SUPER UNION: Unions defy

SUPER UNION

GETS THE GO AHEAD

‘You voted on it and it happened. We’re in a union that can fight back and we’re going to fight back’

It is official. On 6 March the Fair Work Commission said yes to the amalgamation of the Maritime Union, Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) and the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia (TCFUA). The decision, hotly contested by the Turnbull Government and business groups, sees the creation of one of the biggest and most militant unions boasting a membership of more than160,000 members.

It made headlines:

“CFMEU-MUA merger puts bosses on edge,” said The Australian.

“CFMEU-MUA merger to create $150m super union ‘too big’ for the courts”, The Australian Financial Review reported.

The amalgamation came in the lead up to the union’s celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the MUA’s historical 1998 victory over Patrick Stevedores and the Howard/Reith Government conspiracy to sack its entire workforce and deunionise the waterfront. The unions commemorated both victories at a dinner in Melbourne in April.

The MUA will remain a separate division within the Construction Forestry Maritime and Mining Union, with MUA officials keeping their titles as part of the MUA division.

MUA national secretary Paddy Crumlin will also take the role of international president for the new union.

In a message to members via YouTube Crumlin described the decision as historic.

“Comrades, it’s an historic day. We went out there two years ago and determined to form a new union; a union that wouldn’t lose our important MUA identity - the long historical identity of struggle fighting back that saw us build decent conditions of employment at sea and on the docks and in the tugs and in the ports, a union that could fight back against people like Liberal Senator, Michaela Cash who was taking our right to work away in the offshore, Malcolm Turnbull, Howard and Abbott,” he said.

“So we made a determination to fight and we realised it. You voted on it. It’s happened. It’s happened with the opposition of the Turnbull Government, it happened with the opposition of mines and metals, and the builders and all the big end of town looking after their self-interest and to preserve their elitism while taking away your right to strike, taking away your dignity in the workplace. We’re in a union that can fight back and we’re going to fight back.”

National secretary Michael O’Connor said the union would hit the ground running. ”Big business has too much power, we have record levels of inequality in our community, and working families are finding it hard to make ends meet,” he said. “We will be fighting every day to restore the fair go.”

The textile union’s national secretary, Michele O’Neil said it had a proud history fighting for some of Australia’s lowest paid and most exploited workers.

“This is the day that we will begin to win Australian workplaces back for Australian workers,” she said.

However, the success was short-lived with the Australian Mines and Metals Association (AMMA) lodging an urgent appeal to a full bench of the Fair Work Commission in an attempt to stop the merger going ahead.

On 22 June the Fair Work Commission knocked back the appeal, leaving an appeal to the High Court as the most likely option for the serial whingers AMMA and MBA. AMMA and the MBA opposed the merger on the grounds that two of the unions involved were currently subject to civil penalty proceedings and a contempt proceeding pending in the Supreme Court of Victoria. The move was widely seen as an attempt to buy time for the Turnbull Government to try to pass through Parliament i ts so-called ‘Ensuring Integrity Bill’ that would insert a “public interest test”. However, the Full Bench of the Fair Work Commission determined that an earlier finding by deputy president, Val Gostencnik was correct in saying the merger could not be blocked for failing to meet the requirements of the Registered Organisations Act. Paddy Crumlin said it should be up to union members, and not employer groups or the Turnbull Government on their ideological crusade against unions, to decide whether unions should merge. “The MUA vigorously opposed the appeal by AMMA and the MBA and sought to defend the rights of workers seeking to

“Our members have engage in freedom of association,” Crumlin said. overwhelmingly supported this amalgamation and “Our members have overwhelmingly supported this amalgamation and it should be it should be up to them up to them to decide whether they merge – not rogue employer to decide whether they groups.” merge – not rogue “This merger means that maritime, construction, forestry, employer groups.” mining and manufacturing workers will have an industry PADDY CRUMLIN union that is able to represent them more effectively.” Crumlin said bigger can be better as long as members are supporting it. “Do you think the shipping companies aren’t merging together with the mining companies who are merging together with the transport companies that are merging together with the rail companies, that are merging together with retailers?” Crumlin said. “So big business and multinational capital can avoid tax and responsibility by vertically and horizontally integrating themselves through the supply chain from mining to manufacturing to retail and workers can’t do the same thing? “This is just the start of it, there are going to be bigger and better and stronger unions in this country that will change the rules – rules made by governments to eliminate working rights not to promote them. “That’s what the Turnbull Government and employer groups are objecting to - a strong union, a real union and a union that has total support of workers in that industry.” MUA deputy national secretary, Will Tracey said the MUA had beaten legal action designed by anti-union forces against the interests of working people. “The MUA’s legal win against renowned anti-union groups AMMA and the MBA is good news for members and shows the benefit of standing up and fighting back against those who didn’t want the amalgamated union to proceed,” Tracey said. “Well we’ve got bad news for our opponents - as anyone who was at the recent inaugural conference will tell you, no-one from any of the three amalgamated unions is going to take a backwards step when it comes to representing the best interests of our members.” n

STAND UP, FIGHT BACK

The Maritime Union celebrated a new era as part of a new union at the inaugural conference of the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union on the Gold Coast in June.

