Tim Gooden is the Socialist Alliance candidate for the Geelong seat of Corio. 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly's Karen Fletcher spent a day with him on the campaign trail.
"You. Are. Fuckin. Kiddin. Aren't ya?" says Glen, covered in mud, leaning against his mud-flecked ute, dirt bike in the back. He hasn't heard about former Australian Manufacturing Workers Union Victorian secretary Craig Johnston getting slotted. He's outta the loop these days. Not working since Wool Combers shut up shop last year. Craig Johnston's been slotted. Glen's blown away. "Shit." Long pause, and then, under his breath, "Shiiiit!"
He's still shaking his head and swearing as Tim hands him a few hundred Socialist Alliance leaflets to letterbox around the neighbourhood. "Don't worry about the flash joints, we haven't got enough for them", Tim tells him. I look around. I can't see any flash joints. We're just out of the suburb of Corio, home to what used to be Geelong's hefty industrial work force. These days there's a lot of young blokes like Glen — out of work. A lot of old blokes too, and nearly all the women. Not much work around Corio. Not much money either, and not too many flash joints.
Tim Gooden's in work though. Plenty. When he's on days he's up at six and at the site by 6.30. He's a carpenter by trade and a shop steward by inclination. He's working a construction job at Deakin University — a Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) site — and most days the first thing he does is induct new workers. "Show em where the toilets are, check their tickets, explain the EB [enterprise bargaining agreement], warn 'em not to whistle at the young women", he tells me, as we pull away from Glen's place and head back to the highway to rig up a few more placards.
Deakin University is now the biggest industry in town. Shell, Alcoa and some big woodchipping and fertiliser plants are still pumping out enough pollution to show up in cancer clusters and give nearby Clifton Springs the highest rate of asthma in the world, but they operate with just a handful of workers and thousands of tonnes of dead metal. Selling tertiary education to international students is the real growth industry. "We've got seven Sushi joints and they're all bloody good", Tim says approvingly. "They're the real thing too. Not Australianised. Still gotta go in to Melbourne for a decent Vietnamese soup though."
When he's finished his union business for the morning he goes and sees what the boss wants. Lately Tim's been removing asbestos from an old building on campus, all suited up against the deadly blue dust. By four he's on his way to Trades Hall. He's the assistant secretary of the Geelong and Region Trades and Labour Council. This past week, while the secretary's away, he's been the acting secretary and it's been busy. Trades Hall put on five buses to take 300 workers up to Melbourne for the rally against James Hardie. He's also been giving the workers at Timbertruss a "chop out" with a blue over an EB.
I've been riding around in Tim's ute for long enough to know that a "blue" is an industrial dispute, but I have to ask what a "chop out" is. "Give 'em a hand. Help 'em out", he explains. "They had a few pickets running and they needed barbecues and that. We took 'em over."
We drive under a bridge that Tim calls the "Robert Sergi", after a crane operator who died there two years ago. "One of my best mates was shop steward on that site", he says. "He died too, last year, in the back seat of a car on his way home from work. We had a barbecue and raised 65 grand for his family." That's some chop out. I ask him how you raise $65,000 at a barbecue. "Chocolate wheel. Raffle. That sort of thing", he says.
Tim got to know "young Glen" on a chop out. On May 1, 2003, Glen and 80 other workers were locked out of Geelong Wool Combers, one of the few remaining textile shops in town, because they refused to sign the boss's EB, a poisonous package of casualisation measures, shift allowance reductions, "shit-house pay" and abolition of redundancy benefits.
They were a small group of workers from a small shop represented by a small union (the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia) and as the lock-out dragged on, the workers were "starving". Socialist Alliance, through Tim, offered them a chop out — to collect money on the three regular 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly stalls held in the town's market and shopping centres on a Saturday morning.
At first the workers weren't keen. "We don't want to beg on the street", they protested. Tim managed to convince them that they owed it to the town to give them an opportunity to help. And help they did. A few weeks into the campaign the stalls were collecting more then $2000 a week. That, plus the self-imposed levies from CFMEU and Australian Manufacturing Workers Union members got them through. "Even the Australian Workers Union members at Shell chipped in 18 grand between 'em", Tim tells me. At the end of the dispute, after a six-month stand-off, Wool Combers closed down, the latest in a long line of textile shop closures, but the workers got their redundancies, and the "lock-out" tactic hasn't been used by Geelong bosses since.
Tim's partner Sue Bull (a school teacher and long-time socialist unionist herself) says Tim doesn't hear people when they express doubts about whether they can win.
Sue met Tim when they worked together in the Community and Public Sector Union in Canberra in the mid-90s. Tim was then secretary of the ACT government section and she was an organiser. One blue they worked on together was between school bursars and the ACT government. The bursars, says Sue, were mainly middle-aged, middle-class women who'd never been in an industrial fight. The union heard that the minister for education was scheduled to visit one of the affected schools and suggested a picket by the bursars. The women were not keen. Even on the day, many of them tried to turn Tim back as he strode towards the school gate with an armful of placards.
