Trade unionist and political prisoner Craig Johnston was released from Loddon prison in country Victoria on May 26, the same day that the Coalition government announced its next set of anti-union laws.
In 2001, while Johnston was the Victorian secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, Johnson Tiles sacked 29 AMWU members and replaced them with non-union labour-hire workers on lower wages from notoriously anti-union company Skilled Engineering. Johnston's prison sentence resulted from actions taken at Skilled Engineering offices during the ensuing dispute. While 18 people were charged with the same actions in the dispute, only Johnston ended up in jail. The Johnson Tiles workers never got their jobs back.
Craig Johnston was jailed for a non-violent "crime". The system which jailed Johnston never penalised the company for the theft of the workers' jobs.
Sue Bolton interviewed Johnston for Green Left Weekly.
Describe what prison life was like.
Prison life is very spartan despite the perception in [Melbourne's] Herald Sun. Most of the cells are "two out" so you have to share a 10x10 [metre] cell.
You spend an extraordinary time in the cell, depending on which jail you're in. At the MAP [Melbourne Assessment Prison] and some jails you spend 16 hours in the cells a day. In other jails you only spend 10 or 12 hours locked away in the cell.
In most jails you're expected to work and the wages are about $6 a day for working 6-7 hours.
The discipline's quite harsh. If you answer back or have an argument with the screws, you can be charged and have loss of privileges, be locked down early or have your TV taken off you. Life in jail is not very pleasant.
The prisoners I dealt with were friendly. Most were fairly supportive of what we had done in so far as they have an understanding of organised labour and workers, and that scabs shouldn't take other workers' jobs. That wasn't 100%, but that was the majority of prisoners. Jail's like the rest of society. It's a mixture of people with different views.
I was treated very well. There was no aggression or violence shown towards me at all.
Around one in five prisoners at Loddon are in there for car accidents. Many prisoners are there because of mental health problems and intellectual disability because the Kennett [former state Coalition] government destroyed the mental health system in Victoria.
Because there's no-one out there helping people with intellectual disabilities, some of them get themselves in trouble and then they end up doing long stretches in jail at a great cost to the community. It would be much better and more humane and there would be a better result if the government opened those mental health services back up and started helping those people.
You've also got a lot of young kids who get caught up with drug, and if they were given some help, they probably wouldn't end up in jail.
Prisoners with intellectual disabilities are in mainstream jails where they're open to being assaulted and attacked. The jail system in some places can be very violent. At the MAP, Barwon and Port Phillip prisons, there's a lot more violence than at Loddon. It's especially the case in Port Phillip which has been privatised.
Because the privatised prisons need prisoners back so they can make a quid, there's no incentive for them to reform. Loddon is still a state-run prison.
Do you have any regrets about the Johnson Tiles dispute?
If we had the time over again, we would have done some things slightly differently. But the issue of the casualisation of workers hasn't gone away. There needs to be a lot more industrial action over casualisation, and ultimately some changes through laws. At the moment, you can have your job stolen and you get no compensation.
I stand by the decisions we made at the time. We did the right thing at Johnson Tiles to try to get those workers' jobs back. But it might have been better judgement to bypass the Skilled Engineering office because the scabs weren't there — it was the bosses there — and in hindsight that was probably a mistake.
But at Johnson Tiles, if the same circumstances happened again today [where a company threw workers out of work and replaced them with scabs], I'd do it again.
We picketed Johnson Tiles for weeks before that incident. We went to the Industrial Relations Commission which said that they agreed with us but that they had no power to order the reinstatement of the workers because the government had changed the laws.
We tried all the appropriate legal channels. We followed all the guidelines set down by Trades Hall and the ACTU with picketing but the scabs were breaking our picket every day. So desperate people do desperate things.
The sort of incident at Johnson Tiles has happened many times over the last 150 years. Many unionists in the past have been jailed, and there'll probably be more in the future, over similar incidents.
The government and the bosses jailed a heap of shearers in the late 1800s when they brought scabs from Victoria into the shearing sheds in Queensland, and there are hundreds of other examples. It's part of what goes on in industrial relations when you don't have laws to protect workers and workers' rights.
What solidarity did you receive when you were in jail?
There was the Cuban Five [Cubans jailed in the US for monitoring anti-Cuban terrorists]. It was fantastic to get letters from those Cubans. They're all rotting in an American jail at the moment.
