minister Joe Riordan and former ACTU vice-president Tom Macdonald.
Like all unions, the AMWU is now gearing up for a battle with the third term Coalition government. Likely legislation includes exempting small business from unfair dismissal legislation. ALP leader Simon Crean has indicated that the ALP may also be prepared to "soften" the current unfair dismissal legislation.
"I worked on the shop floor in an era before [protection from] unfair dismissal was in the federal jurisdiction", Johnston explained. "When a worker got sacked for being a delegate, as I was a number of times, members went on strike, otherwise you got done over.
"Now, not every union has the industrial capacity to be able to do that. How the hell can any social democratic-type government support right-wing policies like [removing protection from unfair dismissal]?"
According to Johnston, another of Howard's proposed amendments to the Workplace Relations Act will outlaw strike action unless a full secret ballot is taken of the membership.
The AMWU has been one of the unions campaigning against the royal commission into the building industry, which is designed to harass building unions. "What'll come out of it is a series of recommendations that the government can use, or attempt to use, to weaken the unions' industrial capacity" and attack building workers' pay and conditions, Johnston told GLW.
"Howard has clearly decided that he's defeated most of his enemies... The last bastion of opposition (with the exception of some of the smaller progressive groups) is the unions — certainly not all of them, but some of them.
"All we can do is keep struggling. It's always been this way and will remain this way unless there's a change in the society we live in. We'll have to be strategic in the way we do things, but we'll obviously have to continue to break laws, continue to struggle, continue to fight and protect our members and continue to fight for a more fair and just society."
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, December 12, 2001.
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