"We're not feeling very confident about this strategy Tim", Sue heard one woman say quietly as she struggled to stay alongside as Tim marched on oblivious. The bursars remained doubtful and decidedly unenthusiastic until they sighted the minister. "Then they started yelling bloody murder", Sue tells me, hooting with laughter and waving her finger in the air. "'You bloody lying mongrel bastard! You bastard!' They were brilliant!"
Tim actually has a severe congenital hearing impairment and wears powerful hearing aids. It's a strange thing though, says Sue, he can't hear a word if you say something about losing, but he sure picks up on it fast if you need a chop out to get a win.
We've stopped off at the CFMEU office to pick up some star pickets for the placards. In the corner of the shed there's a huge pile of winter jackets. Tim says the members get one new jacket a year from the boss and every winter they bring old ones to the office and the union drops them off at a charity that distributes them to the homeless.
I'm poking around the shed looking for other stories, but Tim is clearly restless and wants to get going. He's on a mission. Last week ALP candidate Gavan O'Connor and a fundamentalist Christian outfit, Families First, got their placards up beside all the main roads and he wants to make sure Socialist Alliance gets the same exposure. We cruise through Geelong in the ute, stopping every time we see a cluster of election placards at the side of the road.
"Hope we don't lose these", he says as he drives star pickets into the ground with what looks like a giant axe. "And if the bloody council rings to tell me to take 'em down I'll tell 'em I'll take down mine as soon as Gavin takes down his!"
The local council, heavily influenced by the infamous Frank Costa, fruit millionaire and president of the Geelong Football Club, doesn't like posters. Just as we're headed to our last placard site Tim gets an SMS from Sue, who's sticking up posters in town. "Did a runner from cops. How r u going?" He rings her. "False alarm", he reports. "Just a couple of old security guards. She got away easily. Lost the bucket though."
We meet Sue and the rest of the Socialist Alliance crew back at HQ — two rooms in the Trades Hall building. There are placards on all the windows of the building — a cheesily grinning Mark Latham on one side and the red and white "Medicare not Warfare" of the Socialist Alliance on the other. "There's a story behind that", says Tim. I knew there would be.
The SA placards went up as soon as the alliance rented the rooms a month ago. Last week the plumbers division had their monthly meeting and someone "got the shits" about all the SA paraphenalia. Like all union branches in the state, they'd got the word from Melbourne (the Victorian Trades Hall Council) that they should be campaigning for Labor. They passed a motion and word reached Tim they weren't happy.
Tim's in full story-telling mode: "So a little dicky bird comes up to tell me about it, and he's pretty sheepish about it — if a dicky bird can be sheepish — and when he tells me what happened I say 'no worries! Why don't you just put up some Labor placards!' And the very next day Mark Latham is all over the front window." He takes me outside to have a look. "Check it out!" He's beaming. "But they've only got six, and we've got seven!"
Tim heads back upstairs to meet with Justine, the campaign's letterboxing coordinator. On the way up the stairs he's muttering about writing a letter to the editor of the Geelong Advertiser about a report that the ALP candidate for the neighbouring seat of Corangamite, Peter McMullan, had held a $750-a-head luncheon the day before for 60 businessmen and "union heavyweights" to listen to a speech by Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Greg Combet. "Bet there were no real bloody workers there", he rages quietly.
Chris Johnson, the Socialist Alliance candidate for Corangamite, has whipped up a batch of vegetarian spring rolls and we all toss in two dollars for a feed. Chris, besides being a socialist, is a Buddhist and a vegetarian. She cooks vegetarian meals for SA meetings and she tells me she likes to torture the "weight watchers", who meet on Wednesday nights in the room next door, with the smell of vegetarian lasagne. "Skinniest mob of weight watchers I've ever seen!" she hoots.
Tim's no vegetarian, but he relishes the spring rolls. In fact he's a paid-up member of the Bow Shooters Association and likes nothing better than to bag a few rabbits for a stew. I tease him about his comrades in the Royal family campaigning for their right to hunt in the English countryside and he takes the bait. "Hunting's a ruling-class sport over there", he says, "but over here its always been a working-class thing".
Tim may not see eye to eye with Chris on blood sports, but they're shoulder to shoulder when it comes to the most important "working-class things" like helping out a mate, a strike, a comrade or a picket line. The same week as the Wool Combers lockout began the Socialist Alliance office got a call to say a bunch of cleaners at the Gordons TAFE had a picket line going. "We just shut up the office and went down there straight away", says Chris proudly.
It's a working-class tradition that smoulders on in struggle towns like Geelong, and it's winning Tim and the Socialist Alliance a lot of support and respect from ordinary people in tough disputes.
On my way out of Geelong that night I pass the clusters of placards we visited earlier in the day. Gavan's may be bigger, and Family First's may be in full colour, but Tim's are in the best position. Every time.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, October 6, 2004.
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