It’s all in black and white. The conference papers for the inaugural conference spell out the new super union agenda for the years to come:

The union has been born into a time of crisis. For over 50 years the labour movement has been under sustained attack. Neoliberalism has run its course and it is the job of the labour movement to bury it. Workers’ rights are at an all time low; inequality is at an all time high. The big end of town is made up of wage thieves, tax dodgers and criminal bankers. Everyday working people have had enough. It’s time to fight back. We have to change the government, change the rules and grow the movement. It is not a slogan, but a call to arms.

“It’s a ferocious challenge and ferocious attack,” International President Paddy Crumlin told the more than 120 delegates, observers and international guests at the Star conference centre in Broadbeach, Queensland. “They are taking away our democratic institutions. They want to take the bread out of your mouth to build their wealth and power. Are we going to rebuild the union movement? Yes. We can fight back – we have a history of fighting and winning. The rest of the world is looking to us to lead from the front and follow us and walk with us.”

The agenda for the new union is to develop new strategies and new tactics to re-invent itself. It is not to leave behind who we are, but to find new ways of organising workers and communities, new ways of campaigning, new ways to tackle the big campaign driver – jobs and inequality. Conference sought to develop a new union identity – “Who we are and what we believe in” – militancy, solidarity, the pursuit of justice, equity, human rights, the promotion of workers and trade union rights campaigning at the workplace, community national and international levels.

“We have to decide if the future will shape us or if we will shape the future,” conference declared.

“Solidarity action of workers on workers should be celebrated,” said Michael O’Connor, National Secretary.

“To build the future you have to have pride in the past,” said Tony Maher, National President.

Dave Noonan, National Assistant Secretarypaid tribute to Ark Tribe, the South Australian construction worker and unionist who was prosecuted for refusing to attend a meeting with investigators from theAustralian Building and Construction Commission(ABCC) in 2008.He was acquitted in 2010 but sadly passed away in May this year.

“Ark Tribe is one of our great union heroes,” Noonan said.

Michele O’Neil, National Vice-President spoke of the extraordinary honour to have the support of the for her position as President-elect of the Australian Council of Trade Unions.

“The TCFUA is 148 years old,” she said. “It is a story of struggles, campaigns and mergers. When I was young I worked as an organiser on a site with 40 languages. My union proudly tells the stories of refugees and asylum seekers. It is a unique story of a union that is predominantly blue collar women workers,”

Sally McManus, ACTU Secretary called on delegates to help build the foundations to keep the labour movement growing:

“They’re going to continue to throw everything at us,” she said. “We need to stay united – we need to win.”

International guests Joe Fleetwood General Secretary Maritime Union, New Zealand, Jenny Holdcroft, Assistant General Secretary, Industrial Global Union, Ben Davis, Director, United Steelworkers, Pennsylvania, USA, Apolinar (Dong) Tolentino, President Building and Wood Workers’ International addressed conference on the global struggle.

The Women in our Union, Indigenous Australians, Youth, The Patrick’s Dispute, Our Future, Workers’ Capital and the union’s role in the Australian Labor Party were on the agenda of the four day conference. Maritime Union members Terry O’Shane and Thomas Mayer gave an overview of the struggle of Aboriginal Australians and the need for unions to get behind the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

Conference concluded with the endorsement of 38 resolutions, including key maritime union concerns of cabotage, the right to strike and the right of representation in the workplace (see 60.) n

COMRADES

The marriage of the CFMEU and the MUA follows a long engagement. And it was on the Fremantle picket during the 1998 nationwide lockout – in the trenches – that the some of the strongest bonds were formed.

etired CFMEU national president (construction) Joe McDonald, (construction), jokes that Paddy Crumlin was ‘just a surfy from the east coast when he came west to head the picket in 1998.

Crumlin had in fact been long under the tutelage of his dad, master mariner Joe Crumlin, seafarers’ veteran leader Pat Geraghty and other union stalwarts who pulled him off the beach back in the seventies and got him started as a ship’s delegate. By 1988 Crumlin was a full time official.

Still McDonald and the CFMEU comrades could lay claim to helping transform him from a middleweight to a heavyweight in union circles.

“Leaders were born out of the dispute,” said McDonald. “Patrick gave us Paddy Crumlin and Christy Cain. Paddy was always going to be leader. I will take all the credit I can get, but he was always going to be leader.”

Christy Cain and Joe McDonald had been mates for a long time.

“They thought the West would fall. Now you could say it’s the most powerful and progressive branch in the union,” said McDonald.

The comradeship on the Fremantle picket climaxed on the night of the Tom Edmund stand, so called in honour of a wharfie clubbed to death on the Fremantle wharves in 1919. (That was Joe’s idea).

