BY SHANE BENTLEY
Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) members may have had a chance to read the April 2003 edition of the Sea and Waterfront Voice. The edition marks the 20th anniversary of the Maritime Unionist Socialist Activities Association (MUSAA).
A glance through the Voice's pages will reveal a number of familiar names. MUA national secretary Paddy Crumlin, national assistant secretary Mick Doleman and numerous other MUA officials from various branches have all contributed articles.
The overlap between MUA officials and MUSAA members is considerable. Crumlin is the national secretary of MUSAA. MUA Central NSW (Sydney) branch secretary Robert Coombs is a local MUSAA leader. Around half of all MUA officials are also MUSAA members.
MUSAA traces its origins back to the Communist Party of Australia (CPA). Up until the 1950s, the CPA had blindly followed the policy dictates of USSR leader Joseph Stalin.
A series of events shook the CPA to its core.
In 1956, three years after Stalin's death, Nikita Khrushchev gave his "secret speech", denouncing the political terror, murder of opponents and the "cult of personality" that occurred under Stalin.
That same year, the CPA refused to condemn the Red Army invasion of Hungary that crushed a workers' uprising. A wave of resignations from the party soon followed.
Another crisis hit the CPA in 1968, when Soviet tanks were sent to Czechoslovakia to put down the "Prague Spring" uprising.
This time, the CPA came out in opposition to the Soviet invasion. This marked the beginning of its shift away from blind allegiance to the twists and turns of Soviet foreign policy. However, CPA leaders responded to the negative experience of Stalinism by abandoning Marxist ideas and shifting rightward towards the Labor Party.
The CPA membership became polarised between the majority who denounced the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and the minority who supported it.
Those who defended the use of Soviet tanks eventually split from the CPA and formed the pro-Moscow Socialist Party of Australia (SPA) in 1971.
The SPA was to suffer its own split a decade later.
In 1983, Prime Minister Bob Hawke's newly elected Labor government introduced the Prices and Incomes Accord, with the support of trade union officials from the CPA. The accord was an agreement between the federal government and the Australian Council of Trade Unions that limited unions engaging in industrial action for better wages and conditions, in return for promised increases to the "social wage".
The accord resulted in a sharp decrease in the real value of wages, a big increase in corporate profits and the weakening of delegate structures and union power.
The SPA and other left groups correctly opposed the accord as a tool for driving down workers' wages and living standards, while shackling unions.
A large group of SPA union officials, however, disagreed with the party's anti-accord position. They preferred to side with the Hawke government and ALP and CPA union officials in implementing the anti-worker accord.
A handful of these pro-accord officials were expelled from the SPA in 1983. A series of resignations from the SPA soon followed.
The split was mainly concentrated in NSW. The union officials who left the SPA included Pat Clancy, Bill Brown, Tom McDonald and Stan Sharkey from the Building Workers' Industrial Union (BWIU). Others were Pat Geragthy from the Seamen's Union of Australia (SUA), Tom Supple, Merv McFarlane and Wal Jennings from the Waterside Workers' Federation (WWF) and Don Henderson and John Garrett from the Firemen and Deckhands Union (FDU).
Former SPA members from the various maritime unions (SUA, WWF, FDU) formed MUSAA in 1983.
Numerous MUSAA members also joined the avidly pro-Moscow and pro-accord Association of Communist Unity (ACU) that was formed by Clancy, Brown, McDonald and Sharkey in 1984.
Union officials from the ACU and MUSAA extended their support for Labor and the accord through to supporting Hawke's attempt to smash the militant Builders' Labourers Federation (BLF).
Under Norm Gallagher, the BLF was one of the few unions that refused to accept the accord's wage-restraint proposals. Special legislation was introduced by the federal, NSW and Victorian Labor governments to de-register the BLF.
The main union to benefit from the dismemberment of the BLF was the BWIU, still under the leadership of Clancy, McDonald and Sharkey. They openly co-operated with employers and the police in order to force BLF members into the BWIU. They even drew up their own blacklist of BLF members who were then refused work in the industry.
With the disappearance of the Soviet Union, the original CPA and the ACU in the early 1990s, many MUSAA members joined the Labor Party.
The Socialist Party of Australia renamed itself the Communist Party of Australia in 1996. It appears to have forgiven the earlier sins of MUSAA. The CPA entered into an alliance with MUSAA in 1997, which still exists today.
Like the ACU did in the 1980s, MUSAA uses Marxist rheotric to hide its anti-worker policies.
MUSAA claims to stand for the defence and advancement of the union movement and the development of socialism in Australia. Yet the practice of its MUA officials over the last decade is very different.
In 1994, the Labor government planned to privatise the Australian National Line (ANL). A five-day national maritime strike against ANL privatisation ended with the September 1994 deal between Labor PM Paul Keating, the ACTU and the MUA that agreed to ANLs sell-off.
Keating sold the government's 25% share of Australian Stevedores to Patrick's Chris Corrigan. PM John Howard later sold nearly all ANL ships to the Canadian CSL and the French CGM companies. Once publicly owned ANL ships now fly flags of convenience.
In 1997, Paddy Crumlin presided over an MUA Seafarers' Conference that rammed through the loss of the union controlled seafarers' industry roster. Equality of pick-up was replaced by a system where seafarers are at the mercy of shipping companies.
A year later, Corrigan and the Howard government conspired to smash the MUA. MUA strategy during the 1998 Patrick dispute was to stifle any further industrial or solidarity actions, avoid any escalation of the dispute and refuse to challenge Reith's Workplace Relations Act.
What was won on the picket lines was handed over on the negotiating table. While picketing and legal action saw the MUA get back onto the wharves, 600 permanent jobs were lost. (P&O followed suit with a further 500 redundancies a year later). Massive casualisation on the waterfront was the end result.
Since 1998, MUA crews on tugs have been halved, delegates have been sacked and conditions have generally gone backwards. The shipping and stevedoring bosses currently have the upper hand.
MUSAA must cop its fair share of the blame for this. While claiming to stand for the defence and advancement of unions, MUSAA officials hide behind the anti-union Workplace Relations Act to cover up their refusal to take on the bosses and the government.
In order to chalk up a few wins for MUA members, the union needs to be revitalised. A good first step would be breaking the political stranglehold of MUSAA on the MUA.
[Shane Bentley is the MUA Rank & File candidate for the position of MUA central NSW (Sydney) branch secretary. He can be phoned on 0419 278 144 or emailed on <srbentley@hotmail.com>].
From Green Left Weekly, June 11, 2003.
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