BY MELANIE SJOBERG
Manufacturing bosses, politicians of both Labor and Liberal stripes and right-wing media commentators are watching closely the current election inside the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU), which ends on May 19. And they're worried.
What they're worried about is an unprecedented challenge to the union's long-entrenched national secretary, Doug Cameron, and his hand-picked Victorian secretary, Julius Roe, by a group of militant unionists, Workers First, which has revolutionised the approach of the union's Victorian branch since it won state elections there in 1998.
Darren Nelson, challenging for the national secretary's position, Craig Johnston, running for the Victorian union secretary, and the rest of Workers First team are seeking to bring their militant, from-the-ground-up brand of trade unionism to the whole AMWU.
The best example of Workers First's approach since taking over in Victoria has been its Campaign 2000, an attempt to replace shop-by-shop enterprise bargaining with industry-wide "pattern" bargaining.
Not only has Campaign 2000 bucked the industrial trend of unions taking the negotiations framework which is given to them by employers and governments, but, because it has been discussed and endorsed by union mass meetings, its democratic character has also generated considerable enthusiasm amongst the AMWU rank-and-file.
The bosses are so concerned that they had federal workplace relations minister Peter Reith draw up legislation outlawing "pattern" bargaining. Reith presented the draft law to parliament on May 12.
So the stakes are high. If Workers First wins, not only will it take Campaign 2000 to other states, it may even inspire similar groupings, dissatisfied with the tame approach of their leaders and hankering for a return to militant, democratic unionism, to mount similar challenges in their own unions.
Driving force
The possible knock-on effect is multiplied by the prominence the AMWU holds as one of Australia's largest and most influential unions. This is not just any other union: it, or its pre-amalgamation predecessor, the Amalgamated Metal Workers and Shipwrights Union, has been a driving force in Australia's workers' movement for decades.
It was the AMWSU which confronted Malcolm Fraser's Coalition government in the early 1980s with a campaign for a 35-hour week, just at the time when Fraser and the employers were telling workers the country couldn't afford it.
It was also the AMWSU which then turned to Bob Hawke's Labor Party and helped ensure its election to federal government in 1983. The AMWSU was one the most enthusiastic and influential union backers of Labor's Prices and Incomes Accord — since disowned by even the most conservative union leaders — which, with almost full union backing, allowed the greatest transfer of wealth from poor to rich in this country's history.
Whichever side it's thrown its weight behind, the AMWU has been a union which others have looked to for guidance.
Journalistic venom
The employers' pet journalists recognised very early the danger a Workers First election win presented to business interests. The Australian Financial Review began its crusade in February, when it began a series of fearful articles on Victoria's industrial landscape and the threat of increased union militancy.
The Australian agreed, spitting venom at union tactics it described as "investment-curdling" and a "return to the bad old days". Campaign 2000, or the associated combined construction unions' campaign for a 36-hour week, is not an example Rupert Murdoch would like to see recur.
The Sunday Age weighed into the election fray on April 9, running a feature comparing the two candidates for Victorian state secretary.
In the hands of the Sunday Age, Cameron protégé Julius Roe became the smart union visionary, a student radical who'd been black-banned by the Liberal government, and who supports militant action but also thinks "there are often more sophisticated ways of going about it". Craig Johnston, in contrast, became the tough kid who didn't do well in school, ended up in the metal industry and didn't answer the Sunday Age's questions nicely enough.
Playing to his fan club, Roe on April 7 announced that the metals group of unions would not be pursuing the 36-hour week already won in the Victorian construction industry.
Johnston, as assistant state secretary responsible for the metal industry, was forced to respond, saying that the 36-hour week claim had been endorsed by mass meetings, that Roe had no authority to overturn such decisions and that the claim would stay as one of the main planks of Campaign 2000.
Cosy
The contest at the national level has been attracting similar interest from employer groups. Labor politicians and several corporate leaders attended Cameron's $200 a head launch, at which he outlined his vision for manufacturing sector unions becoming involved in a "compact of cooperation [with employers] on tariffs, venture capital, support for heavy engineering, technology and research and development" — a "vision" strikingly similar to that pursued under the ALP-ACTU Accord.
Workers First members argue that if Roe wins in Victoria and Cameron keeps his position, it will be this cosy relationship with employers, rather than Workers First's combative Campaign 2000, that will win out.
This would certainly seem to be confirmed by events in Cameron-run NSW where, despite an Olympics-driven building and employment boom, the AMWU has gained little for its members. The latest round of enterprise agreements keeps work hours at 38 per week, for example, and wage outcomes have been lower than those in Victoria.
The Cameron/Roe ticket hasn't been above dirty tricks, either. Its electoral material has argued that AMWU members should not vote for "outside interference" in the union and that a vote for Johnston and Nelson would be a vote for "would-be politicians running the union".
Yet Johnston has announced that he is not a member of the ALP and that the union should be independent of Labor influence.
Cameron, on the other hand, is an ALP heavyweight long rumoured to have parliamentary ambitions and continues to see unions' best hope being in an alliance with Labor, even while admitting that the ALP's policy on trade is "indistinguishable" from the Coalition's and that Labor "laid the foundation for many of the current excesses of the Howard government".
Workers First supporters also allege that the Cameron/Roe ticket has used union funds and resources to boost its own election chances. The union journal, glossy union-produced leaflets and sudden extensive media coverage have all heavily profiled the Cameron team.
Rumours have started circulating through the union that the Cameron group has hired 250 phone canvassers to ring union members to ask if, and how, they are voting.
Workers First was so concerned about the situation that it took Cameron and Roe to the Federal Court. However, on May 2 Justice Ryan refused to grant orders preventing the use of union property, funds, time or resources on electioneering, stating that it was an inherent advantage of incumbency to do just that.
Unionists or suits?
The contrast between this and Workers First's campaign couldn't be starker, a point the militants have emphasised in union material by asking: "Who do you want to run your union? A real trade unionist or a suit?". Workers First's fundraising BBQs don't charge $200 a plate and you're more likely to run into kids playing chasey than captains of industry.
Supporters have had to take time off work to electioneer, some without pay. Yet they've still managed to get material distributed to workplaces in most states and have been well received by some factories which haven't seen a union organiser for years.
Their combination of industrial militancy and commitment to union democracy has appealed to many union members, as has their commitment to the cause.
On May 12, Johnston, alongside Dean Mighell from the Electrical Trades Union and Cesar Melham from the Australian Workers Union, were found guilty in the Federal Court of proceeding with mass meetings of union members in defiance of directives from the Australian Industrial Relations Commission.
The three have said that they'd rather go to jail than pay the fines imposed, a defiance which harks back to the days when unions were willing to challenge unjust anti-union laws rather than cop them.
An official of the employers' Australian Industry Group offered to get the contempt charges against Johnston dropped if he agreed to pull out of Campaign 2000 negotiations and let the AMWU's national officers establish a "shell agreement", with the detail left until later. Johnston and Workers First condemned the manoeuvre.
Nor has Workers First's militancy been limited simply to the industrial area — they've supported International Women's Day rallies, for example, and have sought greater links with environmentalists.
No wonder business leaders, media moguls and Labor and Liberal politicians are worried. This is an entirely different kind of unionism to what they want to see: this kind is militant rather than pliant, democratic rather than top-down and it won't buckle at the first sign of trouble.