On that night the state conservative government called in riot police to break the picket. Things got ugly. The CFMEU were there.

“All the unions played a role,” said McDonald. “Whenever we were needed, jobs just kept shutting down – as they did in every other state.”

In Melbourne a dawn police raid to break the picket on April 18 failed when John Setka (now Victoria branch secretary) and John Cummins (Victorian branch president now deceased) called on thousands of construction workers all over the city to down tools and defend the picket.

“We were all there on the picket line that night,” saidSetka. “We had a whole heap of people assembled there. John was on the roof of a police van with a loud hailer. It was our command post.

“It was the very early hours of morning and we could hear the rotor blades of the helicopters overhead. The police were all cocky. They were all lined up liked storm troopers and were going to give it to us. We made some phone calls.”

“Whenever we were needed, jobs just kept shutting down – as they did in every other state.”

- JOE McDONALD

Joe McDonald, John Setka (far left). The CFMEU flag flies in solidarity over the Fremantle picket (left), a floating picket during the 1995 Weipa dispute. Paddy Crumlin and Michael O’Connor at the 20th Anniversary of the Patrick Dispute dinner in April (below) MUA stand in solidarity with Gordonstone miners, 1999 (bottom left)

The CFMEU pulled workers off the AAMI Park footie stadium under construction as they turned up for work. Others just downed tools and joined in along the way as they marched on the docks.

“Next thing it was like the movies when the cavalry arrives,” Setka recalls. “It was one of those rare, amazing moments in the dispute that pepped everyone up. If those construction workers had not marched down the police would have broken the picket. Our shop stewards still talk about it today.”

Melbourne teachers Lesley Clarke and Bronwyn Jones were at the front line at East Swanson Dock: “Mounted police, riot gear, dogs, a black bus full of plain clothes coppers, all of them with capsicum spray. The spotlight turned to strobe pulsating over the crowd. We link arms, bunch up, clasp our fingers in a monkey group. Protect our thumbs from pressure holds which could break them…”

Patrick apprentice tradie Mychelle Emmett says she still gets goosebumps thinking about it: “We could hear the horses’ hooves as the mounted police were coming down Fitzroy Road. We’d been there all night and the sun was coming up. We were all prepared for the worst. Then we heard the beat of construction workers’ boots.”

James McNamara Patrick delegate recalls: the CFMEU began marching workers off every building site in the city from 6.00 am. Melbourne Patrick wharfie John Paterson could hear them over the drone of the helicopters overhead chanting “MUA Here to Stay”.

In Sydney Mick Doleman, assistant national secretary charged with Port Botany, recalls men in balaclavas and truck drivers making a heavy attempt to break the blockade.

“Everyone on the community picket at the time was exhausted,” he said. “To our surprise we saw a large gathering of people at the end of the road. There was a sense of alarm.

“As the men got closer and unfolded their banners we realised the approaching mob was our mates in the CFMEU. Many of us had tears in our eyes. It was a great day.” “They were the first union at the Port Botany picket, and the last to leave. They only packed up when our members went back to work,” said (1998 branch secretary) Robert Coombs.

Solidarity was not only a one way street.

In 1995 in the mining town of Weipa, 75 workers took a stand against mining giant CRA - the company behind the Bougainville civil war.

CRA was attempting to crush the union. Miners set up floating pickets of aluminium dinghies to block massive bulk ore carriers loading bauxite exports. MUA members voted to shut down every port in Australia. More than 100 ships were affected. Some 25,000 miners nationwide walked off the job and the Australian Council of Trade Unions announced it would extend the campaign to other industries.

The Prime Minister and the Industrial Relations Commission intervened. CRA buckled under pressure. The miners won.

Out of the 1995 Weipa dispute and the 1998 Lockout came the M&M Mining and Maritime Solidarity declaration. The first international conference was held in Newcastle in 2002. The second M&M was hosted by the ILWU in Los Angeles. The third was timed to coincide with the 10th anniversary commemorations of the 1998 lockout in Sydney with 350 national and international guests.

In 1999 the MUA stood by miners on the Gladstone picket line in Central Queensland and in Emerald, then the longest black coal dispute in Australian history, then at the Mount Thorley and Hunter Valley disputes.

In more recent solidarity actions, the MUA has backed the CFMEU miners during the Port Kembla Coal Terminal lockout, and the three year-long Glencore Oaky North mine lock out.

In return CFMEU members joined protests, pickets and blockades over companies dumping Australian crew from the Alexander Spirit, the CSL Melbourne, the MV Portland and others. This year they joined pickets at Webb Dock and Qube, Melbourne.

MUA solidarity action has not been confined to the mines. In 2009 the union backed its amalgamation partner, the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia.

Unions were tipped off that Bond’s factory gear was being shipped out and work moved offshore. Transport unions in Melbourne led by the MUA refused to move the machinery from any Pacific Brands factory. Media dubbed it the Chesty Bonds Blockade. n