Two of them weren't allowed to receive my letters. I got letters from the [US] Department of Corrections saying that they could only get letters if they asked for them. But how could they ask for them if they don't know that someone's going to send them a letter? I got letters from the other three.
I also got a letter and a book signed by people at a public meeting in Queensland where I believe one of the SEQEB workers who was jailed over that dispute spoke.
People would write to me and their kids would put in a little drawing which said 'Free Craig'. That's very touching when children write things.
There were letters from old pensioners, saying that what's happened to you is wrong and I support you. That's also very touching.
I got boxes and boxes of letters and cards — a massive amount of Christmas cards. The screws were joking that they were going to put on a blue to get an extra screw put on just to deal with the mail that came to me. It was phenomenal.
Getting Green Left Weekly and Socialist Worker regularly, and the printouts of the Scottish Socialist Voice, all those things were grouse because I could read them and pass them around the jail and keep abreast of what was going on elsewhere.
What will be your role in the union movement?
My role will be as a rank-and-file activist. If on a particular job, members determine they want me to be the delegate or health and safety rep, then I'll take that role on, or whatever else the members determine.
I want to get involved in the Union Solidarity Group. Anything I can do in the campaign against the Howard government, I want to be involved in.
I can't hold an elected position for five years [under the Workplace Relations Act]. That doesn't stop a union appointing me but I'd rather just spend a bit more time back on the job.
I'll still be playing a role but not being as upfront. I'll be passing on to other people some of the things I've learnt over the last few years.
There's a debate in the union movement about whether to focus on workplace organisation and preparing for the next federal election, or a second view that you need to campaign against the government's attacks on unions with industrial action and mass protests. What's your view?
We should be taking the second course of action. The first one, about building organisation on the job, well it's a union's job to do that all the time so there shouldn't be any debate about that. But if we just wait until the next election, a Labor government may be elected but who's to say it's going to change many things.
History tells us that Labour parties haven't. [British Labour Prime Minister] Tony Blair's changed very few of the Thatcherite laws. [New Zealand Labour Prime Minister] Helen Clarke's changed very little of the New Zealand Contracts Act.
We need to make industrial relations a key political issue so that there is a public debate, so that if a Labor government is elected at the next election, they have to change back all of the things that have been taken away to what we want.
I've got no great illusions in the Labor Party but the reality is that at this juncture in time, the ALP is the only alternative to the Liberals in the lower house. So to get them to bring us some decent laws that give workers a fair go, there has to be a massive public debate, and that won't happen unless there are political protests.
It certainly won't happen if everyone's sitting down quietly and waiting for an election because then there will be a political vacuum, and then Labor will say "We can't change that".
I support the view that unions have to go out and consolidate the gains that they've got and tie up agreements, because a union's job is to make sure that the members it represents are well paid. But having done that, they've got to be prepared to take continued industrial action and political action to help other workers and go to other pickets and have mass protests and all that.
That includes an education process because some workers will be keen to do it and others won't be and some will be scared. It's a matter of trying to educate your way through so that more and more workers come out on the streets.
Because of the way that Howard's going about things, I think there's an opportunity to build a massive campaign against the government.
What about the union movement building alliances?
If the ACTU is getting [joint] statements [with welfare groups and churches, etc.] that's a start, but we need to go further than that.
I don't know that the ACTU is the appropriate body if you're talking about grassroots community work. The grassroots is really where the unions are out in the community.
The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union's role in the last couple of years has been outstanding. It's done a whole range of things with a whole range of community groups in different areas, the Breakfast for Kids program, the Braybrook footy club ... When a parent comes to the school and sees there are union guys raising money for their kids, that wins a heart more than a statement from ACOSS [Australian Council of Social Service] or the ACTU. There need to be lots more of those initiatives.
It's like this picket in Dandenong at Kemalex [Plastics]. I understand there's been a whole range of people who've gone out there giving those workers support. There needs to be practical support as far as bodies, and also financial support.
It might be the NUW [National Union of Workers] this time [at Kemalex] and it might not be the most progressive union but there's a bunch of workers there who are getting screwed. If everyone else jumps in and helps them, that's going to build solidarity for some further dispute further down the track. And if you look at Victoria where unions have operated that way, they've been very successful.
From Green Left Weekly, June 8, 2005.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.